I have always been a big fan of sports, but one of my favorite sports of course to follow is college football. I was following the game virtually last night and while I have friends at both universities who played in the playoffs, I was cheering for the Oregon Ducks.
Why? First, I actually considered Oregon as one of my schools for my high school recruiting trips as a thrower. It was actually my first recruiting trip of the five that I took as a high school student-athlete and I did write about my experience for one of the main high school track and field websites at the time, Dyestat. Here’s what I wrote about my recruiting experience at Oregon – and yes, this was 15 years ago [time has flown by!]
Heading off to my first recruiting trip at UO back in 2000.
Second, Oregon was one of my all-time favorite places to compete as a track and field athlete both in high school and in college. There’s nothing like being at Haywood Field as a track and field athlete – there’s a lot of tradition and history in that one location.
Third, I have always been a fan of their use of creative, innovative, and great campaigns for their brand. Jessica Smith wrote a really good post on their “IF” campaign by the agency 160over90 (a very creative agency who created this campaign and also did one for the Gators – Go Gators!)
However, as I have mentioned a lot so far in my social media class this semester, sports organizations (and teams) always seem to be on the cutting edge of emerging trends and strategies when implementing social media for specific events, team culture, and storytelling.
What were some of the takeaways from what have seen so far in sports and social media for 2015? Here are a few of my thoughts:
- New social media brand RTM powerhouses: As this article talks about from AdWeek, Allstate and Dr. Pepper were two brands that integrated themselves as part of the social media conversation along with this particular event. One book I am having my students read for my social media class is Trendology by Chris Kerns, and the timing of these brand integrations into social is very good.
- College Playoffs = Next Super Bowl?: AdAge thinks so. Many of my friends who are active and working in social media and sports are saying the same things. So, what we will see of course in the future is a stronger presence not only among teams and brands, but more resources and money involved in the digital, social media, and branding efforts by teams and their respective professionals and athletes.
- Twitter = king of second screen: Along with watching the game, Twitter was right there with me. It was great to see the commentary and shared updates / images from my fellow colleagues on Twitter during the game. This really brought the playoffs for me to another level. Was I following the main news outlets? No. I was following professionals
- Fan generated content integrated as part of brand social strategy: This was one thing mentioned in an article in Forbes, and we saw this as well during the playoffs. Exclusive behind the scenes footage along with on Snapchat and the focus on visual content on social media this time around was pretty impressive, and another sign of the times and what to expect more of in 2015.
- Data [especially data visualization] is a key component on social strategy: Twitter had a great link showcasing the tweets cheering for both the teams online and it was very impressive to see this animation and the number of people engaged and active on social media during the game.
- Livestreaming and integration across all platforms: We have seen this with the College Football Playoff website – these websites are getting more complex, visual, and updated in real-time.
In summary, I do believe the college football playoffs will continue to have a ripple effect on other sports, but also the PR and social media field as well. We can all take away these new trends and see how we can possibly use them as part of our own social media strategy. However, we have to always take into consideration our audiences and what content and conversations they are expecting. In addition, we always have to keep in mind while it may be great to be on every single platform, we have to make sure if we do on a platform, it has a purpose and we do it right.
Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
