Monetizing Social Media in Sports with Sean Parker - Washington capitals - Part 2

>> Trevor Turnbull: You bring up a good point because time is a commodity that nobody has enough of nowadays and and in spreading yourself too thin you have a big risk in not seeing some type of result from what you're trying to do. You mentioned the idea of branding; this is a reflection of the Capitals brand and it's another platform where people engage. I'm looking at the page right now - people like this obviously. There's 91 people that have left notes on this photo of Karl Alzner giving cupcakes out in the media room. Ultimately what its your approach when you look at these new platforms on what you're trying to do with them? Are you just using them from a brand managing perspective to try to find another way to reach the fans? Or are you trying to drive traffic to a specific platform like the Web site or the Facebook page? Or is it all just kind of one big thing that works together and spins in circles and we'll see what happens in the end from a monetizing perspective over the next five years? >> Sean Parker: Sometimes you're looking at that and you're wondering, "what is the big plan behind all of this?" We look at it and, not necessarily with Tumblr, but we do look at each platform and say "how is it going to extend our brand, are we going to be able to engage with the fans and ultimately will this make us money." One thing that you dont want to do, whether it's in sports or any other business, is sit there and spend a lot of time and not see any return. I can sit there and post to my Facebook page or my Twitter account all day long but I wont necessarily see any return. I'm responsible for my budget here and I'm responsible for getting the word out about the Caps. When we look at Facebook, or any social network for that matter, we're looking at how we can leverage the fans that have liked us into one of our corporate sponsorships without it being just a simple pass-on or advertisement but actually being a benefit to the fan. The one thing that we want to always be cognizant of is if something is just an ad or an actual benefit to our fans. If it's just an ad we can put a dial ad on our site or a 300x250 ad on our site. If it's a benefit, and we want our fans to engage with us and we want to engage with them, then we need to give them a benefit. From that standpoint we look at social networks as a branding opportunity, as a way to further engage our fans. We do want to make money off of it so it's that fine line where you say, "Let's do some contesting based around joint prizes" or "let's find some way of getting some stuff out there that's a benefit to our fan and a benefit to our corporate sponsor from the association with our team." There's all of these ways of looking at it and kind of meshing it together. Hopefully it's not spinning to fast and too hard so that our heads spin but that we're actually creating win-win situations all around. >> Trevor: For sure. I think it is a major challenge, specifically in the sports industry, to not look at these tools purely as another source of revenue but at the same time sports is still a business. If it's not generating revenue it's tough to put a value on the engagement of the fan. At least it's tough to sell that come budget time. I know, even in the ticket sales world for example, they're directly measured on the number of leads they bring in and the number of leads they close and whether or not the seats are filled and if they're up selling corporate sponsorship and group ticket packages. There's no doubt that the monetizing of the social side of things is probably one of your biggest challenges going forward I would imagine. You mentioned that the social media stuff is definitely a bigger part of your role now? >> Sean: Yeah. A few years ago we started moving into the social space and it kind of fell into my lap. I really liked it, for whatever reason. I've worked at trying to maintain it and trying to keep it as part of my position here. We certainly have grown it as a way to communicate with our fans. We use some great tools and it can be expensive. People say but Facebook is free, but Twitter is free; yes but it costs you time to build contests into Facebook or into Twitter. It costs you time to monitor stuff and see what fans are actually saying about you. A lot of time that's all we have, that time. We don't have billable dollars. Like you said its a commodity that we have to use. One of the tools that we do use to try and help us along is something called Involver. On the back end we have a developer here in house who does a lot of development on the site with coding but he also does a lot of development on Facebook. Involver is his primary tool and the language that they use and it's one where we can post to Facebook, Twitter and Google+ all at the same time. It's not necessarily an automation because we're the ones writing and posting but it's helping us get our word out quickly and across different platforms simultaneously where before we'd be flipping back and forth between some kind of Twitter client and Facebook. Or using a tool like Tweet Deck or something that wasn't reaching all of our audience but just part of it. >> Trevor: Yeah. With the changes that are coming up with Facebook too I know that, again, harps on the time thing right? There's a whole bunch of new stuff to learn when it comes to the new layouts and the way that you can use the gated pages to be able to get people to like, to take some type of action. It's a full time job in itself almost just to manage Facebook isn't it? >> Sean: Yeah, it comes down to that. Fortunately I split that time with our developer. He's got a pretty good knack on some of that stuff so we let him kind of run with it. Especially the development end; we take a look at it and say, "OK, let's do this" or "change that" or "yes it looks good and move forward" or "let's go this direction." Yeah it does end up eating time especially when, we were just talking about it earlier today in a meeting I was having with him about what's coming up, I'm looking at my calendar on the wall here and we have two different contests that are coming down Thursday and another one going up. It's just this constant flux of let's not overlap our social contests, let's put this up then and it's a matter of timing and keeping everything there. Then we started talking about the timeline; we haven't flipped our Fanpage over to a timeline yet, to Facebook's new timeline. We've been holding off until one contest ends. We're going to hold off until that contest ends and then we'll flip it before the next contest begins. We want to fill that timeline with information going back a few years, at least to '74. So there's all of these little bits and pieces that we have to put together before we can actually flip it to something that we want to actually present to the public. >> Trevor: Right, yeah. Just a broken version of what you were hoping to do because you were forced into it right? The nice part is they're not going to force you to do it until the 30th, I think it is, of March. There are a few weeks there. >> Sean: Yeah. If we can't fill it up with content by the 15th then I think we're