What we'll cover

Session 1 – Social Media Success from the world of Sport

What will cover:

Facebook

• What posts work best
• What the new changes mean
• How to grow your fan base though your fans
• What to avoid on Facebook because it just doesn't work
• How to sell merchandise on Facebook

Twitter

• Connecting with your fans, one tweet at a time
• How to create tweets that get retweeted
• How to run a Twitter competition
• Engagement on Twitter

Instagram

• – How to develop a fan community via photos
• – What photos do fans want & when do they want them?

Google+

• What is Google+?
• What is a Hangout?
• How can I use Google+?

YouTube

• Understanding power of video
• Viewers Vs Subscribers
• Resourcing Video

Pinterest

• How to setup Pinterest brand page
• How to sell merchandise via Pinterest
• Pinterest board strategy & pinning tactics

Session 2 – Digital Case Studies in Sports

Session 3 – Sponsorship Activation in Digital 

In the last session we will look at specifically how sponsors can activate digital campaigns using social media.

We will cover:

• Understanding your goals OR Don't lose your shit just because social media is new!
• Understanding ROI of social media
• Defining goals you can achieve
• Attracting fans that fit your goals
• What a Sports Social Media Fan looks like
• How to run a Sponsor Promotion on Facebook
• How to run a Social Media Competition
• Understanding advertising options – Facebook & Twitter
• Social Media Activation Case Studies
• Data, Data, Data – in the end it's all about Data

It will be action packed & fast paced, our goal is to ensure your brain hurts by the end of the day.

Thanks to Jason & Daniel and the team at Major League Marketing for organising & promoting the event in Brisbane.

Looking forward to seeing you there (great list of people attending so far).  Get your tickets now – use the code sportsgeekbrisbane for 10% discount.

Podcast transcription

4BC: The role or the nature of sports marketing has changed so much over such a relatively short
period of time whether it be an individual athlete or a sporting team or a whole organisation their
need to be found in different areas like Facebook and Twitter, the whole world of social media, well
how do you get noticed in the world of social media and the role that sport is playing in social media.
An expert in the file is Sean Callanan, who understand the digital landscape like no other and I’m
pleased to say that Sean is joining us on the line right now. Good day Sean.

SEAN: Good day guys how you doing?

4BC: Yeah doing very well thanks. Just explain to us if you can what – what it is that you do?

SEAN: Um so what we do is work with sports teams and leagues to better understand the – as you
said the digital landscape and understand what fans are doing on line, whether it be Facebook or
Twitter and help them to harness their passion for the team online, and then effectively do what
they all want, get more bums on seats and get them to the game.

4BC: Now you’ve worked here in Australia with some NRL, AFL, Cricket Australia as well, also
the NBA in the States and I know you travel to the US on a regular basis, talking to teams and
organisations over there, are teams relatively quick on the uptake when it comes to all of this?

SEAN: Well yeah it’s still developing and so you know what’s happening here in Australia with
you know the AFL, NRL, cricket, is pretty much on par with the guys in the US because everyone’s
learning how to best use the platforms and how best to connect with the fans, so everyone’s
learning as they go and some are doing it better than others, but it’s all just about – it’s all about fan
engagement and getting the fans involved and really developing their passion for your team.

4BC: See Mike Coleman, who’s in the studio with me now, Australia’s leading sports journalist, he
was against the whole Twitter thing and the way that it was being used, not so much the Twitter
aspect but the way it was being used by a lot of people. But now you’re on there and embracing it,
so how do we get Mike up to a seven ticket summer fan.

MIKE: All right look I’ve got no problems getting followers don’t worry about that.

4BC: Oh okay.

MIKE: It really – it’s not as expensive as people think. But Sean I think one of the things, and I don’t
know if you work in this area, but I think a lot of sports are a little bit wary of things like Twitter and
Facebook, because their athletes do it, and they haven’t been educated about what they say and
we’ve had so many examples of athletes getting themselves into trouble by saying perhaps things
they shouldn’t.

SEAN: Oh definitely and we had you know so many examples of that with the Olympics where they
really weren’t prepared, one for the onslaught of fans and the attention that they would get – that
they would get at the Olympics. You know the footballers are used to getting the attention from
the fans whether it be good and bad, week in and week out, but you know I really did feel for the
Olympic athletes, that they were really prepared for the social media onslaught at London. Like
we did some training with some of – some of the guys at the water polo and one of our key things

was you want to make sure that the fans know you’re having a great time and that they know when
you’re match is on, but when the match – when you’re getting prepared for the match you know
and we say the same thing to the guys in cricket, and AFL and NRL, is you’ve got to turn your phone
on and go about your business and get ready for the game. So a few – a few of the Olympic athletes
unfortunately got distracted by social media, and it becomes an easy target sometimes to blame
social media for the – for the performance, but really it’s just a matter of setting aside some time
and then – then focussing on the result at hand.

4BC: And then the other thing that we’ve seen recently is – is this issue of trolls. And if you make
yourself available through social media, and I mean I would have thought that sports people would
be the worst examples of that, they make themselves available anyone can get to them, and people
are so passionate about their sport that they leave themselves open to abuse don’t they?

SEAN: Oh yeah definitely and you know we’ve had athletes before you know get you know get
pillared by fans, whether it just be for missing a goal or for something, you know or for something
worse and the thing is that you know social media does give these keyboard heroes a voice, but it
doesn’t mean that they need to be responded too. So our advice to athletes when they’re getting
that kind of vitriol put to them, is just to ignore and to block, because you know they don’t listen to
the crazy guy yelling out in the stands, they don’t take to that heart, and to a certain degree that’s
exactly the same on social media. So they really don’t want to pay attention to the trolls, they don’t
want to give them oxygen because that’s what they live on, they want that attention. So it’s really
a matter of taking the power off them and ignoring them and a guy like Andrew Bogut, NBA star,
you know he’s got 100,000 odd Twitter followers, you know his policy is you know if you’re a peanut
I’m just going to block you and ignore you, and he doesn’t really worry about it. And that’s a pretty
good strategy.

4BC: Yeah and there was one of the more famous cases came in the English Premier League, Darren
Gibson, a player for Manchester United at the time, went on Twitter, opened up a Twitter account,
pretty sure it was Wayne Rooney who went on to say follow – follow this guy, a lot of people did and
started abusing him, and it was really nasty, straight away, and so he – he got out of it pretty quickly,
he just shut down his account I think almost within a couple of days of it opening.

SEAN: Yeah and – and that is one of the down sides of it, and it is a matter of managing that, yeah
all of those kind of players will get some of that, but the other thing is if they – if they provide a little
bit more for the fans they will have far more positive feedback from fans than negative. You know
what we’ve seen with a lot of our players that are you know working on Twitter and things like that
is that overall the majority of fans want to support them, and you know the trolls is a minority that
you can easily ignore.

4BC: Yeah that’s for sure. All right so Sean well people can come and see you on Tuesday the 18 th of
September, you’re going to be appearing at the Pavilion at Queensland Cricket, there at Alan Border
Field. Now if you do want to head along you can contact Dan Bedford at Major League Marketing,
daniel@majorleague.com.au – daniel@majorleague.com.au and they can follow your website as
well which is sportsgeek.com.au is that right?

SEAN: That is and yeah they can either you know I’d love to hear from people in Brisbane. They can
either send me a tweet @seancallanan or @sportsgeek and I’d love to hear whose coming along and
looking forward to catching up with people.

4BC: All right good stuff. Appreciate your time on the program tonight Sean, thank you.

SEAN: Cheers guys.