Are You Sure You Are Providing Quality Content To Your Audience?
There’s no question of the importance of sports in the modern society. According to REPUCOM’s “Emerging Giants” Study there’s 2.2 billion people interested in sports globally.
This tell us that it’s not difficult to understand why big sporting events have a huge number of viewers and followers, and when it comes to social media things get really interesting. These communication tools are ideal to engage the crowds and build powerful brands around it, as consumers feel closer to the action and their sports stars.
This crowd empowerment provided by the binomial social media vs sports leads us to a new sports fan consumer behaviour, where people predominantly consume information through a screen. That’s why we are seeing more and more big figures about social media consumption, like the 115 million interactions generated during the fight between Mayweather and Pacquiao on Facebook only.
Social is (part of) our life and sports brands must understand the value of the content they deliver to fans. In fact, there’s a study from Google/Forrester Consulting that says that people who engaged with a brand on social media on a daily basis were likely to make twice as many purchases from that brand than someone who engages monthly. This tell us that you have to heavily focus on providing good content to the fans.
HERE’S ARE 4 TIPS WHEN BUILDING A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY:
Channel: make sure you are using the right channel(s) to communicate with your audience. If you have a younger following probably it will be better to engage with them on instant messaging apps like Snapchat or WhatsApp. Dare to explore new channels and think outside the box like DC United, who used Tinder to sell tickets. Every channel is one more opportunity to generate revenue and awareness for your brand.
Context: sometimes you can have the better of the intentions but the context of the content that you are distributing may not be the best. When Cristiano Ronaldo celebrated his 30th anniversary after a 4-0 loss with Atletico Madrid, fans got really mad when they saw pictures posted on Instagram by the singer Kevin Roldan, where the Real Madrid player was partying with his colleagues. I’m sure that wasn´t his intention (instead he wanted to provide real access to exclusive content to his fans) but when you post something on the Internet you have to always think about the consequences of your actions as it’s content that after you hit ‘post’ it’s not yours anymore.
Timing: with the livestreaming apps rocking hard at this moment, like Periscope and Meerkat, it’s almost impossible to not provide real time content when and where fans want. The Seattle Reigns, a team from the National Women’s Soccer League of the US have already done interesting stuff on this by livestreaming a all pre-season match and providing content directly from the locker room.
Relevance: you can have great content and insights, but if they are not relevant to your audience you will not be able to engage it. AFC Ajax has done an interesting activation on Mothers Day, providing a great mix of relevance, timing, context and channels where they have promoted it.