Los Angeles teams social media audit

Social Media Audit

Group 11

Aaron Rodriguez

Michelle Shaihor

Monique Cedillo

Vivian Khuu

MKT 3800-01

Professor Pendarvis

18 May 2018

Los Angeles Sports Industry

The entire sports industry is worth 1.3 trillion dollars worldwide and 496.1 billion in North America according to Plunkett Research. The Los Angeles sports industry is a widely publicized portion of the sports industry media due to its multitude of large media companies in the city. So, when it  comes to social media it is a good place to study because of its fans dedication to the teams and their multitude of media ideologies through the city. sThe companies inside the industry have very loyal fans who are generational and highly integrated into families. The Los Angeles teams we are studying take up 7.5 billion dollars in that industries assets with billions more in advertising revenue.

There are 5 major sports competitors in the industry which are Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey and Soccer. All these sports are looking for new ways to interact with their fans because fans are becoming more sophisticated in the way which they want to interact with brands and are looking for a more immersive experience. The biggest trend in social media and sports right now is trying to find new ways to get fans to interact more with sports teams with encapsulating attractions like pop up booths which give fans new ways to take pictures in photo booths as well as make them feel like they are professional athletes with workout attractions and other skills drills. When sports teams are not trying to excite their fans with popup booths they use unique social media experiences. One of the biggest ways social media is backing this initiative is by implementing live games on their social media platforms.

Sports teams are looking for new and creative ways to interact with their fans.  During certain sporting events social media platforms open forums where people can interact with other users by searching up a hashtag or it will just pop up on their feed. Social media is also using 360 video to make an immersive experience to show fans their stadiums and new ways to feature their players by giving the opportunity to transport themselves into their world.

Social media is becoming a major player in the advertising and fan interaction with sporting brands with all these fascinating features that create a new creative experience with sporting brands. Most people that are becoming a larger and more growing segment of sports fans are people that are 18-29 and they are more receptive to exciting imagery and use of technology in order to be advertised to. This is why the sports industry is pushing harder and harder to have a larger social media presence and be able to interact with this segment of the market. Social media’s largest demographics are from 18-29 on all social media platforms. However, on Facebook there is a large segment of 30-49 year olds and 50-64 year olds. This is why sports teams are looking to break into social media and Facebook specifically because, they break into their demographics of their fan base so they want to interact with them and have them be involved with their brand as much as they can.   

Los Angeles Lakers

    The Los Angeles Lakers are an organization which is part of the National Basketball Association. The organization started as the Detroit Gems in the National Basketball League they then moved to Minneapolis in 1947 and they  changed their name to the Lakers to reflect the state's nickname of the “ land of 10,000 lakes”. Then in 1960 they moved to Los Angeles where they reside today.  The brand is a long lasting staple of the NBA and has iconic matchups and memories associated with it which its fans continue to preserve the history of the organization and their success. Their brand positioning strategy is to highlight their past success and continue to build upon that success. They carry this over into social media by showing photos and videos of old success and showing their current progress of the team through updates of training camps, practices and key moves of the organization. The three social media platforms which we will be looking at for this brand are Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. On twitter they have a strong social media presence, they hovered around seven million followers over the three week period of monitoring. The posts however, where all over the place when it came to the amount of interactions on the post. During the day some posts would have two thousand retweets and ten thousand likes and others would have ten retweets and fifty likes a few minutes later. They are constantly posting about the team which doesn’t seem to be effective because users seem to get tired from them constantly popping up on their feed. This shows the constant changes in social media reaction to  posts and they are never constant. The content has to constantly be interactive in order to reach more people. The content that was most successful would be content that had links and lead to another page where people could read an article about a topic. People that interact with the brand are interested in getting to know more about the organization and people within the organization opposed to just reading updates about the activities of the organization.  All of the comments that were posted on the organizations posts were positive but were very little. This is due to the lack of opportunity for interaction on the posts by the Lakers. Simple updates don’t spark conversation but posting articles do because of the opinion that the article puts out there which is shown by the discrepancy in comments on the different posts.

