Staying On Top of an Everchanging Internet Landscape

One of the biggest things I have learned this past semester while writing the Social Sideline is that in order to be successful in new media (Internet, social media, etc.) today, you have to be on top of all the trends and apps, becoming a part of the influencers and the "early majority" of users, as opposed to catching on to something late. 

This, of course, leads to the question of how one stays on tops of trends in an online world where 15 minutes of fame has decreased to just 15 seconds of fame?

1. Be flexible
Trends and apps rise and fall at the drop of a hat it seems today - remember how popular those Harlem Shake videos were on YouTube? Remember how big games like Candy Crush and Flappy Bird got? Yet, as quickly as those rose to prominence, they disappeared into obscurity again. Even sites that seem firmly entrenched (looking at you MySpace) can fall from grace, so to speak. So be prepared for any and all apps and trends and, more importantly, to change your content so that it fits. For example, Vine only shows six seconds of videos. So find ways to get important information in then. Show the team coming onto the field. Get video of postgame celebrations. Make sure to give the audience things they cannot get anywhere else. Which leads to point #2...

2. Separate yourself
The beauty of the Internet is that anyone and everyone can add to the conversation. Unfortunately, this also leads to a whole lot of noise, making it hard for even the best work to raise to the top. There are ways though, and you need to find the one that works best for you. Find a topic that few people are talking about and focus on that. Answer questions for people. Find a niche and stick with it. On that same note, follow people who talk a similar topic as you and do what they do not. Some good sports social media accounts I follow (in case you are curious) include MLB Fan Cave, Fieldhouse Media, Wealthbridge, SB Nation and Black and Blue Review.

3. Follow influencers
If you cannot become an influencer, then you should find them and follow them closely. They are the ones who help create and determine what is popular and the public's opinion of things. What to know what the next big thing will be? Follow these guys closely and you will be ahead of the curve at whatever comes next.

Does the NFL Need A Stricter Social Media Policy?

Miami Dolphins safety Don Jones is in hot water for tweets he made in relation to Michael Sam.

As you are most likely aware by now, the recent National Football League Draft saw the first openly gay player drafted in NFL history in Missouri linebacker Michael Sam. Many celebrated the pick, but when Sam was shown on television kissing his partner, some...not-so-nice tweets came out (to put it nicely). Among those that tweeted negatively were Miami Dolphins safety Don Jones, who would later be fined and excused from the team for what he said.

It even went outside the realm of the NFL. Ole Miss guard Marshall Henderson attacked SportsCenter via Twitter for showing the kiss, saying:

Henderson would later say that the tweets were a part of a "psychology experiment" for a friend of his who was also gay.

All of this bothered many, including Bleacher Report NFL columnist Mike Freeman, who questioned if the NFL needed to reform their social media policy. Many leagues, including the NFL, have social media policies that restrict when a player or coach can tweet, but there is nothing in the policies that talk about what someone can tweet about. Freeman asked league spokesman Greg Aiello about this, and Aiello's response was as close to perfect as you could get in such a situation.

"As far as comments on social media, players and all NFL personnel are accountable for what they say, same as we are when being interviewed by a member of the media."

New York Giants offensive lineman Geoff Schwartz added that perhaps the league could set guidelines for punishment on tweets, but that there's no way the league could police every player's Twitter account, so there should not be further policy on this (see the Tweet here).

I believe that the NFL's current stance on the content of tweets is the best way to go about it currently. As Schwartz stated, it would be near-impossible for any league, not just the NFL, to monitor the social media accounts of every athlete. Plus, playing Big Brother is no way to build trust between a league and its players - just ask colleges how well that works for them.

Maybe somewhere down the road, someone will find a better way to monitor player's accounts, but for now, holding athletes responsible for what appears on their social media accounts is the best practice for leagues.

#WeAreAllMonkeys: A Fútbol Approach to Dealing with Racism

Bananas: Bringing People Together Since April 2014

In case you missed it, racism has become the hot topic in sports over the past week, thanks to some leaked comments from Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. You've probably read plenty about that, so I don't need to say much there.

