I recently completed my Master’s Capstone/Thesis on “The Role of Social Media in Sports Communication: An Analysis of NBA Teams’ Strategy.” The study utilized the insights from interviews with social media managers of nine NBA teams along with observations of teams’ ongoing digital initiatives to provide an analysis of how individual NBA teams implement social media strategy, specific tactics, and the current climate around social media in sports communication.
The study progressed to offer eight best practices in effective usage of social media by NBA teams:
- Give Quality Content
- Incorporate Social Media Offline
- Gamify Social Media Efforts
- Personalize Fans on Social Media
- Collect Fan Data
- Fansource/Crowdsource
- Use Fans to Amplify Message
- Track, Measure, Analyze and Adjust
The analysis of best practices within the study goes into great depth which can be found here. These best practices are useful in how they can be translated across other sports teams, leagues, entertainment entities, and brands in terms of effective social media use. Recently, the study was voted to win the American University Public Communication Award for Best Sports/Entertainment Campaign/Study sponsored by New Media Strategies.
This was a very rewarding experience that produced a great exploration of the field. The study can be found as the first item in my portfolio.
*WARNING: The study is kind of long (about 45 pages) 🙂 Enjoy!
Mark Wysocki 