Posted by Luke Worthington at Friday, August 21, 2015 12:52:00 PM WST
The lifeblood of any sporting organisation is the fan. Without fans, there is no one to showcase your athlete’s talent to, and more importantly no one to help fund your organisation.
Until the new age of digital convergence merged sports media with social media, public relations practitioners working in sports were focused on providing website content, and keeping fans engaged through score updates and news.
Now with social media forms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the fan has created a demand to feel as if they are part of the team.
Fans want to feel as if the team they support has a personality and aura about the playing group.
This is where mediums such as Snap Chat are especially helpful. A recent example of a major sporting organisation engaging their fans (stakeholders) through Snap Chat is the work done by the West Coast Eagles media department, Their Snap Chat story shows players preparing for games, arriving at training and exclusive on field access.
This takes away the feeling that a team is not a group of athletes you just happen to watch on a Sunday afternoon, but gives fans the feeling they are part of that team, and allows the fan to see their sporting heroes as a person, rather than a figure.
This technique has been picked up by ‘The Melbourne Mustangs’ of the Australian Ice Hockey League (AIHL). Being a small market league, the Mustangs, and other AIHL teams rely almost entirely on fan engagement and fan participation.
With Social Media now playing such an integral role in our day to day lives, sports teams understanding how to use this method of engagement is critical to the organisation as a whole being profitable, and ensuring their fans are going above and beyond the game day experience to engage with the club.
It may seem like a small aspect of a sporting organisation, but with the average fan craving more than just a simple game of sport, but is one of the most powerful tools to connect with a wider market of engaged sports fans.
The lifeblood of any sporting organisation is the fan. Without fans, there is no one to showcase your athlete’s talent to, and more importantly no one to help fund your organisation.
Until the new age of digital convergence merged sports media with social media, public relations practitioners working in sports were focused on providing website content, and keeping fans engaged through score updates and news.
Now with social media forms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the fan has created a demand to feel as if they are part of the team.
Fans want to feel as if the team they support has a personality and aura about the playing group.
This is where mediums such as Snap Chat are especially helpful. A recent example of a major sporting organisation engaging their fans (stakeholders) through Snap Chat is the work done by the West Coast Eagles media department, Their Snap Chat story shows players preparing for games, arriving at training and exclusive on field access.
This takes away the feeling that a team is not a group of athletes you just happen to watch on a Sunday afternoon, but gives fans the feeling they are part of that team, and allows the fan to see their sporting heroes as a person, rather than a figure.
This technique has been picked up by ‘The Melbourne Mustangs’ of the Australian Ice Hockey League (AIHL). Being a small market league, the Mustangs, and other AIHL teams rely almost entirely on fan engagement and fan participation.
With Social Media now playing such an integral role in our day to day lives, sports teams understanding how to use this method of engagement is critical to the organisation as a whole being profitable, and ensuring their fans are going above and beyond the game day experience to engage with the club.
It may seem like a small aspect of a sporting organisation, but with the average fan craving more than just a simple game of sport, but is one of the most powerful tools to connect with a wider market of engaged sports fans.