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Look at the support the Queensland Maroons get on Facebook.

Like on the field they have a big lead on the NSW Blues

Be sure to register & go to the big game between Melbourne Storm & Brisbane Broncos to see yourself on BattleCam.

If you can’t make the game you picture will still be included in the crowd shot if you upload your picture.

Until next week

Listen to Harf Time on Wednesdays (at 2:45pm) when Sean Callanan discuss sports digital with Daniel Harford.

Tune into Harf Time over the weekdays from 12-4pm on 1116 SEN.

Follow @HarfSerious

Follow @harftimesen

Get the Sports Geek podcasts

Want to get these clips in podcast form? Subscribe here or Add to iTunes

Get the Sports Geek podcasts

Want to get these clips in podcast form? Subscribe here or Add to iTunes

Podcast transcription

HARF: Sean Callanan who joins us, good day, Sean.

SEAN: Good day, Harf. That would be Harf Time’s own, LA Kings,

HARF: Harf Time’s own…LA Kings

SEAN: We were talking about them and they knocked off the Vancouver Canucks.

HARF: Yeah, the Harf Time’s own, and they’ve sent a tweet through saying, “Hope you enjoyed the ride boys. There’s still more to come.”

SEAN: Exactly.

HARF: So, good luck to the Kings. Hey, what’s happening on sportsgeekhg.com at the moment?

SEAN: Well, the thing is it’s Origin, Origin week this week, and obviously the big boys are in town for the game tonight, so it’ll be a good case, a lot of people going, and a lot of people watching at home, and it’ll be another case study to show Twitter just absolutely smashes it, and to have the whole eastern seaboard of Australia be tweeting about the Origin. Most likely the hashtag will be #origin because it’s been the Australian NRL actually haven’t pushed out an official hashtag, like their not like the #NBAPlayoffs that got tweet buttons…

HARF: Oh, haven’t they?

SEAN: No, there’s nothing on their site pushing it, so you’ll see some people using #origin, some people using #SOO, some people using #stateoforigin, so really I should have gotten everyone together and said…

HARF: In Queensland…

SEAN: Yeah, exactly, so…

HARF: Using #origin1

SEAN: #Origin1, yeah, so it would’ve been smart if they had credited it, but no matter what, #origin will be trending, Billy Slater will be trending, when there’s a try, that guy will be trending and it’ll be worldwide because at 9:00 p.m. in Australia we’re the only ones awake on Twitter, so pretty much anything that’s going to happen will be trending worldwide, so that’s how it happens. If you want to trend worldwide, you’ve got to move Harf Time to the night shift.

***Harf laughing*** right…

SEAN: The thing is you’re competing against the LA Kings at the moment, so that’s the problem, but big support for the two teams. We we’re just looking at the Facebook numbers before. 360,000 for the Queensland Maroon’s and 220,000 for the New South Wales Blues, so we’re just wondering what kind of numbers that the big V would get if it was still on Facebook and still active, and I’m thinking it could go close to half…

HARF: Is that ‘likes’ is it? Is that what…

SEAN: Just ‘likes,’ yeah, so…

HARF: Oh, yeah, you’d get half a million there…

SEAN: I think there would be half a million of Victorian footy fans to back the big V, but I think it’s all in the past, and maybe we’ll look at the timeline feature to look at old pictures of state of origin footy, but I don’t think it’s going to come back for the AFL.

HARF: That’s the thing about Origin, too. I spoke to Ray Warren earlier this afternoon who said, “It’s not just a game anymore; it’s an event.”

SEAN: Yep.

HARF: That’s what he said, and it is. Origin’s become that big poster event for the NRL for the whole year and people, like you say, like to get involved by social media and be a part of it, and that the thing that let’s you do it, it let’s you be a part of it while you’re sitting on the couch.

SEAN: And it’s a big TV event. I mean that’s the other thing, being in Melbourne, everyone in Queensland and everyone in New South Wales is watching and then you’ve got extra people in Victoria watching because it’s in Melbourne, so it’s always going to be the biggest game when it’s in Melbourne, but I tend to agree with the guys in Queensland, and you said well it doesn’t have to be here every year because I think if it is here every year there might be a bit of a ho-hum nature about it from some people in Melbourne, so if you keep that event nature of every one or two years, it probably makes sense from my point of view.

HARF: Well, speaking of the Rugby League, the Melbourne Storm are doing BattleCam. Explain to me what BattleCam is.

SEAN: So BattleCam’s, for one is an amazing event that the Storm boys are going to back up two days later and play the Broncos on the Friday night, but from a digital point of view, BattleCam, if you go to the Storm website, and we’ll get Jumper who’s wearing a hoodie today in honor of Mark Zuckerberg, and he’s really getting into Facebook now, so he’s doing the posts. He’s going to put a link to BattleCam, so BattleCam is going to be a 360 degree gigapixel picture taken in the middle of the AAMI Park, so everyone’s going to be in the stadium, sitting in their seats, holding a sign, giving the thumbs up and they’re going to go around and take a shot at everyone in the seats.

HARF: Okay.

SEAN: And then what you’ll be able to do, it’ll launch the day after on the 26th, you’ll be able to go in, zoom in to the photo, find you, find your mate, find your brother, find your sister…

HARF: You can zoom in?!

SEAN: Zoom in, tag yourself, share it on Facebook, share it on Twitter. The cool thing is get on there now and listen to what Billy Slater has to say. Register now and get a ticket so you’re there.

HARF: Well, it’s going to be a huge crowd. I don’t think there are not too many tickets left.

SEAN: Yeah, so get a ticket now, so you’ve got a seat and get ready. They’re giving away prizes all the way up to the game, and then if you actually can’t make it and you’re going to be at home or something’s happening, you can still register for BattleCam and give them your photo and we’ll put you in an empty seat.

HARF: Get out of it!

SEAN: It might be in the back row. We might stick you on top of the goal post maybe.

HARF: Get out of it…

SEAN: So, and there are going to be a couple lucky few Melbourne Storm members, so you should sign up, that are actually going to be snuck out in the field and sitting in the coaches, so in the players spot, we’re not going to tell Craig Bellamy, but they’re going to be sitting there when the photo is taken and then we’ll quickly sneak them away. We don’t want Craig Bellamy finding out about it, but those guys are going to get a real special experience. So check it out BattleCam with Melbourne Storm.

HARF: Right-o, just the Storm website, is it?

SEAN: Storm website and, yeah, the guys there are all over it. We’ll send out a link on the Harf Time Facebook page thanks to Jumper.

HARF: Yes…Harf Time, two words I dare if…Did he just say gigapixels to pull off this? Yes he did. What’s that mean…lots of pixels?

SEAN: Correct.

HARF: Lots of pixels.

SEAN: Absolutely really high def pictures, so you need more pixels.

HARF: Fair enough, thank you, Sean. I look forward to all the latest installments in the world of social media sportsgeekhq.com. Thanks pal.

SEAN: Cheers, mate.

HARF: Sean Callanan our man on @sportsgeekhq on Twitter, as well.

Here, we are going to look at which teams are garnering the most attention on their Facebook pages.

Los Angeles Lakers

You can see here that the Los Angeles Lakers are a huge talking point at the moment, with over half a million of their Facebook fans actively engaging the Lakers on Facebook in some way. Even though it’s less that 4% of their total Facebook fans engaging, it’s phenomenal considering they have over 13 million fans and are averaging half a million new fans per week. Will that number decrease if the Oklahoma City Thunder eliminate them? Stay tuned, folks.

Los Angeles Clippers

The crosstown rival Los Angeles Clippers, who are actually cross-arena rivals, are featuring in the second round of the playoffs for only the second time since the 70s, but still can’t get close to the global Facebook phenomenon that is the Lakers. The Clips have nearly the least amount of Facebook fans from the teams remaining in the playoffs, but their numbers saw a massive spike on April 29th. The same April 29th when they came back from a double-digit deficit to beat the Memphis Grizzlies to steal home court advantage.

Boston Celtics

The Boston Celtics have been a regular in our Sports Geek posts due to their trailblazing ways to engage fans on social media, so we can’t leave them out of this post. Especially when they look the goods to reach the Eastern Conference Finals for the third time since 2008. They have a great number of likes at over 6 million, are gaining around 15-20,000 new likes per day, and around 100,000 active users. With the #IAmNotSouthBeach Pinterest page and Twitter hashtag, expect that fan engagement number to skyrocket if the two teams tangle in the Conference Finals.

