Category: Social Media

Social Media, Sports Media

How the Sports Reporting Profession is Evolving and One Journalist is Paving a New Way

The sports reporter is an endangered species.

It at least sometimes feels that way with the all-too-frequent news of layoffs at even the biggest publications that dominated for decades. But the reality is that the sports reporter is more powerful than ever. As the superstar era plays out in pro sports and the creator paradigm penetrates social media and marketing, so is the sports journalist able to stand on their own and develop a fan base loyal to them, regardless of where their byline appears.

David Alter has lived through the rapidly evolving career of a sports reporter, surviving and transforming himself and cobbling together a community of fans and a content strategy that allows him to pay the bills, create content, write stories, and even fund his own road trips, oftentimes, traveling to cover the Toronto Maple Leafs beat. The line between creator and reporter isn’t completely blending, but the professions are starting to have more in common than the layman would realize. For Alter, while he does work with Sports Illustrated via The Hockey News, he’s partially independent and autonomous, making it on his own. Such an endeavor is not without ample challenges, but the Canadian journalist is winning credibility and repute through persistence, engagement, and taking advantage of every opportunity.

“Part of the issue of being independent, too, is you don’t have legacy brands where a lot of a lot of places don’t even know to reach out to you that they’ll reach out to you on Instagram or social,” said Alter, discussing how to get on and stay on the radar of publicists as an independent reporter. “Like [Maple Leafs defenseman] Morgan Reilly had this thing with Kellogg’s for media to attend and I didn’t even know about it, but the PR person who is in charge there reached out to me 2 or 3 days prior. I’m like, Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for doing that and keep me on all your lists. So you have to kind of build and do things organically.”

Developing things organically has guided Alter as he’s built up his personal brand and business as a sports reporter. He appreciates that monetizing audiences on digital and social means engagement is the key metric and the KPI that brands hold dear when evaluating where and with whom to spend their marketing dollars. And while Alter drives good, consistent engagement just from his quality content and hockey coverage of the Leafs day-to-day, he also wanted to create additional engagement opportunities for his fans through the kind of interactive activations often backed by sponsors.

So Alter did something creative, a sort of ‘fake it til you make it’ initiative, though it was really about giving fans a reason to have fun and stay engaged with the game, regardless of the score. He created a contest to have fans guess the time on ice of a specific player (the amount of game minutes and seconds a certain skater is on the ice during a game) with the closest to the mark winning a Starbucks gift card. The tweets would get a ton of replies from fans putting in their guess and fans would be checking box scores and updates throughout the game. This wasn’t a Starbucks promotion, though (nor did Alter make it seem that way), it was just a small reward Alter paid for out of his pocket to incentivize fans to participate and engage with him and each other.

“When I did that in 2021, that was more so a way for me to give back to fans who couldn’t be at games because I felt bad that I have this privileged situation where I’m at games with an empty arena [due to COVID] and can see it in person,” he said. “Even if it’s not the same experience where people at home are kind of stuck, especially in Ontario, where it was really shut down compared to any other state or province in North America for the longest time. For me, it was just kind of a way to keep people engaged in the game, even if it was a blowout or a meaningless game.”

Soon brand deals started coming organically. Alter even told of a physical therapist trading his fees for their services in exchange for shouting them out to his audience on social. Alter continued to seize opportunities to engage and entertain the audience, even beyond hockey. The life of a sports reporter, especially one that travels with the team they’re covering, is full of interesting sights and sounds and experiences — content. I’ve often written that the ordinary is extraordinary for fans, and Alter has seen that borne out with something as simple as capturing the media meal served to the press at NHL arenas. NFL broadcaster Ross Tucker turned his own ‘Tuck Spreads’ showcases of press food into a sponsorable asset and Alter has surprised himself with some of the initial virality of what is a very ordinary part of the life of a sports reporter.

“Even when I’m on the road [during the season], I review the media meals now and just things I see on the road that people would not normally see,” said Alter, who noted that MLSE’s Head of Culinary even caught wind of Alter’s press food content. “And reviewing the media meals became this big thing that kind of took on its own life because I looked at TikTok and saw what’s popular on TikTok. Okay, food, celebrity sightings, random stuff. So I started it with food where I’m like, okay, here’s the media meal. And like, that thing would get like 30,000 plays. I’m like, Why? Like, it’s just a meal for me. But people are into that stuff, so I did that…

“The Leafs are a niche and I love doing that stuff, but I do like the broad appeal that multiple people can kind of factor in and enjoy as well…It’s just kind of just keeping your eyes open and just not being afraid to try different things and do that. And, you know, you’ll get ridiculed along the way; I have for sure. But I’m like, Hey, people are into it. If they’re into it, I’m going to keep doing it.”

Creating content that will engage an audience, seeking broad appeal, understanding what’s resonating and popular — these considerations could just as easily describe a professional ‘influencer’ or creator as they fit for Alter’s occupation as a sports reporter. They’re all in the business of audience growth and audience engagement; the means may be different but the desired ends look pretty similar. Alter appreciates the value of his audience, his fans, and their continued engagement over time. No matter how the sports media paradigm continues to evolve, that fan base is his job security.

“On my Twitter, I think today I have 42,500 followers,” he said, “which, you know, as far as Leafs reporters or Leafs enthusiasts that cover the beat, it’s not the highest by any means. But I would argue that my engagement rate is as high, if not higher, than most on the beat for the reason that those people are loyal, coming back to me and are repeat customers in terms of clicking on my links, in terms of getting their information firsthand from me or whatever the case may be. So I look at that and I kind of go in that regard where I’m trying to grow things organically that way.”

As long as there is sports, there will be reporters delivering news, access, and insight to fans. But reporters no longer must be beholden to media publications with the biggest bank accounts and logos — they own their audience and they can make their own way.

LISTEN TO MY FULL INTERVIEW WITH DAVID ALTER

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Brand, Content Strategy, Social Media

The Anatomy of Brand Building in Sports — Why It Matters, What It Means, and How It Looks in Action

Too much of social media looks and sounds the same. Brands and individuals exhibiting the same personality, trolling with the same memes, and trying to shout the loudest in hopes of standing out in increasingly cacophonous, homogenous platforms and feeds.

But what is a brand if its primary distinguishing factor is simply the volume? When every team repeatedly tries to out-savage the other or invokes the same well-worn tactics, all of a sudden it’s the black and white cow that stands out amidst the herd of purple cows.

This is not a call for blandness, merely one for purpose, for values, and for giving fans a reason to believe in you, not only to be entertained by you. Jess Smith has been enmeshed with distinctive sports brands throughout her career, appreciating the balance of amusement and aura that the most powerful, lasting brands exhibit. Everybody will say that maximizing engagement is the goal, but that’s oversimplifying things. A couple of slices of pizza may get you the same calories, and more quickly, than a plate of lentils and vegetables, but overdoing either of those meals, regardless of your macros, is a recipe for bloating or blandness. Jess says it better than my nutritional meandering:

“I think not all engagement is created equal,” said Smith, who is Vice President of Brand and Digital Strategy for the Stewart-Haas Racing NASCAR team. “…I always tell the team there are certain things that we’re going to have to tell the story about or initiatives that we’re going to have to talk about. It’s probably not going to be the most engaging, but our job is to figure out how we take it and improve engagement, and build upon it…

“There are some things that are core to the organization, core to our partners, core to values and we have to do them…So I think just understanding that from a team standpoint and I always tell the team, as long as we take care of the foundation, then those fun things that we know are going to pop and are kind of silly and maybe are more of a fan engagement [play], then we can do that.

“But I think it’s just making sure that the team understands what the purpose of it is, and even though it doesn’t hit those engagements, there’s still a ton of value to it.”

