Dolphins Dir of Digital Content Vince Pannozzo is in his ninth season with the franchise and has been integral in overhauling the team’s social media strategy to “more of a social and digital-first approach.” Pannozzo credits the Dolphins’ staff for the success they’ve found on digital platforms. Pannozzo: “The biggest thing for us is working as a team to help us achieve our goals.” With the NFL Draft kicking off Thursday, Pannozzo and his team have all hands on deck. “The Draft’s always a fun time because, especially as you get into later rounds, you really don’t know who it could be."
SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
Must-follows: Gary Vaynerchuk from VaynerMedia does an awesome job in terms of engaging with his fans.
Favorite app: Instagram and Facebook.
Average time per day on social media: Tough to give a time frame, but constantly connected.
Coverage plans for the NFL Draft:
The only thing you can do is over-prepare and be able to be nimble and set yourself up for success knowing that you don’t really know what’s going to happen. We’ll prepare a lot of content that will never see the light of day just to have in the event that something does happen that you wouldn’t expect. We communicate amongst the entire organization and, overall, have from our communications team, from our football communications team our plan in place on what we want to communicate over the course of those three days. A couple years ago we had, I think, three selections within 10 or 12 picks, so it was rapid fire. It seemed like almost every five minutes we were back on the clock.
Getting a heads up from football ops on Draft night:
It really depends from year to year, from what pick to where we are in the Draft, to what selection we have, to how early. Sometimes it might happen right away, sometimes it might take a little bit more time, and depending on when they talk to the player on the phone -- so, it really varies, but most of the time it’s a very quick process from the time that we find out to the time that we’re actually making the announcement.
Using social to drive ticket sales:
It’s not just our digital team that’s running with something, our marketing team running with something. It’s our marketing team, our digital team, our creative team, our ticket team, our communications team, our sponsorship team. We all work in lock-step to achieve the same goals. So, we all know what we’re trying to achieve with our content and how it effects the back end of our business. From the video content, we’ve seen success in that in terms of an increase in digital revenue from a sponsorship standpoint. We were number one in the NFL in video views on social video content, and then saw 30% of our season ticket revenue come from regeneration from Facebook and Instagram.
Platform that sees highest level of engagement:
Generally Instagram, but each platform has its own purpose and own strength whether it be to engage with the users, to help us distribute and reach higher levels of reach and impressions and video views and business results. Twitter’s a great source of news distribution and getting the word out quickly. Each network and platform have their strengths that we tap into to help us engage with our fans and also help to achieve results for the organization.
Other NFL teams that do a good job with social:
The Vikings come to mind. They do a great job when it comes to their look and their content they’re creating. Scott Kegley and his team up there do an incredible job. The 49ers -- Meghan Ryan and her team are doing an incredible job. Kenton Olson and his team up with the Seahawks do a great job. Those are teams that we’ve worked closely with in the past, or share ideas with especially when we’re all together at digital summits or conferences.