San Antonio Spurs

The San Antonio Spurs are doing the same on Facebook as they are doing on the court; just gettin’ it done. They only sport a fan engagement number of around 40,000 but do have over 1 million fans. It’s only half the amount of likes as the in-state rival Dallas Mavericks, but the Mavs benefitted hugely from winning it all last season.

Indiana Pacers

The Indiana Pacers could definitely do with some more Facebook numbers but, lacking a true superstar that is globally recognised, and being the number two team in Indianapolis for the last 15 seasons, their numbers aren’t terrible. In fact, with around 10% of their total fans actively engaging them on Facebook with shares, likes, comments and posts, the Pacers fan engagement percentage is one of the strongest, even though it’s total number is smaller than most.

Philadelphia 76ers

Like the Pacers, the Philadelphia 76ers have to contend with a large NFL-oriented fan base in Philly, but did get a large boost from knocking off the Bulls in the first round. Again, like the Pacers, the smaller market 76ers, lacking a genuine superstar, could be doing better numbers wise, but the passion of their fans shines through, with over 8% of them engaging on Facebook.

Oklahoma City Thunder

This year’s favourites to take home their first championship in franchise history, the Oklahoma City Thunder Facebook page has more likes than the average small market team, thanks largely to superstar scorer, Kevin Durant (who, funnily enough, boasts over 2 million fans on his personal Facebook fan page). The 1 million fans are being joined by around an extra 15,000 fans per week, and are sure to see a boom in numbers if the young guns of the Thunder roll past the Los Angeles Lakers and in to the Western Conference Finals.

Miami Heat

The spoils of having (arguably) the most recognisable current NBA players on their squad has been a huge boost for the Miami Heat. With over 5.5 million fans and a fan engagement number of over 200,000, the Heat are big players on and off the court in these playoffs. Like the Lakers, their engagement could be a higher percentage of their total likes, but with over 200,000 people engaging them on Facebook through likes, wall posts and comments, the Heat are making waves at the moment.

How can you do this?

So there you have it, folks. As you can see, the bigger market teams generally have the greater engagement on Facebook. While smaller teams like the Sixers and Pacers have great engagement, percentage wise, the raw numbers are in favour of the bigger market teams such as the Heat, Celtics and Lakers.

To search a team’s Facebook likes and fan engagement numbers, simply click on the Likes button in the Facebook Apps section as shown below.

Until the next post, thanks for reading.

Sean’s Take

Great post Dion, if you’re not following Dion, you should be.  It should be noted that “Talking about this” is just one metric that Facebook offers publicly at least.  It is calculated based on likes, comments & shares your Facebook posts get.  Other metrics that need to be tracked to get a full understanding of how your Facebook is tracking.  That said is it all part of the game designed by Zuck, you need to keep those engagemnet numbers up to maintain a good Edgerank & keep you Facebook posts in front of your fans.  

If you want some assistance boosting your Facebook engagement numbers please contact us.

Dion Bennett

Dion is the current behind-the-scenes man for @SportsGeekHQ. Undertaking a Bachelor of Marketing at La Trobe University, Dion hopes to make a name for himself in the hectic world of sports marketing.

  

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What are the Three Cs?

What does it take to work in #digisport & talk to thousands (or millions) of fans at once, we are looking for ability in 3 specific areas.

Content

Content is KING in digital & it is vital to keep feeding the digital beast.  It includes some of the following:

• Producing “standard” web content – web articles, video interviews & podcasts
• Having a eye for content that fans would like – behind the scenes shots or insider access
• Being creative in developing new content ideas for the fans (that they can deliver on)

Curation

Curation is critical for sports, in most case there is TOO MUCH CONTENT to push it on your social networks.

• What content fits on what platforms?
• How much is too much? Listen to the podcast to hear Sean use the movie Hangover for Facebook frequency.
• How can you spin any news back to your team or brand?

Feedback from Twitter

We asked Twitter for what they look for in #digisport staff and got some great tweets.

@seancallanan @ABCGrandstand People skills, business acumen, willingness to learn are key #smsports #digisport #grandstand

— Tariq Ahmad (@tariq_ahmad) May 18, 2012

@seancallanan @ABCGrandstand Communication skills, creativity, boldness, insight & ability to engage. #grandstand #digisports #smsports — Shanna Bright (@shannabright) May 18, 2012

@seancallanan: A thick skin! #grandstand — Shane Harmon (@shane_harmon) May 18, 2012

@seancallanan #digisport peeps need to be strong communicators, fast-thinking, opportunistic, business savy + very personable #grandstand — Tom Nickson (@tom_nickson) May 18, 2012

@seancallanan Not to mention resilient, hard-working, tech-smart, creative and willing to learn (quickly) #grandstand #digisport — Tom Nickson (@tom_nickson) May 18, 2012

@seancallanan Put it this way… you can tell when too junior a staff member is at the controls#abcgrandstand #digisports #smsports

— Mandy Passmore (@MandyPassmore) May 18, 2012

Sports Geek Medals – Social Media Executioner edition

Bronze – Jessica Ivers – Canterbury Bulldogs

Jess did a great job driving the #gomanly hashtag all the way to the premiership last year for Manly Sea Eagles, now doing a stellar job with the Canterbury Bulldogs running a #digibattle with the Storm.
Follow @jivebong

Silver – Daniel Pinne – Melbourne Storm

Dan started before the NRL Finals last year & is doing a great job behind the scenes at the Storm, check out the BattleCam scheduled for Friday night against the Broncos.
Follow @cushion09

Gold – Matthew Gepp – West Coast Eagles

Matt is the man behind the powerhouse in the West working the fans into a frenzy with The Swoop & wearing multiple hats tweeting for the Eagles & the mascot Rick the Rock.
Follow @schismd

Until next week

Catch it live on Saturday mornings (at 7:40am) when Sean Callanan discuss sports digital with Francis Leach on ABC Grandstand.

Tune into ABC Grandstand Breakfast over the Friday through Monday on ABC Grandstand digital radio.

Follow @saintfrankly
Follow @abcgrandstand

Get the Sports Geek podcasts

Want to get these clips in podcast form? Subscribe here or Add to iTunes

Podcast transcription

FRANCIS: Francis Leach here on this Saturday morning. Sean Callanan is our digital sports guru, always talking about sport in the digital world each Saturday, and he’s with us again in his very specially designed Collingwood Twitter t-shirt. It’s a ripper Sean. I know that you’ve gone above and beyond to put all the Twitter handles and favorite Magpies on a t-shirt, sort of like John, George, Ringo Starr. How are you?

SEAN: I’m good thanks, Frank, and it’s always good coming in after a win on a Friday night.

FRANCIS: That’s hilarious that shirt. What do we got? We’ve got an @sp_10, Scott Pendlebury; @dt_13, Dale Thomas; @dids_04, Alan Didak, that’s one team. It goes on and on and on. Nice work.

SEAN: I’ll take a pic and twit after the show.

FRANCIS: What we’re talking about it’s interesting today because sports clubs are, some are and some aren’t, I guess, getting a handle, no pun intended, on using digital space to maximize the expanding experience and also I guess to promote their football clubs and sport organizations.

SEAN: Yeah, so, we started Sports Geek to pretty much promote that clubs needed a sports geek or someone to manage their sports side but also understand the tick and manage the community, and so more and more clubs are getting people into those roles, so to manage all the social platforms, help produce content for the website, produce video, liaise with the fans, all that kind of stuff.

FRANCIS: Who were the pacers? Who were the trendsetters that got there first, who got it early?

SEAN: There was a couple in the States who jumped on different platforms early, like we’ve talked about before. The NBA, jumped on board with Facebook, Twitter. They just got 5 million followers on their Twitter account, but it is a developing space, and I suppose when you’re looking for someone to be in that role there are sort of three things that we look at. They’re three Cs, and so the first thing we’ve got to produce is Content because all the social media platforms require content all the time.

FRANCIS: It’s a beast. It just needs to be fed.

