The Right Way to Celebrate a Birthday

Birthdays are a big moment in anyone's life. Friends and family come together to celebrate the special day. Unless you are an athlete, in which case you also celebrate with the multitude of fans you have on social media. Most fans will wish 'Happy Birthday' via a post or tweet and never hear back from the athlete personally.

Of course, it is unreasonable to assume an athlete has the time to look through or respond to each birthday wish. So how can athletes use their birthday to help build their online brand with their fans?

Take a look at soccer/fútbol star Ricardo Kakà for inspiration.

The athlete celebrated his 32nd birthday earlier this week, and of course the birthday wishes came rolling in from all corners of the globe. But, someone on his social media team came up with a genius idea: have fans create birthday cards and submit them to be posted on Facebook to surprise the star with.

The idea was spread on his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts and photos were posted in a Facebook album within minutes. As of this posting, there were more than 185 birthday cards wishing Kaka a happy birthday, varying from handwritten letters to various pieces of art.

Social media specialists can learn plenty from what the '#KKTeam' did. 

First off, post as many responses as possible. The more people involved in something like this, the greater the success. 

Second, and most importantly, make sure to monitor the responses before posting. As Mark Emmert and his team learned, such social media experiments can go downhill quickly. You need to make sure that you do not post anything negative and (preferably) avoid as many grammatical errors as possible. 

Finally, advertise as much as possible on as many venues as possible. Even if the event takes place on Facebook, try to find ways to spread the word on other social media sites as well. Talk about it on Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Reddit and everything in between. 

So, to summarize: monitor your responses, post or highlight as many as possible and advertise the event as much as you can. Thanks #KKTeam for the lesson. And a belated happy birthday to you Kakà.

#AskEmmert: An Epic Fail of a Twitter Q&A

NCAA President Mark Emmert

This is Mark Emmert, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, better known as the NCAA. In case you have not heard, the NCAA has been in some hot water lately as more facts are brought up on the amount of money the NCAA makes while the student-athletes who play the games see none of the cash. Student-athletes recently have said that they sometimes go to bed hungry (maybe that's just Shabazz Napier though) and are trying to unionize, which could be dangerous for the future of the NCAA.

On Friday, Emmert joined ESPN's Mike & Mike in the Morning morning show, and someone (whether it was the NCAA or ESPN is unclear) thought it would be a good idea to have people on Twitter asks questions of the NCAA President by tweeting using the hashtag #AskEmmert.
This is an excellent idea in theory. But, Twitter, for the most part, vehemently sides with the student-athletes against the NCAA and are not big fans of Emmert and the NCAA. As the Social Sideline has previously examined, Twitter has given people a new confidence to say whatever they want, whenever they want. Let's just say that the Twitterverse did not take kindly to #AskEmmert.
It started simply enough, with fans asking straight-forward questions.

Then it started getting a little more personal.

Then it just started getting ridiculous.

A list of more responses can be found here, while the original tweet can be found here.

Whoever thought of #AskEmmert had the right idea in trying to incorporate and interact with fans, but should have realized the high chance of a Twitter revolt like this. If Twitter and the NCAA were political parties, Twitter would be Democratic (young and liberal) and the NCAA would be Republican (older and conservative). #AskEmmert gave the Twitterverse a chance to vent frustration that had been building for months or years even.

There are two lessons to be learned here: 

1. As stated in the Tom Crean's Backfiring Tweet post, you need to know your audience. If you are going to post something like this on Twitter, you have to be prepared for potential trolls. But, if you think that you will get more negative responses than positive ones, you probably should not post it. Even before all the negative tweets came flooding, many people's initial reaction to hearing about #AskEmmert was 'this will end well...' 
2. At the same time, fans need to be more open to the NCAA's mindset. Kyle Kensing, a friend of mine, brought up a very good point on Twitter.
   
   People (myself included) need to work on being more open-minded, both in the real world and on social media. No progress will ever be made if two sides just yell at one another. Perhaps student-athletes should be paid. Perhaps the NCAA is right in trying to enforce the amateur status of their student-athletes. But nothing is going to change if both sides just continue to argue with one another and refuse to change their mindsets on a topic.

