One of the best parts of marketing a professional sports franchise is that you undoubtedly have some die-hard fans and as such brand advocates. You also have an emotional connection between fan and brand which can easily be combined with the abundance of video, audio and digital content that is naturally produced through sports broadcasts and media.  However sports marketers like all others are looking for ways in to not only share that content with fans but to really engage those fans and create a dialogue where the most passionate fans help spur on other fans and at the same time feel that their voices/opinions are being heard and acted upon by the franchise. It would seem a perfect marriage for social media marketing.

There are however only a handful of sports teams that you can point to who are really taking advantage of the content, the advocates and the new channels available to them via social media and Social CRM. One team who seems to be getting it right is the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. The Warriors won a 2011 Gartner and 1t01 Media CRM Excellence Award for their work on the “2010 Warriors Draft Challenge.”

The Warriors were to unveil a new logo for the 2010 season and instead of just calling a press conference and having a player wear the jersey they decided to use the spotlight of the NBA Draft Lottery to create a nine day contest for their fans which would be not only promoted on social media but where the answers to each day’s challenge could only be found by visiting one of the Warriors social media properties. The campaign did not stop with simply delivering clues and answers on social media, each challenge was a chance to engage fans in a dialogue, to bring them into an automated marketing campaign (run in conjunction with Eloqua) where there was lead management, nurturing and reporting capabilities.

In order to fully commit all channels to the promotion of the contest the team utilized email, sms, third party sites, traditional pr and even went so far as to temporarily take down their normal homepage and create a single landing page which gave a primary focus to the contest. The Warriors not only wanted to engage fans for the contest, but they wanted to be able to reach these fans again through multiple social media channels so the initial focus of the contest was on gaining new “likes” on Facebook, gathering new “followers” on Twitter and having people “subscribe” to the team’s YouTube channel.

The team collected email addresses from each entry and then leaned on Eloqua to ensure that they made each fan feel like they were receiving personalized communications based on the actions they had taken on social media.

And it worked!

• The Warrior’s Draft Challenge campaign netted 2,500 new Facebook fans in two weeks
• The Challenge page itself received 900 likes in two weeks
• 1,500 Twitter followers were added in two weeks
• 12,000 views of two related YouTube videos in two weeks
• The day of the logo unveiling and the following day accounted for the highest two-day traffic total in eight months

But what about the bottom line you ask?

It worked out pretty nicely there as well, the Warriors reported more than $440,000 in ticket revenue generated from contest registrants with 102 new season ticket holders and 291 new mini-plan ticket holders added.

While it is easy in the NBA to just say that ticket sales are related to the team’s performance, it is campaigns like this one that prove there is an ability for forward thinking social media marketing to make a bottom line impact.

What about you, do you have any good sports marketing moments to share?

In the world of social media, it seems as though there is always a new tool, application or website to keep up with and, often, it can become difficult to discern which opportunities are worth your increasingly limited time. By now, you’ve likely heard of Pinterest – the social sharing phenomenon with over one million daily users. The site allows users to create and share virtual pin boards featuring everything from fitness tips and home improvement ideas to recipes, fashion concepts and favorite products. It’s fresh, simple and incredibly effective.

To the average entrepreneur, however, Pinterest may not seem like a worthy space in which to dedicate marketing efforts. It consists largely of wedding inspiration photos and craft how-tos. Yet, this network has quickly become a virtual goldmine for both new customers and increased brand loyalty and, because of it’s ease of use, the audience available through this platform broadens each and every day.

The primary way in which Pinterest can achieve your customer reach goals is through something called traffic referrals. For most companies who have built an online presence, the primary objective of any social media platform is to drive potential customers to your website. Think of your Facebook or Twitter page as a teaser – it lets interested parties know you exist and invites them to your website where they can actually review and utilize your products or services. Pinterest does the exact same thing, but in a whole new and much more visual way.

When you add something to your shared pin board, it sends it out to all of your followers and, depending on the number of followers you have acquired, this immediate exposure can generate leads in minutes. Additionally, your followers can choose to re-pin this item to their followers who can then re-pin it to their followers and so forth. Essentially, it’s free advertising for you and an easy way for consumers to find what they’re looking for. It’s also a great opportunity for companies to better understand what their customers want.

Many larger companies, such as Oreck, General Electric and Whole Foods, have already realized the benefits of Pinterest. However, for smaller companies with tight budgets, it can be an even greater tool. All in all, this free site is one social media opportunity your company can not afford to pass up.

What about you, how are you using or planning on using Pinterest in your business?

Our lives are becoming more and more like video games. This is partly because games have advanced by leaps and bounds over the last thirty years, becoming better and better at imitating reality. And partly this is thanks to Generation Y, the children of the 1980s and early 1990s who grew up just as consoles and computers were working their way into every home.

A large and growing proportion of the workplace is dominated by employees who are used to viewing life through the lens of video games. Gamification isn’t just a buzz word; it’s a bona fide trend that can transform the way a modern company does business.

By applying characteristics of gaming into a workplace context, gamification seeks to motivate Gen Y employees with elements of a system they know by heart. This can mean features like transparent performance statistics to encourage competition, and badges or leveling to reward good work, but the what’s most is the idea that clear rewards and performance metrics are the new key to motivating your employees.