SEAN: It does need to be fed, and the thing is with footy clubs and with football media there is so much content available, so it is a matter of, one, producing the content, but it’s also about finding the content out of nothing, so it might be as simple as ‘the boys are getting on the bus.’ That’s something that the fans never see. They never get that insider feel. Pull your phone out, take that shot, and you send it out via Instagram, as we’ve talked about or send it out to Facebook so the fans get that insider access.

FRANCIS: That seems innocuous enough, but what’s the value edge for the club? What’s the value for the fan in that experience? You work in this area. What’re you finding; what’re they telling you?

SEAN: Well from the fans point of view and the way that we sort of pitch it, we call them “social media executioners,” because it sounds cooler on your business card, is that you’re trying to have all your content to have a goal, and for most teams your goal is to get that fan from sitting on the couch in their pajamas watching the TV to coming to a game to becoming a member to being there rain, hail or shine to handing over your Visa card and your automatically renewing each year.
So from a social and digital point of view, you’re trying to fast track them on their journey, and the thing is that’s what social allows you to do because you get to talk to the fan every single day.

FRANCIS: Does it feel like, I know, you and I both use this space a lot and do their people feel like it’s an authentic experience?

SEAN: Yes, yeah, I mean, they do. There are some that sort of see that the people are doing what they have to do as far as putting up posts and that kind of thing. But the idea is the fans, to coin a phrase, they do like the content they’re getting, and that’s the thing. You can track what you are putting out from a “likes” point of view, from traffic driving back to the website point of view, so the other part of their job is to be able to manage those stats and present case studies back to the business, to their sponsors, to the club to say, this is why we’re doing it, and this is why it’s a success.

FRANCIS: How far is it to curate the content well? You’re just not throwing stuff at the wall in the hope that it will appeal to somebody, but you’ve got some sort of plan or some sort of idea what works.

SEAN: Yes, so that’s the second “C,” Curation. It is, you’ve got all this content and you’ve got to figure out which content is going to fit for what platform, and at the right time, so you know something that will work, if it is just a slice of life shot that gets taken, that probably fits better for that Instagram crowd that is a visual medium crowd, who will go to Twitter because Twitter fans like to see pictures as much as to consume the article. So that fits for that crowd, whereas Facebook, our thing is you’re from a brand perspective and from a team perspective, you’re joining a personal platform. So most people in our experience are joining Facebook to connect with their family and friends and to stalk the people they went to high school with, right? And so as a brand or a team you’re encroaching in on that space, so you’ve got to be respectful of that, so the other thing from a Curation and how much do you post point of view, we use the movie the Hangover as an example: You wake up the next morning and you just don’t know what happened. And what do most people do, they’ll go and find out where they lost Mecca and where they checked in on Facebook and they want to check their feed, ah that’s right, we ended up there. And there’s that picture that we took at that bar, and that’s where they ended up, so they can go back to their feed and see that. Now they don’t want to go back in a half hungover state and see 27 updates from their team with a blow by blow description because it’s ruining their experience on Facebook because they can’t find out what their high school buddy is doing that they’re just stalking because there’re all these team announcements in there. So that’s where the Curation comes in because the fan might not “unlike” the team because they just can’t do it in their heart. They’re still a supporter, but what’s worse than that is if they hide your feed. They’ll never see your post ever again, so all the effort that you’re doing to engender more passion for the team, you’ve automatically lost them.

FRANCIS: Which clubs and sporting organizations do you think have established the best sense of community through their efforts in their space? I think there’s a lot of team’s doing it at varying levels.

SEAN: I think Twitter is a really great one from a community point of view because you can have that conversation. You can reply to fans. You can retweet their passion and their developments, so that’s where that Community comes in, which is the third “C” and getting that backwards and forwards going, so guys like West Coast they’re doing a lot of, you know, that random axe of the swoop. So we we’re talking gamification last week, they’ve got that gamification platform where they reward the fans from what they’re doing and they’re always saying, ‘Great work. Keep it up,’ and the fans just take that as encouragement, as a pat on the back.
So there’re a lot of teams that say ‘tell us what they highlights are.’ Collingwood last night was asking everyone what the highlights were and everyone was pumped up for a big win. You really want to maximize those opportunities because everyone’s up and about and everyone’s positive, conversely.

FRANCIS: The good stuff.

SEAN: The bad stuff if you go through a 100 point loss or you haven’t had a win and you’re going to have that digital virtually going ‘sack the coach’ or ‘I’m angry.’ Sometimes you’ve just got to let that stuff breathe, and as long as it doesn’t go overboard as we saw a couple of weeks ago in the __ an incident and then we saw when the LA Lakers player missed a crucial shot and he was getting twitter death threats to him and his wife. As long as it doesn’t go over that boundary line, the fans are going to vent, and the way I sort of experienced it is if the media manager walked around the ground at the end of the game you’ve lost and writes down everything the fans were yelling out, it would be pretty bloody depressing, so one of the things that as a guy working or girl in that instance working in digital sports you’ve got to have a pretty tough skin. Because if someone slams the team and says, ‘Oh, you’re terrible,’ they’re not talking to you, they’re not talking to the person, they’re just having a go at your team. And everyone’s allowed to do that, that’s what sports about.

FRANCIS: In the world of #digisport, we’ve got a minute to go. You got a plan to finish for three people who are doing great work in this space here in Australia?

SEAN: Yes, so Jess Ivers who was formerly with Manly Sea Eagles and took them to the grand final from a digital perspective, now at Canterbury, does a great job with the Twitter banter backwards and forwards. Daniel Pinne, we talked about previously, at the Melbourne Storm, doing a great job reaching the Melbourne sports team and encouraging people to follow NRL. And as we spoke about before, Matt Gepp at West Coast Eagles doing a great job in interacting with the fans with the swoop and having the backwards and forwards with them, even tweets is the mascot, as well, so he has to have that multiple persona of beating out a tweet for different voices, so he does a really good job with that.

FRANCIS: Go on, Sean, Sports Geek.
SEAN: @Sportsgeekhq on Twitter, @SeanCallanan on Twitter. Thanks so very much. Didn’t get to the tweets for replying to what the qualities needed as well, so thanks a lot.

One of the big reasons is that they have embraced the way that NBA teams, players & media are using Twitter.

We discussed it on Harf Time, what do you think of NBA’s use of Twitter these NBA Playoffs.

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Best shown with the NBA Social Spotlight as it shares tweets & pictures from around the league.

Also pictures from Instagram are profiled.

See how the NBA rank with other leagues here at our ranking pages of leagues & teams.

Until next week

Listen to Harf Time on Wednesdays (at 2:45pm) when Sean Callanan discuss sports digital with Daniel Harford.

Tune into Harf Time over the weekdays from 12-4pm on 1116 SEN.

Follow @HarfSerious
Follow @harftimesen

Get the Sports Geek podcasts

Want to get these clips in podcast form? Subscribe here or Add to iTunes

Podcast transcription

HARF: Sean Callanan in the house, Sports Digital Media Guru, has been good enough to join us. You can follow him at @SportsGeekHQ via Twitter or just check out their website, sportsgeek.com.au. Sean, welcome.

SEAN: Thanks a lot Harf.

HARF: Mate, the NBA, they’re going gang busters at the moment from a public point of view, from a fan point of view. How do they do it?

SEAN: Well one of the ways and what I want to talk about is that the NBA Twitter account reached 5 million Twitter followers just this week.

HARF: Has that been done before?

SEAN: It has been from individual accounts. So, you know, guys like Shaq and Justin Beiber posts left 5 million in the dust a while ago.

HARF: And Kobe.

SEAN: Kobe’s not on there. But, yeah, from a league point of view they’re well and truly way out in front from comparing the NFL and NHL and other major leagues from a Twitter point of view, so 5 million it’s a big number. One of the ways that really illustrates how they’re doing it well is that they really took on board the players using it. They saw that the players, much like we’re seeing in the AFL, NRL and cricket, tweeting, you know, what they’re doing, where they’re at, occasionally tweeting back and forth with the fans. The NBA guys really took on a board, guys like Shaq really jumped on board early and were engaging fans, and the NBA was pretty quick to adopt and embrace the players and the fans joining in.

HARF: Right.

SEAN: And so one of the ways…

HARF: Is that different to the other sporting leagues.