going to wait a few days. >> Trevor: Take that grace period. I'm looking at the Facebook page again, and I want to talk about a couple of other things but, I just want to ask one more question about this Sean. In regards to Facebook in particular and the integration of sponsors and the challenge of keeping sponsorship integration from just simply being a banner or being overly-spammy or overly-salesy, that type of thing. How do you guys work internally between your department, as well as other departments, that might be selling this stuff too? The sponsorship guys or the marketing guys. Maybe just give us a sense of what that whole departmental relationship looks like when it comes to stuff on Facebook and other platforms too. I'm just looking at Facebook right now. >> Sean: Yeah. We actually talk quite a bit with our corporate partnership department about what plans they want for social. It seems everybody is coming to them right now and saying I want to be on your social media whatever. Whether it's Facebook or Twitter or Google or whatever you're doing I want to be a part of it. >> Trevor: Do you mean the sponsors? The sponsors are coming to them and saying they want to be a part of it? >> Sean: Yes. They want to be a tied to the team and they want, as part of that tie in, access to our social media. We're running a contest right now with Amtrak that's on our site but we pushed it via social media. We have an agreement with ESRB, the guys who rate video games, and we've pushed some stuff for them via social media. Right now we have a contest running for free windows. If you go in and you dress your window with Caps stuff you'll get free windows from this company, Windows Nation. There's these relationships that we build. For example, Window Nation was really interested in getting involved with our social media and they didn't know how to approach it or how to do it. We sat down with the corporate partnership and said let's find a way of contesting, but not just a sweepstakes. Let's make it a little bit more so it gets viable leads and these are people that actually want the product. That's one of the things that we looked at for that. We had so many people asking for end of the season and first round of the playoffs, knock on wood, that we set up a meeting to go over the contesting and how we would do different contests running now until the end of the regular season. There's a little bit of who's on board for this or who's on deck for that and what can we do to make them happy or how much is too much. A lot of times they'll look at us and say, "really, is tweeting this out three or four times per day too much?" Yeah. Is tweeting this out three or four times per week too much? It depends on what it is, maybe not. There's always that kind of conversation going on. >> Trevor: Yeah. It's interesting that you say that these sponsors are coming to you guys looking for ways to integrate and tap into that audience that you have built on some of the social channels. I know when we first met a lot of times the biggest challenge was that social media was kind of a throw in right? It was oh and by the way we'll tweet about this for you and we'll post something on our Facebook page that will drive people to this custom landing page, microsite, and get people to come in store. Now that's kind of shifted to where people aren't even so concerned about the Web site stuff. They just want the engagement. Or at least the ones that are very proactive and understand the value of it are starting to see that there's a lot of value in the social side of things. >> Sean: Yeah. We've had a couple of partners that have, from the get go, been really smart about social media. Demographics might not fit but they've always been smart about social media and wanting us to be a part of their plan on their social as well as our social. Nowadays it has to be a part of your media plan, part of your marketing plan. It cant be that throw in anymore. It's too valuable. When you have everybody coming to you, you kind of look at it and realize this is valuable. We shouldn't just be throwing it in when that does happen. I think more and more people are becoming aware of its value, I would hope so. I think people here inside the organizational becoming more and more aware of its value, especially the power that it can have to reach a fan. To use an example outside of the industry, we were all talking about this the other day, Kony 2012. I'm sure you've seen this video; 43 million people have seen it. That's the power of social media. You think back a few years ago during the tsunami and we found out about the tsunami via social media. Japan's earthquake is the same thing; we found out via social media. The guy was live tweeting Osama Bin Laden's assault - that's pretty incredible. You have this news that is instantaneous and there and it's so valuable now and such a part of our lives and such a part of media and news that we can't just let it be "oh hey, we'll tweet that for you." It is one of the most powerful ways, I think, of reaching our fans. >> Trevor: No doubt. There's no disputing that for sure. I guess one of the opportunities going forward will be to show the measurable results of that too, the analytical side of it. I know a lot of sponsors still speak in that language. Even though they're looking at the Kony video and all of these obvious things that are just proving that this is not a fad, this is a reality of the way that people communicate now, it can't be ignored. They still dont really understand how to value it right? From a dollars and cents perspective in the way that they might a rink board or being in the program or being up on the video board. They can understand that there's 18,000 people in the seats and those 18,000 may or may not see it but there's a likelihood that they might because there's music playing in the background. Just a different way of thinking; how can you package up the social stuff too so that they can not only see that here's our big audience but here's what they're doing too. They're talking, they're engaging, they're taking action, they're signing up for something, which ultimately means that they might become a customer of that brand. I'm just kind of rambling about the opportunities that I see in that space. >> Sean: We've actually started doing some of that on the analytics end. We've been monitoring it for a while; obviously your likes and follows but also your engagements and also which hashtags are gaining acceptance and how deep they are. It's amazing, some of the tools that are out there and how they all mesh together and how much information you can actually get on a fan based on social media. You have to know, like you said, who is saying what, where and how and where are they? You have to be able to measure that and you have to be able to show your partners how much it's worth. 18,000 people might be in the arena on a game-by-game basis seeing a video but 18,000 people saw that tweet this morning. Even if maybe 100 people retweet it - >> Trevor: With the expanding reach of their audience. >> Sean: Yeah. It's amazing how quickly the two friends tell two friends, tell two friends thing explodes on the social front. >> Trevor: No doubt.