The Industry Column – 7th April

Peter Janes, managing director at new digital sports portal Sportpost.com, explains why sportsmen and women need to embrace the benefits of social media.

Since social media has grabbed the sports industry’s attention over the last few years, agents and athletes have always been fearful of losing control of their image and their brand message by opening themselves up to social tools.

PR and image consultants have realised, via a number of very positive case studies of social media adopted by Andy Murray and Ian Poulter for example, the veil put in front of professional athletes for so long is being removed with huge benefits.  

The clean cut, 100% ‘professional at all times’ image that was ruthlessly maintained for so long is being modernised for the better via social media.

Athletes and agents are learning that to control their message, they need to be active in the social media space with a degree of transparency that allows deeper and sustainable fan engagement.

Paper columns and traditional media interviews are great in terms of volume, however they don’t supply the fans with what they want, a personal link and affiliation with the individual athlete.

The new relationship that needs to be adopted quickly by athletes and the management teams behind them is ‘dialogue not monologue.’  This dialogue allows for the sharing of encouragement, criticism and ideas. 

Accessibility and open dialogue allows athletes to promote sponsors, partners and charities by genuine interactions with their fans.

These genuine interactions create an ‘accumulated influence’ effect which can be drawn upon from time to time by the athlete to accommodate a new sponsor’s message, book promotions, charitable events, or wherever they want to divert eyeballs to. Getting up close and personal and creating genuine bonds with fans is something that athletes are going to have to learn to get better at.

A Twitter account or an open blog via Sportpost.com for example provide sportsmen and women a free platform to promote themselves and control their brand message. At the same time they are able to develop the increasingly important bond with fans.

The scramble for limited column inches in traditional media can be replaced by the promotion of controlled blog portals combined with twitter feeds.

These new social media portals don’t compete with an athlete’s own website if they already have them, in fact they actively promote them by putting an athlete in front of a whole new stream of sports fans already heavily engaged on these sites. It’s a fantastic free tool for promotion.

Best practice with social media portals is the delivery of engaging content and having an open dialogue with fans in a often humorous and down to earth manner.

There will always be critics so a thick skin is important, but for athletes and anyone in the entertainment industry the old adage applies, when they stop yelling at you, that’s when you really should be worried.

Peter Janes is managing director at www.sportpost.com.