Digitally Approved » social networking

Football Season: Getting into the Game

Natalie Svider — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:21:01 +0000

Now that football season is in full swing, we here at Fanscape think it’s about time to take a little look at one of the most successful sports in US history. Whether you’re an every now and then fan or one of the most passionate – you know who you are you face painting season ticket holders and fantasy leaguers – the NCAA and NFL completely captivate us in the Fall and Winter months. And at Fanscape, we’re no exception.

In recent years the game has gone well beyond just what is seen on TV or in the stands; it has become a virtual communications juggernaut. Fans now have unprecedented access to players and teams: fan & team groups on Facebook; message boards galore; Twitter accounts, player websites; and UStream activity, all connecting us in such an intimate way. Because of the expansive amount of options that have been created to link fans to their respective teams and/or players, the doors have swung wide open for brands to captivate their audience in creative new ways.

Contests, promotions, players’ involvement and a team’s interaction all are important aspects of reaching fans, but as marketers we need to make sure our efforts are getting the right message across without being too intrusive. With the every day fan becoming increasingly more savvy on both the consumer and social media front, taking contests beyond entering a name and email is key to a campaign’s success. Some of the best we’ve seen thus far have been those that bring fans directly into the fold; e.g. Dorito’s Crash the SuperBowl and the NFL’s Super Ad.

Football has always been a social affair: gathering with friends, family or a group of fellow fans to watch your favorite team; tailgating, an experience in and of itself; and let’s not forget about actually being in the stadium for the game. True, football has always been about fans coming together to celebrate, but with social media in the mix, fans have the added rush of instant connections and instant interaction on a global scale, whether sitting at a sports bar, at home or in the stands.

5 Rules for Marketing in Niche Social Networks

Digitally Approved — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:45:33 +0000

This is a really good article that appeared in iMedia Connection today. Journalist, Blaise Nutter, checked in with Fanscape’s CEO, Larry Weintraub, to find out whether we’d be seeing niche social networks sooner than later.

Rule 1

Keep your mind open to interesting communities

When approaching niche social networks, it’s good to keep an open mind — a very, very open mind. More than likely, you have only a vague idea of all of the places your target audience might be. So if users are going beyond big social networks, where are they heading?

Odds are, if you can dream it, there’s an online network of people out there who are into it. Doug Schumacher, founder and creative director at Basement Inc., can attest to this. His firm was tasked with developing the marketing around a new installment of the popular Resident Evil movie franchise — a project with ties to audiences with a variety of interests, including pop culture, video games, horror movies, and CGI, among others. But the weirdest special-interest target audience? Zombie aficionados. And as it turns out, the web is teeming with zombie-centric social networks.

In Basement’s online conversation analysis, the firm found that people were already talking about zombies and “Resident Evil” on these networks — and they were doing so passionately. Thus, these networks represented an ideal niche audience to target with “Resident Evil” marketing efforts.

Zombie social networks might sound pretty niche. But the point is, somewhere out there, people are talking about your brand — and you’d better find them.

Larry Weintraub, CEO of Fanscape, says that in the future, we’re going to see even more fragmentation when it comes to social networks. “You’re going to see niche social networks, and then you’re going to see niche-niche social networks,” he says.

As an example, Weintraub proposes a scenario in which the plumbers of the world, sick to death with the lack of plumber-related features on Facebook, start their very own social network, PlumberSpace. And within that niche social network, niche-niche social networks appear, such as Southern California PlumberSpace. Although this world of niche-niche social networks is largely theoretical at this point — or at least in its infancy — Weintraub believes it will offer great opportunities for marketers. Whether you’re Home Depot or a plunger manufacturer, finding an audience as specialized as SoCal plumbers is a marketer’s dream — a highly targeted audience that will likely be particularly responsive to your marketing messages.

Click HERE to read the full article.

What’s Your Community?

