Photo courtesy of SocialTimes.com
The Washington Capitals are well known in the sports world as being one of the more “technically” savvy teams in professional sports.
There is no doubt that this is due to the fact that their owner, Ted Leonsis has a long history in the tech world as the former President of AOL and now majority owner of Monumental Sports & Entertainment.
Now, I’m sure many of you have probably heard of Ted Leonsis. But, have you heard of Sean Parker? No, not that Sean Parker….but THE Sean Parker. Sean is the Director of Digital Media for the Washington Capitals and he has been leading the online charge for the Capitals since 2003 (pre-Ovechkin days).
I have known Sean now for about 3 years. We first met in Washington where he was kind enough to let me shadow him during a Washington Capitals game day to get a first hand look at what he does. And, I can honestly say that he could be the hardest working man in sports!
Sean Parker Talks Social Media, Monetization and Sports Jobs
Now, our interviews are typically 15-30 minutes long, but in this case, Sean had so much great insight to offer, we ended up pushing over 1 hr!! So, for the sake of making it easier for you to pull out the parts that are of interest to you, we’ve broken down the interview into four (4) parts:
- Part 1 – Washington Capitals Social Media Strategy
- Part 2 – Monetizing Social Media In Sports
- Part 3 – Google+, Pinterest & The Female Hockey Fan
- Part 4 – How To Get A Job In Sports
If you’d rather read the interview, make sure to check out the video transcript below. Included in the video transcript are links to some of the tools and social accounts mentioned in the interviews.
Meet Sean Parker – Director of Digital Media
Sean Parker is the Director of Digital Media for the Washington Capitals.
He has over 15 years of experience of integrating design and technology to fit client needs in the advertising, communications and marketing arenas.
View Sean’s Linkedin profile as an infographic: http://vizualize.me/2RY5DfCItu#.T2EZH2LUNTM
Twitter: http://twitter.com/spikep
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/seanparker
Website: http://badlemon.com/blog/
Instagram: http://statigr.am/user/spikep
Part 1 – Washington Capitals Social Media Strategy (24 mins)
Part 2 – Monetizing Social Media In Sports (20 mins)
Part 3 – Google+, Pinterest & The Female Hockey Fan (15 mins)
Part 4 – How To Get A Job In Sports (15 mins)
Video Transcripts
Part 1 – Washington Capitals Social Media Strategy – Video Transcript
Hey everyone it’s Trevor Turnbull here from sportsnetworker.com and I’m joined today by Sean Parker. No not that Sean Parker but the Sean Parker from the Washington Capitals. Sean is the director of digital media. How’s it going today Sean?
Pretty good. I’ve only been confused with that guy a few times.
I pulled that directly from Twitter. I’ve actually seen people use the hashtag before #NotThatSeanParker.
There’s a few of us out there.
No doubt. I would imagine it’s a fairly common name.
Yeah.
So for everybody that doesn’t know Sean we’re going to chat a little bit today about his role with the Capitals as well as how he got into the sports industry.
Just to give you a little back story I actually met Sean I guess it’s been about three years ago, two and a half years ago at least, when I was out in Washington where a good friend of mine also works for the team, Anthony Aspaas. I was lucky enough to shadow Sean for a couple of days. He let me up into the press box and showed me what he did on a daily basis and without word of a lie, from what I’ve seen, I think he could be the hardest working guy in sports.
I don’t know about that. Not any more.
As you mentioned, we were chatting about this earlier, your role has definitely changed a little bit.
Let’s bring it back a few years to when you starting working with the Caps or even when you first broke into the industry. What’s the story behind that? How did you get into the sports industry?
Yeah, I’m a bit of an outlier when it comes to that.
For a long time I had a designer production studio with a buddy of mine and then we merged with another company. After a while I thought maybe it was time to move on and spend some more time with my family.
We had partnered up with an ad agency at one point and at the ad agency a friend of mine said, “the Caps just lost their manager of new media. You should throw your hat in the ring.” I thought yeah sure so I went and got through a couple of interviews. I ultimately ended up having seven different interviews I think, one of them being with the owner Ted Leonsis.
After that I came on board and was hands on with code and hands on with design and looking at everything and totally revamping the site at that time. Now we’re on a common platform, back then we were on our standalone Web site. I said I wanted to spend more time with my family and I don’t know if I actually end up doing that anymore because you’re there and you live a breathe this stuff whether it’s sports or whatever. You get into the technology, you get into the sport and you’re always trying to find new things that you’re there all of the time. I was certainly there all of the time when I first took the job.
When was that again? When did you first start with the team?
That was 2003. The year before the NHL Lockout. It was interesting – we were hoping and praying that there wouldn’t be a lockout and going into it it was really a different time. No professional league had stayed locked out that long and had lost an entire season. It was an interesting perspective and now I look at it and think, “alright, what’s the worst that can happen?” We got locked out.
Been there, done that right? Did the full year lockout.
Yeah.
I know I’ve talked to Anthony about this before too but back in 2003 obviously those were the pre-Ovechkin days too so even though things have changed a lot on the online space fortunes have definitely changed for the team too right?
Yeah. It’s been a bit of a remarkable turnaround. When Ovie came on board, and the season after the lockout Ovechkin was great but, we were still in the black and bronze uniforms at that time and the team wasn’t the best on ice obviously. I think the year Ovechkin came on board we were third worst in our conference. We didn’t do well and struggled for a few years.
Then we brought back the red, white and blue uniforms. There seemed to be a revitalization behind the team and the sprit of the team and the fans and everything else and it just kind of became this groundswell. That one year, five years ago now, we brought on Federov at the trade deadline and that year we made the playoffs. Since then it’s just been like gangbusters; everybody is here, this is literally the hottest ticket in town. People are miserable when we lose – people are happy when we win obviously – but you get to feel it a little bit deeper now when we lose. It’s been a tremendous turnaround.
