To decide to take your brand social is a no brainer. If you ask me, the companies who aren’t involved with the social media world are falling behind their competition. The sporting industry thrives within social media because it builds a closer relationship with the fans. Organizations and teams use social media to keep the consumers aware of their product and service. Athletes use social media outlets like Twitter to help boast their popularity and be loved by their fans. But with social media comes challenges and risks. At the end of the day, I strongly believe the advantages of taking the brand social outweighs the risks.
Let me first start at the benefits of social media marketing their brand. In today’s society, you can’t go throughout a day without hearing or seeing some form of social media. When you are watching Sportscenter, ESPN always shows tweets from athletes in response to an event that occurred in the sporting world. When you go to sporting stadiums, advertisements are displayed directing you to go to social media pages like Facebook to enter to win a prize.
Major challenges with social media within sports usually fall on the athletes. I can’t even count the times that an athlete tweeted out a derogatory message in the heat of the moment. In most instances, these tweets are deleted by the user immediately because of the backlash it has resulted in. But as everyone knows, nothing can really be deleted from social media because people document and save these messages and pictures. Take the Buffalo Bills football player Stevie Johnson as an example. After dropping a game ending touchdown catch that caused his team a loss, he expressed his feelings on Twitter after the game. “”I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO…” Obviously Stevie Johnson didn’t truly mean what he said but it was in the heat of the moment and he can never take that tweet back.
This is a major challenge that comes with the use of social media. The risk of athletes hurting their image and the team’s image by posted distastefully messages on social media. A way around this would be for the teams to enforce a rule that players can’t operate a twitter account or any other social media outlet without the consent of ownership. This would allow for athletes not to damage their reputation as well as the organizations.
Another instance took place a few years ago by Charlie Villanueva, who was on the Detroit Pistons at the time. In the NBA, and other sports, there is a rule that both players and coaches cannot tweet before, during, or after a game until all press meetings are finished. Well wouldn’t you know, before this rule went into effect, Villanueva tweeted during halftime of a game that essential got him in trouble with his coaches and fans. All he wrote was, ““In da locker room, snuck to post my twitt. We’re playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up.” He knew he wouldn’t get any serious punishment but he went behind everyone’s back and showed no respect. This shed a negative light on the Pistons because it made it seem like the team doesn’t have people in place to prevent this from happening.
Overall, the sport industry does have its challenges when dealing with it athletes but that is bound to happen in any industry. Taking the brand social would only help make sports more profitable because its name is getting out to the consumer and they are getting connected with the athletes. I am not going to sit here and say there aren’t many challenges with taking your brand social but where aren’t there challenges in life? The sport industry is doing it right by incorporating as much of their product and services into social media.
ajcannon3 