Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

Smart Questions

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

How does a company decide whether they should be involved in social networking? Well, before you set up a Twitter or Facebook account, you need to consider a couple of things. cartoon

First you need to decide what your objective is? The objective must do one of two things. Increase revenue or decrease costs.

Next you need to decide what your role is.

Are you there just to listen and monitor what people are saying about your product or services?

Are you there to make a sale?

Are you there to promote your brand and market your message?

Are you there to provide customer support and feedback?

Or are you there to partner with other business (B2B)?

It can be a combination of these things but best to concentrate on one or two and do them extremely well.

Answering these questions will help you decide:

A) who you want to interact with (target market)
B) which social networking platform is best for you
C) and which is the best strategy to achieve your objective(s)

With today’s technology, you have a great opportunity to listen and interact with your customers, build loyalty and/or find new customers. You just need to discover the HOW part. The best way to do that is to ask yourself smart questions.

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Posted in Communication, Media, Social Networking, Strategy | 1 Comment »

DAY IN THE LIFE

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Working in sports management, people often ask me – “What is a typical day for you”?

Well, no one day is the same. It really depends on the time of year, what events the athletes are competing in, what’s making news, what sponsors have planned, or maybe there is something that needs urgent attention and takes up all my energy for a week at a time.

So with that in mind, I’ll try and give you a broad summary without going into specifics.

I usually begin the day by watching and reading the news. I scan TV, newspapers and online. I’m focusing on a mixture of sports and business news. The athletes under management cover a wide range of sports so I need to be across a lot of information. I find this also helps me to establish rapport in meetings I have that day.

Using the big rocks principle, I always write down the major things I want to accomplish that day. The things that will yield the biggest results. If I get those done then everything else falls into place. I try and use the mornings to reply to emails and phone calls and leave the afternoons for other projects I’m working on. In saying that, I’m on call day and night and need to respond quickly to clients and the media who work on deadline.

Some days I’m out of the office with clients for sponsorship and media obligations. I’m there to facilitate the appearance, make the sure the athlete is comfortable and enforce their sponsor commitments (branding, key messaging). I’m also there to network. Develop relationships with everyone including TV producers, sponsorship managers, journalists, photographers you name it. Some interstate travel is involved which makes for long days.

The evenings are sometimes scattered with invites to parties, product launches, dinner invitations and other events that involve the athletes or their sponsors. Again, networking is a big part of the job.

That’s a good example of what I do…….but then next week might be totally different. In fact, next week I’m away consulting for a major sports event and then conducting some media with a client for a few days. I might find it hard to blog during this period so don’t be disappointed, I’ll be back. You can keep up to date on twitter twitter.com/SportDownUnder

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Posted in Client Relationship, Communication, Media, Sponsorship, Strategy | No Comments »

Social Networking for Athletes

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

In my previous post I talked about embracing new technology and ways of communication. I’ve also talked about the benefits of athletes using Twitter to better connect with fans and bring value to sponsors. But what about the dangers for high profile people online? Unlike you and me, their words, actions and photos are juicy material for the media.

As an athlete manager it’s your job to educate your clients of the dangers. If they’re already online, then sit down with them and explain the pitfalls and make sure they have the best security measures. (If you read my last post then you should naturally know all this information). If your athlete is not online, then don’t ignore them. Show them how social networking works, how quickly information is spread, how a public photo can be uploaded and shared with thousands of people in the matter of minutes. Let them grasp the power of the web and what this means for them as a high profile person.

Social networking can be great for your clients but it can also be a danger. You’re never going to win the battle of whether they should be on there or not. But what you can do is constantly educate them on best practises.

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Posted in Communication, Media, Social Networking | No Comments »

Moving with the Times

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

We all know people who refuse to take up new technology. They don’t have an email address, or they hang on to outdated mobile phones, or maybe they are scared of the web, and they certainly don’t want to know about social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Nothing wrong with that, they can probably get by ok, for how long I don’t know, I’m just glad the majority of people aren’t like this.

