Over the last few years we have seen a rise in social networking and social media sites, which have captured people’s attention and become a large part of many people’s lives. This, along with the increase in blogs, videos and widgets has changed the way people interact online. Advertisers have taken notice, and lately sports teams, leagues and other entertainment brands have also gotten involved. These properties have begun to realize that social networks and communities offer new opportunities to expose people to their content and bring them together. A passionate online audience is a potential revenue stream.
Sports and entertainment brands have created profile pages on other sites such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace—the NBA has a presence on each of these sites. Some properties have even built their own communities from scratch. For example, there’s the Indianapolis Colts’ social network, MyColts, which just launched a few months ago but already has about 10,000 members. The AFL also has its own fan community, where fans can create and share videos and experiences and connect with other fans.
The rise of social networking raises new questions: Who should get involved? Why should they get involved? How can they create successful communities, and who out there can help them achieve their goals?
One option is KickApps, which helps its clients deploy social media on their websites. They’ve helped clients such as Justin Timberlake, the AFL, and VIBE magazine integrate social elements such as blogs, videos, pictures and profiles into their sites.
I had the opportunity to send some questions over to Matt Bijur (VP, Business Development, and responsible for the sports vertical) and Michael Chin (SVP, Marketing) of KickApps. Because they gave such great answers I am splitting the interview into two posts. Please see below for the questions and answers from Part 1:
Q) Why should brands become involved in social networking? What about sports teams and leagues, specifically.
A) In many respects, social networking and the broader set of applications that fall under social media (i.e. user-generated content, online video and Widgets to syndicate content) are perfect for sports teams and leagues to extend the fan experience beyond actual sporting events. Sports fans form some of the most passionate communities online and offline and social media merely takes what sports fans do inherently in the offline world and enables an online gathering place for them. For teams and leagues, this represents a unique opportunity to maintain engagement with their fans after a game, on days when there aren’t games, during the offseason, etc. In practical terms, this results in new revenue opportunities through increased sponsorships, greater ticket sales, merchandise sales and advertising opportunities.
Q) Should brands start groups or pages on other popular social networking sites or should they build their own site? What criteria determine if a sports team/league or brand should do its own thing or work with an existing site?
A) The benefit of a brand building its own social networking site is that it allows for a direct relationship with its community (usually made up of customers). With social media platforms, the technical barriers to entry for this no longer exist. From a fan’s point of view, if you’re a fan of the Arena Football League, you’re more than likely going to www.arenafootball.com to get information and news about the team already. What better place to gather with other fans than the AFL’s own social network?
Many of our clients utilize popular social networks as supplemental strategies to their own branded communities by creating pages in those networks that promote their communities. While it’s great to have presence on all major social networking sites (where possible), those sites typically offer a wide range of content and a user base whose interests are varied. By establishing your only presence on a popular social network, you are exposing yourself to losing many eyeballs as they move from your content to an unrelated video/member that happens to catch their eye.
However, just building it isn’t enough. Teams and leagues need to consider what incentives there are for fans to join their social network. What unique programming and events will be available there that can’t be found anywhere else? Players and coaches themselves on the social network interacting with fans would be very compelling.
Q) KickApps has been called a “white label social networking platform.” Talk a little bit about what exactly this means.
A) Social networking is one of the four building blocks of our social media platform (the others are user-generated content, programmable video players and Widgets for content syndication). By using the KickApps platform, web site publishers and developers can very easily create and deploy community and video functionality on their web site. We’ve eliminated the hard work of creating and hosting the applications, so developers can just focus on unleashing their creativity in how they deploy social media and video on their sites. The platform is fully customizable to match the look and feel of our customers’ sites. Even though the social media and video is hosted by us, it’s a seamless experience for the member. They never leave the ‘brand’s’ online experience.
Q) What sets KickApps apart from other white label providers?
1) Service – We focus and invest on customer service. We don’t just give our customers the technology. We help guide them through what they can do to ensure success by consulting on programming and marketing (how to stand up an effective community, how to market/promote it, how to take advantage of other KickApps partners who can help grow your community, etc.) providing immediate and constructive responses to questions, concerns or any other feedback.
2) Features & Functionality – While there are many companies creating “noise” in this space offering bits and pieces of community functionality, our platform has all of the features and functionality that enable our clients to deploy fully functional, interactive social media experiences on their websites.
3) Viral Syndication / Widgets – Unlike any other competitor in this space, KickApps places a huge emphasis on letting users market the communities you stand up. Inviting friends is not enough – the concept of an “open portal” where people can take from the community and share pieces of it with friends is most powerful. This is done through our sophisticated widget builder.
4) Customization of Integration (APIs) – While our current hosted solution is extremely customizable via CSS, our APIs offer a much deeper level of integration and customization whereby the community pages are actually being served by your servers and you’re calling our APIs for the community functionality.
5) Media Management and Community Moderation – While many companies can build social media applications, most cannot deliver on the backend functionality required to perform efficient and effective media management and moderation.
6) Data Mining / Reporting – While communities are fun and exciting, there needs to be a business case behind these initiatives. We realize that and one of our major focuses is to deliver to you the data and reporting metrics that will help you better market to your constituents and earn greater advertising revenue through your sponsors. The data and reporting we provide are the underpinning of our entire platform.
7) Scalability – The architecture upon which community platforms is constructed is of vital importance. Our platform was designed by engineers from Disney and Deutsche Bank and is set up to handle the volume created by hundreds of major media entities.
Q) You guys built a site for the AFL. Say a team/league already has an online community. Since most people are already on Facebook or MySpace, how can leagues/teams get people to actually use their own social networking sites (if they have them)? What’s the incentive for people to use them?
A) As mentioned above, there has to be compelling content on the site. The programming element is crucial. What makes your community unique? When people have an affinity to a brand (or a sports team/league) they’ll gather around its properties, but only if it gives them a reason to do so. Teams and leagues have a unique opportunity to offer people content and reach that a generic community cannot. That might be access to players, coaches, contests, content, etc.
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I hope everyone found this as interesting as I did. Part 2 of the KickApps Interview is here. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this stuff.