The 7th annual Sloan Sports Analytics Conference was held near uberVU HQ last weekend at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. The conference provides a weekend for graduate students aspiring to work in sports (and fans like myself) to discuss the increasing role of analytics in the sports world with industry professionals like members of the sports media, team and league executives, coaches and players.
The conference continues to grow: from 1,200 attendees the first year I attended to 2,700 attendees this year. As the conference grows, topics from outside the sports world are covered, including one of my favorite panels this year titled “Staying Relevant: Social Media Analytics”. The panel featured Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of Vayner Media; Dave Finocchio, a co-founder of the Bleacher Report; Omid Ashtari, Head of Sports and Entertainment at Twitter; and Jayne Bussman-Wise, Digital Director of the Brooklyn Nets and was moderated by Gary Belsky of Time.com. Here are three social media tips the panelists shared that resonated with me:
1. The focus of Social Media initiatives should be on engagement, not the number of impressions. Gary Vaynerchuk, who was the superstar of the panel, drove this point home with an example a Facebook Page he manages for a client. His client had a post garner over 1,200 comments over a few days! While this might not be impressive for a fan page with 2 million subscribers, the page Gary manages for his client had around 1200 members. In Gary’s example, which brand has the more loyal community of followers?
2. Use the appropriate messaging for each platform. The panel was unanimous in thinking that today’s Social Media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ etc.) are as different as the traditional marketing channels of radio, television and print. To properly speak to the audiences for each channel, you need to tailor your content accordingly. For example, you wouldn’t pay to have a radio ad shown on TV, just like you also should not post 10 pictures of a blog to Instagram to get people to read it.
3. Deliver content your audience wants, not the content you want to create. A great example of this came from Jayne of the Nets, who talked about the research her team did before the Nets moved to Brooklyn from New Jersey. They learned that people living in Brooklyn are very proud of their neighborhoods and as a result of these findings, the team created custom shirts for several Brooklyn neighborhoods (for an example click here) that have become some of their highest selling merchandise.
While I loved taking two days to talk and think sports; it was also a joy to take a break from sports and hear industry experts share the same beliefs I have about Social Media at this year’s Sloan Conference. Learning how to put these ideas into action, and the success they experienced doing so, was even better!