Marketing tactics that this Facebook page used was that it implemented a vertical network. The common hobby that they emphasized was the Los Angeles Lakers team  and this in turn drew lots of individuals to the Facebook site. This marketing tactic is very effective considering the Facebook page has a total of 21,449981 likes. The Facebook page also creates secondary content that many people like, and share to their own pages. With many shares, this shows that the effectiveness of the secondary content that they make is very high. The Los Angeles Lakers Facebook page has created an effective social presence within the community that is clearly shown in their fan base. The content posted by the brand that received a lot of attention were posts about new players coming in. Fans are very selective and attentive to the players on the team so if there is someone new coming in to the team, whether it be through a trade or free agency,  then it receives a lot of exposure. Fans are very interested to see who the team recruits and trades. An example would be a post from April 9th, about the Lakers signing Andre Ingram. This post in itself got 3.9k reactions, 233 comments, and 230 shares. Then the following day, posts were dedicated to the new player, Andre Ingram, and how well he was performing. These posts did exceptionally well. One video post about Andre Ingram, gathered 33.8k reactions, 733 comments, and 5.3k shares from fans. Positive social media user reactions to content posted and tactics used by the brand to leverage brand-user engagement was if someone agreed with the page, they would either react to the post with a positive reaction or they would comment their opinion in supporting the post. However the Facebook page did not try any tactics to leverage brand-user engagement because they did not engage with their fans. Content posted by the brand that did not receive a lot of attention were posts either about game plays and what could be done differently, sponsored posts, or posts about players exiting the team. An example would be this one post sponsored by Verizon April 9th. It was a post that was about Verizon hosting a Lakers Watch Party. This gathered a total of 282 reactions, 0 comments, and 9 shares. These numbers are considerably low when you compare them with other posts made by this page. Another example would be this post on April 10th, that was about how the Lakers have improved in their defense and the creation of the final roster. This post had 243 reactions, 3 comments, and 5 shares. Another set of low numbers for the Los Angeles Lakers Facebook page. An example of a player exiting that did not receive much attention is this post about Ivicia Zubac leaving. Posted on April 12th, gathered 415 likes, 48 comments, and 17 shares. This video post did not do as well likely because of player popularity or the fact that the player was exiting the team, making him less valuable to fans. Negative social media user reactions to content posted usually consisted of users leaving an angry or negative reaction or leaving a negative comment. They did not use any specific tactics to address negative comments. Negative comments were simply there in the comments section and were only approached by other individuals not associated with the page. What we recommend the Los Angeles Facebook page do to improve the brand’s social media presence is  increase their fan engagement. They can do this by interacting more with the fans, by reacting to their comments or replying to their comments. We also recommend that the Los Angeles Lakers continue on building their brand identity. They can keep doing this by only focusing solely on the Lakers and their games. When it comes to content these two should be their main focus and they should not stray to far from it. Another recommendation that we have is that the posts are more evenly distributed. Sometimes the Facebook page tends to spam one day while others days don’t receive as much post exposure. They are missing out on days where they can potentially reach more fans.

Instagram being one of the many platforms that the Lakers are active on cater to an audience of the ages 18-29. On Instagram the Lakers have a weak social media presence compared to Twitter and Facebook, over the three week monitoring period they gained a thousand followers. The posts were inconsistent with the amount of comments that were received on each post. The Lakers received a lot more feedback from their fans when the posts were player related, rather than paid partnerships. When posts were about the players they would receive a higher amount of likes and comments rather than when there was posts about a paid partnership, likes and comments would decrease. Posting about the players and the team is more effective than posting about other brands. People that interact with the Lakers were posting more positive feedback when they were seeing team related posts. Fans want to see their team and what they are up to, not see partnership ads. Posts about current players, new players and throwbacks of great legends that played on the team were what the fans loved to see. Content posted of the team and their latest updates having to do with the team is what fans want to see to be able to express their opinions and feel involved with the team.

Los Angeles Dodgers

The Dodgers started in brooklyn in 1854 and stayed there until 1957 where they then moved to Los Angeles where they stayed there and continue to be there today. Different social media platforms intend to target different demographics. For example, on Twitter they are trying to reach a younger generation mostly people in high school and college. Opposed to on Facebook who are trying to reach middle aged to older users. The way in which they achieve this is through integrating the live events on social media feeds. Live streamed events are put on feeds and users and they are encouraged to interact with other users by having easily accessible reaction buttons as well as having a comment tool at the bottom which is easily visible. Through these easy tools they look to increase interaction with users on the platform. On different social media platforms they have different approaches to reaching their audience since on Twitter most of their users are between the ages of 18-29 they look to post on Mondays and Wednesdays the most because on Mondays is when they have the most traffic on Twitter because of people posting whatever happened during their weekend. The Dodgers following base had little change over the three weeks. They continuously hovered around two million followers each week. The social media postings however had drastic changes throughout the week some posts would have fourteen hundred retweets and then others would have fifty. Content that had more animations on the post would have more retweets and likes on their posts opposed to static images even though content was similar. This shows that their fans are interested in content which they can be excited to see even if the text is similar, it’s more about how they present their content opposed to what the content is.