SEAN: There were a few other leagues and some of the college systems in the States were like trying to control it and get really heavy handed on the social media policy and what could and can’t be tweeted, that kind of thing whereas the NBA sort of went, ‘Well these players are going to do it. They’re engaging with the fans. The fans like it. Well, we may as well be using that content for our site and encouraging the fan and building the buzz word in social media, building engagement. And so one way that their profile…

HARF: Touching people.

SEAN: That’s a different part of the internet all together, Harf. I’m not going there. So one way they’re activating, which is another thing that we want to be doing with our sponsors is this http://www.nba.com/social-spotlight/

HARF: I’m on that at the moment.

SEAN: If you go to the Social Spotlight, it’s not that hard to find if you really put in NBA social spotlight and Google it, it comes up. What it’s doing is it’s showing you live tweets from players, media partners, fans, teams while they’re watching the game, so that pretty much at the moment everyone’s watching NBA on TNT because the games have just finished with the Spurs winning and LeBron missing a few shots at the end.

HARF: Just chucked it up a tree?

SEAN: I guess, and so they’re going to be a few tweets at King James saying, ‘Work on your free throws, LeBron, ‘cause there’s a lot of haters out there on Twitter.’

HARF: A lot of haters like the game, too.

SEAN: Definitely, yeah, definitely, so, but the thing is, yeah, if you tag your tweets #nbaplayoffs so they’ve got an integrated tweet button there that says use the hashtag #nbaplayoffs, so, again, they’re trying to get the conversation around the NBA playoffs and effectively your tweet could end up on this screen or your Instagram photo could end up on this screen.

HARF: Well you showed me that when you came in before. I decided to have a crack at it from the @HarftimeSEN account.

SEAN: You could sit here and watch…

HARF: Now I’ve got you involved in my loop and I’m watching the Social Spotlight…

SEAN: Maybe Shaq might need to retweet it to get on the board…

HARF: NOooooo because it’s got @sportsgeekhq there, so they’ll be all over that. I’ve kept you in the loop. I’m going to wait until we come up.

SEAN: With 5 million followers there might be a few tweets going through, so you might be waiting a little while.

HARF: Nah, but, Harftime SEN fans will make sure it gets up on the social spotlight. But that’s a great platform for fans.

SEAN: So the thing is, it’s a great plat form and it’s a custom built thing but what you can do is you can do your own homegrown, build ‘em yourself. If you go to Twitter it allows you to build these widgets that you can plug into your own website whether it’s a club that kind of thing, and you could be streaming all the tweets that you favor, for instance.

HARF: Okay, as your team or as Harftime, you say, ‘Oh, that’s a funny twit. I’ll favor that.’ And you can put that on your website. So if you go to Twitter.com/goodies there’re are some little things there to build widgets so you can get something that looks like the social spotlight onto your website, whether it be your club footy website, your local business or your team.

HARF: Okay.

SEAN: So a few of the teams do that. They use the same sort of system to get their tweets up on the big screen at the MCG just by moderating, using a favorite—yet that tweet’s all right—so if you see your tweet getting favored during the footy just keep your eye on the big screen. It might end up on the big screen at the games.

HARF: Well Shaq’s just tweeted, and he didn’t retweet my tweet, so that’s disappointing.

SEAN: Yeah.

HARF: Just another 5 million factor for the NBA, how does it compare to the other leagues in the U.S. and it might be globally?

SEAN: So the other leagues, the NFL is at 3.3 million, NHL 1 million. The UFC, who were going gang busters, are only at 600,000, so this is just Twitter, not Facebook. Facebook is, again, another beast and is a whole different set of numbers, but one of the things from an NBAs team point of view, it sort of shows that a lot of the NBAs marketing stuff is still relatively regional. If you look at the Twitter numbers for the NBA teams you’ve got the Lakers who are a massive international brand, with 2.5 million Twitter followers, but then you’ve got the Boston Celtics, Chicago Bulls, Miami Heat, are all only around 500,000, 600,000. So again, Twitter is still a developing platform and more and more teams are trying to leverage it with their fans.

HARF: If you want to check out the rankings and how they rank the leagues across the globe, go to sportsgeek.com.au/rankings and you will see what we are talking about. Check out the NBA social spotlight, as well. See you at Harftime SEN. Thank you, Sean.

SEAN: No worries, Harf.

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What is Gamification?

What is Gamification?  Bringing game elements to solve problems or better make things fun.

Sean spoke at Churchill Club last week on Gamification with Marigo Raftopolous  (Founder of Strategic Games Lab) and Patrick McQuaid (Project Director at NAB) who’s currently exploring the implementation of gamified projects at NAB.

What are examples of gamification?

• DreamTeam & SuperCoach – Fantasy Sports genre
• Apps like Foursquare, Yelp – gamifying social exploring – checking into bars & cafes
• Runkeeper – gamifying your jogging experience
• Frequent Flyer systems are ages old but early forms of gamification

Where is it popping up?

     - Corporate engagement & training – encouraging staff to participate with some fun game elements.

- Sports with Fan Engagement – we’ve developed Sports DP (Digital Passion) which is a social media frequent flyer system for sports fans.

- Minnesota Timberwolves were the world’s first sports team to gamily their sports fan base with Sports DP as fans tweets were scored at the 2011 NBA Draft in June 2011.  Check out the West Coast Eagles Sports DP rollout called The Swoop.

Expect as membership & stadiums get smarter to see gamification come into play with attendance, public transport, how much your spend – might lead to rewards like invite to team dinner or function.

Sports Geek Medals – Gamification edition

Bronze – Mint

Has a Financial Fitness module that gives you a percentage score for your financial savvyness.

Silver - Linkedin

Simple gamification technique of tracking the progress to 100% complete profile.  While you complete your Linkedin profile why not follow Sports Geek & connect with Sean.

Gold – Foursquare

Badges for achievements like Mile High Badge, School Night Badge & Player Please Badge got people hooked early & mayorship battles keep people checking in.

Until next week

Catch it live on Saturday mornings (at 7:40am) when Sean Callanan discuss sports digital with Francis Leach on ABC Grandstand.

Tune into ABC Grandstand Breakfast over the Friday through Monday on ABC Grandstand digital radio.

Follow @saintfrankly
Follow @abcgrandstand

Get the Sports Geek podcasts

Want to get these clips in podcast form? Subscribe here or Add to iTunes

Podcast transcription

Francis: Francis Leach here for Grandstand Breakfast on a Saturday morning. We like to invite Sean Callanan, our sports digital guru, to come in and have a chat to us about what’s been happening in sport online and in the digital world. Good day, Sean. How are you, mate?

Sean: Good day, Frank. I’m good thanks.

Francis: Gamification, is that a real word or is that a word that’s been invented by geeks.

Sean: It is a bit of a word that has been invented by geeks but it has been around for a long time, so gamification in a strict definition is taking game elements or game structures and applied to things that aren’t games to help those problems get solved or just to make it a little bit more fun and competitive. And so we’re seeing with the advent of social and people sharing and things like that from a social media perspective, we’re seeing game elements added to different apps and different implementations.
So some of the ones, and gamification is pretty big in sports, it has been for a long time, you know. Fantasy sports is a big massive industry both here and around the world with dream teams and super coach and that provides a gaming element to a game that you’re watching.

Francis: So that’s the genius of it is allowing fans to participate in the game and be competitive in the game.

Sean: Yeah, so, with fantasy games it allows you to play along and be invested in another part of the game, another facet of the game. So it’s effectively gamifying the statistics of the game and it definitely came from baseball. We’ve talked about Money Ball before. It’s a very stats based sport. There was even the old 60s style strato-matic, where you would pull in the stats and pull in the box scores and, again, it was fantasy but before computers and people would fill out their sheets and project whole seasons of baseball games or project whole seasons of basketball seasons—that kind of thing—so…

Francis: So it’s like the Wright brothers plane of gamification.

Sean: Effectively, effectively, but now we’re seeing that more short form stuff and stuff that’s available on your mobile, so gamification that the people probably see more often these days—you we’re talking about it just before—Foursquare. Foursquare gamified I guess social networking and geo-locational social networking, so for those who don’t know, Four Square is a geo-locational social network where you check in at venues and effectively say, ‘Hey, everybody I’m here.’ So just as I walked in I checked in and I checked in at ABC Southbank.