Teams would do well to do their meal prep and allow for cheat meals — okay, we’ll skip more food talk, but Smith did discuss the structure and organization it takes to manage a brand and content strategy these days. There are too many demands, too many channels, and miles of monotony interrupted by unexpected detours of urgency and opportunity. One of the more unique characteristics of planning and strategy in sports is that so much of it can end up being all for naught. In a split second, a triumphant victory can turn into an agonizing defeat — but you better be ready to capitalize on the potential win because those are the fleeting moments when outsized returns and results happen. Such preparation is why just about everyone who has worked in sports will know what it means to have a folder of tears (what I called it), a virtual graveyard where the best-laid plans and content remain, having never seen the light of day.

But you still have to be ready. And there are ways teams can be ready for the big moments and also ready for the times when strategy has to be pivoted or executed more quickly than a NASCAR pit stop.

“I feel like in sports you actually have to plan for the unexpected,” said Smith, who spent time with the New York Yankees and New York Rangers prior to heading to Stewart-Haas. “So you know when trade [season] starts to happen, you have to build all the templates and think of all the different scenarios that could happen. I feel like you have to be anticipatory and plan for the things that might not happen. That’s hard because sometimes you might put in work on something and it might not ever see the light of day, but if you don’t plan for it, the team’s going to be in not a good spot. So it’s all about planning for what you can plan for and being prepared for the unexpected.”

It’s easier to be ready in real time when the team knows its brand and knows its identity. Decisions aren’t made in silos, but instead backed by collectively recognized frameworks that keep everyone driving in the same direction (left turns only — NASCAR joke for you). But brands and frameworks can’t be constrained or overly rigid, lest they remain tethered to patterns that shut them out of conversations or even entire platforms where their presence could be relevant and where their existing or potential fans want to engage. There’s a level of flexibility inherent in the most successful brands now, appreciating that their fans want them to color outside a set of lines, at times, as long as they remain true to distinctive guiding principles. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary, to keep relationships burning hot and growing.

“My perspective on what fits within a brand box has evolved over the years,” said Smith, who also writes wonderfully on her blog Social ‘n Sport. “I feel like early on I was overly strict, it was brand above all else…I do believe there’s a brand foundation and you have to do the work that matters.

“So you have to understand who you are. You have to understand your tone. You have to understand what you won’t do. I think that’s really important. Always outline what you won’t do. But the media landscape has changed so much. People, I feel like, consume to take a break, it’s entertainment [and] every brand needs to loosen up a little bit. You have to figure out what that line is for you.”

Stewart-Haas Racing knows who they are and what they stand for. Smith helped tease it out and bring it to life more than ever before, and it was remarkable to hear her articulate the SHR brand, how organic it feels, and how it guides what they do and don’t do, who they seek to engage and not, and, well, everything. This is where conceptual meets practical, where the dreamers must also be doers. It can be easy to put up a few PowerPoint slides outlining a brand, but it takes the next level to translate that brand into everyday execution. But once you can identify the north star, it illuminates and enlightens, making where, when, and how to be active across platforms feel relatively simple.

For Smith and SHR, one of their most important content pillars is the fact that their team is, as she put simply, ‘a bunch of racers.’ Racing is in their blood, across the organization, and it’s that passion for the racing that they want to instill in their content, their passion, and their fans.

“While that seems like just basic marketing speak,” Smith explained,” everyone across the organization — like our fabricators are spending their weekends at Millbridge local dirt track, racing a dirt [race]. It’s true to our DNA. So ‘bunch of racers’ is one of our pillars. We want to show how all of our drivers, most of them race outside of NASCAR. They’ll do dirt racing, they’ll do modified. Kevin [Harvick] tonight is doing SRX, like they love racing. So that’s going to show up.

“That pillar is never going to change; if it changes and it’s not core to our DNA, but how we tell that story needs to change year to year.”

The guiding principle for SHR also helps them stay in the right lanes in their marketing and digital strategies. Brands that try to be everything to everyone often end up so convoluted or confused, with nothing for fans to latch onto or hold dear; they’re inconsistent. Smith articulated how SHR knowing who they are ensures its brand is strong and distinct, recognizable from the rest.

“When you think about that pie [of all potential sports fans], you think about NASCAR, I think we have to be really intentional about who we are or we’ll dilute ourselves and then we’re competing against a bunch of noise and almost don’t stand for anything,” she said. “Of course we want to bring in casual fans, but I think that where we do our brand a service is focusing on those casual racing fans and trying to bring them into the fold.”

As more brands succumb to the temptation to be whatever helps them achieve the biggest engagement numbers and viral growth, it’ll be those that remain distinct that stand the test of time. Everybody loves the jokester, people pay attention to the troll dropping savage lines and memes, they can’t help but look at the absurd and unhinged — but real relationships, backed by emotional investment require something more than surface-level gambits meant for a quick laugh. Well-rounded exposure and engagement matters. You can aim to attract attention for a day or strive to gain unconditional love for a lifetime.

One more thing…

Jess offered tremendous advice for people in leadership roles and I wanted to include an excerpt of that because it’s too dang good to leave out of this post. Listen (or read) the full interview below!

“One piece of advice — I think that you owe it to your team to give feedback and [to give] feedback often. When I first stepped into a management role, it felt like feedback sometimes was not, I don’t want to say a negative thing, but I was uncomfortable giving it. And as I learned, if you don’t give feedback, no one can read your mind. So it’s important for you to make sure that you give feedback, you give it often, you’re direct, and you also have candid conversations about your style. Like I’m going to give feedback, it’s not a negative, it’s a positive because I’m trying to help you. So I think the first time you step into management, just learning to give feedback, learning your style is super important because it helps your team and I feel like if you’re not giving it, you’re just doing a disservice to everyone.”

*******

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH JESS SMITH

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Brand, Content Strategy, Social Media

How the Seattle Kraken Found Their Voice and Formed a Social Media Strategy Their Fans Can Feel Good About

Brand building used to be a one-way street. Something cooked up by the Don Drapers of the world. And, sure, brands were conceived and conveyed such that they’d appeal to consumers, but it was much more of an ‘at’ thing than a ‘with.’

And then social media came along and didn’t just disrupt the paradigm, it reinvented it.

Brand development is increasingly common in pro sports, as league expansion introduces new teams seemingly every few years. And the changed nature of relationships between consumers and businesses, between fans and teams — compounded by the increased demands from fans that the teams they support uphold certain values — has made the process all the more complex, but potentially powerful.

It was into this dynamic environment that Savannah Hollis stepped when she joined the Seattle Kraken to lead the initiatives on the front lines of fan relations — social media. The most recent National Hockey League (NHL) expansion team, the Kraken didn’t even have their name when Hollis came on board, let alone a voice, personality, and point of view. Amidst COVID and the widespread Black Lives Matter movement, the team had to confront important questions and issues long before they had a roster, let alone games or a logo.

“We started really thinking about as an organization, like, who do we want to be? “Who are we and what do we stand for?” said Hollis, who spent time with the Nashville Predators, Texas Stars (AHL), and Florida Panthers before joining Seattle. “I think one of the coolest things about us is from the very beginning, even prior to a lot of that, we wanted to be a little different. We wanted to make the game more accessible. We wanted to show that it doesn’t matter who you are or what your background is, what color your skin is — we want you to feel like this is a place that you could be and you could relate to and you could succeed in…

“One of the things that gave me hope to kind of go through was how we grew as an organization and some of the stuff that we did within the community and the storytelling and that engagement and the awareness and it’s just it’s been really cool and it set a really strong precedent for us…”

Championing approachability and accessibility carried through to the Kraken as a hockey team, too. Because if the team is truly a part of the community, that means just that — they’re a collaborator, not a dictator. So as the team tried to figure out where they should put their resources and who they should become, they asked questions and then sat back and listened.

