Essentials of Social Media in Sports

The assignment discusses the importance of social media in the sports industry, highlighting its benefits such as a larger fan base, cost-effectiveness, easy procedure, increase in brand loyalty, and valuable insights. However, it also touches on the cons, including negative feedback, potential for embarrassment, time-intensive process, risk of cyber attacks. The assignment provides a comprehensive overview of social media's role in sports marketing and management.

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Sports Management

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Essential of Social Media in Sports
In today’s competitive business world, the role of social media has grown significantly in every industry. Social
media is defined as a collective of online communications channels that are dedicated to community-based,
interaction, content-sharing, collaboration and input. This file will discuss the essentials of social media in
sports and evaluate how sports brands use social media sites to their advantage. Further, pros and cons of using
social media in sports industry will be analysed. Organisations in sports industry use social media sites for
different purposes such as marketing, targeting customers, conducting market research, increasing customer
interaction and others. Social media along with mobile technology is transforming sports and business related to
it. The companies use social media sites to open new communication channels between with their customers
which lead to creating new commercial opportunity with sponsors. The benefits of using social media sites
include brand affinity and loyalty that leads to increased profitability for enterprises. Social media provide a
large platform to sports fans which is available 24/7 for them, and they can share and interact with people of
similar interest.
Social media sites enable sports brands to create and publish their own content online which creates an online
brand profile of the firm. It provides tools for analysis to corporations in sports industry which they can utilise
to conduct market research that allows them to target new markets. The companies use online presence for
relationship building with customers since they have the option to communicate directly with their audience
(Witkemper, Lim and Waldburger, 170). Adidas is one of the biggest leading sports organisations which
effectively use social media to its advantage. The company has presence and huge following on social media
sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. The firm uses these channels to post great content
which is based on their brand and the industry that provide them huge response from the public. Online brand
presence is crucial for sports companies, and Adidas maintains a positive brand image. The main competitor of
the firm, Nike, fiercely use social media sites by hiring controversial sports person in its marketing campaign.
On the other hand, Adidas create a positive brand image by sticky by establishing a positive culture and
following a set of values. These factors increase brand awareness and profitability of the company which leads
to

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Pros of Social Media in Sports
Larger Fan Base
There are more than three billion social media users around the globe, and most of them access their social
media account through smartphones. As per Statista’s ‘Most Popular Pages on Facebook 2017’, sports pages
have huge following such as Real Madrid CF has more than 106.1 followers and FC Barcelona has more than
103.49 followers. These statistics prove that social media sites provide a huge platform to sports companies that
they can utilise to increase their fan base. Accessing social media site is convenient for both followers and
corporations that make it one of the most popular medium for interacting with people and marketing their
products or services (Williams and Chinn, 422-437). Social media sites provide great reach to sports
organisations since they can gain followers from all around the world.
Cost Effective
Social media sites are free to use for everyone which makes it a cost-effective tool for marketing and consumer
interaction for sports organisations. Anyone can create a free account on social media sites which makes it
easier for companies to connect and interact with a large number of audiences who are interested in their brand.
Easy Procedure
As compared to other modes of marketing or customer interactions, social media route is substantially easier. It
is an easy tool which can be used by sports organisations as brand awareness tactic. The companies just have to
open an account on any social media site, and interested people automatically follow them. The firm can post
great content on their profile which attracts more audience and increases their brand awareness (Brown and
Billings, 74-81). Therefore, it is a substantially easy tool that is used by corporations in the sports industry to
increase their brand awareness.
Increase in Brand Loyalty
In addition to providing a wider audience, use of social media increases the brand loyalty of companies as well.
According to the study of Laroche, Habibi and Richard (76-82), people who follow brands on social media sites
are loyal to them as well.

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Valuable Insights
Social media sites allow companies to monitor their social media statistics through which they can gain
valuable information regarding their audience which assists them in making smarter business decisions. For
example, social analytics provide information such as which country has most followers and what people feel
about company’s brand. Such information assists sports organisation in making smarter business decisions and
increasing their audience.
Cons of Social Media in Sports
Negative Feedback
Social media users have the option to post negative feedback regarding a firm if they did not like its products.
Many customers write angry rants about a company’s products or services. In sports industry, people who are
attached to a sport write negative things regarding opponent teams which can adversely affect a company’s
reputation (Alexander, 717-733).
Potential for Embarrassment
Use of social media exposes a company’s posts to the world and any mistake can lead to embarrassment for the
firm. Organisations have to ensure that their posts are right since it can lead to a public embarrassment which is
negative for company’s brand image (Dijkmans, Kerkhof and Beukeboom, 58-67).
Time Intensive Process
In order to effectively use social media sites, companies are required to continuously engage or interact with its
audience takes a lot of time and effort. Organisations which focus on maintaining an interactive social media
presence require investing manpower and resource. The sports companies that have limited resources find it
difficult to manage a strong presence on social media sites. Social media sites require daily monitoring and
companies have to activity management their profile to see real benefits.
Risk of Cyber Attacks

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Using social media sites expose the companies to the risk of cyber-attack or hacking. Cybercriminals hack into
the account of large corporations and post things that can negatively affect the company’s brand image (Kaplan
and Haenlein, 59-68). For example, HBO’s social media account was hacked which leaked many confidential
data of the company. Therefore, sports companies are required investing in cybersecurity infrastructure which
increases their overall costs.

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Works Cited
Alexander, David E. "Social media in disaster risk reduction and crisis management." Science and engineering
ethics 20.3 (2014): 717-733.
Brown, Natalie A., and Andrew C. Billings. "Sports fans as crisis communicators on social media
websites." Public Relations Review 39.1 (2013): 74-81.
Dijkmans, Corné, Peter Kerkhof, and Camiel J. Beukeboom. "A stage to engage: Social media use and
corporate reputation." Tourism Management 47 (2015): 58-67.
Kaplan, Andreas M., and Michael Haenlein. "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of
Social Media." Business horizons 53.1 (2010): 59-68.
Laroche, Michel, Mohammad Reza Habibi, and Marie-Odile Richard. "To be or not to be in social media: How
brand loyalty is affected by social media?." International Journal of Information Management 33.1
(2013): 76-82.
Statista. “Most popular Facebook fan pages as of December 2017, based on number of fans (in millions)”
Statista, n.d. Web. 5 Mar. 2019, < https://www.statista.com/statistics/269304/international-brands-on-
facebook-by-number-of-fans/ >.
Williams, Jo, and Susan J. Chinn. "Meeting relationship-marketing goals through social media: A conceptual
model for sport marketers." International Journal of Sport Communication 3.4 (2010): 422-437.
Witkemper, Chad, Choong Hoon Lim, and Adia Waldburger. "Social media and sports marketing: Examining
the motivations and constraints of Twitter users." Sport Marketing Quarterly 21.3 (2012): 170.