It’s funny; the difference just seems like it happens so quickly. The switch was flipped or a coin was flipped or whatever metaphor you want to use, something happened where it almost seemed like instantaneously everybody wanted to be a Caps fan. Everybody is watching what you’re doing and when you’re doing it and all of this other stuff and it was a totally different experience.
Yeah. I’ve seen the passion around the team first-hand in being out there and, living in Vancouver, I fully understand the idea of the passionate fan. We were talking about the riots and stuff last year that hopefully don’t get repeated this year in Vancoucer. I did see that first hand in Washington and there’s no doubt that Ovechkin had a part to play in it, the success of the team had a part to play in it, the ownership and down; the way things are ran over there.
Speaking of which Ted is a very digitally-advanced person I guess you would say. Somebody who is very proactive when it comes to embracing technology which has no doubt helped in bringing in those fans that not only want to come to the games but also want to connect with the team and the players and everybody else in a digital format. I imagine you saw a lot of growth over the last four or five years on the social side of things as it relates to Caps fans wanting more and more from the team.
We have. Its kind of amazing; I think about how we started out where we made very conscious decisions to get on Facebook and YouTube and spread the word that way. Twitter came along and, it was funny, I brought Twitter up in a business meeting and people were laughing and asking what is this Twitter thing, you live in a totally different world. Now some of those guys are the heaviest Twitter users that we have.
No Doubt.
It’s kind of funny how things have changed and progressed.
So we made a conscious decision to get on Facebook and YouTube, like I said, and then we branched out onto Flickr and then Twitter came along and we were on Twitter and we tried a couple of different things.
We looked at what was working at the time and took a look at things like Ning and said that’s not working so let’s not go into that. I’m sure it works for some people but it wasn’t going to work for us so we said let’s back step from that.
Just to clarify, Ning being the kind of lock down more exclusive social networks right?
Yeah. It’s kind of like I want to make a Capitals group that’s only Capitals and very lock down. A gated community so to speak.
We made another big decision; at that time MySpace was very big and we said we’re not going on there. It’s just too noisy. From the get go we kind of had a plan on how we wanted to approach social media. We wanted to go where:
- We would be heard and
- It wasn’t such a crowded space that we would be on there and people wouldn’t be able to find us because there are too many fake accounts.
Facebook at that time had just opened up; there was no fan pages and we created a person named Washington Capitals. Since then we’ve obviously converted to fan pages.
Did you guys have a group at one point as well? Or were they just fan created groups on Facebook.
Fan created groups. Well we had a couple of groups based around one of our podcasts, Capitals Report, but we didn’t really have a Washington Capitals group that we had created.
We had that and then we went into the fan page stuff and Twitter and our Twitter account exploded. I think we now have nine official accounts and we might combine a few depending on how our fans are responding to them. We’ve definitely tried different things with that.
You’re right, fans do want it all. They want as much information, as much accessibility, as much interaction with the team as you can give them.
Ted being the owner that he is; he still gets email from a lot of fans, email isn’t dead. Just look at his inbox. We’re always reaching out to fans and trying to find new ways of doing it. He’s very accessible so that whole philosophy and mentality of community and accessibility has gone down through the ranks. Everybody is here and we all look at it as accessibility to the fans.
Yeah. Sean I just tracked down on your Web site in the Fan zone social networks you guys have listed out all of your fan pages, your Twitter account, you have #GameNight hashtagged so you’re actually telling your fans what hashtags to use during games.
Just look at the Twitter list, how do you guys approach this? I see you have an account for the media, you have a Caps Slapshot; Slapshot is the team mascot correct?
Correct.
Then there’s a youth hockey one and there’s a tickets one. Do you have different people within the different departments on the team actually managing these accounts as well?
Yeah. We have stakeholders from those particular departments.
For Caps tickets it’s one of the guys that works in our ticketing and sales department and he tweets out deals and specials that we have and he mainly works with that account.
Caps media was originally set up to give media information from our media relations department specifically to members of the media. It really is that account being more about stories and ideas and that sort of thing and not necessarily communicating with the day-to-day fan but more of the media-centric personality.
Then obviously on our main account we approach as wanting to engage our fans and give our fans as much information as possible. Whether it’s linking back to stories or videos or trying to start a conversation or contest with them.
Scarlet Caps is our women’s initiative so they have their own Twitter account and the stakeholders there tweet what they want to do or things that show up on the Scarlet Caps site or what’s happening with the club and that sort of thing so that we have those people involved with social media. It’s not just one person; it is one message but it’s not one voice.
Yeah. So there’s obviously, I’m just looking at the hashtags page here right now, a lot of educating. We like to share, we like to hear what people have to say, you kind of educate them on what a hashtag is even.
I imagine there’s a lot of that internally too where you guys have 7-10 people managing accounts on behalf of the team and you want to have them have an independent voice but at the same time kind of know the messaging and the way you want to deliver the message and what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable, that type of thing.
Do you guys meet internally to talk about that kind of stuff as far as guidelines go?
We’re actually starting that soon. There’s a few of us that will meet and they’ll ask, “how do you do this” or “why do you do this?” Or they’ll notice that somebody else is doing something else and they’ll say, “Is this OK to do” and you get that sort of thing. We do meet, not necessarily as a group all of the time, but we do meet individually and talk about what the best way to do this is.
We’re starting to formalize a lot of things that we have haven’t formalized in the past. There have been loose rules about not tweeting about a trade if you find out about it before it happens. Those sorts of things. The funny thing is, with players in particular, the NHL has come down and said you can’t do this or you can’t do that. They’ve formalized rules for hockey operations and for players but not necessarily for communications and marketing departments.
That’s interesting.
Yeah. So it is a little interesting.
It’s funny; we had a player who was called up from the minors and everybody knew he was being called up from the minors before we released the information because he Tweeted about it.
Oh really?
