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A Social Media Strategy for Non-Marquee Sports & Athletes

I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Dan Clarke (@speedydanclarke), an Indy Lights racer from England who lives in Indianapolis, and learning about his struggles this off-season. He’s looking for corporate sponsors so he can race in the upcoming season.

Dan Clarke at Carb Day 2010

If you don’t know what Indy Lights racing is, then you’re starting to see Dan’s problem. Indy Lights is the developmental racing league for IndyCar — Indianapolis 500 — racing. In a sport with fewer US fans than the NHL, he’s in the minor leagues.

Think of your favorite baseball team. Can you name its AAA minor league affiliate? Can you name their players? Do you know who their best hitter was last year, or their best pitcher?

Now you understand Dan’s problem. He’s looking for sponsors for a sport outside the big three — NFL, NBA, MLB — trying to convince them that the developmental league is a great place for them to be seen.

This is where social media can help. A personal branding campaign, even for athletes, can help build their brand, find new fans, and hopefully, bring in the big sponsors. It doesn’t matter if you’re an IndyLights driver, a minor league baseball player, or even the veteran right guard for the New Orleans Saints. If people don’t know who you are, they’re not going to care, and you’re going to have a tough time getting them to notice you. But by doing some basic personal branding, you can use that network to bring in new opportunities that contribute to your total success.

Start with Twitter

Twitter is one of the easiest places to start. This is where you can immediately see your fan base (# of followers), interact with them, and even measure the impact you’re having. Turn followers into fans, turn fans into evangelists. And as more people follow you, demonstrate to potential sponsors that you carry a lot of weight with your network.

Most athletes ignore their fan base on Twitter, choosing instead to communicate with each other publicly about private issues. For example, most IndyCar drivers have only a few thousand followers and only follow a few dozen people. Helio Castroneves, one of the most famous drivers in the world today, only has 31,000 followers, Ryan Briscoe has 8,600+, and Penske Racing (“one of the most successful teams in sports history with 330 race wins”) has 9,900 followers. To put that in perspective, I have 7,200 followers, I write blogs for a living, and the last thing I won was “Best Comedy Script” in a theater script competition in 2005.

If you don’t follow people, they won’t follow you. When you’re in a small-market sport, you can’t afford to be picky about who you follow. If you’re worried about privacy, don’t tweet your personal life. If you’re worried about managing a large Twitter network, get TweetDeck and use Twitter lists. But don’t make yourself seem unapproachable. Twitter is the one place you can interact with fans and still keep them at arm’s length.

Tip: Use Klout or Twitalyzer to measure the influence you have. Show sponsors that a positive word from you can influence buying behavior among your fans.

Create a blog

The blog is really the hub of your personal branding campaign. The point of being on those networks is to drive traffic to your blog; the point of your blog is to get people to join you on the other networks.

Your personal branding campaign is a wheel, with the blog at the center.

A blog is a place where you can share a behind-the-scenes look at what you’re doing. Share your exploits on and off the field/court/track, post photos, post videos, and tell stories. Fans love feeling like they’re connecting with their favorite athlete and learning stuff the casual observer or fair-weather fan doesn’t know. This is why celebrity news is so popular. People get to learn something about their favorite stars. But since small-market athletes don’t get the rave coverage that the Peyton Mannings and LeBron James of the world, you have to make your own news.

Blogs are becoming more important and popular among the PR crowd, especially crisis communicators, because they avoid the whole filter of mainstream media. For athletes, this avoids the filter of the sports media, which only gives a scant amount of attention to your sport anyway, and even then, only to the victories of the marquee stars and screwups of everyone else.

Tip: Use Google Analytics or Yahoo Analytics to measure web traffic. Demonstrate to sponsors that you 1) can get traffic to your blog, and 2) can send that traffic to sponsors’ websites.

Social Media PR

Adopt a strategy of sharing with other bloggers in your sport. Even though I’m not a big open wheel racing blogger (I’ll get to blog from the media center of the Indy 500 for the 3rd year running, but won’t be going to any other races), I can name at least five other race bloggers who all have a decent readership. And they’ll gladly share some digital ink with anyone from the sport who will talk to them.

So, talk to them. Tell them stories, give them exclusive news, and grant interviews. In short, treat them like real journalists, and they’ll pay you back with space, exposure, and kindness. Let a few bloggers break the news about your new team, your plans for the year, or even your struggles. They’ll become your fans, and tell their fans all about you, which will make them your fans too.