“We really did want to engage the community,” said Hollis, whose role for the Kraken is Senior Manager of Social Media. “The amount of fan listening groups that our CEO and (also) at that point our head of hockey ops, who was Dave Tippet [did] — they would sit down and they’d do these fan focus groups. They’d talk to people, like, ‘What do you think about this? What do you care about? What do you want to learn?’…

“You’ll see we actually are getting ready to do this here in a couple of weeks, but once a year we try to do these fan content polls; we want our fans to help dictate what we’re doing because they’re the ones engaging with it. Like if you pay attention you’re going to see that stuff, but you also want to empower your fans to build a positive community, because I think the worst thing any brand can do is just be like, ‘No, we know what’s best’ and turn into that really corporate account who doesn’t actually engage or listen to their audience and then becomes irrelevant.

“The more you engage, the more you listen, the more you work with them, the more positive of an experience it’s going to be for everyone.”

That dedication to open communication continued on for the Kraken, too. Because the best thing a brand or business can do when they make important decisions that affect their customers (their fans) is to let them in on the process and explain their thinking. Noticing a theme here, yet? It’s one thing to say the organization is committed to being accessible, but while many preach it, fewer practice it.

So on the big day when the Kraken officially unveiled their name and brand, following months of speculation, focus groups, polls, and stories, the next step seemed obvious — invite the fans in.

“We were [thinking] like, okay, once we do the name, then what? And I was kind of like, ‘What if we did like virtual breakout sessions?'” Hollis described. “And our marketing team, our comms team took that, ran with it, and we had this really cool thing where we did deep dives with Adidas and the designers, we had our community team join on, we had hockey [ops] join on — it was so cool, all of these things that went into it that made it so successful.

“Because not only were we announcing this thing, but then we are offering people this really intense look into why we did it, what to expect, and really we showed them why they should care.”

So what does all this mean for social media? How does that philosophy extend to the club’s strategy on its social channels? For Hollis and her team, it meant thinking about how fans could feel represented within the team’s social media content, too. There’s still plenty of room for the heavily produced content featuring effects and sick dangles, but sometimes the best content instead zooms in on the fans experiencing the intensity and emotion. It’s palpable, it’s contagious, and it’s real. Hollis offered perspective on the content strategy framework.

“I mean, gosh, you could have this beautifully polished video that you’ve spent years working on and the concepts are awesome and it performs okay,” she said. “But then you have this raw video of like someone just screaming after an amazing goal and that outperforms anything you do the entire year. And it’s because it feels real. It feels raw and in the moment and it allows fans to to really connect with it. The other stuff, there’s still a place for it, it is still impactful, it still matters, but you’re starting to see a shift in what people care about, and a lot of times it’s authenticity.”

Authenticity is a buzzword, but there’s a difference between paying lip service to it and actually embracing it. That’s not to say teams should follow the lead of some of their more vehement fans lamenting a loss, but it does mean exuding optimism while at the same time acknowledging realities. Expansion teams aren’t supposed to be big winners right out of the gates. And while the Vegas Golden Knights broke the mold in their inaugural NHL season, the Kraken experienced a bit more of a typical debut, with losses more common than wins. Many teams still today, for better or for worse, will just type out ‘Final’ after a loss along with a score graphic, and then shut the proverbial laptop and walk away. The Kraken were determined to do it differently, though, to stay there alongside their fans, offering a positive outlook while still empathizing in addition to emphasizing the desire to win.

“I told [my social/digital coordinators], I was like let’s never just say ‘final’ [after a loss],” said Hollis, who noted the team leaned into humor that first season, too. “Let’s find a way to do something else. Like, if we have a bad game, is there something that we can do to still build up a player who performed well? It’s just something to do to poke fun at ourselves or to acknowledge that it sucks, right? Losing sucks. No one likes it and the team shouldn’t pretend like it’s okay.”

The honeymoon, and expected struggles, of that first season faded away as the Kraken began their second season, though. Hollis and her team recognized they couldn’t just run it back, that their fans, while still as excited as ever to have an NHL team in their town, would become more competitive and expect more. Year two for the Kraken’s social media would represent an evolution, too — still being the fun, lovable presence they were as newborns, but with an added edge that left no doubt — they expect to compete and to win.

“Going into year two we were kind of like, I don’t know if that’s going to fly for two years in a row,” Hollis recounted. “You kind of have to think about fan response because now fans are starting to get it. We made some moves in the offseason and we had (highly touted rookie) Matty Beniers coming in for his first season. The pressure was a little higher, the stakes were a little higher. So we still wanted to incorporate the tone and the lightness, but we wanted to also have fans recognize that we do have high expectations for ourselves, too. We’re not okay with being at the bottom of the standings. And I think we did a really good balancing that.”

And the team did start to win. The Kraken went on to make the playoffs and even took out the defending Stanley Cup champs when they defeated the Colorado Avalanche. As teams start to win nowadays, they often evolve their social media voice in a similar way, trending toward snark and savagery, putting more effort into highlighting their opponent’s loss than celebrating their own team’s win. But while Hollis and the Kraken recognize there is room for such snark in the strategy, they prefer to default to positive vibes, focusing on cheering the victory instead of highlighting the other team’s defeat. Such behavior conveys an example for fans, setting the tone for how this fan base wants to be in general and especially when they’re winning.

“There’s a time and a place for [savage and snark] for sure, but I think our big thing was we would rather build ourselves up instead of tear others down,” said Hollis. “There are certain teams where maybe we have good relationships with the [social media] admin so we can plan some fun back and forth or some fun banter. But at the same time, we want to focus on building our team up.

“Again, there’s always a place for the spicy comment here and there, but it’s not the focal point of our strategy.”

Hollis continued, explaining the long-term thinking that went into setting that strategy.

“So when we’re talking through this, we’re planning all this stuff, that was one of the big things that was kind of at the forefront,” she said. “Like, let’s find a way to keep building this up because this team is special and, you know, we’ve got it now, we don’t know if we’re going to get it again…So a lot of it was just let’s focus on building it up now, building these relationships now, building the goodwill now so that we have that kind of there [and] we can start forming those connections with our fans and really continue to grow them in an environment that is really positive.” 

There’s no one way to build a brand, no one-size-fits-all for every team in every market. But certain relationship principles tend to prevail for the teams that drive lasting, unconditional connections with their fans. There’s symbiosis, a feeling of unity and community that makes fans feel they’re part of something, that their relationship with the team gives them positive energy, that life just feels a bit more lively because they’re together.

The Kraken may not have won the Cup (yet), but they went from an unnamed idea to a team and a distinct brand with a distinct fan base. They won something bigger, they won over a community, building connections that can last for generations to come.

LISTEN TO MY FULL INTERVIEW WITH SAVANNAH HOLLIS

Content Strategy, Social Media

The Rise of Team Social Media ‘Hosts’ and How They Give Fans Unparalleled Glimpses at Games and Players