Francis: Are you the king of ABCs Southbank.

Sean: No, I think it’s the mayor.

Francis: The mayor?

Sean: The mayor. It is. So the thing is, and this is where the gamification comes in. People might be checking in at work and they might be checking in and competing with another work colleague to get the mayorship of their work. And so it provides incentive for them to be coming into work more often.

Francis: I don’t know if I want to be the mayor of my local 7-11, but I know that people are.

Sean: There are, exactly, but there are people who say, ‘I’ve got to go on holiday. I’m going to lose the mayorship of my work, and so…

Francis: That’s someone who’s lost all perspective on life.

Sean: They have but they’re caught up in the game. Other games, they’re games around fitness, so Run Keepers is one and Nike Plus have done it as well, where you hook it up, but when you go for a jog, it tracks where you go. Half hour you go, puts it on the map, but also then awards you points or badges. It’s like ‘Way to go Frank. You’ve done five runs in the last 10 days. You were at the Steve Moneghetti level or something along those lines.

Francis: And you can also track in that one, for instance, against your friends, so if you’re training for an event and you’ve run 30 or 40 cases, when your mates run 60, you get a bit of a wakeup call and say I need to lift my game.

Sean: Exactly and that’s the gamification, the competitiveness. I’ve got a mate that does runkeeper and one night he went out for a jog and wrote his name with his jogging on the map on where he jogged. Now he would never have thought of doing that previously if he was just going out for a job, but because he’s getting this feedback, he’s competing against his mates, who are also jogging, he wanted to do a little bit of ‘Hey, look at me. There you go. Look at the map, Steve.’ And that’s how he’s done his little run for the night.
So, yeah, some of the big gamifications and earlier ones frequent flyer systems and loyalty programs, so I think in sports we’ll start seeing that sort of gamification come into it and it might be you get your membership, but we’ll scan and check how many times you’ve actually come to the game and that will reward you points, and if your membership is linked to your merchandise and when you buy some merchandise you’ll get some points frequent flyer style and then obviously you can rank all the fans, and, you know, the fans who will do the best job might get a reward of meeting the coach or sitting in the coaches box or tossing the coin, that kind of stuff.

Francis: Has anybody in professional sport taken that sort of vertical integration of digital information and used it yet? I mean what you’re saying makes perfect sense, and we can see how it would work because it already works saying that commercials be at retail, but is anyone doing it yet?
So we did it with the Minnesota Timberwolves in the NBA draft where we gamified the Twitter experience of the Timberwolves fans, so we were rewarding points for them tweeting and retweeting and showing their love for the Timberwolves and all the fans were ranked. We were giving away prizes, but now…

Francis: And how many people sort of hooked into that and got the sense of what you were doing and really got stuck in.

Sean: We had 160 fans tweeting away on their draft party, and by the end of the next day when Derrick Williams turned up to town, we had 110 fans signed up, tweeting away and had their score ranked. And then what we did was we’ve talked Twitter, and Facebook is the big one, we’ve now added Facebook to that, so we can now rank your action on Facebook, so if you check into a stadium, so the West Coast Eagles are running it currently and they’re able to say, ‘Hi, guys use this hashtag and their little digital cheer squad is clamoring for points because they want to be in front of their mate as well as get awarded for things.

Francis: Is it ever outside of that? Does it actually encourage people to become assets to the club or the sporting organization and uses them in a way without being too calculating to promote the program.

Sean: Yes, so it becomes a training tool and that’s where we seeing corporates doing it on sales managers having to complete their sales form. If they complete it to 100% they’ll get points and again at games that sort of prices of we just want you to complete the form, will give you extra points, so it goes back to the scalp days. You do the things you’ll get the scalp edge. It’s just the same sort of sense of accomplishment.

Francis: Good thing the pics coming up. Any sense of are they going to gamify it. I think any way so there’s going to be sort of fantasy Olympics so that you can get involved and maybe whether it’s metal projections or particular ethics, what’re you hearing about how that’s going to work?

Sean: Well, the Olympics are trying to I guess gamify, build a social hub where effectively trying to get you to follow all the different athletes that are going to be involved and some of the former athletes. I think if, you know, you follow Mark Spitz. He’s not obviously just swimming, but if you follow Mark Spitz it’ll unlock the Mark Spitz video and then you’ll find more about Mark Spitz when he’s commentating, so there’s a bit of that, but as far as fantasy sports and the Olympics there seems to be a team basting rather than a country basting because most people come to the Olympics and don’t know 18% of the competitors and so what Olympic bodies like the U.S. team and actually did an activation with I think it was Samsung and tried to rally the troops and a few athletes said ‘well hang on we didn’t actually let you use our images and stuff,’ so they got into a little bit of trouble, but they we’re trying to share the stories of all the athletes and try to provide it in a gaming experience, so I think brands will be the ones that are driving it.

Francis: New podium for this week in the gamification stakes, 3, 2 & 1.

Sean: So I’ve got to give Mint is one it’s a financial planning one where as you save and learn more about saving they give you points. Linked In, just use the gamification technique just to complete your profile. It says: You are 40% done. Don’t forget to invite your friends, get recommendations, so it just steps you through the process and encourages you to do it, but I’m still a Foursquare fan. I think they’ve done a really good job in awarding badges for being out on a school night. There’s this one for Pizza how many pizza joints you’ve been to. There’s a mile high badge, and that’s for checking in on an airplane with WIFI, not the other reason you might get the mile high badge. But, yeah, there’s a bit of merit to ‘hey look at me’ I just got the sky high badge. There’re all the different ones, burger joints and those kinds of things.

Francis: You are in deep my friend. You are in Foursquare deep.

Sean: Pretty much, pretty much.

Francis: Get on, Sean. People want to find you online and challenge you to be the mayor of your local 7-11, where can they find you?

Sean: They can find me at @SeanCallanan or at @SportsgeekHQ or sportsgeek.com.au.

Well, the MLB are at it again. With Mother’s Day just around the corner, MLB have created a Mother’s Day Pinterest Contest, where fans can win MLB gear from their online shop by pinning items to custom made “MLB Mother’s Day” boards and repinning this image below onto the board.

The creation of the Pinterest competition for Mother’s Day is a great initiative that engages fans, drives traffic to the online store and makes the MLB noteworthy within a growing social media space like Pinterest. Like the Boston Celtics, who are also utilising the Pinterest space for competitions, the MLB is starting to create a great image for itself on Pinterest and will be looked at as the world leader in sports utilising the Pinterest sphere.

Have you seen other teams and/or leagues using Pinterest for competitions? Tell us in the comments section below.

Dion Bennett

Dion is the current behind-the-scenes man for @SportsGeekHQ. Undertaking a Bachelor of Marketing at La Trobe University, Dion hopes to make a name for himself in the hectic world of sports marketing.

  

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Who is Sarah Phillips?

First broken by Deadspin, it details the rise & fall of “Sarah Phillips” definitely worth a read as it details the world of sports parody accounts & how easily people can be fooled.

Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet! Watch out for the fakes.

Sports Geek Medals – Parody edition

Bronze – Dennis Cometti

#BrianLake won’t win #GoaloftheYear, but if there is a special category for players made out of Lego, he would receive an honorable mention.

— Dennis Cometti (@DennisCometti) May 4, 2012

Silver - Fake Shane Watson

ATTENTION JOURNALISTS: I will be holding a press conference at 2pm local time to discuss the Ponting run out#notmyfault

— Shane Watson (@FakeShaneWatson) April 11, 2012

Gold – Not Bill Walton

While going after a ref, Andrew Bynum was restrained by Matt Barnes. When Barnes has to calm you down, it’s probably time for anger classes.

— Not Bill Walton (@NotBillWalton) May 5, 2012

Until next week

Catch it live on Saturday mornings (at 7:40am) when Sean Callanan discuss sports digital with Francis Leach on ABC Grandstand.

Tune into ABC Grandstand Breakfast over the Friday through Monday on ABC Grandstand digital radio.

Follow @saintfrankly
Follow @abcgrandstand

Get the Sports Geek podcasts

Want to get these clips in podcast form? Subscribe here or Add to iTunes

Podcast Transcript

FRANK: Time to catch up with Sean Callanan, our Digital Sports Guru, to have a look at sport in the digital space with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, wherever it is, Sean is all over it. Good day, mate, how are you?