I’ve been listening to Wall Street Journal sports writer Stefan Fatsis‘ book, A Few Seconds of Panic (affiliate link), about his weeks spent in training camp with the Denver Broncos as a kicker. While I have never been a Denver Bronco’s fan, Fatsis’ look at the danger and drudgery of training camp and football has me looking at the Broncos in a whole new way, and I may have to cheer for them a few times this year (something I would never have done until this week). Can you find bloggers to do that for you? What about bloggers outside the sport? When less than 1% of the country knows who you are or what you do, non-industry bloggers are a rich, untapped vein. (Just don’t blanket every blogger out there. You’ll be labeled a PR spammer.)

Tip: Let other bloggers tell your story. If they make it compelling enough, they’ll win your fans for you. If you connect solidly with 10 bloggers and they each have 1,000 readers, you’ll reach 10,000 people. Now, compare that to the effort you would need to put out to reach 10,000 people yourself.

Build a Facebook Brand Page

You may already have a Facebook page, but that should be kept private. Try not to connect with your fans on your personal Facebook profile, since that’s where you’re also connecting with family and friends. Instead, create a Brand Page, and connect with people there.

However, it’s crucial that you actually use this page regularly; don’t ignore it. Promote your blog posts there. Post status updates when you publish your tweets (but don’t feed your Twitter stream into Facebook; it’s annoying. Just rewrite them to be more Facebook friendly.)

Tip: Republish your videos and photos to your Facebook page too. Ask your fans to share them with your friends. It’s a well-known adage in social media circles that we consumers trust recommendations by our friends. Let your fans evangelize to their friends about you.

There are a whole lot of other strategies I could recommend — posting videos to YouTube and photos to Picasa/Flickr — but that’s for another post. Use these strategies as a place to start and start building your personal branding campaign as a way to get sponsors, build name recognition among fans, and add new fans.

Do you have any strategy suggestions? Anything you’ve done as an athlete, or anything you wish an athlete would do? Share your wisdom in the comments section and let’s learn from each other.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

Photo credit: Just_Bryan (Flickr)

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Indiana Deputy AG Learns Hard Lesson About Social Media & Job Security

You wouldn’t think someone would be fired for 3 words.

But Jeffrey Cox, Indiana deputy Attorney General, was terminated by the Indiana Attorney General for a number of offensive tweets he sent out on February 19th.

We were surprised in the Indianapolis community, not only by the quickness of the developments — Cox was investigated on the morning of Feb. 23, and fired that same afternoon — but also because such a public figure as a deputy AG would make such publicly heinous statements.

According to an article on the Mother Jones website, Cox tweeted that he believed Madison police should “use live ammunition” when dealing with protesters at Wisconsin’s state capitol.

Tweet from Indiana deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox

What Cox failed to understand is that social media is public and permanent. If you put out good stuff, and are helpful and supportive, it can prove valuable later on. But if you say something hateful and nasty, it may come back to haunt you, sooner rather than later.

It can hurt your reputation, you can lose your job, and in some cases, you could badly damage, or even end, your career. Even if you try to keep a wall between your personal life and your professional life, social media has broken it down. Something you say in private can become a problem for your work life, and vice versa.

In short, be true to who you are, but if that you is a jerk, then you don’t need change your online behavior. You need to rethink your whole approach to life.

The fact is, social media has tripped up people making rather awful statements, exposing what people think are private jokes or “only a little mean.” What you might see as snarky, or even a bad attempt at dark humor, can end badly. It can be something as minor as public embarrassment, or something as major as being fired in as public a manner as possible, and being a story on the 11:00 news, as well as making headlines in the London Daily Mail.

I was interviewed by WISH TV and Debby Knox (@Debby_Knox) last night for the 11:00 news, and asked about the potential damage Cox did to himself because of his public missteps.

“Unfortunately, this sort of thing will follow him around forever,” I said. “When someone, like a new employer, Googles his name — even 10 years from now — this story will forever be associated with it.”

I don’t know if this is irony or just an odd coincidence, but nearly 10 hours earlier, I had spoken to the Young Professionals of Central Indiana — including several attorneys — about the reasons they need to be on social media, personal branding being the biggest reason of all.

Social Media Affects Personal Branding

What that means for anyone who uses social media is that we need to remember that recruiters are searching for us online. If they find you tweeted about how police should shoot fellow citizens, you can guarantee you’ll be dropped from the candidate pool immediately. If you post your “Spring Break” photos on Facebook, they’ll be held against you. If you write blog post after blog post calling the other political party a bunch of Socialists or Fascists, people won’t want to work with you.

Social media does not let people whisper dirty jokes or make offensive statements among friends. Social media blasts out everyone’s messages, and exposes character flaws and moments of indiscretion.