The Men Behind the Keyboard: Meet the Team Behind @LAKings

The National Hockey League has long been at the front of changing the Twitter game, as it was there that teams began tweeting more as fans. The Social Sideline has done posts in the past talking about this exact topic. The Los Angeles Kings were the first to do this, lighting the sporting world afire with this tweet after defeating the Vancouver Canucks in Game 1 of their playoff series on April 12, 2012:

The tweet that started it all

Today, the Social Sideline has the honor of talking with the two men behind that tweet and the Kings' Twitter account during the team's run to the Stanley Cup in 2012: Dewayne Hankins and Pat Donahue. Hankins was the Senior Director of Digital Strategy of Anschutz Entertainment Group (who owns the Kings and is better known as AEG) and currently holds the title of Vice President of Marketing and Digital for the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers. Donahue, who pushed the send button on the infamous Canucks tweet, is the Director of Digital Media for the Kings.

Russell Varner: How did you end up working on the Kings’ Twitter account? How long were you working on it prior to the 2012 playoff run?
  
Dewayne Hankins: I was hired by the Kings in November of 2010 to take over their digital properties. I hired Pat shortly after that and worked with the Kings on trends, how we could be different than the other teams on social media. I always told people I follow when social media got popular among sports, I went and followed all [accounts] around all the leagues and it was all pretty bland. It was very much black and white stuff where they were talking to their fans, not really with their fans, and I saw an opportunity to take things in a different direction, but needed to get the buy-in from our manager and staff that it was a good idea and we’d be protected. Although it was a risky move, it was gonna pay off in the end, show what we needed to prove. We had kind of been doing that for a while and hiring Pat was a great move because he and I have a very similar sense of humor, so you could really never tell when Pat was running the Twitter or when I was. It wasn’t until Pat’s brilliant tweet against the Canucks in Game One of our playoff series that the rest of the world started to take notice.

Pat Donahue: I had done it, I forget when it was, but I was down in Anaheim and Dewayne said, “oh yeah, you can tweet tonight”… and I just ran with it. Even now, looking at all these accounts, it’s the most boring, kind of very PC fan, and from the beginning, we just tweeted how Dewayne and I talked. It’s our humor. It’s our kind of voice. It’s not fabricated, it’s not trite or made to sound like something. It was just how we really wanted to do it. It was pretty natural to do that from the beginning.

RV: Did you have any reservations when you first started doing so? What were your biggest fears?

PD: No, and I knew if I said something wrong that Dewayne would take the blame for it. *Laughs* So I was just reckless abandon. But Dewayne always had my back.

DH: I always attribute [our success] to the fact that we have a president and an owner and a president at AEG who really understood what we were trying to do. Because of that, it was so much easier to do the things that we wanted to do. An example of that, the day after Pat’s tweet [to the Canucks] set Canada afire with controversy, I was driving to work and wondering whether or not we were going to have a job the next day. And our CEO at the time calls and says, “How do we want to handle this?” “I don’t know. I don’t want to delete it and say we got hacked because that’s what everyone else does I want to stand by it.” “He was like, “Yeah. And we need to tell Canada to get a sense of humor” was his comment. After he said that, I could breathe a sigh of relief and knew that we had a team in place that understood what we were trying to do and the value of all that engagement and interaction. It’s too much and too often, like I said, that teams aren’t able to sell to a higher up because the idea is you are trying to engage your fan base and teams talk about follower counts and how much that stuff matters. I don’t get too worried about that because different market sizes that have different needs – you look at the Lakers and the Kings have a huge disparity between a lot of people that follow the Kings and lot of the people that follow the Lakers. But I would be willing to bet a lot of money that the Kings get more engagement than the Lakers do because the Kings go about it a different way and Pat does an excellent job at keeping hockey fans engaged.

"(F)rom the beginning, we just tweeted how Dewayne and I talked. It’s our humor. It’s our kind of voice. It’s not fabricated, it’s not trite or made to sound like something. It was just how we really wanted to do it. It was pretty natural to do that from the beginning." -Pat Donahue

RV: What were the initial reactions to it from your co-workers? From other teams? From fans?