You peer at the footage on your device, squinting to try and make out the chorus of the song. Sure, you could look up the band on YouTube and hear it perfectly, but something about seeing this video sent from your friend at the concert makes it…different, special.There’s no logical explanation for this strange but perfectly normal behavior. But the same thing plays out for sports — a mobile shot from your buddy in the crowd adding a flavor that the official highlight on Twitter simply cannot. There’s a vicarious element to it, that even though you’re not there, you’re living through somebody else — a friend or, increasingly, a team’s social media “host” taking fans along for the ride on IG Stories and TikTok (and, years ago, Snapchat).But the idea of putting a face in front of a club’s social media presence, a guide for the fans, is a relatively recent phenomenon. It was a new idea altogether when Aviv Levy Shoshan became the conduit to the club for FC Barcelona fans around the world in 2018.”They were really the first club who made a decision to hire a host, specifically for the Instagram channels, to cover all the first team trainings and also all the first team matches,” said Levy Shoshan, who would become as recognizable to fans as many of the players as the club traveled around the world. “Now you go to any second-tier team, to any random team channel [and] you click on a match day and there will be a guy or a girl hosting on Instagram, which is bizarre thinking about it. But back in the days like five, six years ago, it was not very common. You had the traditional presenter or host for the club TV [content], but not a social host. And now it’s very hard to think away this social figure.”He was a fly on the wall — until he wasn’t. The content became that much better, the experience that much more (here’s that word again) vicarious when the previously backgrounded character became an active participant in the content, the fans enjoying his POV as if it were their own. In hearing Levy Shoshan describe the experience, one can easily close their eyes and picture the kind of content that’s become so common in sports social media today.”I always really liked as raw as possible…It’s just, clicking play and seeing how the players would interact with you,” said Levy Shoshan, who is today the social media host for Dutch club AFC Ajax in addition to leading Double Tap, the agency he founded. “Because at the end of the day, if you are behind the camera, you’re behind the camera, no one needs to know, but once they interact, they interact with your direction. “So we had a lot of times that the players would come up to us or coming out of the parking and walking to the locker room and we would be there just filming and they would just come for a fist bump, you know? And now you see every team in the world [their] social media team is receiving fist bumps from their players. But I think it kind of started somewhere around there. And players also would start realizing like, ‘Yo, if I don’t fist bump [him], there’s no chance he will post me [on social]. So you at some point all 20 players would just walk past you and fist bump you.”That kind of eye contact and second-person (but feels like first-person) interaction is the stuff of magic for fan engagement. But anyone in and around social knows that such participation from players requires trust and doesn’t happen overnight. Levy Shoshan has worked alongside the biggest football players in the world for whom any misstep could blow up. So the best thing the social media person can do is, over time, ensure players know that not only will they be protected in the content, but that it will make them look good. Because social media is a conduit to the fans and by being active participants in the content, a player’s star only shines brighter as fans feel closer and more endeared to them.”I think it all comes down to respect at the end of the day,” said Levy Shoshan. “So what you said at the beginning, they know I make them look good. So there was a good proof of concept.”I was there for a few months, [the players] were all pretty cautious with me at the beginning, like, who is this new guy? What’s he filming? Is he going to post some stupid things? Is he going to make us look bad? [There is] a lot of cursing around the pitch, is he going to pick up on that? Is something going to leak? Then you see after a while that I’m completely clean and always make them look good no matter what, and [they] say, ‘Okay, he’s one of us.'”All of this comes together in remarkable fashion in the rawest of moments on the pitch. Levy Shoshan had the enviable experience of being a pitchside content creator during the World Cup, following Argentina as Leo Messi and La Albiceleste captured the title. He also played an active role when Antoine Griezmann celebrated a goal with a toss of confetti that mimicked LeBron James’s well-known chalk powder toss. As the magic moments compounded, with Levy Shoshan being the eyes and ears for fans at home — their ‘friend’ that just happened to have a great view of the show — the power of this content showed itself to be undeniable. The polished broadcast highlights are great, but they’re just not the same.”Of course you can see the goal on TV, but it’s nicer if you see it from someone filmed by phone, right? It’s because it feels like you filmed it or you interacted with it directly…,” said Levy Shoshan.He continued, describing a dramatic goal at the end of an epic FC Barcelona match: “[So] we’re losing 2-0, make it 2-2, Pique scores in the very dying minutes and he comes to celebrate in front of my face again. So there was screaming, there were these raw emotions that you cannot capture through the camera of a TV.”People want to live it like it’s their own phone, you know, it’s way more relatable than a TV camera.”Maybe we forgot about what makes social media special somewhere along the way. Sure, it’s great that broadcast replays arrive in the timeline in seconds, but that was never the point of what has become this social media industrial complex in the first place. It’s sharing the experience of others, feeling like you’re in their shoes, and having a ‘friend’ that’s there and taking you along for the ride.

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH AVIV LEVY SHOSHAN

Brand, Content Strategy, Social Media, Social Media ROI

How Sports Teams Can Craft a Strong Brand Narrative One Social Media Post at a Time

Think about one of your favorite sports teams to follow on social media. How would you describe them? Which traits do they embody as an overall brand, which adjectives come to mind, what are their values, and what differentiates them from other sports teams?

In a time when consumers care what the brands they patronize and support stand for and how those brands come off, sports fans are also cognizant of whether their favorite teams and athletes mesh with their personal identities. And social media, in all its forms, is the most powerful mechanism teams have to develop and activate an identity. Every one of the hundreds of touchpoints teams have on these platforms with fans each week, every graphic and word — it all coalesces into how fans perceive the personalities and values of the team.

By the time Kurt Gies arrived at the Philadelphia 76ers, the team knew who it was and how to express it on social media. Luckily for Kurt, the brand of the 76ers was ‘Philadelphian’ and Kurt just happened to be a born and bred Philadelphian. So when he took over the keys (the social media posting) for the Sixers, he appreciated what his predecessors had built and sought to grow it further, along with the emerging personality of the team as embodied by its charismatic players.

“That [Sixers] account is not talking in just this plain voice, it’s talking as if it’s a Philadelphian, and Philadelphians appreciate that so much,” said Gies, who today is the Director of Social Media and Influencers for the LA Rams. “You look at the makeup of the team too…Joel Embiid especially in his early days was such a personality and it was like how do you take that huge personality and try and replicate that? Because at the end of the day, if you’re a sports brand account, you probably want to take on the voice of the people on your team…

“So having somebody like Joel Embiid is a huge piece of that and [the Sixers social media managers before me] did a great job emulating that and it just really opened up the doors for me as he started to play and become even more popular of like, ‘Hey, Joel is trolling people, we’re going to troll people too’ or we’re going to take on that similar voice.”

The Sixers were (and still are) one of the more distinct voices in social media and sports, and their originality and success continued, whether it was people named Max, Sandro, Kurt, Alli, Andy, or others behind the keys. It felt so organic for the Sixers when Kurt was there, and having guys like Embiid fueling the fire only made the direction all the more logical, sensible, and almost facile. So it was a new challenge when Gies left the comfy confines of the city of brotherly love to head to the LA Clippers, which had its own distinct brand identity and goals.

The Clippers were in the midst of a reinvigoration. The brand had been ascending, but with the arrival of newly acquired NBA stars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George coinciding with Gies’s arrival, there was a salient opportunity to mold the brand and perception of the Clippers and its newly bedazzled roster. But to seize that opportunity meant paying attention to every detail, to ensure those hundreds and thousands of fan touchpoints all furthered an intentional narrative, Gies explained to me.

“When [his Clippers colleagues Sandro Gasparro and Charlie Widdoes] started they didn’t have Kawhi and PG [Paul George], but they did an incredible job of crafting that narrative and sticking to that narrative to help build that brand up from what it used to be,” said Gies, who had connected with both Gasparro and Widdoes from their time at the Sixers. “And then, you know, you get somebody like Kawhi and PG and you’re title contenders and everything was very calculated.

“That was probably one of the biggest I learned of many things from working with those guys. But that’s something that I always go back to, just there’s always a why behind what it is that we’re posting and what it is that we’re creating, and making sure that it’s achieving what that narrative is.”

Gies went on to describe what, exactly, that narrative was the Clippers sought to build. The ‘why’ to which every piece of content and post should connect.

“For the Clippers, it was, ‘Hey, we’re a blue-collar team. We’re a gritty team. We’re not this superstar team,’” he said. “So we want to show that we’re always putting in work. We want to show that we’re not afraid to roll up our sleeves and here are the specific players that we want to highlight and the keywords — so just really calculated and determined what it was that we were highlighting in the content that we were creating.

“We weren’t just creating things to create them. We were creating things and crafting copy — there are so many things that go into it. But we were doing all of this with meaning behind it.”

