NBC Sports VP/Consumer Engagement Lyndsay Signor (@NBCSports) is a five-time Emmy winner and has covered four Olympics and two Super Bowls. She knows what it takes to provide content around major events. The 10-year NBC vet said, “I’ve done enough of these to know that social teams across the industry are not always the fattest group of folks. They tend to be pretty lean and multifaceted and able to edit and write copy and shoot and produce.” She added, “My role now is making sure I’m not in the weeds on the day-to-day to make sure we have enough time, thinking about strategy far enough in advance so we have time to create cool and interesting content, get the resources we need.” In addition to her Emmys, Signor was named one of Multichannel News’ “Top 10 Social Media Mavens” in ’12 and is a two-time selection for Cynopsis Media’s “Top Women in Digital” (’15 and ’18).
SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
Must-follows: Will Smith on Instagram right now, this might not be a luke-warm take because I feel like everybody kind of feels this, he has had this resurgence of amazing content and he’s really funny and really entertaining.
Favorite apps: Twitter and Spotify.
Average time per day on social media: Probably not as much as it used to be. If I had to give a number, I am actually looking at it one to two hours.
NBC Sports’ social media goal:
One is to be able to engage a younger demographic. We are not unaware that a lot of young people aren’t sitting down for appointment television in primetime every night. Part of what we really focus on is talking to and aggregating communities of people that are well under 35 to get them excited about the properties that we carry, and sometimes what we don’t carry, like the NBA or MLB. We are also focused on monetization of social and how to make money in the space. And obviously, when we aggregate these people, how do we get them to turn on the television or get them to live stream. Television is still the anchor of everything that we do.
Importance of driving traffic to websites rather than using platforms as a news source:
Part of how social rolls into marketing is that we have a conduit or a hub for all of the content within our entire building. If there is a piece of breaking news, we work really closely with our website and our production teams on what’s the best way to communicate that. As it pertains to editorial content, we defer to our experts in that area. It may be our talent, it may be our production team, it may be our website. Social is the distributor of that info.
Balancing major events along with regular content:
I don’t think it’s ever balanced. It’s not work-life balance, it’s work-life harmony. These big events are the DNA of NBC Sports. It’s really what our bread and butter is, even from the marketing and social sides. It really is looking at prioritization and making sure we have the appropriate staff, if we have to have more folks in the mix, making sure we are equipped for that. Covering one regular-season hockey game is not the same as covering 17 days of the Olympics.
Preparing for the ’20 Tokyo Games:
We've had some initial conversations. The Olympic Channel airs a ton of year-round Olympic programming, so we have the ability to start talking about the athletes that are going to be competing earlier on. We have more content to talk about these folks in advance of the Games. We are already talking about staffing, some things like looking back at Rio and PyeongChang and what we would like to replicate or do differently.
Progress in driving viewers to Olympic stream:
It’s really understanding the niche in the individual platform. There are some like Twitter that are really great in real time. For something like Facebook, where you have the algorithm, the real time isn’t quite there, but they have a number of products to drive tune-in or app downloads in advance of an event. For us, it has been understanding the different uses of each platform and leveraging them.
New social media initiatives:
“On Her Turf” is one of my favorite things that we have launched this year. It is our female empowerment brand that started on Instagram, and it was never really intended to live just on Instagram. It’s a collaboration with (digital/entertainment company) Refinery 29, which really understands how to speak to a young female audience. We now have a “Football is Female” franchise that highlights in and around the NFL. Looking ahead to '19 and '20 with the Women’s World Cup and the Olympics, there are so many ridiculous female storylines that are going to happen.
If you know anyone who should be featured for their use of social media, send their name to us at jperez@sportsbusinessdaily.com.
