Thank you for reading my fourth post! This week I will be talking about the challenges and risks experienced with taking a brand social, or not taking a brand social. In my eyes, it’s quite simple that in the modern day there is no choice, a brand must choose being social. The sports industry is one of the best examples that can be examined because most leagues are engrossed in social media websites and taking the brand social.
Next time you are at a ballpark look around and you may see something similar to this before a game. Most people standing around looking at their cell phones and trying to take pictures or get autographs while constantly updating social media
I believe that Major League Baseball has done a great job with handling social media and interacting with fans. MLB has a social media policy for players and teams that is simple and effective. I read an article written by, Craig Calcaterra, titled, Major League Baseball releases its social media policy — and it’s pretty good. It stated some great facts about the social media policy. The follow are the ten things that are on the prohibited list (found here).
Josh Hamilton posing for a picture
Another great article that I read was written by Kristi Dosh, her information can be found here, and published online via ESPN.com. It is titled Social Media Giving MLB Fans a Voice. All Major League Baseball teams have a social media night at their respective home stadiums but some teams do better and go farther than others. For example, the article stated “On Wednesday, for example, fans who purchased tickets through a special link online for the Mets’ social media night will receive a social media-themed T-shirt and an iPhone Skinit. Fans who purchased the special social media night tickets will also enjoy a pregame meeting with other Mets Twitter followers and staff, and one lucky fan will get to throw out the first pitch. Giveaways will occur throughout the game, and fans’ Twitter handles will be displayed on the scoreboard.” (A picture of the shirt can be seen below) This really gets the fans involved and lets them feel close to their favorite team. Fan interaction is key and Major League Baseball has figured out some great ways of doing this by being a very social and mobile accessible brand. The article also states this, “League wide you can also now find access to all of a team’s various social media accounts, as well as the accounts of players, right on team websites. Simply add “/connect” to the end of any team’s website (for example, http://www.sfgiants.com/connect) and you’ll be directed to the team’s Social Media Clubhouse to find all this information and more.”
The last thing I will mention is something that I read by Phyllis Zimbler Miller, who’s information can be found here. She stated on her blog that, “Once you become active yourself on social media platforms, you’ll find many more reasons to promote your brand, book or business on social media in order to attract targeted potential clients/customers. And you’ll look back at your pre-social media days and wonder how you ever did marketing without using online social media.” Taking any brand social is a must and no matter what the risks, it’s worth doing because that is the way of modern day society.
This shows the mobile voting method for the extra player fan vote-in for the 2013 MLB All-Star Game
This shows a number of different social media platform ratings for different MLB teams on MLB Opening Day 2013.
Blogging My Way To a Masters in Sport Management 
Adam,
I really enjoyed reading your blog this week. I really liked how you used various examples to help better understand how sports are using social media to build the brand. I really liked the example of special tickets and the prizes. I think this gives a new value of going to the game which is important in a time where technology makes it very easy for fans to just stay at home. Do you think social media could help get fans back in the seats?