Five social media lessons brands can learn from watching baseball

Grab your Cracker Jacks. Get your peanuts. The Fall Classic is right around the corner. It’s playoff time in Major League Baseball. Whether you’re an American League or National League fan, baseball fever is among us. While watching the games yesterday, I came up with the following five social media lessons brands can learn from watching baseball.

1) Best-of-series ─ Division series are best-of-five series and League Championship Series are best-of-seven series. Strategy is important. Managers will look at pitching match-ups and which players are hot. Brands, just like baseball teams, need to strategize. Brands should study their competitors. Don’t only track your results, track the competition too.

2) Playoff roster ─ Once playoffs begin, teams are cut to a 25-man roster. Every player is utilized by the team’s skipper one way or another. Social media is a team effort. A single person from one department can’t do it alone. Input across sectors is a necessity to ensure messaging about the brand is accurate and consistent.

3) Stand out among the competition ─ When the Cubs win, fans sing “Go, Cubs, Go” and Yankees fans sing “New York, New York.” Fans enjoy the games because of the unique stadium experiences offered by the teams. One way brands can engage more with Fans is by offering them unique or exclusive social media opportunities online.

4) Home Runs ─ While a powerful offense can help teams go deep in the playoffs, teams won’t always win just by hitting Home Runs. Every hit counts. Brands, like teams, can’t only rely on the long ball or the Home Run social media program. It’s better to continuously hit singles, doubles and triples throughout the year. Brands need to always think about next steps online because consumers are always watching

5) Rain out ─ Playoff games are never cancelled due to weather (although they may be postponed). Just like playoff baseball, there aren’t any cancellations on the internet. The social media space is always awake. Whether its 12 p.m. or 12 a.m., Monday or Saturday, consumers are always online. Brands should engage seven days a week and analyze popular conversation times with tools such as Tweetstats and Radian6.

Which social media brands have you seen throw a perfect game?

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Why Brands Ignore You

I attend many Social Media conferences and invariably I see a flood of tweets and blog posts from people who are begging brands to sponsor them in their attempts to get free trips, hotel rooms, flights and more. Here is what is I see “Sponsor Me“. Bloggers and Tweeters just shouting to the rafters “anyone willing to sponsor me???“. It is really an irritating and ineffective way to get the attention of brands. It is also a way to alienate your followers and generally piss people off. There are ways in which to actually get the attention of brands that are much more effective.

Do Your Research

Do you know anything about the brand that you would like to work with? Start your search, find out who the social media or PR people are, follow them on Twitter. Now resist the urge to call them out with an “@brand hey send me free stuff” sort of message. It is hard to resist, I know but don’t be that guy.

How Can You Help

In your research learn what you can about what the company does, what is there message, how can their message fit your blog. It it a unique proposal that you can offer the brand? In what way would your readers benefit from a campaign with this brand? What would the brand get out of working with you?

Is the ROI Measurable?

Can you monitor Tweets, Facebook fan likes, traffic to blog posts and more? Remember that you are talking to people who most likely are more number oriented thank anything so you have to give them numbers. Do you know how many pageviews you get daily, weekly, monthly on average? Are you tracking these stats? You should be if you want to work with brands.

How to Connect without being “That Guy”.

Make the initial inquiry privately. – Don’t blast things out on twitter or Facebook screaming with the rabble, have some finesse and class. Friend the contact on Twitter, Facebook or Linked In and when you can send them a quick message requesting if they would be willing to read a proposal on a sponsorship opportunity. Don’t make the pitch all at once, make that initial small ask and if they agree make a bigger ask. Many people are willing to hear a pitch if they are asked rather than having it forced upon them.

Be Bold – If you don’t ask you don’t get.

Write a well thought out proposal – Introduce yourself, your blog and blog topics, make your request, provide numbers, graphs and charts backing up your claims and showing your reach, readers, twitter followers, Facebook friends. Sites like compete.com are good resources and also Google analytics. Be sure to focus on how working with you benefits the brand.

Most Important:

Follow up with your brand contact and send them a report on the numbers. Tweets, Re-Tweets, Contest Entries, and so on. Then THANK the contact for working with you. Write a note, make a blog post but whatever you do make sure you give follow up and a Thank You.

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