SEAN: I’m good, thanks, Frank.

FRANK: The question is, is it real or is it not?

SEAN: It is a bit that way. This week we’re talking about fakes and parodies, and one is the Worldwide Leader, ESPN. It seems to have been caught up in a pretty big Twitter scandal and a big scandal in incident, anyway.

FRANK: Has it been punked?

SEAN: It effectively has been punked by the looks of it. The story goes as, I guess, we’ll put it in, it’s hard to do what quite sounds right.

FRANK: Let’s start. What happens?

SEAN: So, Sarah Phillips…

FRANK: Who is Sarah Phillips?

SEAN: So, I’m doing air quotes, which is hard to do on radio, but Sarah Phillips started as a 22-year-old blogger, blogging about gambling on the site Covers.com, and she was…

FRANK: So, let me get this right, so you got a 22-year-old blogger…

SEAN: She was in the forums talking about the bets she was doing and things like that, and she was sort of plucked out of the forums and given an article, you know, a spot on Covers.com to blog about gambling and how she’s doing betting on different sports and things like that.

FRANK: So she proposed a picture like of herself and avatar herself looking like an attractive young 22-year-old, and someone goes, ‘Oh, obviously somebody who knows what they’re talking about…hmmm a 22-year-old with a lot of experience in gambling,” hmmm, alarm bells already; keep going.

SEAN: Yes, so you can only gamble, again, not very much in the United States, but you have to be 21, so she’s had a varied experience…yeah (sarcastic laughter), and from that, and she obviously had a little bit of a following and from that she was recruited by ESPN to sort of help fill their void in covering the gambling space and again she’s got a nice avatar and had a bit of a following and started writing for ESPN for their reformed Playbook, which used to be Page 2, which is just, I guess, a little bit of an off Broadway side, a bit of covering different topics, and so she was writing a few columns there. There was a bit of murmuring of who is this Sarah Phillips? And there was a little bit of skepticism of if she was a real person.

FRANK: So we’re talking about ESPN who hired her to write, didn’t bother to actually have any sort of face-to-face time to check to make sure if this person was bonafide, or anything like that?

SEAN: Again that’s what it appears. It appears it was a bit of a email communication around recruiting, but that’s not really, you know, if that was it, that’s not really a big deal, like they might have just had her writing articles, but then it was actually again Sarah Phillips and a couple of her partners who started leveraging the name of ESPN to then go and find other accounts to bring into a network with what they we’re going to call the Sports Comedy Network, and now they’re eventually going to sell it to ESPN. So they went to some of the really popular parody accounts on Twitter and Facebook and started saying, ‘Oh, look guys, If you come into our stable of accounts we will produce this Sports Comedy Network and we’ll sell it to ESPN.

FRANK: What are some of the really big parody accounts if you’re a sports fan that are out there?

SEAN: We’re looking at ones like they were talking to @notbillwalton. @OhWonka is another one and there’s another one, NBA Memes, which is now up on Facebook and it would post funny pictures with comments and have a bit of a joke around the NBA players, and what they were able to do was to one either gain access to some of these accounts. The NBA Memes one was funny in a sense they then told the guy, ‘Look, what we’ll do is pay you for amount of views.’ Every time a post gets a lot of likes we’ll get advertising and we’ll pay you, and they promised this 19-year-old college student the world, and he saw the dollar signs, but then he said, ‘Oh, but there’s legal issues. What we need to do because you’re using Getty’s images and they’re going to charge you a $1,000 an image, you’re going to get sued! ‘ And then they gave him this story that they tracks it all by IP addresses, so that’s how you are uniquely identified on the Internet, and they said, ‘But if you transfer the excess of the page to us, we’ll say that the IP addresses originate out of Bristol,’ which is headquarters for ESPN. And then why bother suing ESPN because ESPN is too big, and this poor guy believed them and handed over, added them as admins to the page, and this is a page of 300,000 Facebook fans.

FRANK: It’s a huge database.

SEAN: So it’s a huge database, and as soon as they did that he was removed as admin and lost complete control of the page and they effectively then said, ‘Oh, we’re closing NBA Memes. Please come over to the Sports Comedy Network. We’ve moved,’ effectively trying to siphon off a fair portion of his fan base across, so this poor guy who had built a bit of a comedy page leveraging off of the NBA players and things like that had lost his page.

FRANK: How did ESPN respond to all of this?

SEAN: Well, so this all came about when Deadspin, which is another website, did a bit of an expose on Sarah Phillips and started to expose all of this stuff where she was approaching these parody accounts and trying to bring them all in halves to become this Sports Comedy Network.

FRANK: She was basically harvesting other people’s ideas.

SEAN: Harvesting and recruiting all these people’s accounts under the guidance of we’re going to set up this company and because our work at ESPN, ESPN is going to buy It, so she was at the, you know, shilling the ESPN brand without anyone’s knowledge. Again, there are still big question marks whether this Sarah Phillips is actually a person or whether it’s just another fictionally fake account. So it’s an identity theft thing so if that’s the case the poor girl whose photo it is, you know, there might be people who eventually might see here and say, ‘I know you, you’re Sarah Phillips. You’re the one who was trying to get, and you know, in other words…

FRANK: She’s studying medicine in Wisconsin or something like that.

SEAN: Exactly…

FRANK: There’s nothing about it.

SEAN: Yeah, they just grabbed the photo from some poor girl’s Facebook profile, so it’s just a strange scenario. I mean Twitter specifically allows parody accounts.

FRANK: And there’re some good ones. I mean even in the Australian space, the Dennis Cometti one. He’s hilarious and the Caroline Wilson one, Carowhine has had some great moments, as well.

SEAN: And the thing is and it is quite frustrating if you’re not on Twitter and you don’t want to be and you see this account you can go, ‘Oh, they’re impersonating me.’ The thing with Twitter is it actually allows, and if you say in the profile this is a parody account and you’re not trying to pretend and impersonate them, they’re OK with it because, obviously, but it’s a bit too hard, I guess for Twitter. They just sort of shrug their shoulders and say look we’ll put this policy in place to cover that and for the most of it when people have the name, you know, @NotBillWalton, you just sort of know it’s not Bill Walton.

FRANK: And if you don’t realize that by that stage you’re the one with the problem.

SEAN: Yeah, exactly, so you know, I think @FakeShaneWatson is quite humorous.

FRANK: He had some good moments.

SEAN: He had some good moments, and it’s sort of like…

FRANK: Sleeping with the lights on and watching out for the ghosts.

SEAN: Yeah, exactly, and I think Shane Watson sort of just goes, ‘Well, I don’t need to be on Twitter. I won’t be as funny as @FakeShakeWatson, so you know, if you can have a laugh at it and everyone can see it for what it is, but yeah, sometimes the parody accounts can go a bit haywire and you’ve got to be careful, but it is funny how many people get sucked in to thinking that fake accounts are real in some instances. But, yeah, it was just funny to see…you know you can’t believe everything you read on the incident I guess is probably the moral to the story.

FRANK: Just another cautionary tale. Did ESPN finally cut ties with this Sarah Phillips?

SEAN: Yes, pretty quickly after the Deadspin article they cut ties with her, but, you know, if you go to ESPN, all of her articles are still there and there are still references to all the stuff that she’s done.

FRANK: It would seem Current Affair would be after her, get Martin King to put his foot through their front door.

SEAN: I would like to see Martin King fight because, again, it’s a virtual person. It’s a Twitter account, so it is a strange one for them to go through.

FRANK: Have you got a podium for us this week? Have you got a podium of fake accounts?

SEAN: Well that’s the thing. You know we had a few and I should not knock Bill Walton. He’s very funny as a…

FRANK: Tell people who Bill Walton is, or not.

SEAN: Bill Walton is an NBA great Hall of Famer. He played with the Portland Trail Blazers and the Celtics and now he’s an NBA broadcaster. And he’s a Grateful Dead fan and he’s a hippy and the account just pretty much…

FRANK: So much to work with.

SEAN: It is. So much to work with and pretty much now, I agree, the Dennis Cometti one is very funny, but, yeah, there’s a lot out there. You just got to be aware that they are just fakes and it’s just a little bit of fun.

