Access to Social Media Matters for The Growth of Sports

The lack of social media tools for individuals will have a major affect on them as far as the world of sports when retaining and achieving the most recent information and news. The online presence of sports teams and individual players is so strong, that it absolutely allows consumers to gain more specific information about a particular team and player more so than by just watching the games or checking up on sports center (television programs). The success of a sports organization’s social channels is often dependent on them offering unique content that is not available anywhere else. This can come in the form of traditional content, contests for social followers, or real-time updates during games for those who are unable to watch or listen live. One example of unique social content comes in the form of a second screen for sporting events. Organizers of the Superbowl XLVII in New Orleans created a customized social media command center to highlight the social media interactions of fans around the big game. This is important for sports fans to have the ability to access these forums and mediums that fulfill the most important news of a game. The ability to access the internet creates a more loyal fan base for sports programs who ultimately allow for these organizations to grow. I see it as the principle of the more you know about your team from a statistical and individual basis, the more you will be likely to invest into that team ($$$). Jersey sales, ticket sales, and other donations will more likely come to the person that has internet access and follows teams on social networks. They are the ones that give more of a "care" and put more attention onto particular programs, teams and players. 

Social Media & Politics

Ever since the rise of social media outlets in America, U.S politics have and will continue to be forever changed. I would really like to touch on the shift in style of political campaigns and how major social mediums have changed the way candidates reach their audiences and how Americans interact with their candidates in order to elect officials. Social media tools including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have paved a new way for the way political campaigns are run. These sites allow politicians to be a lot more accessible, at the same time carefully crafting and customizing candidates' images based on a rich set of analytics in reasonable time and at nearly no cost. Let me dig into the whys and ways for how particular tools impact U.S politics. First, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube allow politicians to directly connect and pursue their interests with their voters. Next, it has become very common for political campaigns to produce commercials and publish them for free on YouTube, instead of paying for them on television or radio. Not to mention, sometimes journalist's will write about those YouTube ads essentially advertising and broadcasting their message to a wider audience. Twitter and Facebook are also instrumental in organizing campaigns. They allow for like minded voters and activists to easily share information and news on campaign events with one another, hence the "share" button and "re-tweet" functions on both sites. Fundraising for campaigns. Fundraising can be tied together through money bombs and to get large amounts of money in a short amount of time using sites like Twitter and Facebook. Another great attribute is Feedback. Feedback allows for voters and constituents to give their feedback to candidates on particular issues running in the campaign. However, this can turn out to be bad too, stock piles of bad/bias feedback do happen. Finally, using social media for campaigns is hip. It allows for the younger generation to voice their opinions and engage in the campaign more directly and user friendly. All of these tools have easily joined many, many of Americans together, leveraging the numbers to higher extents than ever before and that is why social media sites will forever change the style of political campaigning. 

How The Sporting Industry Deals With Activism

In the wake of such a political culture, activism has continuously became more and more prominent in our world today. I really would like to emphasize on the word prominent. When I say this, I do not mean static issues nor do I mean necessarily large, major issues in our world. What I really mean, is the amount of people participating in and actively making intentional actions in order to bring about social and political change, as well as the abundance of smaller issues has made its mark during this spark of social media. With the advent of the internet, people have the ability to show the world how they are connected to organizations or positive and negative efforts much larger than before. Their faces, names, and even how many people are collectively participating in such activist efforts, has been directly related to the advent of social media mediums like Twitter, Facebook and blogging websites. Sports activism deals with very extreme issues, considering the mass appeal that the industry has on its attention getters. So many people view sports, have a particular sport they pay the most attention too, have favorite teams and idolize certain players. These attention getters participate in obvious activist efforts and advocate for certain political change, but where I see the strongest impact towards activism, is seen within the athletes themselves. In the last few years, we’ve seen sports activism at every locus on the ideological continuum. On the right, short lived football star Tim Tebow, starred in an antiabortion Super Bowl ad. In the transpartisan middle, Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas refused to attend the White House’s Stanley Cup ceremony because he said he “believes the Federal government has grown out of control.” And on the left, Major League Baseball teams have led public campaigns against anti-gay bullying. And, of course, there is LeBron James who organized Miami Heat players into a hoodie-themed photo in solidarity with those demanding an investigation into the shooting of Trayvon Martin. James’ move best highlights the veering undercurrents. As the Bleacher Report’s Ryne Hodkowski noted, “corporate athletes who don’t say anything political are in fear of losing a big-time contract."  No matter the issue, sports is now involved. Fans now expect their sports deities to embrace that new normal, and as the big time star Lebron James shows, those deities are increasingly responding to the call.

Crowdfunding: Sports!

There are plenty of crowdfunding opportunities for film, music and design but what about sports? Luckily sites have been popping up more abundantly than ever opening up major efforts of funding within the world of sports to individuals and organizations. Crowdfunding at its most basic level, is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, typically via the internet. When in the midst of a global recession, with many brands suffering and most marketing budgets slashed, sponsorship and funding for sports can be extremely hard to come by and even when some is secured, it is often not quite enough. In my eyes, the most beneficial crowdfunding options in the sports industry come from the athletes themselves.  Like musicians, artists, and entrepreneurs, competitive athletes have big dreams. Unfortunately, they lack the necessary funding and sponsorships to help realize their intriguing, passionate goals. That is when crowdfunding comes into play. After some research I was able to come up with some websites that are excellent for funding athletes and teams. They are: Rallyme, DreamFuel, Pursuit, SportFunder, MakeaChamp, and Athlete.com. All of these sites were inspired in either the U.S or other outside countries to help athletes raise money for either themselves and teams to fund projects on campaigns relating to their sports. This all raises awareness and is good practice in the efforts of maintaining good relationships and strong support from outsiders. So go fund an athlete or team today and support local sports!