 Thoughtfully crafting a brand doesn’t always equal virality. Sure, it’s great for every post to hit big numbers and social media teams will always try to convey the desired meaning or value in the best way possible. But when it comes to activating different aspects of the brand, it may mean not every post will ‘blow up’ on social. If every post were to go viral, it’s probably a sign that the narrative is not well-rounded, the full brand picture is not being presented. Gies talked about the importance of balancing trying to win the internet with content that connects back to organizational goals, and did so more eloquently than this author ever could.

“Focusing on engagement, that doesn’t necessarily mean that can’t hit both [goals],” he explained. “Saying something that’s like, ‘Hey, this is a meme, but that still ladders back to a goal,’ which could be engaging in internet culture because that’s going to help hit fans that aren’t fans of the Clippers; or the complete opposite of that of like, ‘Hey, community is really important and showing what we’re doing in the community is really important for our narrative,’ but that stuff might not necessarily perform that well. There are ways to make it more creative, but that’s still really important to our narrative. 

“So understanding that sometimes things that you’re doing might not necessarily be for the engagement or for the impressions but are still really important in telling that story.”

Our reputations and personalities are the sum of every micro-interaction and impression we have with others. A perception is neither formed nor changed with a single engagement, let alone a single social media post. Over time, everything adds up and it’s integral that every word, each creative piece, and every post has purpose and precision. Brands aren’t built in a day, but they can last a lifetime.

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH KURT GIES

Social Media

2023 in Social Media and Sports: Creating for Audiences, Hitting Home Runs, and Seeking Remarkable Originality

Everything is more ephemeral nowadays. The rapid coming and going of TikTok trends is a microcosm of the sports business and fan engagement space in general. Heck, there was that week when everyone started grabbing their Mastodon handles as Twitter’s ability to stay functional seemed tenuous.

The metaverse. Discord servers. TikTok. NFTs and other web3 initiatives. Going into these new-ish spaces and others is not a bad idea, some will stick around for many years to come. But there is such thing as trying to do too much, especially amidst the post-pandemic realities of leaner staffs and smaller budgets.

All we can hope to do is stay true to the undying principles of fandom. To understand what lies at the root of all these ideas — community, social capital, emotional connection, and everything in between those core tenets.

So as we close the door on 2022 and look ahead with anticipation and excitement for 2023, it’s time to combine the power of the art and science of it all. Here are five areas in the greater sports and engagement that are top of mind as the calendar gets ready to flip.

Superfans

It’s always exciting when a post takes off. When a TikTok gets millions of views or a tweet racks up thousands of retweets. More reach means more opportunities to bring casual fans into the fold and can drive revenue from more volume and more value of sponsored content.

But in 2023, it’s hard to ignore that the time is ripe to build and maximize superfans. The fans that live and breathe you, who are eager to invest their hearts, minds, and money in you. Look around and you’ll see Twitch viewers paying a little extra for custom emotes or chat privileges, gamers that spend a few bucks to don their favorite digital apparel, Patreons and premium Discord members, and, yes, even the privileges of Twitter Blue.

We’ve grown so accustomed to chasing scale (rightfully so) in sports, that it’s easy to forget how the 1000 true fans theories can be applied, and scaled up, for sports. Who are the fans that joined that small Discord server? Or the couple hundred that always tune in for the postgame Twitter Spaces? The goal with superfans used to be confined, primarily, to creating season ticket holders. But the new paradigms and opportunity of microtransactions offer so much more.

What more could we do to give and get value from superfans in sports? There could be NFT-based communities, exclusive apparel, more loyalty and rewards programs, displays of identity, premium content and access. Superfans want and are willing to pay for more. More ways to activate their fandom, more ways to feel heard, and more ways to be recognized.

In 2023, don’t forget about your ride-or-die crew.

Influencers (but not the ones you’re thinking of)

This ties along with the previous section, kind of, in that everyone can be a potential influencer. One superfan can evangelize their way to recruiting more fans and superfans. Any individual whose content gets seen by at least one other person can technically be a digital influencer.

Hyperbole aside, there is value yet to be realized with microinfluencers and nanoinfluencers in sports. There is an arbitrage opportunity in social media is to stop thinking solely about broadcast; instead to reach the niches, the most engaged communities and transform them into fans or superfans.

Because they’re out there. How many uber-specific audiences lie behind TikTok’s FYP algorithm? Or how many user segments exist on on Amazon? Niche groups on Netflix? Your content can’t be everything to everyone, nor is it feasible to try and program for every niche and cranny among your potential fan base.

A tactic we talk about in the fan development world is to identify points of intersection — the beloved musical artist that’s also a diehard fan of the team, the player that’s also an avid Call of Duty streamer, the newest food concoction at the team’s arena or stadium. Identify the nano-influencers in specific areas because you’ll never match their authenticity and, often, the ROI they bring.

Snark is here to stay

At least it is in 2023. Because it works, it’s successful. At least in the way we most measure success right now.

If one of the key adjectives in social media is ‘evocative,’ well, snark or savagery often evokes a response. And that leads to big numbers and a lot of that catch-all term ‘engagement.’ It may not lead to love as much as affinity and pride and social proof, but those latter elements matter, too, and can bring the community of fans closer together. Collective joy and collective schadenfreude can make communities closer and more ardent.

But how can snark evolve in 2023 and beyond? How will it? In the end, it’s a positive sign that the ‘stories’ are working. When the home team wins, it feels natural to celebrate the defeat of the enemy as much as the victory of the home side. If one of the core parts of a story is the battle of good over evil, triumph over conflict — then it all kind of makes sense. It may come at the expense of personality, however, if overused or unoriginal. Standing out from the crowd has value (and we’ve seen the recent trend of ‘shocking’ content play into this) and it takes greater effort for content to cut through the increasingly complex algorithms and currency of attention on emerging platforms like TikTok, Reels, and Shorts. There is greater challenge and greater opportunity.

A challenge because your content isn’t guaranteed to be seen by as many of your followers, but that’s also the opportunity. If your cleverness and originality combines with some entry point of affinity and identity for your team, that is. Otherwise, it’s lost in the sea of sameness. Snark can feel like that sometimes, in 2023 it’s time to evolve.

Swinging for the fences

Let’s put this in terms of sports. In Major League Baseball, we’ve witnessed the prioritization of going for home runs — strikeouts and base hits be damned (kinda). In basketball, they got good enough at hitting threes that it made more sense to go for a more valuable, but lower percentage shot.

As social media and sports teams enter 2023, some with fewer resources, many with raised expectations, there’s a growing need to work more for home runs than singles. Quality over quantity. In some cases, that may mean sacrificing the numbers that volume brings, but the home runs can make up the difference. That may mean working off templates more often or outsourcing some work, but the thought, time, and effort put into the home runs will deliver an oomph of deeper engagement that’s greater than the sum of the lesser parts.

As metrics get evaluated after every week or month or season or year, don’t only pay attention to the aggregate sums. Are the highs getting higher, is the slugging percentage — so to speak — going up (on whatever KPI or qualitative/quantitative strategic objective)? The team can also seek to get better at hitting home runs, whether that means squaring up a pitch down the middle (a predictable well-performing post, but ensuring the high hits higher) or knocking some over the fence when the pitches are tough. (I’ve taken this baseball analogy too far, haven’t I?)

You’ll end up with some whiffs along the way, but it’s those big hits that will achieve the most lasting results.

Content for Audiences

Who are we making content for? It’s not a simple or single answer, sure, but is it for casual fans, for avid fans, for informed fans, for specific interest groups, for whoever cares to see it?

The strategies have been honed over the years to produce for the platform and what works well for the platform. Great content always wins, there is no doubting that, but there is still something of a platform strategy to execute in order to reach and engage your fans.

But then TikTok came along and flipped the paradigm 180 degrees.

Now, you hand over your content to TikTok and their recommendation engine finds the audience for it. And there’s an audience for just about everything — it’s not always huge, but it often feels like there’s no subject matter too niche, no rabbit hole too deep. This bringing the right content to the right audience feature is growing beyond TikTok, too, with each platform hoping their own algorithm can deliver exactly the content you want to see, even if you didn’t fully realize it.

