Paciolan's Craig Ricks spoke about new ways to engage socially with Sravani Atluri of The Smith Center in Las Vegas, Spreadfast's David Hinojosa, Purdue University's Ellie Saxon, and Ken Kluender from University of Wisconsin.
As technology advances rapidly, Paciolan and its partners creatively figure out new ways to leverage it to enhance the fan experience. It only takes four generations of social shares from people with a network of more than 140 to reach a network of one million people, making social a very valuable conversation tool.
“There’s a convergence of connectivity with mobile and social at all of our venues,” said Paciolan’s Craig Ricks. “There are so many great tools out there and so much appetite for social consumption that you can ask a community to come together and do some really cool stuff.”
There are many different opportunities for real time engagement with patrons, including getting feedback from an audience with social voting where attendees post to Twitter with a hashtag representing their vote.
“Social can be a great way of harnessing the passion and emotions of your fans,” said Spredfast’s David Hinojosa. Many venues are taking advantage of consumer-created content such as displaying fan tweets or photos on a video board.
“If you’re not doing these types of things, why not? Your fans are hungry for this and want these types of things,” he added. “They want camaraderie with other fans, recognition for passion and loyalty, and access to the team, players and exclusive content — social media can be a tremendous tool for all of these things.”
As one of Paciolan’s strategic partners, Spredfast manages the social experience for facilities and provides new opportunities. Spredfast organizes and schedules content as well as monitors social channels and checks analytics. It also allows venues to create templates and share fan-created content to video screens as well as spark conversations through social voting.
Hinojosa said that there are a few things that are especially important for social success. One is forming a good content strategy and understanding what is really interesting to the fans. Next comes content production.
“You need to be able to quickly curate content, have access to information and the right data, be able to filter it for relevancy and safety and be able to moderate that on the go,” he added. “If getting people off the couch and into the stadium is the goal, how can you bring that on-air experience into the game?”
Finally, fan development plays a large role in success. Facilities can get to know fans better by analyzing social profiles, enabling venues to create fan-focused content.
The University of Wisconsin, Madison, implemented some Spredfast products and ideas with great success in 2014. The university made the investment in its football stadium for WiFi, more than 700 televisions and three video walls. The venue was able to display messaging and graphics in zones, to send different content to suites, student sessions and the general public. Sponsors also reached out for new tech-based opportunities at the university’s Camp Randall Stadium.
“One thing we started doing that was simple was put photos to the screen, and the nice thing is we were able to sell that sponsorship so we were able to use sponsorship dollars to invest in the tools that we needed to do that,” said the university’s Kevin Kluender. Because the facility committed to showing fan photos once per quarter, four different sponsors came on board.
“Doing a good social engagement the right way can really drive more value,” said Hinojosa. “If you can keep the fan happy you have happy sponsors, but if you have happy, engaged, social fans then you have delighted, ‘shut up and take my money’ types of sponsors.”
Ellie Saxon of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., said that Spredfast and PACmail have helped take the university’s engagement to the next level with pregame, in-game, postgame and season-long strategies. Social videos and ticket contests make up the pregame strategies, with Saxon saying the focus is on surprising people. Though there is always a spontaneous element to capitalize on unique moments, Purdue University has a game-day script for social media pinpointing which elements are necessary to capture throughout an event.
“It’s helped us out a lot to not have gaps in our social content,” said Saxon. She also tries to create unique aspects that fans can only see or participate in at the facility during the game, such as the short video series Cooking with Basil featuring player Basil Smotherman. “It was neat to watch the Spredfast feed where everyone was hashtagging #cookingwithbasil. It’s a great feeling when you’re creating content that people want to be part of.”
Having a postgame strategy is vital, so Purdue University sends an immediate follow-up email featuring social graphics or a photo of what fans missed.
“It’s really important to not just end your social media engagement and interaction when the game ends even if you lose — especially if you lose,” said Saxon. “Immediate follow up capitalizes on the positives to try and create a repeat experience.”