What you probably did not hear as much about is what happened that same weekend during a professional soccer/fútbol match in Spain. During a match between FC Barcelona and Villareal FC, Barcalona defender Dani Alves went to take a corner kick. As he was preparing to take a kick, a fan from the stands threw a banana at Alves. Yes, you read that right. Disgusting act of racism, right? Don't worry though, Alves reacted in arguably the best way possible.


His act quickly spread on social media from one soccer fan to another. Then, his teammate, young soccer starlet Neymar, posted the following photo on Instagram.


He included four hashtags with the photo: "#somostodosmacacos," "#weareallmonkeys," "#somostodosmonos" and "#totssommonos." All four hashtags translate to 'we are all monkeys.'

Suddenly, player after player and team after team began posting their own #weareallmonkeys photos on social media.

With my colleague Marta from Brazil we say #NoToRacism. We are all equal. pic.twitter.com/0kWLsaAgwP
— Sergio Aguero (@aguerosergiokun) April 28, 2014

With my mate @Phil_Coutinho #SayNoToRacism #WeAreAllMonkeys pic.twitter.com/mY3W4GogqZ
— Luis Suarez (@luis16suarez) April 28, 2014

#SomosTodosMacacos pic.twitter.com/lgxJLBa9X0
— Corinthians Paulista (@Corinthians) April 28, 2014

Juventus #SayNoToRacism con @danistone25 @Asabob20 #Pogba #Giovinco (1/2) pic.twitter.com/tj0qZ8XfAJ
— JuventusFC (@juventusfc) April 29, 2014

Even the Maldivian national team are going bananas pic.twitter.com/Wgi1rA3LFu
— 101 Great Goals (@102greatgoals) April 29, 2014

#SayNoToRacism #weareallmonkeys #Schalke #S04 pic.twitter.com/scY5vkZaC4
— FC Schalke 04 (@s04) April 29, 2014

The movement initially looked like a great success, particularly for something as spontaneous as it was.

But, just as with David Ortiz's viral selfie with President Obama, it turns out to was not as spontaneous as it seemed. Turns out that Neymar himself, who has dealt with racist acts this season, actually hatched the idea to eat a banana that was thrown at him, with the help of some advisors, including Neymar's father.

Alves had the opportunity before Neymar did, and did not think twice about eating the thrown fruit. Neymar then took to Instagram to launch the campaign, including with the photos the hashtags that were actually planned out by a Brazilian marketing firm.

Guga Ketzer, who works at the marketing firm, said:

"Actions speak louder than words. A gesture needs no translation and what we’re seeing is that this has gone viral, globally. The concept was for Neymar to eat the banana, but in the end it was Alves, and that works just the same.
The best way to beat prejudice is to take the sting out of the action so it is not racist repeated. We created #weareallmonkeys #somostodosmacacos, with the gesture of eating a banana, and it has been turned into a movement."

More information can be found here.

The fact that the act and movement was preplanned should not diminish what Neymar and Alves have been able to accomplish. They have brought worldwide attention to the racism that still exists overseas. Working with a marketing firm certainly helped with the success of the #weareallmonkeys movement and should be something athletes consider doing more often in the future.

If the racist acts of this past weekend have done nothing else, they have reminded us that A. unfortunately, racism still exists. B. just how powerful social media can be when used correctly by opinion leaders and those with massive followings.

And for those wondering, the fan suspected of throwing the banana has been found and arrested.

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.

Sideline Scoop: Troll So Hard

With the rise of social media sites and messages boards, Internet trolls have also become increasingly popular. For those who do not know, a troll is defined by Wikipedia as "person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people by posting inflammatory, extraneous or off-topic messages in an online community with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion." For more information on trolls, check on the YouTube channel Gloves and Boots' informative guide on trolls and the levels of trolling.

This also means that trolls have found their way into the sporting world. And no, it's not just the fans. Even athletes, teams and general managers are starting to show signs of becoming trolls. Let's take a look at just three examples from the past few weeks.