Intern Desk — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:26:32 +0000

My generation is so connected to each other via the internet, mobile web, SMS, and such, it’s nearly impossible to escape. But none of us really want to! I’m a sophomore at the University of Southern California and we like to stay connected. For us, MySpace is dead outside of the music realm. Facebook would be perfect if we no longer had to cut through the clutter of worthless apps, too many embarrassing tagged photos, and worst of all, parents. And personally, I love Twitter (tweet me @stevemanuel), but many college students think it’s just like updating your Facebook status — at least that’s what my girlfriend over at UCLA says.

I’m in a social fraternity at USC and one thing that everyone has problems with is keeping their Facebook groups, pages and events both private from non-USC students and as socially usable as possible. We use Facebook to share event dates, themes for parties, philanthropy details and invitations of all sorts…and so does every other fraternity and sorority across the nation!

So I thought — why not make my own social network that I can customize to meet my local peers’ needs? I could make a place about our Greek row that won’t get clogged with news and information from another college in another state!

…But then I pondered, “How can I make a social network?” I searched online for a few options, thinking at first that I’d have to buy an expensive domain name with a ton a bandwidth and hosting fees attached and find someone to help me with all of the advanced HTML and CSS to make it look good. I was wrong. I found several social network companies like Ning, CrowdVine, SocialGo, Elgg, and WackWall. All of which were capable of providing me with my very own free social network, but Ning gave me more of what I was looking for with a truly user-friendly and recognizable social networking platform.

The beauty of having a micro social network with Ning is they give you a plethora of easy-to-use customization tools that allow you to change your network to be as specific as you’d like. With a little bit of Photoshop skill, I made a logo, a header and some basic icon graphics, which all seamlessly integrated to my network, “The Row”. It’s also easy to keep unwanted users from spamming and abusing your network. I used the network privacy settings to require that new members must be approved (based on their name, email address and any other information you require they include when they sign up) before allowing them access to the site. Like the glory days of Facebook, when only ‘.edu’ email addresses were accepted, this keeps your network exclusive to a demographic, location, etc. that you determine to fit your network best.

To be realistic, I don’t think that my network or any micro-network created on a social networking site will ever grow to the size of Facebook or MySpace, nor do I believe that the majority of them will last as long. But I do think that everyday people can create great social communities for millions of active internet users to enjoy.

-Steve

The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same

Christy Wise — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:53:18 +0000

I became inspired to blog after reading a post on YPulse about “Youth Social Networking Fatigue”, which outlines why teens are falling out of love with Facebook and other social sites. One particular point made in the article refers to these communities not being “their space anymore”. This reminded me of a question that I recently posed on LinkedIn – which in short asks if having your parents on Facebook would deter you from continuing to participate in the network. I think that answer is a resounding yes. Teenagers are programmed to hate everything their parents do – and have since the first teenager walked the earth slightly hunched over. There are many technological advances that I wish I would have had as a teen, but social networking is not one of them.

To this day I haven’t forgiven my mom for “accidentally reading my diary while dusting” — I don’t know what I’d do if she was tracking my every move on Twitter or Facebook. As parents become more technically savvy, they now know where their teens go, who they hang out with, what music they like, what they bought and what videos they’re watching. It used to be as simple as asking your mom to knock before she came in your room – imagine if she was living in your room. Am I the only one that thinks this is a bit dangerous? Those precious adolescent years are filled with the freedom to not relate to your parents. It’s the time when you are supposed to learn the much needed powers of manipulation and how to get yourself out of sticky situations without mom and dad there to save you. The young social networking set will inevitably grow up to be hyper dependent, needy and unable to deal with the real world and what actually goes on when you step outside.

Let’s hope what Anastasia at YPulse says is true – that teens are not taking this lying down – for the sake of generations to come. However, if they are really so turned off by their parents joining their favorite communities that they are willing to abandon ship, this is a huge win for parents everywhere. Mom and Dad, I think you know what to do next – get busy “sexting” your significant other and his/her friends, start Tweeting what you’re doing every minute (“Buying Crystal Light”, “Paying the cable bill”, “Taking My One-a-Day”), focus on uploading daily office photos to Flickr and dedicate your evenings to playing WoW with your friends from out of state (Class of ’81). Your kids will be so appalled they might actually turn to studying and volunteering. Stranger things have happened.