Cox says this is a matter of his First Amendment rights being quashed. And that this was satire, and he “wanted to make people think.” While that may be the case, it’s also a matter of his reputation, now horribly stained and tarnished. Sure, you’re free to say these sorts of things, but when you’re a public servant in a visible agency and position, you should be held to a higher standard.

The lesson here is be careful of what you say online. A career you spent ten years growing can be undone in mere seconds. Things you meant for a few people can become widespread in a matter of hours, or even minutes. In Cox’s case, 3 words, and the subsequent deeper-hole-digging tweets, became an international story, and resulted in him losing his job in the most embarrassing manner possible.

The things that make social media awesome also make it dangerous. It’s a double-edged sword, so handle it with care.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

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Are You a Social Media Private, Captain, or General?

I’ve noticed that most social media books are written at one of three levels:

  • 30,000 foot view — The General
  • 15,000 foot view — The Captain
  • Ground level — The Private

Books at the ground level, that is, the Private’s level, are how-to books. They detail the step by step process you need to follow to execute a strategy. Follow those steps, and you will have done the right thing. Write a weekly blog post using these 12 steps. Add 1,000 people to your Facebook business page by using this tool. Feed your blog post into Twitter with this plugin. They touch on strategies, but they’re mostly just books on execution.

Books at the 15,000 foot level — the Captain’s level — are the strategy books. They show you how to create the plan to give to your Privates, with some statistics to back it up. They tell you to blog, because 77% of American Internet users read blogs. They tell you to use Twitter, because 150 million people are on Twitter. They tell you to use Facebook because Facebook has 600 million users. They may touch on the why, and they may cover a little execution, but they’re by and large books on the what and when of social media

30,000 foot level books — the General’s level — are the why books. They tell you to use social media, because social media is more popular than porn, or because more people use social media than any other form of entertainment out there, including television. They tell you why you need social media, maybe even tell you what you can accomplish with it, but they’re short on strategy, and they never, ever discuss processes.

A General’s book explains why you should “Take that hill,”

A Captain’s book shows you how to “Take that hill by outsmarting your enemy.”

A Private’s book explains every step you need to “Take that hill in 30 days.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, because I’m trying to decide the next stage of my development. I’ve spent so much time on the ground, telling other people how to do processes, and that’s working well. Those blog posts are some of the most successful I’ve written. Those talks are some of the most well-attended at any conference. But, just like the army, there are thousands of us.

I like creating strategies better. I like being the Captain. I’ve created enough marketing strategies over the last 18 years, because I get the most enjoyment out of it. Of course, with an army of two here at Pro Blog Service, I’m also the Private, carrying out the strategy I just created.

But I hate being a General. I don’t have the patience or world view to tell people how to see the big picture. I can’t even see it that clearly myself a lot of the time. I know enough to explain to a client why we need to take that hill, but once that’s done, and they’re convinced, I can’t add any more value, unless I can put on my Captain’s bars and create the strategy.

However, it’s the Generals who are seeing a lot of the success in this industry. A lot of luminaries in the business world are Generals. A lot of rock stars are Captains, but they don’t get the glory. Or the keynote speeches. Or make the New York Times Best-sellers list.

But I also know myself enough to know that I’d much rather give up that stuff if it meant liking what I do. Still, I’m wondering if I can create a new niche for myself. Maybe I can be a Major, or even a Colonel. I can tell people why they need a strategy, and then I can create it. Sort of the 22,500 foot view. I don’t want to hang out out 30,000 feet above the earth, and I’m tired of slogging in the mud.

So who are some good Majors to pay attention to? Who are some of the business leaders I should be watching, and what books should I be reading? What have you been reading lately, and why should I read it too? Leave a comment, and let me know.

My own book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link) — a true Captain’s book, if there is one — is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy, another Captain, who’s been eyeing a Generalship lately.

Photo credit: Virginia Guard Public Affairs (Flickr)

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10 Signs for Spotting Twitter Spammers

I’ve been seeing a lot of Twitter spammers lately, andI’ve learned how to spot most of them rather quickly. Aside from the people who blatantly tell us we can make money, build traffic, or try Forex trading (I still don’t know what that is; don’t care either), there are a few tricks people are using to get you to follow them.

They’re trying to make their Twitter accounts look like real ones so you’ll follow them. Then they’ll either change their Twitter handle to something more spammy, or they’ll just DM you their crap, hoping you’ll fall for it.