1. Houston Rockets got jokes!

Meet Portland Trail Blazers center Robin Lopez, who is probably better known for his hair than his playing ability (though that is not shot at his skill level). The Trail Blazers are taking on the Houston Rockets in the first round of the NBA Playoffs and, during Game One of their series, the Rockets sent out of the following tweet, more or less comparing Lopez to Simpsons' character Sideshow Bob.

You know, I think they may be on to something...

Ohio State quarterback Braxton Miller, who has given Michigan plenty of fits on the field, is now taking shots at the school off the field.

2. Aren't rivalries great?

It's the spring, which means it's the quiet downtime of the off-season for most football players.  It also means that college spring games are underway, and any chance a team has to take a shot at a rival is free game. Ohio State quarterback Braxton Miller took the opportunity to send out a tweet comparing the spring game attendance's of his school to that of their biggest rival, Michigan.

Toronto Raptors' GM Masai Ujiri pumps up fans using some unique language.

3. Toronto Raptors' GM is not the biggest fan of Brooklyn. Apparently.

The Toronto Raptors are in the playoffs for the first time since 2008, so the city is understandably excited. The team is hosting the Brooklyn Nets, and prior to the first game of the series, Raptor General Manager Masai Ujiri was giving a speech to help pump up the fans. Thanks to Instagram, we have video of what transpired (WARNING: NSFW language). There has been somewhat of a rivalry between the two franchises ever since the Raptors traded Vince Carter to the Nets and Carter, who some believed was not trying his hardest in Toronto, suddenly became a star again for the Nets.

#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.

Tom Crean's Backfiring Tweet and What We Can Learn From It

Indiana head coach Tom Crean opened a can of worms with his recent tweet.

Poor Tom Crean and Indiana University's PR Department. All they wanted was to try to get fans involved and closer to the team.

So some back story first: Indiana University is one of the proudest college basketball programs in the nation, but one that has fallen on tough times lately (the team did not even make the NIT Tournament this year). Fans have grown tired of this and are beginning to sour on the team's head coach, Tom Crean.

Back to the present day. Tom Crean, who in the past has said that he doesn't read replies on Twitter (red flag right there), tweeted the following out to his 138,000+ followers:

So innocent. So simple. But left wide open for trolls.

Seems innocent enough. It's even a great idea, a way for fans to feel a part of their favorite team and try to inspire them daily. Unfortunately, this is the age of the Internet, and trolls thrive on things like this like never before.

Responses came in quickly to Crean's tweet, but none of them were what the team at Indiana was expecting. Most people brought up the team's recent poor play. Others took shots at the coach himself. Take, for example, @RealPhilS, who said that playing for Indiana meant "TO BE VERY TALENTED BUT HAVE YOUR SH*TTY COACH F*CK UP YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING" (On a related note, @RealPhilS should read this comic on typing in all-caps). More examples of responses can be seen here.

My fear from this response is that teams and schools will stop doing things like this altogether, which is the opposite of what they should do. Much like a white paper I recently helped write for class, schools needs to teach everyone, from their student-athletes to those who coach them, the proper way to use social media and how to respond to situations like this. And no, ignoring them is not the correct answer.

So what can we learn from Indiana's mistakes?

• Know your fan base 

Indiana is coming off a 17-15 (7-11 Big Ten) season that saw them fail to make a postseason tournament.. For a team with such a prestigious history, that is not a good season Fans are not exactly going to be in the happiest of moods right now. Therefore, it's probably not the best time to ask such an open-ended question on a site like Twitter, where trolls lurk around every corner just waiting for an opportunity like this.

• Take the good with the bad

Unfortunately, as Alfred in the movie 'The Dark Knight' pointed out, "some men just want to watch the world burn." Regardless of what you do or say, some commentators to online posts will always troll and post negative things. Do not let that discourage you from trying to interact with your fans and readers though. The loudest ones are often the minority.

