Sports Communications Weblog

5-Point Strategic Communications Checklist

sportscommunications — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:03:28 +0000

There’s a twitter here, a twitter there.
There’s a reporter calling about a blog post.
Has the Facebook been updated?
The NCAA Super Regional starts in 3 days.
Who’s going to Arkansas for the Track Championships?
Everyone wants to talk to the new recruit.
What’s the plan for our All-America campaign?
He said what??????????

Have any time for strategy? I know, I know, you planned to do a communications plan this summer. It’s important for your athletic department. Seems like Communications is the new Marketing…everyone is talking about it. But who’s going to lead the process? Who needs to be a part of the process? Is it just something you can do if you turn off the phone for a week?

When the world is moving at the speed of light, it’s not always realistic that communicators have time to do strategic planning or even be strategic at all. In reality, however, strategy is exactly what you need to maximize opportunities and create a program that supports the overall efforts of the athletic program.

To help you keep strategy and focus when the world around you seems reactionary and in crisis, we have developed a 5-point Strategic Communications Checklist:

√ Know your destination

√ Keep your audience in mind

√ Make good vehicle decisions

√ Communicate

√ Measure

Over the next few weeks, we’ll go through these a bit more in detail to give you a tool you can use to stay focused on the strategic plan you’ve already created or to have a little strategic focus until you do finally get around to writing that plan.

Who owns Social Media/New Media?

sportscommunications — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:45:05 +0000

So the results are in from our informal survey of Who owns New Media in your College Athletics Program? Leading the way are:

1. Media Relations Departments

2. Marketing

3. AD of Communications

So how is this working for your organization? Do you have a global communications strategy of which social media is a piece or do you even have a social media strategy? As communicators and marketers, we all hate to be reactive but without a strategy, you can find yourself in reactive mode really fast when it comes to social media programs.

Here are some Strategic Questions for Social Media programs:

What are my outcomes/goals for social media?
How am I measuring these outcomes/goals?
Am I just monitoring my own social media or do I have a good process for monitoring it all?
What are the messages I need to get across, am I messaging the brand and goals of the university and athletic department at all?
If marketing has the lead? Does your social media have synergy with your other marketing tools? Are you utilizing it around the 4Es of marketing as described by Christopher Graves of Ogilvy PR (Experience, Everyplace, Exchange, Evangelism). Experience is especially important for college athletics.
Is social media a dominate tool in your communications basket? Have you lost site of other communications tools? Does it link back to other communication vehicles?
Does the team leading your social media have on a global hat with a global vision/view?

Who owns New Media in College Athletic Programs?

sportscommunications — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:35:08 +0000

From an athletics director standpoint, you have decided to hang your hat on New Media. So, who in your department owns this? Sports Information/Media Relations Director? Marketing Director? PR Director? Communications AD? In most cases across the country, the choice falls under Media Relations or Marketing. Media Relations owns the content and Marketing owns the advertising. So who wins in that battle? It’s an age old question.

Our take is this: New Media is a communications tool first and must be treated that way. If you make it a good communications tool that engages donors, fans, recruits, sponsors, etc…the money will follow. If you lead with money but don’t have the communcations strategy that supports it, then the money won’t stay long term because the tool will not be effective.

From college athletic purposes, think of planning and executing New Media as you would plan to host an NCAA tournament. There is a lot of planning that goes into place to win the bid then everything must be executed just so. Don’t forget their are rules as well. You have a team leader for the project, usually at an AD-level but that person is supported with both in-house and outsourced support. Ultimately, you want visiting fans, visiting teams, visiting media and the NCAA to find your campus and city well organized and for them to go home talking about the enjoyable experience and your hospitality. You want them to come back and to tell their friends and colleagues to come back and you put a lot of effort into making that happen.

Every time you engage, it is a communications experience that if planned correctly can reap rewards. The lead is through communication but must be supported throughout the athletic department.

New Media and Collegiate Athletic Programs

sportscommunications — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:28:57 +0000

This week, the NCAA Champion Magazine had a media inquiry for a New Media expert who could talk about lessons university sports departments can learn from the innovation of the Barack Obama campaign. The lessons to be learned from studying the Barack Obama campaign are many, not only for collegiate athletics programs, but also corporations, small businesses and future campaigns.

University athletic programs can learn from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, not just from the New Media aspect. In fact, single-sighted focus on New Media is a mistake. College athletic programs, who do not have communications strategists to advise them, are likely to overcompensate vs. use the tool as just that — a communication tool/vehicle.

What can be learned from the Obama campaign is the incorporation of New Media into his communications strategy. But ultimately, the presidential campaign had a massive communications strategy with a focused message that went from Web 2.0 to town hall meetings across this country. The campaign recognized bloggers as media but not in place of traditional mediums (though some media campaign plane seats were shuffled late in the game.) Collegiate programs may have to accommodate bloggers on press row but press row will not likely become blog row overnight.

The Obama campaign used New Media to engage people as if they had the opportunity to come to a personal appearance with the candidate. The campaign used New Media to keep constituents informed and motivated. The campaign used New Media to help create a movement. Collegiate athletics programs can do all of the above.

However, communications strategy is what was key in Barack Obama’s campaign and then the campaign used all the communications tools available to distribute that message effectively to targeted audiences. The campaign controlled the message throughout all of those communications tools.

The challenge for collegiate athletic programs is that they more often find themselves reactive rather than proactive when it comes to communication. Utilizing New Media will not change the outcome without using it proactively with an overall communications strategy, messaging, a rules.