Imagine if our ancestors refused to use the telephone, or the original fax machine or what if they turned their backs on the first television? Where do you think we would be today? I’m guessing we’d still be hunting for our food and travelling via horse and cart!

I’m not saying that all these new technologies we have today are great, in fact some can be time wasters, disruptive and uncomfortable to use but if you don’t embrace them and get involved you will be left behind. Today’s world is moving faster than ever which means you need to move fast to.

Forward this message to that person you know who refuses to embrace new technology (if they are not on email you can re-write this blog with a feather quill pen and delivery it via a horse drawn cart).

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Posted in Communication, Social Networking | 1 Comment »

Small Talk

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

What do you do when you meet someone for the first time? You quickly try and establish common ground right? Salespeople call this small talk.

Small talk eases the salesperson into the conversation and helps them make a connection with the person their trying to sell to which assists in developing rapport. A sales pitch won’t have the same punch without first establishing trust and rapport. Sometimes finding common ground is really easy, and you hit things off immediately. Other times it can be awkward, particular if the two people don’t share any interests, aren’t reading the same news or don’t share the same values.

So as salesperson, wouldn’t it be great if before you met a potential client, you knew a few things about that person? What if you knew their interests, passions, or what they’ve been up to lately? Wouldn’t this give you a huge advantage over the next sales guy?

Well with online social networking sites such as Twitter and personal blogs, now you can search for that information. I recently met with a sponsorship manager and before the meeting I checked if they were on Twitter. Turns out they were and I quickly discovered that we shared a passion for golf. Guess what, I just found common ground and I hadn’t even met the person yet!

Suffice to say the meeting went well. Our respective golf games dominated discussion for the early part which laid the platform for an extremely productive meeting.

You wouldn’t go to a job interview without first researching the company would you? So why wouldn’t you research the person you are meeting? In this day and age it’s possible so why not use the technology.

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Posted in Client Relationship, Communication, Social Networking | No Comments »

Twitter

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

twitter-birdMore and more celebrities are starting to take advantage of the social networking site Twitter. For those who don’t understand the platform watch this video or read this text. Now why should an athlete be on Twitter?

Firstly, let’s look at one of the basic reasons why brands sponsor athlete’s. Athlete’s help put a face and personality to a product or service, and that human element helps the brand CONNECT with their target market. Brands try to achieve this connection by way of athlete appearances, consumer promotions and above the line advertising etc. These are all great, but are often expensive and sometimes a scatter gun approach to actually REACHING key customers.

So how does Twitter reach key customers? To give you a rough example of the power of Twitter, let’s say you’re selling a product and want to make 2,000 sales. Using your ambassador you decide to put an ad in the sports section of the paper (hoping it hits some of your target market), it costs you $30,000. A small percentage of your target market reads the paper, an even smaller percentage see your ad, and a smaller percentage actually take action. You make the 2,000 sales but it cost you $30,000. Now, just imagine your ambassador has 10,000 followers on Twitter, but these aren’t any ordinary people, they are fans who are INTERESTED and PASSIONATE about your ambassador. The ambassador has built incredible trust with his/her followers through daily tweets about their lives. Now instead of spending $30,000 on a newspaper ad, you ask your ambassador to tweet about your product with a direct link to a page that allows consumers to purchase that product. How many of these passionate followers do you think will click on the link? A bloody big percentage and all of a sudden they are at the check out counter. You easily get 2,000 sales (probably more) and it cost you nothing.

Twitter isn’t for everyone, but for those athletes that want to better connect with their fans and add value to their sponsors then I don’t see a better platform.

Some quick rules. Please don’t use a PR person to Twitter on behalf of your athlete, fans see right through this which defeats the power of Twitter. What you put in is what you get out. And don’t let your athlete abuse the service by over promoting their sponsors, they need to interact first, then promote, then interact some more.

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Posted in Social Networking, Sponsorship | No Comments »