AEG Dir of Social Media Sara Morton (@AEGWorldwide) has been in the digital and social space for more than 25 years. As the space has evolved, Morton is excited that brands are now building content that is social media-specific. She said, “Look at what the NBA is doing and how they craft a strategy, thinking about the fan experience and how they can bring live sports to life not only for fans in the arena but for folks who are out and about.” Morton added, “The way they mix game highlights and bring in player interviews, bring in player social, it just feels fresh and new and different.”
SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
Must-follow: I love comedy so I have to go with The Daily Show. I also like Bark Box. They do a great job of turning creative into subscriptions.
Favorite app: Spotify.
Average time per day on social media: I’m constantly on social every day.
AEG’s focus:
We bring a level of authenticity to our social publishing. We reach a very broad spectrum of fans and audiences. Our guiding principle is to bring a level of authenticity by being live and present and keeping our posts real. We are at the games, in the community and we are at the events we are covering. Our colleagues joke they know where to find us by following us. Our philosophy on social media is to highlight our people as thought leadership, which covers diversity and philanthropy and sustainability along with live music, sports and partnerships. We may not be covering the play-by-play, but we are capturing the experience from a fan’s point of view. Our divisions are highly collaborative with us and give us a tremendous amount of access to their events.
Social media target:
As a brand with such a rich section of content and activities, we have the opportunity to deliver the most exciting, diverse and engaging live content in the world, so we are targeting a broad audience whether that be fans, influencers, our business partners, prospective business partners or employees. Importantly, because our audience is broad and diverse and our content mirrors that, we have an opportunity to highlight our key pillars of thought leadership. During a recent Hockey Fights Cancer night, we were able to highlight cancer survivors and their families during an L.A. Kings game. We also recently celebrated Pride with members of the L.A. LGBT Center at a Galaxy game.
Relationships with teams:
We are complementing what’s going on. There’s a play-by-play, but then we are alongside the fans crafting our story in the audience and on the field. It brings that level of authenticity and it also captures the emotion of the fan experience at a live event like no other.
Promoting events, properties without sales pitch:
We really leave it to our venues to promote their individual events and that’s their wheelhouse. However, from a corporate social perspective, we highlight the diversity of content and activities in our network of venues on a daily basis. Because we have a wide selection of events to choose from, we are selective about what we publish. The key for us is whatever content we publish, we are amplifying the authenticity of the moment. We highlights fans, people and artists, and try to minimize graphics and images that portray the emotion of the experience.
AEG’s use of social platforms:
We primarily publish on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. For Twitter, we are timely, in the moment, capturing news relevant to our company, and that includes corporate news and content and news related to diversity, sustainability and it ties into our key pillars. With Facebook, we try to highlight employees and news around them, and any engagement folks might be doing. With Instagram, we are there -- we are publishing with our stories, photos and videos around the events to capture the emotion and bring that to life. We are segmenting our accounts based on the performance of our content. We are not only able to broaden our reach and offer broad and diverse content on each channel, but we continue to amplify the authenticity of our content by delivering what each audience wants.
If you know anyone who should be featured for their use of social media, send their name to us at jperez@sportsbusinessdaily.com
