Creative Agency Secrets

I wrote a piece back in May about an event hosted by Channel 4 and Sport England on how to use social media for grass roots sport communication. 

The Image by Leo Reynolds via Flickr and so I am re-linking to the article in case you want an update.

Thanks to Steve Moore I was invited to chair the Channel4 and Sport England seminar held at Horseferry Road [backstory here and here ].  I loved it.  A perfect opportunity for me to exercise my passion (rowing) and my profession (business development).

The brief was that Sport England wants to educate its members (sporting organisations) on how to join Sport to the communities that participate in it.  Social Media is the answer.

Panelists include Mark McGuinness ; Gi Fernando ; Ed Mitchell and Antony Mayfield .  Detail below about each of their pitches.

My job was to summarise and (self-appointed) make suggestions to the attendees about areas they might investigate further afterwards. These include:

• Collaboration - learning in groups and with co-operation rather than traditional teacher/pupil.
• Long tail - who are the long tail groups in your community and how to differentiate them
• Monologue versus dialogue - assess your current communications (paper, email, web) and see how many are one way and how many facilitate / enable two-way conversations
• Where are your audiences - which platforms, digital spaces, real spaces/places do they hang out in?  Can you 'be there' too?
• We are all guests in the new digital world - takeout from Mark McGuiness talk - act with social gestures that would be appropriate in a party setting.
• There are no strings attached to content and membership online - is registration really necessary?  Why should audiences pay to take part? Don't have member only parts of your website - these exclude rather than include browsers and lurkers
• Social media is now mainstream.  Use it to amplify the conversation you are having with your audiences.
• Conversations and campaigns have to be pushed - takeout from Gi Fernando's talk.  Push appropriately; allow others into YOUR space and let them make connections and manage that themselves without your intervention
• Create ande sustain long term local heroes.  Make them aspirational role models - and make lots of them.
• Data = database - takeout from Ed Mitchell's talk .  Collect email addresses, build profiles of your users, segment them, communicate and learn and customise the online experience to suit their needs.
• There is no online copyright worth having - takeout from Antony Mayfield's talk.  Anythingyou post online is public, its impact is measurable and it can drive revenues to your organisation.  Think about offering a matching service for coaches and athletes (this could be low level revenue generation).  If you can measure anything, you can prove its value and so fulfill funding requirements from your funders / Government.
• Consider the "user journey" for your audience.  What happens before an
  event, during and after and what about the absents - those who can't be
  there, can they also participate in the event experience?

(more…)