ESPN Gets Social Media Optimization

One of Rohit’s 5 Rules of Social Media optimization is that marketers should help their content travel. As Rohit put it:

Content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.

This is a concept that worries many marketers. The fear is that by distributing their concept in different formats, away from their web site that they will be cannibalizing their existing audience. But guess what. ESPN found the opposite happened when they started to podcast the popular Mike & Mike show.

In an Adage article on Podcasting, Traug Keller, senior VP, ESPN Radio, said the popular talk duo’s ratings on the 350 ESPN Radio stations actually increased after their show was made available on iTunes, XM and Sirius satellite radio.

“Despite the fact that we’re putting these guys out on more platforms, it’s just old-fashioned putting out a good product as many places under the tent in whatever places they can take advantage of it”

So let that sink in for a second, Bu making their content available in different formats, and in different locations, ESPN saw an increase in ratings for the Mike & Mike show. Instead of cannibalizing existing ratings, they were able to reach out and interact with people who were not regular listeners to the show.

That is the power of social media optimization. By turning your marketing focus away from just driving people to your web site (one destination) you can instead focus on going to where your customers are (multiple destinations). There you can package and present your information in a format that your audience is looking for. Suddenly your market reach expands and you will find like ESPN that your market share increases.