March Madness

Like I had previously mentioned in several posts, my end goal is to work in an athletic department for a D1 school. What is every athletic department focusing on right now? Men and Women's NCAA basketball tournament also known as "March Madness". Every person that is studying sport administration or sport management knows that the TV rights for march madness are insane! Teams, schools, and conferences make so much money for each game, which makes March Madness the highest making money event in college athletics, more than NCAA football championship! But what about social media? I think the impact March Madness has on social media is not talked about enough! Each school and conference have different approaches to their March Madness promotion and it is common to see basketball teams or certain games constantly trending the last weeks of March, and first weeks of April. Additionally we see brands and company's-for example Capital one- use March Madness on social media to help with brand recognition. Some brands it is a flop as it does not make sense or does not connect well with the tournament, but for others it can be extremely successful! A couple of specific examples according to Forbes.com " Capital One saw a massive 2,573% social media lift. Unilever jumped 1,665%. And Intel saw 1,232% social lift."

Social lift is an increase in mentions, likes, comments, and retweets, and it's indicative of how central a brand or topic is to our collective digital consciousness. Numerous brands have collected hefty top-of-mind bounties, thanks to the annual NCAA tournament, according to data collected by 4Cinsights. Brands with the most social lift within two minutes of TV ad spots were Sherwin Williams, with 1,521% lift -- at 89% positive sentiment -- and Hanes, with a 867% lift. Hanes, however, only had a 68% positive sentiment for ads that compared its Hanes "comfort flex pouch" to the pouch of a kangaroo. The fast food outlet earned 30,749 social media engagements from March 11 to 19, achieving a 450 score on the affinity index. In other words, if you were tweeting, sharing, or posting about March Madness, you were 450 times more likely to mention Wendy's than an average social media user.

But the real question is, how did they get this increase of social media engagement? While most can’t afford national ad campaigns, they can implement smart social media planning, leveraging the huge audience that will be watching (and live tweeting) every game.

Find the hashtags your company cares about and start tweeting. You’ll grow your follower base while gaining exposure, the official tournament hashtag is #MarchMadness. Always use hashtags in moderation and context. Don’t just tweet your company’s latest news followed by eight random team tags. Try to align your brand message with something going on in the tournament. Or write a blog post like this one, combining your professional knowledge with an aspect of basketball competition. That way the company is participating in the fandom, not just hijacking it. Get your customers and followers to share their March Madness enthusiasm on your social media accounts. Folks are already keyed about their brackets; give them another place to play. Depending on your business’ tone and message, you could create a promotion for the alums of participating schools, a giveaway to bracket winners, or even a discount. Local businesses have a lot of opportunity to build camaraderie during March Madness—especially if your hometown team is moving on to the next round. Just about any company can quickly and easily post a cheer for the nearby college. And in many cases, showing your audience that you follow local sports is enough to create a connection. Remember: above all, social media is a tool that helps brands become more relevant and more human. 

To finish this post up I found an amazing graphic that perfectly explains how the March Madness Tournament has such a large impact on social media! better than I could ever explain myself!