FRANK: And today tell people where they can find you, the real Sean Callanan.

SEAN: Yeah, the real Sean, I haven’t got a fake account. If anyone wants to do a parody account go for your life. It’s at @seancallanan @SportsGeekHQ.

So, why did Facebook shell out so much money for such a simple app? One reason, folks; reach. With between 30 and 50 million users now having Instagram, the reach the app boasts is unbelievable for a mobile app, and will continue to grow as Facebook pushes it’s development.

Like Twitter and Facebook. athletes across the world are starting to integrate Instagram into their daily repertoires to connect with their fans and show their “human” side. Now, without any further ado, let’s look at ten athletes from around the world who are absolutely killing their Instagram connection with fans.

Kevin Durant (@trey5)

You know him on the NBA courts as the jump shooting, rim shaking, 3-time scoring champ of the Oklahoma City Thunder, but the 23-year old forward is just a regular, 23-year old guy off the court. For some fun behind-the-scenes kind of shots from one of the NBA’s best characters, you could do much worse than follow KD on Instagram.

Rob Gronkowski (@robgronkowski)

Another young gun at the top of his game at the moment is New England Patriots tight end, Rob Gronkowski. At just 22 years of age, the man affectionately known as “Gronk” is well and truly part of the “iGeneration”. As a potential cover athlete for the Madden 13 game set to be released later this year, the “Gronk” took to Instagram to ask his fans to vote him on. Although he never won (that honour went to Detroit’s Calvin Johnson), Gronk obviously wasn’t too fazed about the infamous “Madden Curse”.

LeBron James (@kingjames330)

King on the court and  marketing giant off it, Miami’s LeBron James has over 350,000 followers on Instagram. They’re often treated to pictures of his latest Nike kicks for their loyalty.

Source: instagr.am via Dion on Pinterest

Tony Hawk (@tonyhawk)

Skateboarders are often seen as outside-the-square thinkers, and legendary boarder Tony Hawk is no different. As a businessman, Mr. Hawk has proven himself to be as fearless as he was in a half pipe. Who else could pull off the business-presentation-in-a-half-pipe idea as well as Hawk? Brilliant stuff, Bird man.

Source: instagr.am via Dion on Pinterest

Kelly Slater (@kellyslater)

Like skateboarders, surfers are also seen as creative thinkers. Champion surfer Kelly Slater helps keep that belief alive with his Instagram shots, including this beauty from his last visit to Australia. Picturesque shot there, Kelly.

Source: instagr.am via Dion on Pinterest

Scott Pendlebury (@sp_10)

Magpie superstar Scott Pendlebury is a leader amongst his AFL contemporaries on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. With nearly 2,500 followers, Pendles is giving his fans a great insight into his life away from football and what keeps him grounded when not tearing up the MCG.

Mick Fanning (@mfanno)

Like Slater above, surfing legend Mick Fanning is a lover of Instagram. As he does so much travelling throughout the year, Instagram is wonderful to not only let his fans know what he is up to, but also let them know where he is! Loved this shot of him flipping the coin at the MCG for the Hawthorn vs Geelong match in round two, just days after his triumph at Bells Beach.

Source: statigr.am via Dion on Pinterest

Kaka (@kaka)

Brazilian soccer superstar Kaka was one of the first sports stars to embrace Instagram. With nearly 150,000 followers, Kaka is one of the big players on Instagram, and posted this beauty for his followers just this morning, mere hours after Real Madrid clinched their first La Liga title since 2008. Hala, Madrid

Source: statigr.am via Dion on Pinterest

Mike Tyson (@miketyson

While he’s most well known for his headline grabbing boxing career, retired boxer (and star of one of the best scenes in “The Hangover”), Mike Tyson is a regular on Instagram. As an old school WWE fan, this one below, of Iron Mike being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, is especially good.

Source: web.stagram.com via Dion on Pinterest

Stephanie Rice (@itsstephrice)

Last but certainly not least is Australian swimming’s golden girl, Stephanie Rice. The three-time Olympic gold-medal winner is great to follow on Instagram as she gives some cool insight into all the training and preparation needed for the Olympics. With the London games coming up shortly, she is definitely worth a follow.

Source: web.stagram.com via Dion on Pinterest

 

There we have it, guys. Are you in Instagram yet? For more information on Instagram and it’s impact on the sports digital world, check out Sean’s #YouTube140 look into Instagram.

If you want to follow any of the stars featured here or any other sporting identities and teams, check out our Sports Geek Pinterest page, “Sports on Instagram”.

Dion Bennett

Dion is the current behind-the-scenes man for @SportsGeekHQ. Undertaking a Bachelor of Marketing at La Trobe University, Dion hopes to make a name for himself in the hectic world of sports marketing.

  

 Download mp3

Using Social Media for Good

Sports Geek Medals – Pinterest edition

Bronze – Manchester City

They have a board for title “City Tattoos”, needs no other explanation.

Silver - Anaheim Ducks

Doing a great job of pinning material from fans from other social networks like Facebook & Twitter.

Gold – Boston Celtics

Doing a great job sharing pictures & promotions from the Celtics vast history.  Even running a Pin it to win it competition.

Until next week

Catch it live on Saturday mornings (at 7:40am) when Sean Callanan discuss sports digital with Francis Leach on ABC Grandstand.

Tune into ABC Grandstand Breakfast over the Friday through Monday on ABC Grandstand digital radio.

Follow @saintfrankly
Follow @abcgrandstand

Get the Sports Geek podcasts

Want to get these clips in podcast form? Subscribe here or Add to iTunes

Podcast transcription

FRANK: Sean Callanan, our Digital Sports Guru, joins us every Saturday what his field of dreams might be. Good day, Sean, how are you?

SEAN: Good day, Frank. Well other than MCG, I mean that shows a bit of bias to Melbourne, but from a baseball perspective, I actually have been to Wrigley Field and it’s the stadium in the states that most reminds me of the MCG.

FRANK: What about it reminds you of the MCG?

SEAN: You pretty much just walk in there and you just, the history, and you can just feel it. It wraps you up.

FRANK: I think there’s two ways you can go with this. I think the really big venues are super impressive and they’re overwhelming in their size and their stature in the history. And the MCG certainly got that about it, but sometimes the smaller venues are the ones that capture your heart. I’m sure Fenway Park is like that for me because it’s a tiny, you know, it’s a tiny track. It’s a very small ballpark, really. It’d be like, you know, I’m going to ask a person ‘Do you like having the good fortune of going to Highbury a few times over the years,’ very small, compact ground, beautiful art deco grandstand.

SEAN: And it is something that all the special baseball stadiums, all the refurbs and, you know, getting the new stadiums built. Like last time I went to New York I went to both Yankee Stadium and the new Mets stadium. Both new stadiums, the Yankees went with a complete almost carbon copy of …..

FRANK: It’s unusual isn’t it?

SEAN: of the old stadium.

FRANK: Explain it. It’s not on the same side, is it?

SEAN: It’s across the road.

FRANK: It’s across the road.

SEAN: But it’s a physically carbon copy, and it looks a little bit like a Coliseum. There’s a lot of concrete and it really doesn’t have—they tried to replicate it, and they really couldn’t. Whereas the new Mets stadium they did it in that vintage style, and they used a lot of the pieces of the era, and so it looks like an old stadium but it’s got all the new amenities, and it does it have that old style ball park feel. So it’s sort of like, again, comparing MCG to the Docklands Stadium. You know, and amenities wise, it’s just a matter of getting it right.

FRANK: So since through your choice hashtag #grandstand, your field of dreams, the venue of the sports, I mean it doesn’t have to be a professional sportsman. There’s a lot of people have a very, very deep and affectionate ties to their local sports fields, whether they played there or their kids did or whatever it is, how should today’s grandstand let us know? Whereas the other one in the United States that I really love is AT&T Park or in San Francisco, the home of the Giant’s, is a venue I have a little bit of a soft spot for. It’s a magnificent vista when you’re sitting up in the stands there at across San Francisco Bay on a sunny day. It’s like the happiest place on earth.

SEAN: Yeah, definitely, definitely. It’s one of the ones I haven’t been to. It’s on my stadium bucket list.

FRANK: It’s a beauty. We’re talking to you about social media today, of course, in sport and sometimes we focus a lot on the negative and the trouble that people get themselves into using social media platforms, but sometimes it actually can be a really powerful tool for niceness instead of evil.

