Indianapolis Colts Go Social
I have written in the past that social networks should be ripe areas for sports teams. One team that has been very active in building their presence online is the Indianapolis Colts.
According to the Indianapolis Star the Colts web audience also has grown about 30% a year for the past four or five years — now totaling 8 million unique visitors a year.
The Colts have an official site (www.Colts.com) which includes team news, multimedia video, photos of players and cheerleaders, the Forum Credit Union fan forum and a virtual tour of Lucas Oil Stadium.
Last summer the Colts leapt into the social media phenomenon, rolling out two networking sites, MyIndiana Football.com and MyColts.net, to help the team connect with potential fans and sponsors.
www.MyColts.net: This social networking site, unveiled in July, allows fans to create personal profile pages, share blogs, post photos, link to friends and form hometown fan groups. It’s also the home of coach Tony Dungy’s blog.
www.MyIndianaFootball.com: This features schedule results and game reports for Indiana high school teams and a blog about coaching by Joe Ehrmann. It also hosts the Motorola Coach of the Year contest decided in online voting by fans; Pike High School’s Derek Moyers was this year’s winner.
Pat Coyle, the Colts’ executive director of digital business says that:
“We’re more heavily invested in Web staff than most teams because as a small- market team we have to work harder to compete. The team’s success has also made it easier to drive traffic to the sites. Now what we have to do is grow our audience and continue to make these sites better.”
David Morton, principal of Sunrise Sports Group, an Indianapolis-based sports marketing enterprise has this to say about the Colts social marketing push:
Social-networking sites are “extremely effective” in building brand loyalty and attracting new fans and customers. The greater the connection for the fan — with whatever Web platform used — the greater the loyalty. What follows that increased loyalty is their pocketbook,”
Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (5) : Jan 8th, 2008
January 8th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Great post. Thanks for pointing these out. I agree sports fans are a massively untapped social networking market. I firmly believe in many ways fantasy sports online was the first true practice of social media.
You may also be interested in Robby Gordon’s social network at www.robbysuprising.com. I’ve had some input and serve as an administrator there, but am not to take credit for it. They’ve done a nice job of capturing the audience that is passionate about him for all his racing endeavors.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
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January 8th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
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January 9th, 2008 at 2:48 am
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January 21st, 2008 at 2:25 am
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