“Just landed it New York. Joining the Caps.” So it was like alright, maybe we should set the guidelines of no Tweeting about call-ups. Hold back a little.
Yeah. It’s definitely a fine line right? You want to be able to still have some control internally over the way that things are communicated, because it is a part of a business still. It’s a competitive advantage, information is power as they say.
Yeah it is.
It’s funny I was just thinking about how 10 years ago or less we were worried about what people said on camera. Don’t say this on camera or don’t let somebody record you saying this, that or the other. Now everybody has a camera phone, everybody has a Twitter account or a Facebook account and everything is being posted. It’s a whole new way of approaching media and how you deal with getting your word out there. Not only from a positive standpoint with a brand but, for lack of a better term, protect your brand from incidents of life.
When something happens people are taking a picture nowadays; they’re not always calling the cops or calling emergency services or whatever. It’s like, “let me get a video and put it on my Twitter.” You want to be careful about that and you do want to retain some control but it’s important to let those people have their individual voice as well.
Right, no doubt. Control alone doesn’t work right? It’s impossible to censor everything. A lot of times you just have to put faith in people and give them guidelines and hope for the best then put your crisis management strategy in place if it’s ever needed.
Exactly.
One of the areas that I’ve seen that you guys have been very proactive in, and this is a testament to you and being around the team in the last nine years, when new technology emerges you guys are one of the first ones to dip your toe in the water and try it out.
Tumblr is not necessarily a brand new platform but I do find it interesting the way that you guys use this. You guys actually have somebody on staff that manages the Tumblr account exclusively right? They post photos behind the scenes, on the road. The one thing I notice about this more than anything is that I see content on here that I dont see in other places. How have you guys found this from a strategy perspective and what was your reasoning for diving into Tumblr and putting in somebody dedicated to that platform?
Yeah. It’s funny; we talked about Tumblr a few years ago, I guess when Tumblr started becoming a viable blogging platform and wasn’t just a startup. People were actually using it to post stuff.
To be quite honest with you I was actually quite resistant; I wasn’t resistant from “let’s just try something out new” because I’m always up for trying something out and I don’t dip my toe. I tend to jump into technology with both feet.
Well I can tell you I’ve learned a lot from you over the years just from following your Twitter account and everything you’ve got going on. You’ve definitely got your finger on the pulse.
Yeah. As a matter of fact the odd thing is I’ve been trying so much stuff lately I haven’t been tweeting about it because I’ve just been jumping in a trying this that or the other.
With Tumblr we resisted it for a bit and then we brought somebody on board. We had Brett Leonhardt, who was here and he left. Then we brought somebody else on board and they were really interested in using Tumblr.
I thought right now we don’t have the resources to keep it up; this guy is dedicated to this, this guy is dedicated to this and we’re spread pretty thin. James Heuser, who came on board, said, “let me take it on. I’ll do it.” He and I sat there one afternoon and discussed what it’s going to be. We want content that we’re not just posting on our Facebook page, we want content that we’re not just posting on the site. Where are we going to use this?
James actually came up with the concept of Overtime. This is all of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes that you’re not going to find on our main site. You might not find it on one of our associated blogs. You will find it on Overtime. Last night after the game Karl Alzner walks into the press room with a couple of bins of cupcakes that his fiance made. We got a couple of pictures of that and that’s the story that you’re going to find on our Capitals Overtime. It’s those sorts of things, those little bits of life, around the hockey team that dont necessarily fit into the areas that you’ll find on other sites. That was how we kind of looked at it and the fact that James can update it with his phone when he travels with the team so he does all of the video from there. He can do everything in a relatively quick manner and put it up there. It’s great and we really like it.
One of the things that we always look at, this is something that we kind of touched on before we jumped on this call, how do we approach new social services or new social outlets and where we’re going with these things. A lot of times it comes down to do we simply have the manpower to do it. Some of these things you dont always want to trust to an intern. There are some things certainly that you can but this is your brand. You have to be aware of what you’re doing and where you’re going and what you’re putting out there and where the voice is from. That’s how we’re approaching every new outlet that we look at.
Part 2 – Monetizing Social Media In Sports – Video Transcript
Trevor Turnbull: You bring up a good point because time is a commodity that nobody has enough of nowadays and and in spreading yourself too thin you have a big risk in not seeing some type of result from what you’re trying to do.
You mentioned the idea of branding; this is a reflection of the Capitals brand and it’s another platform where people engage. I’m looking at the page right now – people like this obviously. There’s 91 people that have left notes on this photo of Karl Alzner giving cupcakes out in the media room.
Ultimately what its your approach when you look at these new platforms on what you’re trying to do with them? Are you just using them from a brand managing perspective to try to find another way to reach the fans? Or are you trying to drive traffic to a specific platform like the Web site or the Facebook page? Or is it all just kind of one big thing that works together and spins in circles and we’ll see what happens in the end from a monetizing perspective over the next five years?
Sean Parker: Sometimes you’re looking at that and you’re wondering, “what is the big plan behind all of this?” We look at it and, not necessarily with Tumblr, but we do look at each platform and say “how is it going to extend our brand, are we going to be able to engage with the fans and ultimately will this make us money.”
One thing that you dont want to do, whether it’s in sports or any other business, is sit there and spend a lot of time and not see any return. I can sit there and post to my Facebook page or my Twitter account all day long but I wont necessarily see any return. I’m responsible for my budget here and I’m responsible for getting the word out about the Caps.
When we look at Facebook, or any social network for that matter, we’re looking at how we can leverage the fans that have liked us into one of our corporate sponsorships without it being just a simple pass-on or advertisement but actually being a benefit to the fan. The one thing that we want to always be cognizant of is if something is just an ad or an actual benefit to our fans. If it’s just an ad we can put a dial ad on our site or a 300×250 ad on our site. If it’s a benefit, and we want our fans to engage with us and we want to engage with them, then we need to give them a benefit. From that standpoint we look at social networks as a branding opportunity, as a way to further engage our fans.