PD: There was the old-school approach of ‘this is unprofessional’ or ‘classless.’ We got classless a lot. And then the majority were….

DH: Twitter is such a crafty place.

PD: And sports is also. But in terms of friends and family and employees and our LA Kings fans, they loved it. Again, you look back on it and it’s nothing offensive. I never said anything that would actually offend someone. We knew it was OK. It was just dealing with the people that are watchdogs on the Internet and they just like to make a stink over any little thing. You still see it now with an off-color phrase that someone says that gets completely blown out of proportion. It was quite the interesting experience. … I think it was the next day and [Dewayne and I] would just sit down our phones and flip through [what] seemed like three day’s [worth] of replies. I’ve still never seen anything like it before.

RV: What did you think when other NHL teams started treating Twitter the same way you did?

DH: For me, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or however that phrase works. It was fun for us and I had always envisioned how much fun it would be if other teams would get involved that way and how much fun you would get out of it. A great example of it is, (with the Blazers) now we know we can go to the Phoenix Suns and they’ll be up for anything and we can go to the Atlanta Hawks and they’ll be up for anything. And for the Kings, the Columbus Blue Jackets are an example of a team that totally gets it and understands the difference. To me, the more teams can do that, the more everyone will benefit.

The Kings and Blue Jackets have quite the Twitter-mance

PD: I’m the same way. We’ll try to engage, mainly with Columbus because they are the ones that kinda ‘get it,’ and we have a fun online relationship with them. There are some teams I’ve noticed that try to do the exact same thing, and usually it’ll backfire or there will be a lot of ‘we did it first and you are just copying us.’ But at the end of the day, there’s nothing better that we do online than talk to other teams. People just go berserk over it. So, when we do play teams and they don’t respond – they don’t respond to us, they aren’t responding to their fans – it’s definitely much harder because then we have to fabricate a story and content, whereas if the other team is willing to engage with us – whether it is friendly… it is a much more fun and engaged experience online.

RV: Why do you think more teams from other sports don’t treat social media the same way you did with the Kings?

DH: I don’t think it is a matter of them not wanting to do it. The people that are behind the keyboard and typing the tweets, they would love to do it. It’s a matter of being able to convince your management staff to take a certain amount of risk to do it. And there are many, many people who still feel social media is too risky and things that are said can cause more backlash than good. So it is just a matter of convincing them that yes, there is an inherit, small amount of risk, but the benefits outweigh the risks.

The biggest tweet the Kings ever sent

PD: And sometimes, the higher up people only know about the negative things, like maybe they read something negative in the [Sporting] News Journal or something where they don’t see the day-to-day positive stuff that comes out of it. Negative things make news more than positive ones. … I haven’t talked to the guy, but Dewayne has, where the tweet I sent to the Penguins after we were eliminated, asking them to get a drink? To us, number-wise, that’s the biggest tweet we’ve ever sent, even bigger than the Vancouver one. But they never were able to respond… They had a meeting for like an hour over whether to respond to it and they never did. Whereas, with me, my bosses know what I do and everyone’s bought into it, so I’m going to respond to them in five seconds and I’m not going to think twice about it.

RV: What do you think of the current state of social media and where it will go from here?

DH: It is constantly evolving. There are obviously the main stays like Twitter and Facebook, but you can’t be complacent. Pat’s team’s doing a really good job on Instagram, we’re finding our way on Instagram right now with the Trail Blazers on what makes good content and what doesn’t. In the NBA specifically, they are certain things we can’t do. We can’t put highlights in our Instagrams and we’re still governing the rules around this stuff and we need to talk to the NBA and let them know, “hey, they are things we might want to change here because the social media landscape changes so fast and people are consuming media so much faster.” So I think the most important thing is to stay ahead of it and when each social media [application] comes out, don’t try to do everything, but certainly be in the places your fans are and then figure out how you’re going to make it work for your team. Like Snapchat. I’m not a personal Snapchat user, but there’s way that a team could use Snapchat to help engage fans and enhance their space in social media.

