Nick Saban, “The Process” and Tweeting
photo via 60 Minutes
On the November 3rd edition of 60 Minutes, the program featured Alabama head coach Nick Saban. 60 Minutes was granted rare access to the football team’s practices and behind the scenes. It was a look at what makes Alabama so successful, namely, the coaching philosophies and strategies of Nick Saban.
The team chant is “Get your mind right.” You’ll hear Saban shout at his players, “Do it again,” in an effort to make sure that they do their job the right way, perfectly. He talks about creating a standard of high achievers. The part which I loved the most was his talk about “The Process.” He teaches his players to, “Ignore the scoreboard. Don’t worry about winning. Just focus on doing your job at the highest level – every single play. The wins will follow.”
Nick Saban challenges his players to “play every play of the game like is has a history and life of its own.” He enjoys seeing his players take “pride in performance.”
While I had many flashbacks to the life lessons I learned from my tough-as-nails softball coach (a.k.a. “Dad”), I also kept thinking about how Nick Saban’s process could be so easily applied to our communication and what stories and messages we share with the world through social media.
If we approached every tweet, every post, every photo, every video with that same mentality, just think about how awesome our messages would become. If we stopped for one moment before we hit the send button and asked ourselves out loud, “Is this the best tweet of my life?” I wonder how quickly we would achieve more positive and purposeful communication? What examples could we set for others to follow? What pride in our performance might we gain?
Nick Saban may be on a quest for perfection on the football field, but his players know that it’s not just all about the game. He makes them better people. I have often said that we can tell a lot about our society by what and how we communicate. What we say to each other (in person and online) demonstrates the state of our community and how we treat each other, what level of respect we have for our fellow humans and how we feel about ourselves. If we focus on communicating at the highest levels (every message is your absolute best), then I believe we will grow communities of people who are nicer, kinder and more compassionate. We will be better people. And the wins will follow.
The full 60 minutes segment is included in the following video…
If for some reason the video doesn’t load, you can watch it here: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50158430n
To watch the 60 Minutes Behind The Scenes on this story, follow this link:
This segment was also an extraordinary look at a truly amazing and inspiring man.
New Facebook Insights
As you may have noticed in the last week or so, Facebook has launched some new features within Insights, as well as dressed up our view of the data. I’m really pleased with this upgrade. One of my favorite new features is the “When Your Fans are Online” tool. This tells you when you should be posting to your page. Couple that with the “Best Post Types” data and you should start to see some increases in engagement.
Here’s an example of what it look like. The main page (Page>Insights>Posts>When Your Fans Are Online) gives you the average time of day your fans are online, weekly view:
Facebook’s new Insights tell you when your fans are online.
But if you hover over any day of the week, it will give you the specific data for that day:
This is a super helpful tool for those who manage pages and are trying to figure out when to post and what types of posts their fans like the best. This would be an awesome tool for Twitter, should they ever decide to add analytics to the mix.
The Power of Pinterest
Today I had the pleasure of speaking at the Association of Club Catering Professionals Conference on the Power of Pinterest. This marks the second annual event for the ACCP and I was delighted to speak again this year.
The Private Club industry has amazing potential to build an audience through the visual mediums like Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest. The Catering and Private Event Directors are the ones who can truly take advantage of all of the wedding planning, party ideas and concepts shared on Pinterest. If your Club doesn’t have a Pinterest account, or if you are aimlessly creating boards and repinning without thought, please read on…
Here are a few of the tips I lent during my seminar:
Clean Up Your Website
Make sure your website is Pinterest friendly and has lots of fantastic images which Members and guests can share. Pinterest will drive traffic to your website. If you are inviting people to your house for a party, make sure you clean up first!
Plan Ahead
Give great consideration to what boards you will create, what titles you will give your boards and the descriptions you will use. This will help get your boards and pins found. Think about all of the potential boards you’d like to create and use post-it notes on a wall to plan. Keep in mind that when anyone lands on your account main page, the first two rows of boards are visible. Your most engaging and fantastic boards should be at the top.
Make Time
Of course it takes time and effort to build your boards, your audience and to let people know that you are on Pinterest. It takes time to incorporate Pinterest into your communication routine. Yes, we are all busy, we all have full plates, but Pinterest serves as a powerful, visual communication tool which can help you better connect with your audience and attract new business. No communication tool will help you become and overnight success. You have to work at it. So get to it.
Pin For Your Audience
Consider that food and beverage are the most popular topics on Pinterest. For Private Clubs, you should be able to rock this category like no other. But what other helpful pins will your audience crave? Images should be high quality and visually appealing (like these drool worthy, individually sized Chocolate Lovers Triple Layer Chocolate Mousse Cakes), as well as serve as peak the interest and serve as inspiration to Members, potential members, brides, wedding coordinators, etc. Think about who will repin or like that photo before pinning. It will help you create high quality content.
Use Analytics
Pinterest offers analytics for business accounts. While the analytics are pretty simple, they will guide you to understand where traffic is coming from and going to on your website, what pins are popular and how many people are interacting with your pins. Reading through the analytics will help you determine what types of photos your audience is looking for and what content is the most helpful for your Members.