We do want to make money off of it so it’s that fine line where you say, “Let’s do some contesting based around joint prizes” or “let’s find some way of getting some stuff out there that’s a benefit to our fan and a benefit to our corporate sponsor from the association with our team.” There’s all of these ways of looking at it and kind of meshing it together. Hopefully it’s not spinning to fast and too hard so that our heads spin but that we’re actually creating win-win situations all around.
For sure. I think it is a major challenge, specifically in the sports industry, to not look at these tools purely as another source of revenue but at the same time sports is still a business. If it’s not generating revenue it’s tough to put a value on the engagement of the fan. At least it’s tough to sell that come budget time. I know, even in the ticket sales world for example, they’re directly measured on the number of leads they bring in and the number of leads they close and whether or not the seats are filled and if they’re up selling corporate sponsorship and group ticket packages. There’s no doubt that the monetizing of the social side of things is probably one of your biggest challenges going forward I would imagine.
You mentioned that the social media stuff is definitely a bigger part of your role now?
Yeah. A few years ago we started moving into the social space and it kind of fell into my lap. I really liked it, for whatever reason. I’ve worked at trying to maintain it and trying to keep it as part of my position here. We certainly have grown it as a way to communicate with our fans.
We use some great tools and it can be expensive. People say but Facebook is free, but Twitter is free; yes but it costs you time to build contests into Facebook or into Twitter. It costs you time to monitor stuff and see what fans are actually saying about you. A lot of time that’s all we have, that time. We don’t have billable dollars. Like you said its a commodity that we have to use.
One of the tools that we do use to try and help us along is something called Involver. On the back end we have a developer here in house who does a lot of development on the site with coding but he also does a lot of development on Facebook. Involver is his primary tool and the language that they use and it’s one where we can post to Facebook, Twitter and Google+ all at the same time. It’s not necessarily an automation because we’re the ones writing and posting but it’s helping us get our word out quickly and across different platforms simultaneously where before we’d be flipping back and forth between some kind of Twitter client and Facebook. Or using a tool like Tweet Deck or something that wasn’t reaching all of our audience but just part of it.
Yeah. With the changes that are coming up with Facebook too I know that, again, harps on the time thing right? There’s a whole bunch of new stuff to learn when it comes to the new layouts and the way that you can use the gated pages to be able to get people to like, to take some type of action. It’s a full time job in itself almost just to manage Facebook isn’t it?
Yeah, it comes down to that. Fortunately I split that time with our developer. He’s got a pretty good knack on some of that stuff so we let him kind of run with it. Especially the development end; we take a look at it and say, “OK, let’s do this” or “change that” or “yes it looks good and move forward” or “let’s go this direction.”
Yeah it does end up eating time especially when, we were just talking about it earlier today in a meeting I was having with him about what’s coming up, I’m looking at my calendar on the wall here and we have two different contests that are coming down Thursday and another one going up. It’s just this constant flux of let’s not overlap our social contests, let’s put this up then and it’s a matter of timing and keeping everything there.
Then we started talking about the timeline; we haven’t flipped our Fanpage over to a timeline yet, to Facebook’s new timeline. We’ve been holding off until one contest ends. We’re going to hold off until that contest ends and then we’ll flip it before the next contest begins. We want to fill that timeline with information going back a few years, at least to ’74. So there’s all of these little bits and pieces that we have to put together before we can actually flip it to something that we want to actually present to the public.
Right, yeah. Just a broken version of what you were hoping to do because you were forced into it right? The nice part is they’re not going to force you to do it until the 30th, I think it is, of March. There are a few weeks there.
Yeah. If we can’t fill it up with content by the 15th then I think we’re going to wait a few days.
Take that grace period.
I’m looking at the Facebook page again, and I want to talk about a couple of other things but, I just want to ask one more question about this Sean. In regards to Facebook in particular and the integration of sponsors and the challenge of keeping sponsorship integration from just simply being a banner or being overly-spammy or overly-salesy, that type of thing. How do you guys work internally between your department, as well as other departments, that might be selling this stuff too? The sponsorship guys or the marketing guys.
Maybe just give us a sense of what that whole departmental relationship looks like when it comes to stuff on Facebook and other platforms too. I’m just looking at Facebook right now.
Yeah. We actually talk quite a bit with our corporate partnership department about what plans they want for social. It seems everybody is coming to them right now and saying I want to be on your social media whatever. Whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or Google or whatever you’re doing I want to be a part of it.
Do you mean the sponsors? The sponsors are coming to them and saying they want to be a part of it?
Yes. They want to be a tied to the team and they want, as part of that tie in, access to our social media.
We’re running a contest right now with Amtrak that’s on our site but we pushed it via social media. We have an agreement with ESRB, the guys who rate video games, and we’ve pushed some stuff for them via social media. Right now we have a contest running for free windows. If you go in and you dress your window with Caps stuff you’ll get free windows from this company, Windows Nation.
There’s these relationships that we build. For example, Window Nation was really interested in getting involved with our social media and they didn’t know how to approach it or how to do it. We sat down with the corporate partnership and said let’s find a way of contesting, but not just a sweepstakes. Let’s make it a little bit more so it gets viable leads and these are people that actually want the product. That’s one of the things that we looked at for that.
We had so many people asking for end of the season and first round of the playoffs, knock on wood, that we set up a meeting to go over the contesting and how we would do different contests running now until the end of the regular season.
There’s a little bit of who’s on board for this or who’s on deck for that and what can we do to make them happy or how much is too much. A lot of times they’ll look at us and say, “really, is tweeting this out three or four times per day too much?” Yeah. Is tweeting this out three or four times per week too much? It depends on what it is, maybe not. There’s always that kind of conversation going on.
Yeah. It’s interesting that you say that these sponsors are coming to you guys looking for ways to integrate and tap into that audience that you have built on some of the social channels.