PD: Yeah, I think the same things. It’s just moving even faster than it used to. There’s few NHL teams that are using Snapchat and [the Kings] have one, but when our team is running around shooting stuff, it goes up on Vine and it goes up on Instagram and the idea of using Snapchat… I’m 29 years old, I’m past the target demographic for that. I just don’t even really think about that. But you got to stay open to things like that, and we’re really lucky that the blogger we work with, the Royal Half… without him, I would just fall behind. He’s so into everything social and digital. We’re probably the only NHL team that does GIFs to put highlights on Twitter. We get those up within two or three minutes and I haven’t seen any professional team do that that quickly, and he’s the one to show us the whole GIF world… Just be around other creative people and try to stay on top of it all, because I remember a couple years ago, Dewayne and I talked about Snapchat when it came out. Dewayne was like, “have you seen this thing?” I said, “ I don’t know what that is.” And Dewayne goes, ‘oh, it’s just for like, little kids to send naked photos to each other.’ And now it’s more of the most valuable assets on the Internet. So stay on top of it because who knows where it is going to go.

RV: What is the best piece of advice you can give fans on social media? Teams? Athletes?

DH: Be authentic. It’s really simple: be authentic. If you are an athlete and you don’t want… I know, for our team, if you don’t want to be on social media, then don’t do it, because if you don’t want the work that comes with having to answer people and engage with people, then don’t it. You have to have a passion for it, first of all, and you have to be authentic. If you aren’t, people’s BS meters are way, way better than they were years ago.

PD: I was just say for teams, and especially athletes, just to talk to people. It’s such a common thing where athletes just post photos. But then, you look at the replies and they never say anything. That’s a one-on-one contact that they could give a fan that has never been possible before. And there are still so many teams out there that I’ll look through their replies, and they’ll respond to maybe two fans through a whole day. At that point, you are just ignoring people. They know it. You’re in season and fans know that you’re reading their stuff. At least favorite it, or something. Give someone a short reply. Those little things go a long way.

"You have to have a passion for it, first of all, and you have to be authentic. If you aren’t, people’s BS meters are way, way better than they were years ago." - Dewayne Hankins

DH: I think that’s what honors the Kings so much in using social is that the Kings are known as an account on Twitter especially that is willing to engage with the fans and reply to their fans. Pat does this thing during the second intermission (of games) where he asks ‘Q&A Time with the Kings Twitter Guy,’ and it probably gets more engagement than anything else they do, and it’s just goes to show how much Pat’s team invests in the fans and talking to them, not at them.

PD: Yeah, it’s still unbelievable how many people respond to that, and especially during a slow game. Yesterday, they played Winnipeg. It’s not a national broadcast, a smaller Canadian team. It was a 4 o’clock start, it was just slow on Twitter. And then all of sudden, it’s time for second period Q&A, and I couldn’t even keep up with how many tweets we were getting. And I respond to at least 80 percent of them, even to the point where we’ve had out account shut down a few times for sending out too many tweets in a short amount of time.

You can follow Hankins at @DewayneHankins and the Trail Blazers at @trailblazers. You can follow Donahue at @patatack and the Kings at @LAKings.

Social Sitdown with: Devils Illustrated and Mountaineers Illustrated's Brian McLawhorn

In the first in the 'Social Sitdown' series on the The Social Sideline, Brian McLawhorn of DevilsIllustrated.com and MountaineersIllustrated.com sat down to talk about how social media has changed the sporting world.

Russell Varner: First, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Brian McLawhorn: My name is Brian McLawhorn, and I am the publisher for DevilsIllustrated.com and MountaineerIllustrated.com, affiliate websites of Yahoo! Sports and Rivals.com. I have been with Rivals.com for 11 years.

RV: How has social media changed your job/what you do?

BM: Social media has changed the sports industry in a huge way. For me, it has changed how we have to report the news and events surrounding Duke and Appalachian State sports. When I first began with Rivals.com and Yahoo! Sports, social media was not what it is today. Athletes were not heavily involved with social media, at least as a form to put out information about their recruitment, games, etc. Fans looked to us as journalists to provide that information through interviews and evaluations. When a recruit announced his decision to attend a particular school, fans would hang on to every word we said - we could truly use the news as a marketing component and increase subscription numbers significantly if a recruit had a high enough profile.