The Use of Social Collaboration to Strengthen Business

Social collaboration is related to social networking with the distinction that social collaboration is more group-centric more so than individual-centric. When I say the term collaboration, this does not particularly pertain to sharing information, thoughts and ideas on an individual basis, but that of which contributes to a total group effort. By definition, social collaboration refers to the processes that help multiple people interact and share information to achieve any common goal. These processes are usually found on the internet, where collaboration and social exchanging of information is made easier through the use of innovations directly related to social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Crowdsourcing has been a recent topic that has allowed individuals to work together using networks and social media to reach a common goal. Well, social collaboration is just that. Within the business of sports, social collaboration in my eyes, is a small key that packs a big punch. Lots of businesses are using this to their advantage, but not enough are excelling with it. Collaboration among individuals is an appealing experience, because participation is a low investment, with the possibility of a high return. This then allows entrepreneurs in the sports world to engage and invest in new innovative ideas with the masses in order to receive feedback and push on projects and business models to ultimately reach their goal. It's a win, win situation. It gives employees a higher understanding for the knowledge of management and relations that allow industries like sports to grow as a whole. Through environmental factors, participant characteristics, structure of communication, the overall purposes discussed and adequate recourses, social collaboration can and will result in positive influences for businesses and major industries looking to continuously grow, like the sports world. 

User Generated Content And Its Relation To The Sports Industry

User generated content has become a generally new phenomenon with the advent of social media and the ability for users to create a new form of journalism that ultimately has no filter, or a filter that restricts users toward a particular theme regarding the site they are using. The true definition though of user generated content (UGC) is material on websites, and occasionally other media sources, that is produced by the users of the website. This is different than, for example, a website designed by a company that puts forth material produced by professionals. In UGC, it is the amateur, in most cases, who contributes the content. Larry Lessing gives an intriguing speech on TED that gives the consumer a metaphorical history lesson, allowing you to see the evolution of user generated content beginning with the metaphor explaining how people who owned land always had to give permission to certain people in order for them to cross their land. This begins the process of how we now take those principles and pertain them to social websites and how we have distinguished the new from the old and created this new form of journalism that has really no filter to what people can post and say. For example, Facebook and Twitter really have disguised the old form of journalism where you need to source everything that you say and record. Now, you can really say whatever you would like to say knowing the only precautions are what anyone says back to you or even at worst, getting booted from the medium. Sports have been very published, even in recent years professionals are doing most of the writing and publishing for sites like ESPN and others major news pertaining to sports. However, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Vine have allowed sports to become more "naked"or in other words have allowed sports to be written and recorded upon by the masses creating user generated content that is basically unfiltered. People now have the ability to share the in-game experience with everyone around the world, which has more than likely allowed for more people to become interested and connected with a wider variety of sports. This has allowed me to be more interested in the concept of user generated content and its application to sports. I have thought of ideas that shall not go public right now due to the respect of the building and modeling practices that I am working on for content that I would like to generate in the near future for ESPN, Facebook and Twitter applications. These ideas along with many others in the future will change journalism and the way people talk and receive information about sports. I predict positive results however, and believe the changing world of social media and other mediums will boost businesses due to the amount of people tuned into the wide variety of sport entertainment that not just the U.S holds, but the entire world.

Social Media & Relationships

Social Media can be an extremely effective way to establish worthwhile relationships not only on the internet, but in the real world as well. Giving people the opportunity to connect with one another through medium's like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter, really allows for someone to heighten their social status in order to prove their worth within particular fields they may be interested in. For example, individuals within the sports industry looking to establish connections with people that may be higher up in the industry, will ultimately benefit from that online connection in the real world because they created a way to make a relationship and online presence with someone in order to show how serious they are about gaining insight, communicating issues, and ultimately talking about the sports industry with other people that are in your field. This can help you gain status and ultimately move up within your company for your industry. By offering your insights, opinions and research abilities, employers can connect, share, communicate back and forth and move the company forward in a positive direction, by using these social media sites in their most effective ways. The social media site that I have seen most effective for not only the sports industry, but all industries is LinkedIn. LinkedIn offers the ability for people to connect with organizations of their interest and professions, which then connects them to people within that particular industry for the purpose of strengthening relationships with people in your "like" field. Overall, this makes individuals, companies and industries more powerful and well connected than ever, which is always a positive for everyone.

Introduction to the World

My blog for this semester is directly related to the social media course that I am currently taking at California State University, Chico. I chose to write to the world about the connection between sports (particularly professional) and the positive correlation it holds with major social media hubs. Professional sports is one of the most people driven industries in the entire world. Sports are played by people, enjoyed by people and most of all, directly communicated by people through major mediums like television, the internet, print and now so interestingly new; social media hubs. I have always been interested in all sports and talking about them with friends, family and even people I do not even know has and always will be a passion of mine. However, I would like to take a different approach on my blog. Instead of strictly talking about sports and what went on during the game, I would like to talk about the connection that each individual game has on the world, through the elements correlated with social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. People explore one another's thoughts, emotions and reactions towards similar sporting events through social media and that connection is extremely revolutionary towards our world today.  So much more personal content is being driven through and shared within multi-million dollar industries like ESPN and News stations, giving people more insight and "up-front" reactions to better engage their experiences with the sports they are watching, with the people they are watching them with even if they are on the other side of the world. This is what drives me and fascinates me to share my thoughts and opinions with the world everyday and it all has to do with this new fad of social media.