    1. Following over 1,000 people, but doesn’t have an avatar. Someone who has managed to gather enough followers should know enough to get an avatar. No avatar is not a sign they’re spammers, just like a real photo is a sign they’re not. But when I see a new follower with no bio and no avatar, I may block them, I may not.
    2. They’re following over 1,000 people but have never, ever tweeted. Sometimes someone can write a decent bio, and post a photo, but have not sent a single tweet.
What
  1. The bio is formulaic.The one I’m seeing the most lately lists their likes, where they used to live, and another place they used to live.Likes – Writing, Tunes, Photography, Movies. Gym, Formerly from Albany , various places near Columbus.
  2. Their avatar photo has ugly borders. The ones I’ve been seeing are photos that look to be about 15 – 20years old (they’re actually a little faded; nice touch.), and have borders on the top and bottom, or left and right. The colors are purples, greens, and blues that remind me of something you would have worn in the 80s. Basically, the photos were too small, so the spammer added some border colors to fill up the photo space.
  3. Avatar is of a young attractive woman but has a guy’s name. And not even the sort-of gender neutral names like Tony/Toni or Stevie. No, these are names like Barry, David, or Kevin. I’ve only seen this once in a while, but it still happens from time to time.
  4. Avatar is of a young, scantily-clad woman. Guys, I’m sorry, but not only is she not really into you, it’s probably not even a woman on the other end of that Twitter account. Most women will not post a photo of themselves like that on Twitter, especially if they want to show you how to make money through your Twitter account.
  5. They have tweets on their profile page, but they’re usually gibberish. Things like “Ian successfully dispelled” or “it isn’t sepulchral quiet.” I’ll block them on both Twitter.com and on TweetDeck. It doesn’t actually count as double-block to Twitter, but I feel better doing it. (Update: @KaryD and @JenKaneCo apparently call this Twitter Haiku. I’m adopting this moniker too. Thanks you two.)
  6. Their Twitter handle contains numbers. Not just a couple numbers, like the year they were born. These look like tracking numbers. Once you start seeing several of these people following you, they invariably follow the same patterns: they’re all young women, they’re often accompanied by a formulaic bio or no bio at all, and their tweets are often commercial or nonsensical. Sheila9489, Kelly1276
  7. Their Twitter handle is NAME_in_CITY. I’ll see Lisa_in_Milkwaukee and Stephanie_in_Madison. I got hit by this spammer when he started in Portland, Maine, and he predictably traveled westward over the next several months. I couldn’t even give him points for creativity, although I do confess to a little thrill of recognition when he chose a few Indiana cities I knew.
  8. Their Twitter handle follows similar formulas, like CITY_OMG or CITY_140. Handles like Omaha_OMG or Louisville_140 were also common. I still see follow requests from this guy once in a while.
  9. Unfortunately, Twitter hasn’t been able to crack down on these spammers, or they’re not as worried about it. But I think they should be able to identify some of these strategies (or even maybe hundreds of accounts all signing up from the same IP address) and work to stop these slimeballs from clogging up their Twitter tubes.

    How are you spotting spammers? Any hints? How do you deal with them or eliminate them? I’m working on a new post about how to deal with the people who clog my Twitter, and I would love your suggestions.

    My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

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Four Ways to Use Twitter as a Lead Generation Tool

Have you gotten any sales leads from Twitter? Have you ever found any opportunities, whether personally or professionally, from the micro-blogging network?

While some of the social media purists might still gnash their teeth and pound their laptops from the safety of their moms’ basements, anyone who wants to see Twitter (and other social media tools) succeed needs to show their bosses that it can generate business. If you’re in sales or marketing, here are four ways you can use Twitter as a lead generation tool.

1) Connect With People in Your Industry.

Twitter is a great way to easily get connected with people in your industry. Use tools like Twellow (for Twitter Yellow Pages) to find people in your industry, and search.twitter.com to find people talking about your industry keywords. Also try Googling a title and/or company with the words “on Twitter” in the search. So, look for VP of Creative Services on Twitter or Professional Blog Service on Twitter, and see what pops up.

If you’re a TweetDeck user or use Twitter lists, save your industry contacts into their own list, and communicate with them. By keeping them in their own list, you’re more easily able to see what they’re talking about.

2) Build Relationships.

The newbie mistake that many new Twitter marketers use is to treat Twitter like an advertising channel. That is one thing you absolutely cannot do. People don’t want you to sell to them.

Instead, establish relationships. Have conversations with them, retweet them, introduce people, share articles, ask them questions. If they’re local people, or you have a chance to attend industry conferences, connect with them in person. Meet for lunch or coffee, and create that all-important offline relationship. Then, you’re a person, not a handle. You have a face, not an avatar. By creating those relationships, you become someone they’ll trust, especially if they ever need what it is that you do.