Once social media began to gain popularity, recruits started using it as a tool to update fans themselves, on their time. Subscriptions began to steadily decline because fans no longer needed to rely on us for the information - it was coming straight from the horses mouth and for free.

That forced us to reevaluate how we approach our business, and ultimately had to shift our business model from breaking news and updating statuses to evaluating and offering analysis. This approach helped slow the decline, but it certainly has not allowed us to recover as an industry and enjoy the level of success we did previously.

RV: How has social media changed the sporting world (in your mind)?

BM:It has closed the gap between the celebrity athlete and the regular, ordinary fan. Everyone has the opportunity to feel like their voice is being heard, and that there's an ability to interact directly with their favorite athletes.

When I was growing up, the only way you could connect with a professional athlete was to write a letter, send it to the organization and hope it made it into his hands. Now, fans can go directly to the source. It's really created a community that never existed before.

RV: What are the greatest strengths of social media?

BM: It depends on what lens you are looking through when answering this question. From a journalistic point of view it makes for tracking information a lot easier in some cases. The stories fall into your lap - you really don't have to dig quite as much for the stories. Certainly you have to in regards of getting the full details, but the stories themselves are right in front of you.

From a fans point of view, it's brilliant. The diehards can interact with one another. They can draw a closer connection with their favorite teams. It has really opened a whole new aspect of sport that I personally would never have imagined. Fans have an endless supply of information coming their way.

I think from an athlete's prospective, they have the ability to control their image a lot more than they could in the past. That's huge for athletes that feel as though they are misinterpreted through the media. It is a valuable tool for them to brand themselves how they want to. It also allows them to be as involved with their fan base as they want.

RV: What are the greatest dangers of social media?

BM: Again, I think it depends on the perspective you are looking at things through. From my viewpoint as a journalist, I think there are many dangers. It allows any random person to proclaim themselves to be a sports journalist, insider or expert. And as sad as it is to say, much of the general public is very naive and don't check the source in which they are getting their information. The next thing you know, rumors are spreading and true journalists are left cleaning up messes.

Thanks to social media, an extremely high percentage of what is being put out there is false information. I think that is very dangerous. It has the potential to ruin images and reputations.

It also allows for people to attack others and hide behind the anonymity of a username and never take accountability for things that are said. 

I could really go on forever with my thoughts on the dangers of social media from the angle of a journalist. Unfortunately, I don't think there's much of a way to regulate it and control the types of content that is put out.

RV: Talk about your favorite and least favorite aspects of social media.

BM: My favorite part of social media is the ability to interact with other fans and have real-time connections. I am also a big fan of the opportunity to get updated information instantly. I think there are a lot of benefits to be had with social media if it's used responsibly and I think it's a thing of beauty when it is used in that manner.

My least favorite aspect of it is the freedom to say whatever with no real consequences. I think it's a dangerous thing when people are not held accountable for what they say.

RV: What is the biggest piece of advice you would give fans on social media?

BM: The biggest piece of advice I can give fans using social media is to be smart about how you use it. Watch what you say. Make sure you have facts before making accusations and be aware of how what you say can impact others. I would also tell them not to blindly trust what they read without checking the source of the material and using some commonsense.

RV: What is the biggest piece of advice you would give athletes on social media?

BM: Be careful with what you say. It's out there and it can come back to haunt you if you're not careful. I personally feel like athletes, particularly college athletes, should steer clear of it. If you're a professional athlete, that's a different story. But college athletes play to a very passionate fanbase - particularly football and basketball. Opposing fans will try to bait you and set you up at times. If you feel the need to be on social media, ignore them. Don't respond. Be smart about how you use it and understand that people are watching and waiting for you to make a mistake.

RV: Where do you see the future of social media and sports going?

BM: That's a good question. I think the future will simply continue to grow the connection between fans and athletes. I don't see anything changing in regards to how social media is used. It's a forward moving industry, and I feel like athletes and fans will continue to embrace the control that is given to them through social media. I do fear, however, that fans will continue to grow more bold in how they use it and hope there are some ways of deterring such usage of social media. 

Follow Brian on Twitter at @DevilsIllust.

