The Hidden Playbook: Tricks of the Sports Digital Marketing Trade

Over the past few months I've spoken to colleagues at over 30 different professional sports teams, sports networks and sports agencies about the rise of digital marketing in their field.  The most common question executives get tied up on: How do you stay relevant?  With new tools arising everyday and more and more outlets offering fans a unique avenue to voice their opinions and needs, sometimes the most difficult challenge remains simply staying up on the latest and greatest technologies.  So what are some of the best tricks of the trade for keeping a pulse on where things are headed and how best to market?  Here's a few strategies from my own playbook:

Feed.ly

RSS Feeds Are Your Friends
I start every morning with feed.ly, an RSS feed aggregate that pulls in all the latest and greatest information from ESPN, MLB.com, Sports Illustrated, etc. in one place so I can quickly scroll through articles, staying informed on the latest news while find content that might be of interest to my audience.  I don't just select sports feeds either I have feeds categorized for digital media and tech as well from sources like Mashable and the Social Media Examiner.  By cross populating my news feeds in the morning to subjects relevant to my industry I can not only follow the exciting moments in sports, but also see how they are translating to the latest tools in the digital marketing trade.

Find Your Influencers
LinkedIn is one of the most underutilized tool in social networking, yet one of the most robust platforms available to becoming an informed sports marketer.  The colleagues across the nation who I've spent the last few months communicating with about the growth of the digital field were never introduced to me in person.  Rather I sought them out over LinkedIn by searching for those that do this work everyday, those who influence the decisions that are made in the sports industry on what and when digital and technological moves will take place in marketing, and those most interviewed in the news as most likely to be most open to a conversation.  After learning more about their positions I follow them on other social networks like Twitter to stay connected and informed about changes taking shape at their club that others might look to follow suit on.  The sports industry is smaller than one might think and having a strong network means having a direct line to the inside scoop.

Schedule Your Statuses
Social media can often seem like a daunting task when Klout scores drop quickly without constant meaningful updates and a wealth of direct communication with followers.  However, one doesn't have to be on social media 24/7 to leave a lasting impression.  I utilize Buffer, a scheduling program every morning to lay out my Tweets, Facebook business page statuses, and LinkedIn posts for the day based on the rich and meaningful content I would like to share with my followers specific to each network.  I can set the times based on when I know more of my followers are likely to see the posts as well as the number of posts for each network and go about my day knowing the program will post my statuses at the times I requested.  This is no substitute for active 2-way communication so I still get social media notifications sent to my phone in order to reply timely and in a human fashion to direct questions or responses from others looking to engage.  Buffer instead allows me to have the comfort of knowing that I don't need to be on social media all the time to have my message heard, freeing myself up to work on gaining knowledge, skills, and experience outside of that world that will be useful to those inside of it upon my return.