But never, ever try to sell anything. Do that in phone calls and meetings, when the time is right, not when they start following you.

3) Establish Your Expertise.

When people have a problem, make sure they know you’re the one to solve it. Answer questions, share information, refer useful articles to them. If you write a blog (you do write a blog, don’t you?), share the useful posts with them. Ask them to comment, and leave thoughtful comments on their blog.

If you’re trying to reach people in your industry, write about topics related to that industry, especially if you can make them useful to the problems your Twitter network is having. For example, if you own a Mac repair shop, and you know a bunch of Mac-owning public speakers, and you know a lot of them are having problems dealing with the new Keynote 09 (which, irritatingly, ruined a bunch of my past slide decks. Thank God for backups), you could write a couple blog posts about how to solve that problem.

Then, forward the article on to them via Twitter or DM. They’ll see that you know your stuff (as well as theirs), and they’re more likely to call you for that problem that can’t be fixed with a few keystrokes, or explosive cursing and an external hard drive.

4) Direct or Facilitate the Conversation.

If you create the subject people are talking about, or steer people to the place where they can find answers, you are helping people figure out they may need your product or service in the first place.

The best example I can give is Apple computers. Before 2001, no one knew they needed a portable MP3 player. No one knew they needed a way to play music on anything besides a portable CD player. No one knew they needed a way to create or listen to podcasts, or that they could even learn through radio shows of random length and scheduling. Once Apple introduced the iPod, people realized they needed this device, and the industry changed.

By directing or facilitating the conversation, you can help people see the pain point they never knew they had, and they will look to you for solutions.

How do you use Twitter as a lead generation tool? Do you even do that, or do you think it’s just wrong and that people shouldn’t do it? Leave a comment, and let us hear from you.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

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The Need for Social Media Experts Grows

People are starting to trust their peers less and less, according to a the Who Do You Trust? report from MarketingPower.com.

A lab coat does not automatically make you an expert. But it helps.

Researchers attribute this drop to overfriending. We see it all the time with people on Facebook with a few thousand friends, most of whom were gathered to build an army in Castle Age (guilty!). But all these friends telling us we “should” do this, we “ought” to try that. We can’t really trust anyone anymore.

This means, says MarketingPower.com, that people are starting to trust professionals a little more:

There’s been a decline in trust in a “person like myself.” A “person like yourself” fell from 47% in the 2009 study to 43% in 2011; this represents a steep decline from 2006 levels of 68%. In addition, a regular employee increased in credibility from 32% in 2009 to 34% in 2011. When it comes to the credibility of information, respondents trusted academics or experts [emphasis added — Erik] the most (70%), followed by a technical expert within the company (64%), a financial or industry analyst (53%) and a CEO (50%).

What does this have to do with social media? Basically, it means the need for social media experts is growing, and people don’t want professionals who use goofy titles to avoid the whole social media expert controversy. They want to be able to trust people who are credible and have the information they need — 70% of us want the experts.

  • If you’re a consumer-level trainer, like Patric Welch (aka Mr. Noobie), you’re highly sought out by noobies who are looking for basic answers on how to use Facebook and Twitter, how to write blogs, or how to research, buy, and use digital cameras and laptops. These beginners want someone they can trust, because that person has high credibility. They don’t want ninjas, gurus, superheroes, or surgeons, they want experts. In short, if you’re not an expert, or your Memaw’s favorite grandson who knows a lot about “Facespace,” they’re not going to hire you.
  • Although the data points to individual trust, this kind of thinking is also starting to find its way into the workplace. People are beginning to look to colleagues and associates within their professional networks. We’ve already seen the growth of the use of LinkedIn, reading industry blogs, or looking to their Twitter feed for professional advice, and the use of “real” experts is starting to grow. If you’re still playing at being a social media guru or shaman, companies are not going to call you.
  • Websites and print publications want experts to write for them, conferences want experts to speak to them. They need people who know what they’re doing, and have demonstrated their knowledge and understanding of the issues. This is not the time and place to use goofy titles. While it will work within our industry, when you talk to people outside the industry, they don’t get our cute little quirks and they don’t understand the whole expert/not-an-expert debate.

Trust is becoming more important to people, especially in the business world. Social media as a whole is all about user-generated content. We form opinions and make buying decisions by reading reviews and comments from our friends, and even strangers. But this may give way to, ever so slightly, to the need for independent experts who have a lot of information, and are willing to share it.

Photo credit: Fawksy (Flickr)