It has been three years since the NHL Panthers were sold to Vinnie Viola, who has committed to turning the franchise into a staple of the South Florida community. Part of that effort has included beefing up the team's social and digital media efforts with the likes of Digital Media Coordinator Kyle Morrison (@morrison_kyle), who has been with the club since January. He got his start as an intern with the Blue Jackets, but after eight months with the Browns, Morrison realized he missed hockey. One of the things he has been working on with the Panthers is expanding the platforms on which the team maintains a presence. That includes going down an uncommon path -- Reddit. He said, "There aren’t a whole lot of teams on it, but stuff like player AMAs whenever we get a chance, we re-did our locker room with the new logo and put a bunch of new workout equipment in there to show some behind-the-scenes photos."
Culture change:
We are getting more media coverage locally and nationally than we ever have. But coming down here in the middle of the culture change, I didn’t know what to expect. I spoke with my old boss in Columbus and asked him about the organization. He told me it was filled with really good people and was an organization on the upswing.
Similarities between the Blue Jackets and Panthers:
We're a smaller market. Less established and less successful historically, but when the team starts to get good, people in the community notice and rally around it. We saw that in the playoffs last season and early this season. Working for a smaller market team in hockey is a lot of fun. Here and in Columbus, hockey fans are a really tight-knit community. It’s almost like a lifestyle brand.
Connecting with fans:
We didn’t have a Snapchat presence when I started, so I helped lead that effort. Starting on an entirely new social platform is something that is a big undertaking, because you are not sure how you are going to measure success or what kind of voice you’re going to take. I decided to really try to tell the story of gamedays and events instead of a random assortment of snaps that aren’t connected. Each one leads to the next. We also are leveraging our graphics team. I bought a stylus for one of our graphics people and had her draw some really high quality Snapchat doodles. That’s something that really resonated with fans, because it was something they haven’t really seen before. Since we have a smaller staff, the league is providing real-time correspondents to teams to cover content down on the concourses and fan-facing stuff. We’re really trying to leverage our correspondent to get some additional content that we otherwise would have missed out on to show what the gameday experience is.
Kevin Spacey experience:
It was a lot of fun. Last season was the first time a lot of our fans were around a team pushing for a playoff spot. Everything lined up, so people were looking at the team. Then the weird Spacey stuff just drew a whole new crowd in. We had to be careful not to hit that too hard and pick our spots. When he showed up, it was such a huge moment and we capitalized on it as much as we could. It’s nice to see things happen organically, but social is so much about capitalizing on those things when they happen.
What is in store in social media:
With the way Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are planning new algorithms, more timely updates are eventually going to be obsolete. I’ll get score updates from teams that I’m a fan of all time, but maybe it’s a final score of game that ended over 24 hours ago or a halftime report for game that ended a day and half ago. It’s definitely going to be interesting to see how teams try to deal with that. I know the way we are trying to do that here is really leveraging our creative department. Doing stuff that might reflect what is happenning in the moment, but will still be relevant for a couple of days. You'll see less live content on those platforms.
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