• Develop a social media strategy beforehand

 It is best to develop a strategy beforehand of what you will post, when you will post it and how you will respond to both positive and negative responses to that post. I am sure that Indiana had a plan when they had Crean post the tweet (because I have trouble believing someone who has so openly criticized Twitter in the past would come up with this idea on his own), but I do not think they executed it as well as they could have. It may have been better to have the school's official Twitter account post the question as opposed to Crean's account. But every mistake is a chance to learn, and I am sure that Indiana and Crean have learned plenty from the tweet.

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.

Sideline Scoop: Twitter - Sport's New Battleground

While Twitter has often made news for negative interactions between fans and athletes, it has been more a case of athlete vs. athlete or even owner vs. team recently. In this edition of the Sideline Scoop, we take a look at a player-on-player Twitter fight, a baseball owner taking a shot at another team and (on a lighter note) a college football coach getting closer to his fans.

1. He May Have a Point, But Still...

Let's summarize the fight here: the Boston Red Sox and Miami Marlins played a spring training game where the Red Sox had just two players with major league experience on their roster. The Red Sox GM apologized after reports came out that the Marlins were "outraged," particularly after they raised ticket prices for the game. John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox and former owner of the Marlins, then sent out the tweet seen above - an uncommon move for any sports owner not named Mark Cuban.

2. So Guys, Who is the NFL's Top Cornerback?

One of the bigger moves in the first few days of free agency was the Denver Broncos signing cornerback Aqib Talib. When the mive was announced, LaGarrette Blount, a teammate of Talib's in New England, tweeted congrats to his former teammate and called him "the best corner in the league." Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman (of this rant fame) did not take this comment lightly and challenged Blount on who exactly was the best corner in the league: Talib or himself. It is hard to say who won, though Sherman got a nice last shot in.

UPDATE: It seems Mr. Sherman and Washington Redskins cornerback DeAngelo Hall also had some words (even former wide receiver Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson made an appearance).

3. Kliff Kingsbury: A Man of the People

A popular trend lately is for athletes and celebrities to go the website Reddit and take part in an AMA (ask me anything) session. These are quite popular because Reddit users will say and ask pretty much anything and everything and the celebrities usually have some fun with the Reddit users. The latest sports figure to engage in an AMA: Ryan Gosling look-a-like, former Texas Tech quarterback and current head coach Kliff Kingsbury. The highlights from this session included questions about him being a Jeopardy answer and his thoughts on Rachel McAdams in the movie 'The Notebook.'

Sideline Scoop: Selfie Jerseys on the Way

You read that headline correctly. A baseball team will wear a jersey full of selfies for an upcoming game. All this, plus a more NHL news and a team (finally) taking advantage of Snapchat, this week on the Sideline Scoop!

1. Baseball Team to Don Selfie Jersey

Baseball teams are know to have some crazy promotions, and this latest one may be the best combination of social media and sports yet. The Kalamazoo Growlers, a collegiate summer baseball league team, are inviting fans to post selfies on social media that will be used for a jersey the team will wear and later auction off.

2. NHL Player Collapse, Social Media Responds

Earlier this week, Dallas Stars center Rich Peverley collapsed on the bench during the first period of a game and was taken to a hospital. Social media (particularly other NHL teams) immediately began selling well wishes to Peverly and the Dallas Stars took the time to respond to every team that tweeted at them.

3. Saints Scoring Big on Snapchat

Snapchat is still a relatively new media that many teams are struggling to understand a way to fit into their social media plans. The New Orleans Saints may have figured out a blueprint for other teams to follow though. Here, we find an extensive interview with Alex Restrepo of the Saints to learn how the team got involved with Snapchat and why they have been so successful with it (as of January, the team had more than 36,000 followers on the site).

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.

Social Sideline: How the NHL is Changing the Game

The National Hockey League has gone through tough times in recent years, thanks to a lockout that hurt all momentum the team once had. The league needed a new way to connect to and bring back fans and saw an opening in social media. Where many leagues and teams kept their social media accounts, particularly on Twitter, as professional as possible, the NHL began to write tweets in the similar fashion as a fan. Here, we take a look at just three examples of the league bucking the trend and breaking out from the crowd.