SEAN: Yes.

FRANK: As Maxwell Smart would say.

SEAN: Exactly, and we had a pretty good example of this earlier in the week when I saw, I think I actually saw your tweet initially, and re-tweeted it to Ben Hollioake who passed away and was an English cricketer, had his kit, these English kids stole it from his parent’s home in Perth. So someone broke in…

FRANK: Terrible.

SEAN: Whether they did it deliberately or it was just a break in and they’d stolen all his English gear.

FRANK: Because when Ben died , I think about, oh, ten years ago, I think it was in a car accident in Perth, and so his parents have kept his kit as, you know, as a keepsake, a very precious keepsake for his career as a…

SEAN: I think he played two tests in twenty or so one days…

FRANK: With his brother, as well, Adam.

SEAN: And, so, yeah, the English cricket community, so Michael Vaughan and Alec Stewart and a lot of the guys that played with him started tweeting, “Hey guys find his, find Ben’s kit. Ask everyone to re-tweet it.” You know astray and cricket personality Vaughan, Damien Fleming and the like did the same. And so it was obviously trending on Twitter, but it did provide a little bit of an action, a bit of awareness for everybody because most people wouldn’t have known. It would have maybe made the England papers and maybe the Perth papers, and then luckily enough a couple of days later, because I really put the alert out, and said, “Hey, if you find this stuff on Ebay or someone’s trying to off load it,” and a couple of days later both they found the guys who did it and they found the kit and it was returned. So it was one of those good stories, too, you know, get awareness and also it’s about what we we’re talking about last week, getting a story that you want out in the press and getting a bit more publicity.

FRANK: What it shows is that communities coalesce really quickly around things that are of, if you got a likeminded cause or an interest with people, you can coalesce a community really quickly around that—incredible resource. I mean, in my gig, here working as a professional sports broadcaster, the connections you can make with other journalists and broadcasters and people of who can actually be part of the show or give you information and insight from a first person perspective of being at games and being at press conferences, and the like, it’s an extraordinary reach, and it really has changed the way broadcasting works, and in this instance it’s worked…

SEAN: And the thing is everyone can have their own niche show. You know, if you didn’t hear it from one of the players themselves, you might hear it from a follower who’s mad for cricket, and he’s always giving you your cricket information, so he’s my cricket expert. It’s not, I’m not waiting for the cricket segment on Grandstand. It’s this twitter follower that’s always giving me the best cricket advice. So, you know, people can develop niches and become these, you know, curators of content and pass it on.

FRANK: Well that it is very egalitarian, too, and as you said, you know, looking at the tweets, there was Adam Hollioake, Ben’s brother who was tweeting through Alec Stewart. I mean I’ve sent my re-tweet out. You did as well. We’re all having the same impact. You know having a conversation with these people who are professional sports people who you previously probably wouldn’t have access to, not only just to talk to them but also to, you know, to working inside with them, maybe if they’re, you know, not cognizant that you’re doing it, but it is really, really an egalitarian experience.

SEAN: And it gives them, you know, it goes back to that, you know, the ability that for athletes to be role models whether they’re pushing a charity or trying to push a cause or in this case, you know, just to find a mates kit because someone’s gone and broke into his parent’s house. So another one that I again caught by Twitter and the Wallabies did, I think, did a good job in, one, telling everyone about Michael  Lynagh who’s had a stroke and is still critical in the hospital at the moment. They sent out a tweet saying, “Hey, send Noddy,” which is Michael  Lynagh’s nickname, send a tweet, “Get well Noddy,” and we’ll pass it on to the family, and, you know, it’s not going to help him get better, but it is going to rally the rugby community, send their messages of support. I’m sure, you know, as the guys at the AOU handover pages and pages of tweets to the family, it will mean a lot to the Lynagh family just to see that he’s getting a lot of support, and, you know, we send out our best wishes to the family, but it’s just another way to, one, get the information out because you might check the newspapers and not find that information, so it’s a way for teams, in this case the AOU, makes sure that the rugby community knows that one of their own is in a bit of trouble.

FRANK: Yes, certainly, they did rally around Michael. We spoke with Andrew , his former teammate, yesterday on the program, and he’s recovering, but he’s got a long way to go after suffering that stroke earlier in the week. Have you got a podium for us today?

SEAN: Well just, actually, just one more on—we did speak about it a bit about four weeks ago, Kony 2012 “Cover the Night” was last night, and as I was driving in I did see obviously some kids had still rallied to the cause, and I did see a couple of Kony 2012 posters up around Melbourne, so I don’t know if anyone else joined in the fun of promoting the Kony 2012. We discussed that when they brought out the issue clips, so I need you to see if anyone else and how it goes in America.

FRANK: Just on that they’ve posted a second film, haven’t they, a follow-up to the original Kony 2012.

SEAN: Yes because there were some concerns and people worried about the funding and stuff, so they’ve sort of done that, and even the fan had a little bit of a crazy time there and they’re going to be caught up with the celebrity, but the cover of the night actually went through, you know last night here, and it’ll be in the states tomorrow, so it needs to be seen what good kind of coverage it gets in America tomorrow.

FRANK: Sean Callanan with the say on Digital Sports Guru here on Grandstand Breakfast. We always have a podium of three, two and one for those in the digital space on Twitter and other social media who’ve done interesting things this week. What have you got for us?

SEAN: So, what I want to do is get away from Twitter and have a quick look at Pinterest Day invented to the really good article on Sports Geek on how sports names are using Pinterest. We talked about Pinterest as way to share photos and stuff, and so the bronze medal goes to Man City, and if you check out one of their boards, I have a board called “City Tattoos,” and there is one of the most gruesome tattoos you’ve ever seen in your life there, with effectively the Manchester City logo tattooed onto the guy’s heart.

FRANK: It’s pretty full on.

SEAN: It is pretty full on. The Anaheim Ducks have done a pretty good job on Pinterest, as well. They actually shared the tweets and Facebook posts and things that the fans are doing, but one of the ones that is leading the way and doing really well in the digital space is the Boston Celtics sharing stats and boards, and they’ve been running a Pin-It competition, so they’re instead in a game in cyber space and had a little bit of fun.

FRANK: Pin-It-To-Win-It.

SEAN: Pin-It-To-Win-It, yeah!

FRANK: They got to vote on that one first…It’s a beauty.

SEAN: Yeah, exactly, so everyone will be following them, but, yeah. Let’s check out sports on Pinterest and we’ve got the article on sportsgeek.com.au.

FRANK: Remind us what Pinterest is because it’s a bit different to Instagram, isn’t it?

SEAN: It’s a pin board, so as you find photos and things that you like you pin them to boards, and so like I said, Manchester City might have a City Tattoos. A lot of the teams are doing Pets Who Follow Us, and so they should pin pets, dogs and cats that are wearing their team’s colors. They do baking goods. They should share merchandise.

FRANK: So it’s more on the subject matter. You can direct to what subject matter.

SEAN: So it’s a real visual medium, so you pin pictures that you like to that fit your brand, and then people re-pin them to their boards because their fans of your team, so it’s a real, you know, you just surf along, look at all those pictures. They’re pretty. I liked that one. I re-pinned that one, so we’re having a lot of traffic back to websites, so on and so. The sportscenter is starting to delve into it.

FRANK: Get on you’re sure. Now get to make a little point today.

SEAN: Thank you very much, and good luck with maybe us…

FRANK: (laughter) I haven’t got this one quite yet. It’s New York 6, Boston 2, top of the 8th, no outs and a man on second for the Yankees at the moment, but dear, it hasn’t been a great start to the year for the Red Sox, but this game and over the next few days might be crucial to their season given it is the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park. You’ll have to get there one day.

SEAN: I will. I have to be there in August for a conference, so I’m looking forward to it.

FRANK: By then it could be ugly for bargaining if they keep playing the way they are. Remind people how they kind of find him: sportsgeek.com.au

SEAN: That’s it, sportsgeek.com.au, @sportsgeekhq or @SeanCallanan on Twitter.

FRANK: He’s everywhere. Sean Callanan our Digital Sports Guru here on Grandstand Breakfast.

Jump on board Australia & give it a retweet.