I know when we first met a lot of times the biggest challenge was that social media was kind of a throw in right? It was oh and by the way we’ll tweet about this for you and we’ll post something on our Facebook page that will drive people to this custom landing page, microsite, and get people to come in store. Now that’s kind of shifted to where people aren’t even so concerned about the Web site stuff. They just want the engagement. Or at least the ones that are very proactive and understand the value of it are starting to see that there’s a lot of value in the social side of things.
Yeah. We’ve had a couple of partners that have, from the get go, been really smart about social media. Demographics might not fit but they’ve always been smart about social media and wanting us to be a part of their plan on their social as well as our social.
Nowadays it has to be a part of your media plan, part of your marketing plan. It cant be that throw in anymore. It’s too valuable. When you have everybody coming to you, you kind of look at it and realize this is valuable. We shouldn’t just be throwing it in when that does happen.
I think more and more people are becoming aware of its value, I would hope so. I think people here inside the organizational becoming more and more aware of its value, especially the power that it can have to reach a fan.
To use an example outside of the industry, we were all talking about this the other day, Kony 2012. I’m sure you’ve seen this video; 43 million people have seen it. That’s the power of social media. You think back a few years ago during the tsunami and we found out about the tsunami via social media. Japan’s earthquake is the same thing; we found out via social media. The guy was live tweeting Osama Bin Laden’s assault – that’s pretty incredible. You have this news that is instantaneous and there and it’s so valuable now and such a part of our lives and such a part of media and news that we can’t just let it be “oh hey, we’ll tweet that for you.” It is one of the most powerful ways, I think, of reaching our fans.
No doubt. There’s no disputing that for sure.
I guess one of the opportunities going forward will be to show the measurable results of that too, the analytical side of it. I know a lot of sponsors still speak in that language. Even though they’re looking at the Kony video and all of these obvious things that are just proving that this is not a fad, this is a reality of the way that people communicate now, it can’t be ignored. They still dont really understand how to value it right? From a dollars and cents perspective in the way that they might a rink board or being in the program or being up on the video board. They can understand that there’s 18,000 people in the seats and those 18,000 may or may not see it but there’s a likelihood that they might because there’s music playing in the background. Just a different way of thinking; how can you package up the social stuff too so that they can not only see that here’s our big audience but here’s what they’re doing too. They’re talking, they’re engaging, they’re taking action, they’re signing up for something, which ultimately means that they might become a customer of that brand. I’m just kind of rambling about the opportunities that I see in that space.
We’ve actually started doing some of that on the analytics end. We’ve been monitoring it for a while; obviously your likes and follows but also your engagements and also which hashtags are gaining acceptance and how deep they are.
It’s amazing, some of the tools that are out there and how they all mesh together and how much information you can actually get on a fan based on social media. You have to know, like you said, who is saying what, where and how and where are they? You have to be able to measure that and you have to be able to show your partners how much it’s worth. 18,000 people might be in the arena on a game-by-game basis seeing a video but 18,000 people saw that tweet this morning. Even if maybe 100 people retweet it –
With the expanding reach of their audience.
Yeah. It’s amazing how quickly the two friends tell two friends, tell two friends thing explodes on the social front.
No doubt.
Part 3 – Google+, Pinterest & The Female Hockey Fan – Video Transcript
Trevor Turnbull: I want to talk about two more platforms that are hot. I see that you guys have a presence on one and not on another so far.
Google+ first of all; I forget what the numbers are exactly, I think that they just hit 50 million maybe? I could be way off on that but I think that they just hit 50 million. There was talks projecting them hitting 500 million by the end of the year and the fact that Google might have gotten it right this time with their social network. Being that they are the most massive Internet company in the world the opportunity for them to increase their role on the social side of things is incredibly large to start competing against the Facebooks of the world. You guys have started to dive into the Google+ area. What’s been your thoughts on it so far and where do you see that one going?
Sean Parker: OK. That was actually my idea. I said let’s get onto Google+, this is going to be huge, everybody is kind of laughing at me.
Very similar to the Twitter conversation then two years ago right?
Very similar. This time it’s more like “you sign up but nobody uses it” or “yeah but that’s 50 million Google employees are on it,” that sort of thing. “You’ll never get anybody to follow you.”
I think this time they did get it right. I think that Buzz was all messed up, it was totally wrong. They hadn’t really thought through what they needed to do.
With plus it’s a little bit different and I think it’s way more valuable for brands on plus than on Facebook, or ultimately it will be. Facebook is built for that personal connection; I want to meet my friend, I want to look up a high school sweetheart or I haven’t seen my buddy in 20 years what’s he look like now sort of thing. It’s very much built for that personal connection and meeting people and working on it that way. Google has their search engine that they can leverage behind Google+.
What are the statistics now on Facebook; you have one in five people I think on Facebook. In one way shape or form it’s like four out of five or five out of five of us are on Google. Whether it’s the search engine, whether it’s Google Docs, whether it’s Google Maps; we’re using their platform in some way, shape or form. Now they’ve started to include your world in their searches so that if you’re on Google+ and they’ve tied everything together. Whether it’s Gmail or Google+ they’ve tied all of those accounts together. Your world, your recommendations from friends, the things that are important to you, are showing up first. You can turn it off but it’s showing up at the top. They’re starting to leverage their monolithic power as a search engine company to get people to buy into their social.
I think as soon as they start releasing APIs and saying brands can now add more flourishments to their page than simply the big picture at the top or the big icon and multiple pictures that’s when you’re going to start to see brands really take advantage of this. I think ultimately it’s the power of the search engine that is going to drive this thing.
I like it; I certainly see it’s in its young stage. For the lack of a better term it’s a startup. You have to play with it and bust it out. It has some cool things; the hangouts are cool. Being able to have a conversation with nine of your friends; we’ve actually thought about a couple of different ways to be able to run some contesting around that.