1. The Los Angeles Kings' Twitter Account - the Originator

The trend began to gain momentum during the Los Angeles Kings' Stanley Cup run in 2012, when the Kings' Twitter account started poking fun at the teams they eliminated and their fans. The team's Twitter followers skyrocketed, and the rest is history.

2. Twitter Fights Galore

One of the most popular parts of the game of hockey are the fights, so it only makes sense that teams take part in "Twitter fights." Take the rival Edmonton Oilers and Vancouver Canucks throwing Twitter jabs at one another. They will even pick fights outside the hockey world - see the Dallas Stars vs. Justin Bieber fans (Round 1 and Round 2).

3. They are more snarky than professional at times

Snarky is defined as "sarcastic, impertinent, or irreverent in tone or manner." This is where the "tweet more as fans than professionals" comes into play. Take, for example, this list of three examples the NHL has the best Twitter accounts (according to brocouncil.com). ESPN has been a popular source of snark for NHL Twitter accounts as well. SportsCenter has a reputation of ignoring hockey to focus on other sports, and some teams like to poke fun at that every now and then.

 

New Media Means New Interactions between Fans and Athletes

Miami Heat star poses with fans at an Ohio State game in a photo he posted on his Instagram account.

Obviously, social media has brought fans closer to their favorite athletes and teams than ever before. This also means that athletes are now able to connect with their fans (and those who are not such big fans of theirs) in ways that were never possible before. Some athletes use the new technologies to let fans know what is going on in their daily lives. Others still interact directly with their fans, engaging in everything from Reddit 'Ask Me Anything' sessions to spontaneously taking Twitter followers to dinner.

A screenshot of the top of Ricardo Kakà's Facebook page

Facebook could be called one of the originators of the social media. Taking notes from MySpace, Facebook is now one of, if not the, most popular websites in the world. Athletes will often have private Facebook profiles so that they are not bombarded daily by fans. For that, some players have created their own Facebook pages, such as Brazilian fútbol star Ricardo Kakà. As a worldwide star, Kakà has to cater to a fan base of more than 26 million fans on Facebook, and he does as fine a job as any catering to those fans. The page will often post "Words of Wisdom" or Bible passages because he is a very religious person. It provides photos of Kakà training and playing with his club, AC Milan, as well as gameday infographics and shots of him off the field with his family. In addition to all of this, the page includes links to other social media pages belonging to the soccer star and almost every post is in multiple languages to welcome fans from all over the world.

Though it is one of the newer social medias, athletes have taken to Instagram in full force, giving fans fancy filtered views into their lives (even if the posts have gotten slightly predictable). NBA players in particular seem to love the application, which took off during the 2012 Summer Olympics as the US Olympic team used Instagram to chronicle their time in London. Since that time, the league's two biggest stars, LeBron James and Kevin Durant, have embraced the site and frequently post to it, even though both are in the middle of playoff runs with their respective teams. Want to know if it is working? Then consider this: LeBron James posted a photo of his breakfast along the waterside, a basic photo on Instagram. As of this posting, the photo has more than 101,000 likes.

While social media has indeed brought players and fans closer than ever before, it has also given "trolls" and people who are not fans of a certain player a new avenue in which to communicate. This can often lead to some bad situations, such as players receiving death threats from fans due to one play in a game. Twitter is one of the worst when it comes to this, though most players will just ignore the "haters." Every now and then though, athletes will respond to this people and when they do, it usually ends poorly for the fan talking trash. Take Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman. Remember him?

Well, following the Seahawks' victory over the Denver Broncos in the most recent Super Bowl (a game in which Sherman got injured), a fan decided he would voice his opinion on how Sherman deserved what he got (Warning: Includes NSFW language). Sherman went through all of his Twitter mentions after the Super Bowl win and thanked everyone, though he had something special for the fan who spoke ill of him.

If there was ever a textbook on how to deal with "trolls" online, this would surely make the book.

To summarize, athletes are still learning how exactly to use the various social medias available. And while much of what makes the news may be negative, there are still plenty of good seeds out there to outweigh and counter the bad seeds.