6 Ways The NHL Fully Embraces Social Media

Many companies have yet to fully embrace social networking sites and social media dismissing it as nothing more than an internet fad. Although not in the majority there are those companies out there that have fully embraced social media in an effort to drive sales and engage in an open communication with their customers or fans. One company that extensively employs the use of social media tactics and fully understands user engagement and the importance of social networks in today’s wired world is the National Hockey League (NHL).

If you are one of the brands currently not engaged in any social media activities or a business who thinks that social media can’t help you here are six ways the billion dollar NHL brand currently uses social media to promote their business, engage with fans and spread their brand across the internet to encourage and entice individuals into becoming fans of the game.

1. Online Video – Not only does the NHL show vides from all games and teams that range from usual game highlights and interviews off their online video portal NHL.tv but the NHL has taken it even further by breaking down the highlights from each game into goals, saves and hits. On top of that each of the 30 teams in the league also has their own branded video domain which then shows only that teams videos and game highlights broken down the same way as on the main site. Sharing is a big part of the functionality of the site as each video including all highlights and individual portions of game (hits, saves, goals) can be posted to your profile on a number of different social networks but can be emailed or embedded directly from the video making sharing videos amongst friends extremely easy. The NHL isn’t done with video and if you turn to online video juggernaut YouTube and the NHL’s official YouTube Channel you’ll find not just duplicated content from their NHL.tv site but other content including entire game broadcasts from recent games and entire classic games as well. When it comes to online video no other sports league has embraced online video quite like the NHL.
2. Twitter – The NHL and all 30 of its teams have fully embraced the 140 character communication tool that is Twitter. Behind each of the 30 official team accounts and the official NHL account you won’t find an automated system sending out the tweets instead you will find actual humans engaging with the very active and vocal NHL community on Twitter each and every day. Tweets sent out range from articles for each team, new videos, game tweet-by-tweets, behind the scenes pics from the team and interacting with the fans by answering questions and retweeting their content. The people behind the Twitter accounts of the NHL and its teams work extraordinarily hard and long hours ensuring the content they post is what the fans want to see and making sure there is a two way dialog of communication happening between the fans and the teams instead of a one-way self promotional automated system you may see many other large corporations engaging in. The NHL knows the secret to using Twitter properly is engagement and they have used this to their advantage to increase their follow counts and drive online brand awareness.
3. Facebook – Just like on Twitter the NHL is well represented on the social networking giant Facebook with not only the NHL having an official page, but all 30 teams and the NHL Ship have official fan pages as well. In keeping with the NHL’s open communication and fan engagement their Facebook properties are no different and each Fan page has unique features and content related directly to that property. Since Facebook isn’t constrained by the 140 character limit the content posted to the different fan page walls can be anything including comments meant to engage fans in a discussion, alerts on merchandise sales, videos and game recaps. The NHL fan page is a great example of using custom tabs to create a highly interactive fan destination where you can give virtual gifts, participate in polls and subscribe to their newsletter, the events tab is a great way for fans to find out about NHL sponsored events happening near them. When it comes to Facebook the NHL makes sure it’s an active participant that leads and encourages its fans to join the vocal hockey community.
4. Facebook Like – Facebook launched its new Like buttons during their F8 developer conference last week and being the social media aware brand that they are the NHL was one of the launch partners immediately using this feature. The day of the launch the NHL introduced its Facebook Like buttons that allowed the over 400 million Facebook users to give a Like to their favorite teams and players, this information is then displayed on their Facebook profiles for all of their friends to see. I would think that if they aren’t already the NHL is using the data gathered from the Facebook Likes to track trends in team and player popularity and I would also think that they might display this data publicly at one point giving team and player fans a chance to vote to make their favorite teams and players number one overall. Embracing the new Facebook Like button and being a launch day partner shows the willingness that the NHL has to embrace new technology and the confidence that they have in social media.
5. Tweetups – A tweetup is an organized meet up of twitter users and in the case of NHL tweetups it’s the hockey fans gathering to talk about their favorite teams and watch games. The NHL has hosted several tweetups at its flagship store in New York and has provided prize giveaways and merchandise to several other tweetups. The NHL knows the importance of its fans and has been generously giving back to them through the use of social media and different events such as tweetups. If you want more information on NHL tweetups near you look no further than the excellent nhltweetup.com ran by hockey fans @dani3boyz and @goaliegirl
6. NHL Players – As of now the NHL hasn’t put a muzzle or leash on any of its players who are using social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook. You can see evidence of this in tweets such as this one from Martin Havlat from July 1, 2009 where he talks about signing with the Wild and issues that happened in Chicago. It speaks of openness and transparency when the league allows its players to speak what’s on their minds directly to their fans.

What’s Next For The NHL?

With their willingness to embrace new technology and social networks I fully expect that the NHL to begin using location aware services such as Gowalla and Foursquare to further interact with its fans as early as the start of next season. I can see the league offering discounts to the mayor of their flagship store in New York, the different NHL arenas may offer discounts on concession items to their mayors and I’m sure there will be special badges to collect.

As a hockey fan I am extremely excited by how open the NHL has in giving fans access to the content and media they desire and their openness in embracing new technologies. Their continued use of social media will only help to drive the growth of the fan base and the game which is only good news for hockey and its fans.

If a billion dollar organization can fully embrace the changing online world without question why do other businesses question the validity of the social space?