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.
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.