There are still benefits to having followers — the audience you know best and that knows you best. But the opportunities are broad and endless. If you want to reach a certain audience, you just need to program for that specific audience. Then drop it into the TikTok machine and let it do its thing. The numbers won’t always be huge, but that may not matter, that may not be the point with every piece of content.

It’s about reaching the right audience, whatever that may mean based on the organization’s goals. If you build it, the algorithm will deliver it. This all doesn’t mean it’s easy, far from it. It forces us to understand audiences so much more, learning in-depth what a given community of users likes, cares about, and consumes, both within and beyond the core interest that comprises the community.

There will still be conversations and think pieces and data around gaming the algorithms to amass the biggest numbers. But there’s a better way in 2023 and beyond. The algorithms are only going to get even better from here — and more welcomed plus intentionally affected by users. Ride the distribution wave and focus on building the content that will reach the audiences you want to reach.

__________________________________________________________________

The social media and engagement space continues to evolve a mile a minute. It makes us all appreciate more the core principles of community and engagement, which is a good thing. Many of the notions in this post are pretty timeless. But the rapid change of platforms, the fleeting nature of trends and ‘best practices’ — it all keeps you on your toes and keeps you young (but also ages you).

There’s no telling what 2023 will bring. But we can focus on creating and providing value, serving audiences, and leaning into remarkable originality. The directions that people can direct their passion and attention only grow more numerous, so lean into it, and give fans a reason to direct it to you. Now more than ever attention and passion must be earned.

Fan Development, Social Media, Social Media ROI

How to Develop Fans of Your Team from Scratch

    Take a close look at the fans in the stands at the next NFL game in the UK. Or the next exhibition match of Premier League teams in the US. Or when there’s an NBA game in Mexico. What you’ll notice is a virtual rainbow of team jerseys—fans representing a variety of teams from the league or even the sport at large.

    They may not be watching their favorite team, but they look to their left and right and recognize they’re in a special club, and they finally have an opportunity to congregate with fellow club members. They may not cheer for the same team, but there’s a sense of unity, still, as fans of the league or sport in a country where such fans are in the minority for now. These are revelations that Harry McIntire has witnessed throughout his career, building up fan bases where they largely didn’t exist before. And yet something magical happens when fans recognize a familiar peer, even if they’re wearing a different club’s crest.

    “There is this natural commonality and this bond of being a fan of the sport or the league in particular,” said McIntire, who is the Director of Digital and renowned agency SPORTFIVE. “I think the perfect representation of what this is in America is the Premier League Fan Fest…

    “There is this interesting bond that forms as a soccer fan (in the US) because you’re a fan of the same sport that is a bit niche still, and you can have this kind of a natural commonality of having to search hard to find all the best information on your favorite team or see what all the transfer rumors are because…you’re not getting it on all these traditional outlets in the same way you’re getting after the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and so on…”

    But cultivating a fanbase of a minority sport isn’t just about connecting existing fans, it’s about developing new ones to join the fold, too. The goal is not to have the sport or team or league remain underground, but to find ways to bring more fans in and foster an ever-growing fanbase to blossom. And just like there are these intersections of commonality among the existing ‘punk rock’ fans, there are points of intersection where future potential fans can find their way onto the path to fandom.

    McIntire gave a poignant example of US Soccer star — who plays for Premier League team, Chelsea — Christian Pulisic, who also happens to be a New York Jets fan.

    “So when [SPORTFIVE] helps the New York Jets internationalize to the UK market, as they were one of the winners of the [NFL’s international marketing rights for the UK], one of the first things we tried to do was work with Christian [Pulisic],” McIntire explained.

    “It was a no-brainer…Now we can work with him to try and communicate the message of the NFL game of what the Jets are in that market and have this soft entry in to potential fans.”

    Pulisic is not just a potential familiar face to drive fans to sample the NFL, he represents an opportunity for American sports fans to find a familiar face, a point of intersection with the English Premier League and the sport of footba — I mean, soccer, at large. International players are a meaningful entry point for sports fans in countries abroad to fall in love with the team, the sport or both.

    Think about how many South Korean sports fans love Tottenham and the EPL because native son Son Heung-min is among their top players. Or why so many sports fans in China started watching the NBA when Yao Ming burst onto the scene, many of them becoming Houston Rockets fans (though the passion of Chinese fans for Kobe Bryant is incredible, too). For teams hoping to build an international fan base, activating around a native son can be a powerful arrow in the quiver. But it can’t be everything; it’s a foot in the door, but the goal is to develop fans that fall in love with the entire team.

    “Fans are smart. They do research on their own because they’re just excited and interested in the club,” said McIntire, discussing SPORTFIVE’s work with German top-tier club Borussia Dortmund (aka BVB). “If we were marketing to the US market by just putting (American player) Gio Reyna in every single place possible, we’d be missing the boat because there are people who became fans of the club because of Gio or because of [former Borussia Dortmund player] Christian [Pulisic]. But at the same time, they’re now BVB fans…

    “So yes, the player might be a vehicle at the beginning to try and get someone excited about a club, but it’s not the end goal. The end goal is how you turn into a fan of the club itself.”

    Look, it is different for fans that live in the club’s home area. They are surrounded by a town full of fans of the same team, they can go to the historic grounds and see the team in person, and they can see the organization and its activity in the surrounding community. But just because it’s different that doesn’t mean fans around the world aren’t significant and can’t be just as passionate and dedicated. It’s just different.

    But there’s something that’s common to pretty much any and all sports fans — they want to know the club sees them. That they matter and that the club will engage and serve them just as they do for those back home.

    “[Making] a fan feel appreciated is always the goal. Because people wanna be heard…” McIntire said, discussing his work developing international fans through a localization strategy. “[These teams] are cultural representations of the local identity.”

    There’s a magical point on the fandom path at which the team or league becomes part of one’s identity. It doesn’t happen overnight, nothing truly significant does, but each impression, feeling, touch, and tweet accumulates. There is no magic pill that makes a fan a fan, let alone a fan for life. It’s all of what was discussed in this article — and then some. The way McIntire put it, the strategy is like stacking a lot of pebbles, with the occasional boulder of a tentpole event or mass-gathering, to construct fandom.

    “When I think about social, it’s like that daily grind, that pebble, if you will, that’s just building up and you just gotta keep doing it day after day after day,” said McIntire. “You know, you’re looking six months from now, you’re gonna be so impressed that you built a mountain of pebbles, but you shouldn’t forget you can have those tentpole moments where you can build a mountain purely by doing something amazing and massive…

    “So just creating those tentpole moments that can collaborate with those pebble ones, so pebbles vs. boulders in a way, allows it all to synchronize together.”

    There are reasons that sports fandom conjures up some of the most intense emotions humans can feel. There’s a sense of identity, unity, family, and appreciation. And there’s a powerful synergy when that all comes together, an everlasting flame of fandom alights, burning for generations to come.

    LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH HARRY MCINTIRE

    Conferences, Short Rants, Social Media

    ESPN, Sowing the Seeds of Iterative Content, and Where the Avalanche of Social Media is Heading

    We’re in the remix era of social media. Trends, memes, duets, reactions — a powerful seed of content begets a tree, which can turn into a forest. Content snowballs, with creators from across the world, in different communities, and from various subcultures, with original POVs, adding their unique take. No snowflake is alike, to complete the analogy, and AI-infused feeds seek to deliver the precise snowflake that’s perfect for you, the content that seems targeted to an audience of one — you.

    So what’s a media behemoth, a decades-old brand like ESPN to do in this space, where they’re one of many voices on social, working with the same sports content and stories everybody else is? There’s no easy answer, but in many ways ESPN is spreading and discovering seeds, helping plant the trees across an array of diverse sports fan communities. I loved the way ESPN’s Senior Vice President, Original Content & ESPN Films Brian Lockhart put it on a panel at the ESPN Edge Conference [click to watch] in October 2022.