Have Fun and Be You
Your Members and guests who interact with you on Pinterest are interacting with YOU. And that’s who they want to pin with. Infuse your board descriptions and photo captions with smart text and personality. Leave comments which are kind and sincere. Pinterest is a very fun way to connect with your audience. Enjoy it!
I love having the opportunity to gather a groups and chat about social media. I love it even more when the topic is Pinterest and the group members have the chance to really make the most of it! If you would like me to speak to your Club’s Catering or Private Events team about the Power of Pinterest, give me a call! 619-244-2400.
For attendees who missed the handout provided at the conference, click for your digital copy: ACCP Pinterest Handout
Conan O’Brien on LinkedIn
This video clip from the CONAN show landed on Youtube and other parts of the web today. Host Conan O’Brien talks about having a ‘digital presence’ and social media sites, as well as his digital team’s insistence that he have a LinkedIn account. What he says about LinkedIn is pretty funny. Have a look and then view my notes after the video:
I looked Conan up on LinkedIn and sure enough, he had a profile listed. My request to connect was accepted and I am now an official connection. Not sure the process his digital team went through to accept or deny all contact requests. LinkedIn has been the one space where there’s not so many hallow or spammy accounts, so it’s likely that at this early stage, all of the folks who have requested to connect with Conan are, indeed, really people.
However, it made me think that LinkedIn may need to set up a verification system for high profile people, as Twitter and then Facebook has have. Soon after I connected with Conan, I saw a Jimmy Fallon profile. I’d love to connect with Jimmy Fallon, but I had no way to tell if it was an official profile.
I wonder, is this really the right space for celebrities and superstars to grow their fan base? Is LinkedIn prepared to somehow verify high profile accounts? Will the attention Conan gave to LinkedIn on his show have a lasting effect or just be a quick sizzle?
It will be interesting to see what happens in the weeks following. It’s funny – we are so used to talking about Twitter and Facebook on television. But when does LinkedIn ever get three minutes of air time? What are your thoughts?
The NFL Woos Female Fans – Just Not on Pinterest
On September 5th, Bloomberg Business Week published an article with the title “How the NFL Woos Female Fans.” Within the article the NFL’s Vice President Brand & Creative, Jaime Weston explains some of the reasons behind the push:
“About four years ago, there was a push, recognizing how many women fans we have, that we need to speak to them. And while they follow the game like every other fan, like our male fans, they do want to be spoken to in a little bit different way.”
The article goes on to share the efforts the league will make to reach out to female fans, including a special insert in Marie Claire, print ads, TV spots and the pop-up boutiques called “style lounges.” Note that this push began four years ago.
This morning, I watched the 10am Chargers game, drank my coffee and perused Pinterest. I checked out the NFL’s account. I am disappointed. Where is the strategy? Knowing that (still) nearly 80% of pinners are women, it would seem that a well developed Pinterest strategy would help the NFL connect with precisely the audience it wants to woo. I would think that the stats for purchasing power alone would lure the NFL to Pinterest. Here’s a screenshot of what the NFL has going at the moment:
Haphazard attempt, it appears. In the “NFL” board, there are roughly 530 pins. And the content is all over the place. Some of it is news, some of it is cool photography, some of the pins are uploaded, some are repins. For many of the photos which are uploaded by the NFL, the URL redirects you to the Pinterest account, not to the NFL site or blog or press or the store. There is no care in the captions and no strategic use of hashtags. All I can think is, “Some dude who totally doesn’t get Pinterest must be running this account.”
In fact, on the board titled “NFL Store,” many of the products are not from the NFL store, but from Amazon. The seven pins on the “NFL- Women’s Fashion board have nothing to do with football at all and look like an Amazon wish list of the person behind Pinterest. Speaking of which…The two main boards are managed by multiple people, people who do not look to be affiliated with the NFL. On the “NFL” board, these accounts are also pinning.
And on the “NFL Store” board, these two accounts have been added as managers.
Who are these people and how are they representative of the NFL? Is this is an NFL Official account at all? And what do you know … This website, note the address – nfloffical.org – and the random Pinterest accounts behind it appear to be the very unofficial NFL organization presenting themselves as the real National Football League.
FUMBLE! Wow. I cannot possibly be the first person who has followed this train of thought.
The NFL needs to get a handle on this – and quick. This nflofficial.org account has accumulated 15,570 followers (people who likely believe that this is the real NFL account). NFL Official, the largest of accounts with “NFL” in their name, is completely misrepresenting the league. Essentially, the NFL has NO presence on Pinterest. The NFL is SO missing an opportunity to woo its female fans via a major social network dominated by women.
How can the NFL get set up on Pinterest and truly connect with female fans? Here are a few of the boards I would set up:
- One board per team (and work with each team’s digital media director to insist that all 32 teams are following a similar Pinterest strategy so that repins are stategized).
- NFL News (linking back to the NFL site and the blog and news stories)
- NFL Players (stories featured in any publication or news outlet)
- NFL Moms (Think Campbell’s soup)
- NFL Biggest Fans (Feature fans from around the league)
- Together We Are Football (Feature the stories of fans as on the site. Let most likes, repins, comments help decide who goes to the SB.)
