The Trail Blazers' social media strategy "prioritizes personality, a fan’s perspective, and content Rip City fans actually want to see," according to Jeff Beer of FAST COMPANY. While the team is "active across multiple platforms, it’s seen the most growth over the past year on Instagram." They have seen a "56X return on every dollar spent on Instagram Feed ads, 33X on Stories ads, and more than 14X across all Instagram campaigns." The Instagram work has also "helped boost mobile ticket sales by 10%." Trail Blazers CMO Dewayne Hankins gives credit to Owner Paul Allen, who "understands the space really well." Hankins: “A lot of teams struggle to get the resources to make social media a priority, and we’re lucky to have an owner who really appreciates what it can do." Beer noted when Hankins first joined the team in '13, he and one other person "were in charge of everything under the umbrella of 'digital.'" Now his team is 12 people "strong, and they enlist photo and video staff to create professional content with a fan’s voice." That approach has "helped them attract a significant amount of new sponsor partners." Hankins: "It’s gone from a place where you dabble and experiment with things to becoming a very substantial part of driving the revenue side of the business. We’ve seen a 10-times revenue increase across ticket sales and sponsorship using these platforms." A while back, the Trail Blazers "started filming the players as they arrived for games, giving fans a peek behind the scenes." As of last month, those clips are a "series sponsored by Verizon called Gameday Get Ups" (FASTCOMPANY.com, 4/20).
