It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the volume and varying nature of social media content. That’s where Mass Relevance comes in. The Austin, Texas-based firm has spent several years working with sports networks, teams, leagues and brands to analyze that raging stream of content and turn it into a meaningful part of each entity’s marketing and programming platforms. Mass Relevance also was the first company officially licensed by Twitter to resyndicate tweets for external use. A veteran marketing and e-commerce executive, CMO Matt Corey leads the firm’s marketing efforts following prior stops at Golfsmith, The Bombay Co. and The Home Depot.
— Compiled by Eric Fisher
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Photo by: ELLIE FALCAO
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The key is how organizations harness the passion of the fans, but do so in a controlled way.”
On brands in social media: One of the biggest trends we see is the growth of people directly participating with brands through social experience, not just social networks. Brands are building interactive social experiences, on their websites and through mobile, and fans and customers are participating through direct comments, voting, sharing photos and much more.
Monetizing social media: The key for brands is to ensure these experiences are “brand appropriate,” which means filtering out the drunk guy who tweets or anything else that should be naturally excluded from an engaging and fun social experience.
What about photo sharing?: Allowing fans to see themselves, literally, as part of a social experience for a sports team, event, or even a retail brand, is a fast-growing trend. Retailers in particular are beginning to experiment with how to leverage customer photos to drive commerce, so we should see a lot of best practices come to life.
Major events: Social media plays a huge role with major events and has the potential to become even more pivotal to the audience experience. A socially powered second-screen experience is just one example of how fans can watch TV and participate socially. Where there is a large audience, there is an opportunity to leverage that audience to amplify the experience to a whole new level through a curated social experience.
The next sports event to explode for social media?: The World Cup. This event is ripe for a huge social spike.