I’ll ask you – as a fan would you like to sit down with one of your favorite players in a hangout? Just you and a couple of buddies on Google+ and have a conversation with a player or an owner or a GM or somebody?
Yeah. No doubt.
I’m sure you would and I’m sure there’s a ton of sports fans that would as well. That’s a great little feature that they have.
The fact that you can record it and there are ways that you can go back and edit things, the way you add pictures, is good. I think its going to be a pretty robust outlet when everything is said and done and I think that brands are certainly going to benefit from it more than they think right now.
Yeah. Just to elaborate on what you’re saying too I think the expansive network that Google has is interesting. You mentioned the search engine; it’s a common phrase now right? It’s not a tissue to paper its a Kleenex, it’s not a search engine it’s Google. I’m going to go Google this.
I just did a search for hockey right now on Google, for example, and right beside this link I see a big “+1” button. I dont see a Facebook like button, I don’t see a tweet this button, I see a +1 button. The amount of users that are using Google, whether or not their signed up for an account with Gmail or Google+ or whatever it happens to be, I’m with you. I think the possibilities are massive in this area. It’s going to be a big time battle over the next few years watching these behemoths go at it.
Speaking of the multiple platforms that you see Google on, you now see Facebook talking about creating a phone. A Facebook-dedicated phone where they now have control over the whole interface and what you see and all of that kind of stuff. So they’re getting into the hardware side of things. It’s really, what we’ve been saying, the wild wild west for the last five years but it really is. It’s going to be amazing to see what actually becomes of all of this stuff.
Yeah. Somebody better be keeping track of all of this so that 10 years from now we can look back and say, “oh my God, he was so wrong” or “oh my God, he was so right.”
No doubt. We’ll you’ve pointed it out a couple of times already. I was out there in Washington with you talking Twitter talk at the time when nobody else was really into it or wanted to spend the time on it or saw the value in it. Now I know that your senior directors, hell even Anthony; my buddy your co-worker there; is on Twitter. That says something.
So the other platform that I wanted to talk to you about Sean is somewhat related to your team initiative to try and tap into that female demographic, your female fan for the Washington Capitals. I know a few years back you guys launched a site called scarletcaps.com I believe; I think it just redirects to a subpage of the Web site now. It was really an initiative to try and tap into that female demographic and give them the content that they were looking for, that may or may not have been different than what the male fan is looking for. I guess it was kind of an experiment at the time.
Pinterest has now blown up in the newswires about how awesomely dedicated it is to the female demographic; it’s 85-90% women who use the platform. What’s your guys’ stance on Pinterest? Where do you see things going with that platform?
It’s funny. I looked into Pinterest a little bit ago; our developer, Alex Ball, said my wife is on it and the demographics are very female, as you said. I jumped on it just to see what’s going on and what it is. Immediately the first thing that came to my mind is exactly what you said – this is certainly geared toward women, for whatever reason. This would be a great platform for Scarlet Caps and that whole initiative.
I mentioned it to our vice president of marketing and we’ve had conversations around it and I’ve had conversations with my graphic designer and developer. For now we’re holding back. The reason why is not because we don’t want to jump on it. We have so many fingers in so many pies that jumping onto Pinterest would actually probably end up hurting our brand rather than helping it because we wouldn’t be able to sustain something that we think would be valuable. So we’ve been holding back a little on getting onto that.
As I mentioned earlier, there are some things that you want to trust to an intern and other things that you don’t necessarily want to. People’s tastes are certainly different. If we had an intern this semester who was plugging away and posting stuff on Pinterest; the way that we look at that is you can’t do it just once per day. You have to be pinning stuff almost constantly. You’re talking about a full-time job managing Facebook; it would certainly be a full-time job for somebody just to sit there and get interesting stuff and develop and cultivate something on Pinterest. The resources just are not there. We do think it’s a viable platform.
It’s kind of funny; I think it’s one of these things where it follows Malcolm Gladwell’s tipping point scenario where you have these early adopters that think something is great and then you have a couple more adopters that think “hey they talked about Pinterest. This is great.” Then you had a couple more and a couple more and now I think they’ve seen like a 4,000% growth in the last couple of months. Something absolutely ridiculous. Your cash-flow would be all wonky if you had a business that was growing 4,000% in a few months. You’re looking at that and you’re saying this has to plateau at some point. It’s got to go up, it’s got to come back down. I think at some point it is going to come back down and then it will go back up again. It will be one of those wavy kind of things.
You’re seeing that with Twitter now; where a year and a half, two years ago it had gotten to the point where you were seeing Twitter accounts on commercials and you’re seeing hashtags in shows at the bottom of the screen asking you to talk about a show. Same with Facebook. You’re seeing those things ramp up and now it’s like a Web site; everybody has to have a Twitter account, everybody has to have a Facebook account. It’s expected to be a part of your business. I think at some point Pinterest might be that way and we’ll have to look long and hard at it at that point to say we need to get somebody involved, somebody on board that can handle this.
Yeah, no doubt. You spoke to the idea of Google+ even too. Google+ went through a massive growth at the start and maybe it’s plateaued a bit since then, who knows what we’ll see going forward.
I actually saw a stat the other day that talked about Facebook and Twitter’s numbers in the United States in particular. They said that they’ve seen Facebook kind of plateau a bit in the United States; their growth opportunities are overseas. Twitter their seeing more growth than Facebook. Obviously not to the extent of Facebook, I dont know if they’ll ever get to those numbers, but it’s interesting to see these fluctuations.
You’re right if you dedicate a bunch of resources to the next greatest thing and become the early adopter in everything now everything that you tried to put a bunch of effort into before gets lost a little bit right? Or suffers I should say.
Right. It’s always picking and choosing your battles and making sure that you’re not doing a disservice to your fans. You’re not just putting out the same thing over and over again. You’re actually giving it some unique, some exclusive bit of content.