- NFL History (great old photos from the archives)
- NFL Films (also from the archives)
- NFL Fantasy Football (feature what’s happening in the leagues)
- NFL Store (general products)
- NFL Women’s Style
- NFL Men’s Style
- NFL Kid’s Style
- Homegating (term pulled from the Bloomberg article)
- Tailgating
- NFL Sponsors (always good to place nice)
- Superbowl Champions
- Superbowl History
- Football Movies
- NFL Guest Pinner Week #1(this could be a contest and feature one new pinner each week)
….I could go on, but I think you get the idea. The pins of each of these boards would strategically link back to nfl.com, the NFL store, sports publications, etc. Of course, the account would repin, comment and use hashtags just as strategically. And all of this effort is measurable. Through web analytics and even Pinterest’s analytics. Is the Marie Claire insert measurable? How much will the TV spots cost? How will the NFL measure the direct impact of a TV spot?
It’s almost inconceivable that the NFL has completely ignored Pinterest and even worse that some totally random people (who don’t even appear to be football fans) have intercepted the NFL brand on the network. It’s 3rd and goal, NFL. Will you take it into the endzone for a touchdown? I’m always wooed when my team scores.
(Feature image directly from the Bloomberg article: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-05/how-the-nfl-woos-female-fans)
The ‘It was hackers’ excuse
When a high-profile person posts something stupid on social media and then gets “caught,” it seems the only excuse on the table lately is, “It wasn’t me, it was hackers.” Yawn. Who actually believes this excuse? Who ever did?
The latest to offer up this all-to-common excuse is young NHL player, Tyler Seguin. He was just traded to the Dallas Stars. The tweet in question? “Only steers and queers in Texas.” You can read more about the what the 21-year-old tweeted HERE.
Of course, he deleted his tweet, and the team has “addressed” Seguin as well as issued the obligatory, “This, in no way, represents the organization, blah blah blah,” statement. In addition to the standard apology and clarification, the Stars also included, “…and we’ll continue to work on educating our players regarding the importance of their conduct on all forms of social media.” Work on educating? That’s a fancy way of saying, “try.”
An athletic organization that doesn’t take the time to educate – not attempt or try or wish to but actually really sits their athletes down for some hard core PR and communication training – deserves the heat of the spotlight when their players behave irresponsibly. Those organizations should not be allowed to issue the empty “it was hackers” or “we’ve addressed the issue” excuses if they are not going to invest the time and effort to protecting their brand by equipping their front-line ambassadors with proper tools to represent the organization professionally, blades on or off.
My favorite quote from Seguin, not only expresses what TRULY happens when he’s online, but likely what happens when a lot of athletes and others decide it is time to tweet. “…sometimes I forget that I’m on Twitter in front of a quarter-million people and not just talking to my friends. It’s just another learning experience.” That is the mentality we are dealing with. And that is a behavioral shift that can easily be changed with good old fashioned education.
Beaming Bohemian consults with university athletic departments to establish social media guidelines, educate staff, coaches and student-athletes, and implement strategic communication and content plans which work to achieve positive and purposeful goals.
NFL bans bags from stadiums for 2013 season
You’ve probably caught the news by now about the NFL banning what amounts to any kind of purse, backpack or bag into stadiums. If you missed it, you can read up HERE, HERE or even HERE. If you want to read the entire policy published by the NFL itself, you can click HERE. There’s also a friendly website which lists FAQs: http://www.nfl.com/qs/allclear/index.jsp
Understandably, people are upset. Women are particularly upset. The policy states that women are allowed to bring a clutch purse that is no bigger than a hand. Heck, photography enthusiasts should be pretty peeved, too, since camera bags are not allowed, either. Did you want to make your game experience a family outing? Sorry, diaper bags (or kid-bags) aren’t allowed. Backpacks? Uh-uh.
I understand that the NFL would like to create a safe environment for their fans. But turning stadiums into something worse than a TSA nightmare is probably not the answer. This is a sure way to alienate fans all together. Or maybe they want to turn the stadiums into a big bowl of drunk dudes? I understand the intention and reasoning for safety, however I do not agree with their decisions.
I’ve been impressed with the NFL in the last couple of years with their efforts to make football a female-friendly sport. They even launched a terrific site called the Women’s Resource Initiative. You’ll find that at: https://www.nflplayerengagement.com/wri.
So with these welcomed efforts to be more inclusive of a wider audience, I cannot understand why the NFL would institute a policy that is so extremely exclusive. It is hassle enough, and expensive enough, to enjoy a game in person. All the NFL has done by establishing the “no bag” policy is give every single fan one more reason to stay home. And is the NFL certain that come the start of the season, all fans will have gotten the memo? What chaos will there be in those first games when people bring their bags, unaware of the new policy?
By the way, you can still buy tote bags through the NFL shop (which you won’t be able to bring inside the stadium). And no surprise here – clear, branded tote bags are already for sale! http://www.nflshop.com/All_Clear
I’m curious how the fan backlash will affect this policy. I’m sure we’ll see some changes.
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