    “How do we open source [a] story,?” he said. “Maybe deliver this to a different partner that has an authentic voice on a different platform. “That same piece of IP can have new life breathed into it and hit different for different audiences.”

    For much of social media, user-generated content provides a lot of seeds. Whether it’s home videos, serendipitous discoveries of content, memes, and everything in between — fans are planting seeds all over. ESPN Vice President of Social Media Kaitee Daley applied a perspective related to Lockhart’s ‘open source’ idea in describing how they activate user-generated content and inviting diverse voices to put their spin on it.

    “Nearly half of all media consumed is user-generated media,” Daley said. “This notion of someone down the street from me went and filmed their kid doing something incredible in the backyard and that’s going to perform as well on our channels as a really well-done highlight. When you think about how we approach that, sometimes I think people go ’Well that’s not innovative at all because anyone can do it.

    “But what we’ve started to do on TikTok in particular is bring voices like Omar Raja to those moments. So we’re storytelling user-generated content in a different way and it’s made for that audience. They consume and they think ‘this is for me’ And that speaks to that inclusivity as well.”

    So, yes, create your content and serve your fans. But also invite others to build off the content you produce or curate. When platforms like TikTok strive to deliver the exact right content to the tiny, exact cohort of users for which that video is a perfect match — trying to be everything to everyone is a losing battle by design. There are too many segments and sub-segments, communities, and sub-cultures — the forest is appreciated for its trees.

    That’s one of my own key takeaways from hearing the insightful conversation on the ESPN Edge Conference panel.

    Fan Development, General Sports Business, Social Media

    How the Savannah Bananas are Crushing TikTok and Inspiring a New Generation of Baseball Fans and Beyond

      TikTok has disrupted social media strategy for everybody.

      Because anybody can go viral, every account is on a treadmill chasing that next big hit. The next video that’ll rack up hundreds of thousands or millions of views and engagements and capture the attention of lots of…people. It may not be entirely clear what it means when a post goes viral on TikTok, but the most strategically savvy brands, teams, and organizations have a strategic foundation for all their content — ensuring that virality has value.

      The millions of fans that discover The Savannah Bananas on TikTok may not have a favorite MLB team, let alone know much about baseball at all. But with over 3.5 million followers on the platform, the Bananas know that every encounter is a chance to execute against their core mission to proselytize the sport; in brief, to spread the joy and the game of baseball.

      “We have the sole goal to make baseball fun,” said Savanah Alaniz, Marketing Coordinator for The Savannah Bananas. “So anything that we do or post, we think how is this going to show making baseball fun?

      “When I post something on TikTok, I hope that whenever anyone sees it that they think it’s so intriguing that they have to do exactly what I did the first time I saw the Bananas — they have to go to the account and see more and all the other things they see make them laugh and then make them wanna show their roommate or their sister or brother, dad — like, ‘Oh my gosh, look what this baseball team did.’…

      “My hope is that we post something that just pulls you in, even if it’s not all the way, but pulls you in just enough to where you have to [wonder] what the heck is this?”

      TikTok may be that first touchpoint for many fans. That first engagement or encounter may not lead to a purchase, let alone a lifetime of fandom — that shouldn’t be the goal, really. As Alaniz noted, it’s to pique that curiosity, get them to want to see and learn more. And the more they see, the closer the Bananas get to accomplishing their goals of propagating the joy of baseball and positioning the Bananas as the beacon for that message.

      Social media was never about driving a sale. A ‘conversion’ on social media can mean a lot of things. And as exciting as it can be for Instagram Stories to add swipe-up links or for TikTok to try and sell tickets, we know better. Rather than chase the fraction of a percent that may click through, let alone complete a purchase, focus on the most powerful part of social media — giving friends or a community something to talk about. When content cuts through, the fans become the marketers, and the invaluable pathways of dark social take over — and the brand comes along for the ride as the purveyor of that social capital. In the global ecosystem of social media and digital-first (or even digital-only) fandom, being a ‘fan’ can mean a lot of things. It becomes even more clear to hear Alaniz tell it.

      “We want the Bananas to be global,” she said. “We want every single person to know the brand. So whenever you’re walking on the street and you see an LA Dodgers cap, like you’re gonna recognize the logo immediately. [We want the Bananas] to be like that…just to be super popular. [Fans] may not be able to attend the game, yes, but they can share the video online with their TikTok or online with their friend. Then maybe that person is in a city that we’re touring to and then they can go attend a game where they like the team, they can buy merchandise…”

      What’s the ROI of a smile? It’s difficult to say, of course, but we know a smile is a win on social. Smiles add up and smiles can help form a positive relationship with a brand or a sport or a person. The Bananas know that every smile conjured by baseball gets those viewers closer to recognizing the joy that baseball brings. So, in many ways, the Bananas are building fans and celebrating metrics, sure, but they’re also just chasing smiles.

      “How can we reach a new audience of not only ticket buyers, but just people in general, baseball fans and non-baseball fans to be like, ‘Hey, baseball is cool, baseball is fun’,” said Alaniz, who has been with the Bananas since 2020. “We love the sport, we want it to keep growing, and bringing joy to people and reaching people that baseball wasn’t able to reach before.

      “So I think that’s the big goal is to continue making baseball fun and then obviously we want everybody to know about the Bananas. They should. It brings a smile to your face.”

      Just watch any Savannah Bananas video or even the ESPN+ series ‘Welcome to Bananaland’ and you’ll see the fun and novelty of the team. But TikTok is a heck of a beast to tame and once you think you understand it, something unexpected takes off while the thing you expected to perform well falls flat instead. Video trends or trending sounds can feel like the way to go, oftentimes, but it’s what you do with the trends that determines whether it leaves a lasting impact on the viewer. Something resonates beyond just another iteration of the trend they’ve seen throughout the scroll. I love the way Alaniz put it when describing how the Bananas approach TikTok trends, inventing the word ‘Bananafy.’

      “We have a meeting every single day at 4:00 where we talk about what are two trends that we saw last night while we were scrolling TikTok in bed and how can we ‘Bananafy’ those trends?…”I think if you scroll our content, you’ll find a way that, yes, we completely gave in to a TikTok trend and we did it on the mound or something. Like, we just did the trend because we knew it needed to be done; the people wanted it so we gave it to them…”

      But Alaniz continued, talking about what it means for the Bananas to ‘create’ a trend. The success of said trend is not necessarily going viral on TikTok with hundreds or thousands of imitators. Sometimes the best sign of success is videos of Little League parents showing off their kids having fun on the baseball field recreating something they saw the Bananas do.

      “[We try] these weird things that have never been seen before in a baseball field [and] Little Leaguers are trying to do it. I think that’s pretty cool,” said Alaniz, who is still a kid herself, almost, having just graduated from Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in 2022. “Will we ever start a super crazy viral trend like Charli D’ Amelio and Addison Rae? Probably not. But the Little Leaguers see it and that’s pretty cool.

      “I think that’s more important than the masses.” 

      The Bananas are reaching generations of fans that didn’t know you could have so much fun by breaking the rules. Or creating new rules. If spreading the joy of baseball is the Bananas’ core belief, a key tenet of the doctrine is to err on the side of trying something new. Call it defiant innovation, naive exuberance, and not so much a rejection of the status quo but the absence of unconditional reverence for it — that is what has helped guide the Bananas to such massive success on the field, in business, and on social media. Alaniz feels that encouragement to take swings (to borrow baseball parlance) and it comes directly from the top in Bananas owner Jesse Cole.

      “Typically you don’t have owners of teams telling you ‘Hey, break the rules, do this crazy thing. You see the line, now go a mile past it,’” she said. “You don’t have team owners selling you that. But Jesse gives you the confidence that you can do that, and it’s okay to fail at the Bananas because if you don’t fail a couple of times how are you gonna know what works and what doesn’t?”