Generation Y already makes up 25 percent of the workforce, and that number is certain to grow. For them, gaming is a vehicle for cooperative and competitive interactions, problem solving and discovery, all attributes that can apply to the workplace. And they already use gaming as a lens to view their life, telling an MTV study that a “game-like metaphor” applies to almost any aspect of it. These workers instinctively know how to function in a game-like environment, and that represents untapped potential for new motivational techniques.

The idea of gamification has already inspired a new form of employee rewards with sites like Achievers who allow employees to earn benefits in many forms and levels as set by companies. Rypple uses social badges and introduces some gamification to employee feedback. For companies who have young employees and are looking to inspire gamification is a natural fit. The same principles can apply across industries, wherever young employees are looking for a chance to show their skills.

There are lots of great resources on Gamification and I encourage you check out how the concept can help you and your company connect with younger employees.

So, your Facebook contest was wildly successful. Congratulations! You have tons of new fans, a fresh audience for your product or service, thousands of potential leads—now what? After the contest wraps up, how do you keep all those folks coming back?The real challenge of running a Facebook contest isn’t handling the logistics of the contest itself, but rather, figuring out how to maintain a connection with all those Facebook followers once the hoopla dies down. Ideally, you want to make your Facebook page so chock full of relevant, entertaining or compelling information that it becomes worth your follower’s while to return again and again—whether or not you offer them an actual incentive to do so.

Providing that kind of value to your Facebook fans can be achieved using a variety of strategies. Here are a few of my favorites…

Start a Conversation - Ask your Facebook fans what they think—of your company, of your product, of your latest advertisement—whatever! Encourage them to share their thoughts and opinions openly, and respond to as many as you can. Foster an atmosphere of honesty and mutual respect by handling criticisms with grace.

Share Tips - Give your Facebook followers information they can put to good use. Share tips on using your product more effectively. Point out features they may have overlooked. Advise them on how to get the most from your service. It will keep them coming back for more.

Host a Poll - Opinion polls are fun for Facebookers and pretty darn interesting for those of us in the back office. While they may not be scientific, Facebook polls offer an instant picture of how your followers feel about a particular issue. It’s a great opportunity to capture your audience’s attention and gain some valuable insight for your marketing team as well. Polls are also inherently interactive so encourage comments with votes and you’ll undoubtedly increase the chance that your polls show up in user feeds.

Show Your Human Side - People love to know what’s going on behind the scenes. Show them. Highlight your outstanding employees, post pictures of the firm’s holiday party, provide a of video-tour of the home office—let your followers get to know the people behind the products they’ve purchased.

Say Thanks - The success or failure of your business lies in the hands of your customers. Make it a point to say thank you. Post a personal message from the CEO. Showcase a “Customer of the Month.” Make it clear that you appreciate every single one of your customers and treat your Facebook followers accordingly.

A Facebook contest is a great way to get people in the door but keeping them around requires that you spend time and effort on the post contest content.

What are some of the best ways that you have seen to keep an audience engaged after bringing them in through a Facebook contest?

It’s easy to understand the logic behind content marketing—that establishing yourself as a thought leader will build your brand and generate leads. But it’s one thing to appreciate the idea; it’s another to actually create a content marketing culture in a company to enable successful execution of the strategy.

The Content Challenge

Content marketing can take many forms—blogs, white papers, email newsletters, social media postings, You Tube videos, personal appearances, self-published print magazines, and so on. But where does all this content come from? According to a recent survey, this is clearly the biggest problem with implementation—with respondents saying that their greatest content marketing challenges are producing engaging content (36%), producing enough content (21%), and budget to produce content (20%).

Making It Work

The most important aspect of content marketing success is making it a fundamental part of your company’s operations. It can’t be an afterthought if it’s going to pay off. - Mashable.com reports on three success stories here.

The following steps can help you generate content and successfully implement a content marketing strategy:

Have strong upper management support. Management-driven support (e.g., job descriptions, financial incentives, awards, visible enthusiasm) is essential.

Convince employees of the value. Tying content marketing to the personal benefit of all stakeholders is the surest way to get participation.

Provide adequate collaboration support. Most of the content experts in your company are probably not skilled in writing, editing, video production, printing, social media, etc. You need to have employees, resources, and processes that content experts can use to turn their knowledge into useful, publishable material.

Keep control of your brand. You don’t want people producing content that’s not consistent with your branding. Provide editorial guidelines and practical brand-building suggestions.

Develop meaningful metrics to track success. Nothing encourages buy-in more than demonstrable results. Measurement also helps to justify content marketing costs and indicate necessary adjustments.

Include mechanisms for customer input. Content marketing works best when it’s interactive—drawing potential customers into a relationship with your company.

Reuse existing content. You can alleviate the content-supply problem by putting existing material to new uses. Often, it only takes a little modification.

Stay informed. The Web is full of information on content marketing, such as The Institute for Content Marketing’s 10 essential content marketing templates and frequent articles on sites such as techcrunch.com. Executives and marketers should stay on top of content marketing trends and strategies.

As stated extremely well in “Content Rules” you need to speak to your customers and prospects in a way that makes them appreciate your expertise and tells them about the benefits of your products/services not simply the features.

“The inherent tension in marketing is that companies always want to talk about themselves and what their products or services can do. Everyone else meanwhile, only wants to know what those products or services can do for them.”

Good content does not just appear, rather you need to work at it and make it part of the culture of your organization.  So start small but ramp up quickly because content based marketing will not only be a key part of your inbound strategy but should be key to generating leads and sales opportunities.