Sports & Social Media

Work In Sports. Why You Should Hire "Athletes" After we closed our round of Series A funding for 42Floors, we began working on hiring the right people.

Because we got a lot of good press, we got inbound job requests from some impressive people. As we looked at the most impressive resumes, we kept seeing a trend: people who were incredibly good at one thing. But that’s actually a problem for us. One of our early decisions was not to hire specialists, but generalists--we call them athletes, because they can play every position.

These jacks-of-all-trades types are the best kind of early employee you can have at a start-up. Here are a few tips we've learned about finding and hiring athletes: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Ups-donates-autographed-nascar-and-ncaa-items-pro-am-golf-day-and-more-for-united-way-auction-159589325. Publications New Social Nets Target Sports Fans, Amateur Athletes 04/19. Sports and social media is a natural fit, given the communal nature of fandom and the myriad fine points of strategy and stats.

With that in mind, two new social networks dedicated to sports are launching this week -- one targeting professional sports fans, the other targeting amateur athletes. The first sports-oriented social network, JockTalk, launched in private beta with the support of over 60 professional athletes from the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS and Olympic sports. Founded by former MLB All-Star Shawn Green and digital media veteran Brendon Kensel, JockTalk is intended to provide a single place for athletes and fans to interact with each other by posting conversations, videos and photos; it also provides a forum for athletes to promote charitable causes. Linsanity on Social Media - How Lin Has Sparked The Knicks' Online Engagement.

Jeremy Lin has officially gone viral – and the New York Knicks are seizing the chance to energize their social media game by cashing in on Lin’s stellar rise, racking up big increases in online audience numbers.

Lin’s spectacular “talent finally gets its due” story combined with his captivating on-the-court performance has catapulted him to overnight stardom and turned around the Knicks’ lackluster season – all the while transforming the Knicks’ social media presence. In fact, Lin’s meteoric rise from bench warmer to starter matches the Knicks’ insane boost in online audience numbers game for game. Prior to his first big game against the New Jersey Nets on February 4th, the Knicks’ audience was only increasing at the same steady pace as every other NBA team. Starting February 2nd, with a loss against the Chicago Bulls, the Knicks were at around 1.59 million social media fans across all social media platforms. Women Buy Into Sports Via Social. Christopher Heine | March 27, 2012 | 0 Comments inShare42 Data from Applebee's and Visible suggests advertisers should reconsider demo during March Madness and alike events.

According to new social data from Visible Technologies and Applebee's, advertisers may want to target female sports fans more often. Visible studied 125 million social media posts over a recent three-month period, finding that 17 percent of the messages conveyed purchase intent. From that subset, women authored 69 percent of the posts, Visible says, most often using Twitter to show off a recent purchase and employing blogs to express their desire to buy an item. The Bellevue, WA-based researcher says 31 percent of sports chatter on social comes from women, calling the data point "surprisingly strong" compared to past findings in a prepared release today.

NFL March Madness as Manning, Tebow Shift; Saints Take Hit. From #SXSW: How libel law and free-speech requirements affect social media. How can you make the most of social tools without running afoul of the law?

At the recent South by Southwest Interactive Festival panel “Can You Tweet That? Social Media and the Law,” Dara Quackenbush of Texas State University gave attendees a crash course on fundamental social media legal issues. Quackenbush focused on defamation, hate-speech law and the First Amendment — and the way those legal principles were applied to social media in two recent cases.

Case Study 1: Horizon Group v. Bonnen: Libel and defamation laws apply to tweets … but not this time. Amanda Bonnen was a former tenant of Horizon Realty who was sued after she tweeted to friends, “You should just come anyway. Defamation: Would an “ordinary person” think the tweet or posting damaged someone’s reputation?

While the case ultimately was dismissed, Quackenbush said it illustrates challenges that social media professionals face with libel law. Courtney Love wasn’t as lucky when she tweeted a rant about her fashion designer. Publications Ciroc Scores With During-Bowl Videos, Social 03/07. Ciroc vodka saw strong engagement results from videos with integrated interactive capabilities across social media and mobile platforms shown during this year’s Super Bowl and following days, according to Ciroc’s in-house agency and the media solutions provider involved.

Sean Combs, a/k/a Diddy or P. Diddy, who is in a multi-year agreement with the Diageo PLC brand wherein he gets a performance-based share of Ciroc’s profits, starred in four 15-second “Ciroc Bowl” videos released during the game. (Ciroc did not advertise during the Super Bowl itself.) Early on Super Bowl day, a Diddy intro video was released, in which he encouraged fans to watch the videos that would be posted during the game and accessible through his Twitter and Facebook accounts, vote on which was their favorite, and interact with him via social media. Inside the Marketing Playbook of the New York Giants. How Much Do Sports Fans Love Social Media? [INFOGRAPHIC] Sports and social media are a marriage made in heaven.

News and score updates break constantly. Heated debate is a big part of the fun. And fans love any chance to interact with the athletes they idolize. But just how much do sports fans love and use social media overall? The brand-engagement firm GMR Marketing recently conducted a study and came up with interesting results, presented in the infographic below. According to GMR, people today are 10 times more likely to check the Internet for breaking sports news than they are to turn to sports radio. And it doesn't matter where fans are; social media lets them get their sports fix in any place, any time.

Don't just take our word for it, though. Infographic courtesy of GMR Marketing.