      It’s time to redefine what success means in social media strategy. To chase goals bigger than virality. To reframe failure as a pit stop and not a dead end. And to focus on the feelings and storytelling we want to inspire more than the metric. Because if you’re having fun along the way and leaving every fan with a smile, nobody will even care to remember the score anyway.

      ************

      Bonus: Because Savanah and the Bananas have crushed it so much on TikTok, I wanted to include her going into detail about their TikTok and social media ideation and execution strategy:

      “[It’s] definitely a lot of scrolling. I call that my research. I do spend a certain amount, anywhere from like 15 to 20 minutes [or more] depending on what I have for the day. Just minutes of my day scrolling, seeing what people are saying on Twitter about certain things, or TikTok — what are the sounds that people are using? Or Facebook even, like, what are the PTA moms up to these days?

      “So then I kind of figure out, alright, this is what the people are talking about. So I have a long-running list; I have a note in my phone and then I also have an Excel sheet, and then also I bookmark a lot of tweets. I bookmark a lot of TikToks to go back to, but I typically add links in my notes, and then I’ll add like a little note under there of just what I’m thinking of. Normally when I see a trend, I think in that moment, like, ‘Oh, this is what I wanna do.’ So like I said earlier, Caitlin and I have this 4:00 meeting every single day where we talk about what are two trends that we saw yesterday. That way we constantly know that we’re growing and learning new things. And half of these, more than half of these — 75% of them will never see the light of day. It’s just we wanna keep that creative muscle in our brains working and thinking of ways to Banana-fy trends or think of new trends.

      “There have been times where I’ve just like sat and stared at the wall and kind of hoped that an idea would come to me and, like, it doesn’t really work. I would rather scroll. But yeah, there have been a couple times where I’ve just had to like sit and look at the sky and kind of wait for something to come to me. We also have ideas sessions. So that is where our team gets together, we’re told topics beforehand and we think in these buckets and these categories of trying to think of, like, hitter walkups that are unique or run celebrations, for example. 

      “So we’re constantly around here thinking of new ideas and working that idea muscle.”

      LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH SAVANAH ALANIZ

      Brand, Fan Development, Social Media

      How an NHL Team Built and Executed its Brand: ‘You need to have a vision and a north star’​

      I remember my first social media job in major pro sports. I was an entry-level, one-man content band for social, among other platforms. And nobody told me what content to create.

      Early on that often meant piggybacking off the beat writer stories until I got more comfortable talking to players and coaches. And, looking back, I had some strategy in my head — stories to tell, events to amplify, and my interpretation of the ‘brand’ of the team on the marketing side and how that should manifest on social media.

      Social media has grown up since then. One-man bands in major professional sports are no more; social channels are powerful and they command more resources and efforts now. Strategy is now table stakes. The best teams have social media leaders collaborating with the rest of the organization, carrying out a thoughtful, cohesive brand through content and social media activity.

      The content and social strategy starts with the brand, not the other way around. That’s an important distinction that can be the difference between engagement and connection, short-term results that can set up long-term wins. A strategy built out from a strong brand foundation stands the test of time. I recently spoke to the New Jersey Devils’s Senior Manager of Content Strategy Chris Wescott about the team’s success in building a distinct, relatable, objectively successful cross-platform content practice that effectively activates the team’s brand.

      “You need to have a vision and a north star for your brand,” said Wescott, who has been with the Devils since 2019, the third National Hockey League (NHL) team with which he’s worked. “And then you kind of build your content plan around that, build your marketing around that, and you kind of build your voice around that.”

      One reason that’s so key for social media, too, Wescott explained, is because the voice should not be the voice of the person on the keys. It’s the voice of the team and it should remain so even as key pushers change.

      “The whole point of having a brand identity and voice is so that you can survive turnover at the creative level, too…,” he said. “You have to invest in [social and creative] positions. So that’s where you’re going to get a little helter-skelter in terms of brand voice and then you’re gonna see things that don’t necessarily make sense coming from that team.”

      It’s just as integral to realize that a brand is more than the copy and memes on the team’s social media channels. It represents and manifests from the organization as a whole. And because brand is always the first brick laid, upon which the strategies and tactics are built, it’s vital that everybody works together and works out from the same foundation. That everyone has the same north star. Wescott talked about how this process played out for the Devils as they sought to reinvigorate and define the team’s brand in recent years.

      “Our social media team does not operate in a bubble; we operate alongside marketing brand strategy…,” said Wescott, who previously worked with the Chicago Blackhawks and Edmonton Oilers before joining the Devils. “We all kind of sat in a room and started [asking] what are the Devils? Who are the Devils? Who are we gonna be five years from now? Who are we gonna be 10 years from now?

      “There were a lot of meetings and discussions that went on with this evolution of our brand and how the voice should not only complement who the brand is, but really work in tandem with it to grow brand affinity.”

      Think about one of your own favorite teams or athletes. How would you define their brand? Then consider how the content they post, what they talk about, how they talk about it, how they interact, and whether it all lines up with this overarching ‘brand.’ The word brand gets a lot of play nowadays (I hope you’re not playing a drinking game for use of the word ‘brand’ in this article), but less discussed is how you go from the strategy to tactics, how you put into practice what is put down on paper. As Wescott and his colleagues defined the brand of the New Jersey Devils, it was up to him and his team to activate the brand through their social media.

      “We are Jersey’s team and there’s a certain pride and toughness that comes with New Jersey…,” said Wescott, describing a bit of the team’s brand. “We wanted to reflect that pride, that toughness, that roll off your shoulders kind of mentality in our voice. There’s kind of an attitude and a bit of a swagger with it…if you come at us, we’ll swing back. We’re not gonna take it from anybody, we’re gonna dish it back.

      “And I think that plus a little bit of irreverent humor really kind of blends together with that attitude and toughness to create who the Devils are on social media.”

      One of the best parts about social media, too, is that it offers both quantitative and qualitative feedback on whether the brand, strategy, and tactics are working. Wescott noted that the team has seen largely positive results since they adopted the more ‘Jersey’ brand. And what’s cool is that it’s not just social media. That brand north star really permeates throughout the rest of the organization in a lot of ways.

      “There are certain times where you kind of hold off on integrating it,” Wescott cautioned but also noted, “But I think for the most part, like game presentation (for example) — everything should have that tone to it because you’re the Devils and everything that you do should have that tone to it.”

      Tone, voice, and personality are important parts of a brand. But they’re not the only parts. Particularly in recent years, what a brand values — and how they actively demonstrate they hold those values — is of utmost importance. Remember, the Devils are ‘Jersey’ and that means not just representing the personality and tone of New Jersey, but showing that they really do love and support the Garden State. Wescott discussed how that well-rounded brand plays out through the team’s content — the team and the brand are more than their tone and voice.

      “I think that there are some people [that] just think ‘Oh, the Devils are rude or they’re always roasting [people]’ or something like that,” he said. “But if you see what we do in the community and the amount of social justice initiatives, the amount of helping different underserved parts of our community and what we do for [the] ‘Hockey is for Everyone’ [program] and all those initiatives; it’s also welcoming people into our family, and once you’re in our family, you’re family…”

      A significant part of forming an emotional connection is getting to know someone. It’s hard to form a relationship with someone inconsistent, to understand a disparate collection of interactions. The same challenge persists when sports teams don’t know who they are and who they want to be — if they don’t know, their fans certainly don’t know. The end result is often weaker connections, perpetually chasing short-term engagement day-to-day. A brand north star changes that. It creates a gravitational pull around which everything else orbits. Things just make sense and fans can get to know you, to appreciate you, and to fall in love with you. That’s how relationships form that will stand the test of time.

      LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH CHRIS WESCOTT