For the Los Angeles Dodgers Facebook page they used many marketing tactics to impose a strong social media presence and they have also formed a strong social media community on Facebook. This community on the Facebook page consisting of 3,379,431 likes. Another marketing tactic that is very effective for the Los Angeles Dodgers Facebook page is that they use a hashtag consistently. They use the hashtag #LADetermined. Using this hashtag repetitively and for popular posts will help gain more reaches for the post.  Content posted by the brand that received a lot of attention were posts that had top players or posts that showed some amazing plays by the team. An example of a post like this would be a video post of the LA Dodgers winning 6-3. This post gained 8.6K reactions, 186 comments, and 728 shares. An above average set of numbers for the Facebook page. Positive social media user reactions to content posted usually consisted of positive reactions to the post or positive comments. Just like the Los Angeles Lakers however, they do not use any tactics to leverage brand-user engagement. They do not interact with the fans other than publishing the posts. The content posted by the brand that did not receive a lot of attention were posts about the Dodgers not performing at their best or losing. Also when they post insider live questions is when they do not receive a lot of attention. An example of this is them posing an insider question through a post and this post got 147 reactions, 84 comments, and 6 shares. The reactions are low compared to reactions of other posts. For negative social media user reactions to content posted, there would be negative reactions to the post and negative comments. They do not use any tactics to address the negative comments, they just decide not to tackle them at all.

On Instagram the Dodgers have a weak social media fan based compared to Twitter and Facebook. The Dodgers started with 1.5 million followers and over the three week monitoring period they gained a thousand followers. The posts were inconsistent with the amount of comments that were received on each post. The Dodgers received a lot more feedback from their fans when the posts were playbacks of game footage. On April 27, the four posts that were made were of game footage and that day the average of likes was 44,512 the most likes any other day had received. On April 23, there were fifteen posts made of game footage but only averaged at 39,213 likes for that day. Fans want to see game footage and their team being active, but they don’t want to be spammed with numerous of posts. The feedback that the Dodgers received on their comments was generally positive, but that only happened when the posts were game footage. However, when the posts were promotions about a game coming up or an advertisement the feedback would be both positive and negative. The success of Dodgers in social media posts is the highlights of the games. Fans are able to relive the moments that they got most excited about during the game and it just give them a reason to be proud of their team. The Dodgers are also consistent when it comes to posting on Instagram they at least one posting on the days that they were monitored and the days in between they stayed active posting regularly.  

Los Angeles Rams

The Los Angeles Rams  started their football career in Cleveland in 1937. Then in 1943 they suspended operations till 1946. In 1946 they moved to Los Angeles till 1994. Then in 1995 they went to St. Louis till 2015. In 2015 they then moved back to Los Angeles and continue to be there today. The brand image is trying to get fans to remember the greatness of old players and that they can bring the same greatness this coming season. We monitored them through three social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

On Facebook, there were some days that the Rams did not post, and many days where they would post excessively. On the posts that the Rams posted about drafted players, those were the posts that received the most likes or reactions. Many of their other posts were seen  more as spam and irrelevant because from the beginning of the monitoring, they had 805,102 likes and 738,710 followers, but by the end of the monitoring, they dropped to 804,979 likes and 738,634 followers. During the monitoring, it was realized that when the Rams posted irrelevant content or just spammed, they lost more likes and followers.

On Twitter the Rams experienced the same trends that other sports teams had. They had little change in follower count and massive differences between posts interactions with fans in the way of retweets, likes and comments. Most of the posts were on Monday and Wednesday and the tweets that were posted through the day. There was a massive amount of tweets on Mondays and Wednesdays and little to no tweets on other days showing little spread in their tweets. They also experienced the same random amount of interaction on each tweet. Some tweets would have a lot of likes and retweets of around 1500 to 2000 likes and 500 retweets while other tweets had 20 likes and 5 retweets. Despite having a lot of retweets and likes, the posts would not have that many comments. The content that was popular were posts that showed more insights on players or coaches over things that were simply updates on what was going on with the team and other promotional material for events.

On Instagram the Rams have a weak social media presence. The Rams started off with 469 thousand followers and over the three week monitoring period they gained five thousand followers. The posts were inconsistent with the amount of comments that were received on each post. The Rams received a lot more feedback from their fans when the posts were videos rather than photos. On April 9, the post that was made was of a player working out and that post received a total of 96,053 likes, the most likes any other post had received. On April 27, there was one video post made of game footage but only received a total of 31,828 likes. Fans want to see game footage and their team being active. The feedback that the Rams received on their comments was generally positive, but was more common when the posts videos. However, when the post was just a picture of a player the feedback would be both positive and negative. The success of Dodgers in social media posts is the highlights of the games and player’s workouts. Fans are able to relive the moments that they got most excited about during the game and it just give them a reason to be proud of their team. They also get an insight of what some of their favorite players do to workout. The Rams are also inconsistent when it comes to posting on Instagram they don’t post every day. However, the Rams do stay active on social media through Instagram Stories they post polls and footage of behind the scenes for their fans to see.  

Appendix

References

Britannica, T. E. (2017, April 18). Los Angeles Lakers. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Los-Angeles-Lakers

Industry Statistics, Sports Industry Statistic and Market Size Overview. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.plunkettresearch.com/statistics/Industry-Statistics-Sports-Industry-Statistic-and-Market-Size-Overview/

York, A. (2018, May 11). Social Media Demographics to Inform a Better Segmentation Strategy. Retrieved May 17, 2018, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/