Part 4 – How To Get A Job In Sports – Video Transcript
Trevor Turnbull: So I just have a couple more questions for you. I’m not going to keep you here all day, although this has been a great chat. I’m glad that you’re taking the time to go through all of these different things and talk some strategy with me.
To just kind of take it back to your current role with the team and what social media in particular has done for your own career as far as a learning tool, connecting with others in the industry. What have you taken from social media from an individual perspective aside from the team?
Sean Parker: I think it’s probably been, for me, all about connections.
For example, this whole interview was set up via Twitter. I saw something that you guys put out and I thought it was really good stuff and I tweeted about it and you said thanks for the shout out and next thing I know you’re contacting me for an interview.
I’ve certainly been privileged enough to appear on some panels at conferences and speak at some conferences. I think from a personal standpoint it certainly has made me more connected to people in my industry, whether it’s the sports industry or the technology industry.
It’s allowed me to express myself in certain ways. For example I love Instagram and I use Instagram a lot. Although I haven’t used it a lot lately but I do use it a lot. I have almost 800 images up there so you can tell I’m clicking away. So it allows me to express myself that way, where I might not have had that opportunity without some sort of social media outlet. I could post it on my Web site or my blog or whatever else but it wouldn’t get the exposure that it gets via social media. In some of the conversations I’ve found about how people are using things where I would think that, as a fan, I would use it this way but I ask the question on Twitter or on Facebook and people answer, “no. I dont use it that way.” I thinking alright maybe we shouldn’t go down that route.
Those sorts of things where it’s connecting with people, finding out information and obviously ultimately being able to express yourself in one way, shape or form is probably the way that I use social media and the way that I’ve connected with people. I already had this position when social media became really active. I think that we learned from day one using discussion boards and those sorts of things; they were social media. That was a community that you built. That was social media before the term Web 2.0 and Social Media. We were using it and I think that we built upon that same philosophy.
You actually bring up a good point there too that you were in your role prior to social media so it came along with you as you have evolved in your responsibilities with the team.
Which we didn’t really get into a whole lot, but you used be involved; my God. I’m telling you people this guy was the hardest working man in sports when I first met him. He was working 12-14 hours per day, he was up in the press box, he was in the room that had wires all over the place, he was managing the social stuff and he was running back and forth and he had a smile on his face the whole time I couldn’t believe it.
For people nowadays that are trying to break into the industry and essentially do what you do on a daily basis. I’ll let you speak to this but I know from my point of view, when we hire for people that essentially do what I do everyday I go straight to their social accounts to see how they use the tool and how they express themselves. It’s almost like a direct extension of who they are from their personal brand perspective. How hard they work, what they know, what they dont know, how comfortable they are in reaching out and communicating with other people using these tools. They’re important skills to have in the role.
What would you say about all of that? As far as the social stuff
Yeah. I certainly think that that’s a great way to use it. Essentially if you’re going to become a social media manager or director for a company that’s your portfolio.
It’s funny; whether you’re on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter or even using YouTube in a more social manner or Flickr, all of these outlets becomes part of your personality. It shows who you are, it shows how connected you are. It also shows that maybe you’re the right type of person for a position because you’re out there and you’re willing to reach out and communicate with people that you may not know personally. You’re not afraid to make the, I don’t want to say cold call because you have some sort of information about that person via social but, you’re willing to go out there and communicate. It becomes, as I said, your portfolio of work.
When we hire people here we do look at their social stuff. It’s not always just to go, “what’s this person look like.” Look, we’ve all made mistakes in the past. I’m not going to go into your Facebook page and see if you were partying when you were 21. I know it happens, come on. It’s life. I’m not going to be that guy. I do want to see if you’re posting stuff beyond what you ate for breakfast. Or more than pictures of your cat or dog. I want to know that you’re actually having that conversation with people; that you’re not just spewing stuff out there. I look at it from that perspective. I want to know that they’re getting answers back too. I want to know that people are talking with them as well and that they’re not just putting stuff out there. That there are conversations happening. I can tweet 1 million times just by typing something out every few minutes but if nobody is answering back then there’s no engagement. There’s no conversation.
If I was going to give advice to somebody number one I would say yeah there are going to be guys or HR people that look at your social stuff and say, “this guy or girl was out drinking the night before. I dont know if this is somebody that we want on our staff.” I would also say, other than cleaning that up, you need to have that conversation with people. You need to engage, you need to talk with people, you need to express yourself and don’t have flaming conversations; have earnest, honest conversations. You don’t want to have to go, “oh, you’re suck a dick.” You can be cool about it and say “I don’t agree with that. Maybe you should look at it this way” or “maybe there’s something else out there.” You’re allowed to disagree as long as it keeps the conversation going you know?
Yeah. So having an opinion is important. I couldn’t agree with you more. The other thing I would say too is the hunger and the desire to learn right?
Absolutely.
I see a lot of people that dive into social media and the ones that find immediate success are ones that start following people that they idolize, they see as mentors, they see perhaps in a position that they want to be in and start sharing what they have to say in a genuine way and eventually contributing to that conversation in an intellectual way. Before you know it you’re on the radar of the person that you want to be like and next thing you know you’re chatting with them at a conference.
It seems like such a logical thing that a lot of people forget to do. Be human. Be a real person that’s generally interested in learning and building relationship with people and you’ll see success from the social side of things.
Yeah, absolutely. Alex Ball, our developer here, one of the ways that he got on my radar was he actually came from an industry that wasn’t in the development role at his prior industry but what he did is he build a site specifically for this job to show me his skills. Then he followed me on Twitter and started having these conversations with me and then I knew about him. When it came time to pull the trigger on who to hire it wasn’t a real struggle.
He was at the top of your mind right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Free work. You just brought up a good point about doing free work.