Think Before You Tweet: Athletes learning lessons the hard way

When an NFL team drafts a player in the first round, they are making a multi-million dollar investment into that player. It would make sense that a business would want to know as much as possible about their investment beforehand, and the Minnesota Vikings are no different.

Thanks to some research, the Vikings have already red flagged eight draft prospects for this year's draft because of dumb tweets the athletes have made.

To be 'red flagged' by an NFL team usually means that they will avoid drafting you at nearly all costs. So prospects are already losing out on potential jobs before they even set foot in Indianapolis for the Combine.

“There were guys I found on Twitter this year that I can’t believe they would post and re-Tweet some of the stuff they were saying,” Rick Spielman, general manager for the Vikings, told USA Today recently. “We wrote a report just on their Twitter accounts.

“I won’t say the names. But out of the 60 that we did, there are eight guys that we have concerns about their Twitter feeds that we will address here.”

Spielman mentioned tweets about partying and doing illegal drugs as some of the one that caught his attention. And this is far from the first instance of Twitter getting athletes in trouble.

 The New York Daily Times put together a gallery of such instances, ranging from international soccer star Wayne Rooney challenging someone to a fight to WNBA player Cappie Pondexter commenting on the tsunami in Japan, saying that God "makes no mistakes" and "They did pearl harbor."


Five years ago, when social media was still relatively new, an athlete may have been able to get away with tweeting something like that. But today, the majority of people know (or at least should know) that nothing you say on social media is private. Social media is available for the whole world to see and you need to have your guard up 24/7 to protect your brand and image.

We need to start teaching athletes as early as possible - possibly even freshman year of high school - to think before they tweet and that something they now could hurt them even two-three years in the future.

Given the immense scrutiny athletes on social media sites face on a daily basis, it could be one of the best moves for their careers.

Sideline Scoop: Infidelity and Beyond

Welcome to take two of the Sideline Scoop. Today, we will be taking a look at an interesting Twitter confession and two articles from the website Sports Networker.

1. Oliver Giroud admits infidelity...via Twitter

Oliver Giroud was best known for being the best goal-scoring threat on Arsenal FC. Then came Feb. 16, 2014, when, hours before a key match, he posted on his Twitter account that he had cheated on his wife. Not only was the timing of the announcement odd, but so was the medium by which he choose to relay his message that made it so unique. This article, posted on Bleacher Report, shows one of the dangers of Twitter: instant reaction from others.

2. The Social Media Engagement Guide

The first of two articles from Sports Networker, Lewis Howes takes a look at guidelines for teams and athletes, as well as businesses in general, to follow. It is a solid list that everyone should read and consider before they take part in social media.

3. Social Media and Sports Contracts

This article looks at extreme sports athletes (Tony Hawk, Shaun White and company) and how companies signed these athletes to contracts to promote their contract via social media, and where things will go from here.

Sideline Scoop: First Take

So begins the first of a new installment called the 'Sideline Scoop,' highlighting multiple stories, graphics and everything in between from all corners of the Internet.

This week, we'll be taking a look at a previously mentioned article on fans' influence on the college recruiting process, athletes taking to social media to make major announcements and a look at how fans engage in social media.

1. Social distortion: Twitter has given fans direct access to recruits, for better or worse

 ESPN.com posted this article around a month ago, which talks about what athletes on Twitter currently deal when Signing Day approaches. The article gives readers a good idea of what it is like to be a recruit today and how they deal with all of the voices they hear on social media sites such as Twitter.

2. Richie Incognito returns to Twitter/Jeter announces retirement on Facebook

Two of the bigger stories in sports recently have been the Wells report on the interactions between Miami Dolphins teammates Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin and Yankees captain and shortstop Derek Jeter announcing his retirement. The ESPN article looks at Incognito's final tweets before he quit the social media site and his first tweets when he returned to the site three days later. Meanwhile, Jeter's retirement alone would be a big story, but it became a big social media story when he made the announcement via his Facebook page. Who needs journalists to tell a story when you can do it yourself?

3. How Sports Fans Engage With Social Media

A PR firm called Catalyst put together an infographic on how sports fan engage with social media, showing that Google+ and YouTube are the fastest-growing social medias for sports fans. Find out more in this infographic via Mashable.