People have a misconception of what that means too. By no means do I mean live on the streets and work for free forever. There’s just a difference between doing free work and doing an internship where you’re being told what to do and you’re just plugging through spreadsheets. The proactive nature that your current developer showed landed him a job. How much time did it really take him probably; if he’s skilled at what he’s doing it might have taken him a full day. A little dabbling around here and there but if it got him his dream job then I think he can honestly say that it was time well invested.
Yeah. Absolutely.
With the intern stuff; one thing that we always look at with interns here is how proactive they are. Once they’ve obtained an internship here we dont want them to just say “what do you want me to do,” “let me pump out another Photoshop file” or “let me look at these analytics.” It’s “have you thought about this sort of method on Twitter” or “all of my friends are doing this on Facebook. Maybe you should look at this and see where this trend is going.” “I just found a new piece of code that we can use that fits into our site that can make this great thing.” We’re not afraid of ideas here; bring them on. They’re not necessarily a bad idea, it’s just one that doesn’t fits right now.
Its funny; do you know Square, the credit card technology that works with iPads and iPhones and Andriods? I had mentioned that here to somebody in ticketing a long time ago. One of them was Anthony and another was I think Anthony’s boss. I found out this morning at a meeting that we’re using Square now for ticketing stuff and I’m like, “what? I told you that.”
We’re not afraid of ideas it’s just sometimes they take a little time to develop and work into the mindset of people around here. I think it’s the same with any organization. If it’s a good, viable idea yeah they’re going to run with it. If it’s an OK idea maybe it just needs to be built up and flushed out.
Yeah. I’ve seen you guys be proactive in a number of ways and use new technologies and experimenting with things and it is exciting to see.
I really appreciate you doing this interview with me Sean and I know I’d like to do some folo-ups too here and we start to see how Google+ is making out and when you guys decide to dive into Pinterest and whether or not your perspective on that platform will change or stay the same or whatever it might be.
So, I guess just to wrap things up then, how would people connect with you online specifically? LinkedIn, Twitter, how can people connect with you. Even your Web site too.
Yeah. Well
Your personal Web site
Oh, badlemon.com. I haven’t written there in a while; for me it takes forever to write a blog post. I think about and I think what is this, is it really going to go over that well. SpikeP is my Twitter handle. Sean Parker on LinkedIn. Facebook I like to keep for my friends and family but you can always become a fan of the Washington Caps and reach us that way.
What about Instagram? How do people check out these 800+ photos you have going on?
That’s almost 800, not quite 800. Now I have to start posting there again too. It’s SpikeP, the name I use on that one. I’m on Google+ as well on a personal level. When Google+ first came out only one person could manage the Google+ page.
You’re the guy.
Now there are things that we can do to get other people to manage it as well.
Good stuff. Awesome. Thanks very much again Sean for doing this and if you see Anthony in the hallways make sure you give him a good shot for me on the way by.
Oh I will. A good body check.
Good body check, there we go. We’ll talk to you again soon.
Thanks Trevor. See you.
If you prefer reading the interviews versus watching the videos, click on the link above to access the video interview transcripts.
What do you think of the Washington Capitals approach to social media? What are they doing great? What do you think they could be doing better? Leave your comments below and/or send us a tweet to @sportsnetworker
Loved the piece on Monetizing Social Media, I think every major sports team in the country/world will be busy scrambling 2012/2013 to build out their social media teams to master this incredibly powerful piece of the marketing puzzle. Amazing job opportunities for those who take the initiative to learn and execute on this stuff now.
@seokiwi Agreed…..was great to hear Sean’s take on how they are working with other departments within the organization to identify opportunities.
Monetizing social media is definitely a challenge, but I believe it doesn’t happen until all departments understand the opportunities so they can communicate them to current and potential sponsors.
The sponsors are asking for “social” to be included in their sponsorship deals….the opportunity is there!
@seokiwi Thanks for the kind words. I do think monetizing is going to be key from here on out. Social has become a full-fledged marketing and communication channel and besides we need to find a way to pay for all those hours we spend on Facebook and Twitter.
@trevorturnbull Smart Sponsors for wanting in on this and even smarter leadership/management by the folks @washcaps for getting it and having the balls to execute on all this. Hats off to them, makes me happy to hear these stories. Cheers.
@reddusfoximus thanks for the RT Pam!
@seo_kiwi thanks for the RT Aaron!
thanks for the like Pam!
@clintperez Thanks for the link!
@FitzmauriceT Thanks for linking. I’m digging you Bash Brothers icon.
@spikep lol I’ve wanted this poster forever. Couldn’t find it so use it as the avi. Keep up the good work so I can tweet ur content!
@spikep Absolutely. Big #Caps fan and love what you are doing. Let’s get a win tomorrow night!
@bfesl7t thanks for the RT ahmed!
@billionaires2be appreciate the RT!
@danielpeterson thanks for the RT Daniel!
@hallpassmedia appreciate the RT!
@cserafino thanks for the RT chris!
@sportsnetworker you’re welcome 🙂
@hjalmars thanks Hjalmar! Be on the lookout for more interviews to come in the future
.@hjalmars Gr8 to hear you enjoyed the interviews w/ @oscarugaz & @spikep . Both very smart guys…they make my job easy 🙂 @sportsnetworker
@tremmsAU checking out the webcast right now. Fun stuff. Want us to name you the head of our social media dept?
@AUSwimDive Haha I think @AleZander24 and I should split it, if anything.
@tremmsAU @AleZander24 The wheels are already spinning here in Ashland.
@AUSwimDive How did the locker room dedications go?
I think this is among the so much significant info
for me. And i am satisfied reading your article.
However wanna remark on few normal issues, The
web site taste is great, the articles is really excellent : D.
Just right process, cheers
I am extremely impressed with your writing skills as well as with the layout on your weblog.
Is this a paid theme or did you modify it yourself? Anyway keep up the excellent quality writing, it’s rare to see a
great blog like this one these days.
Yes! Finally something about conveyancing.