Social Sports

In more recent years, Sports teams throughout the nation have been using Social Media for many different reasons. They use their Social Media's to get fans involved, notify them about events or games and keep them informed about everything that take place within their fandom community. During games, some teams will have Twitter or Instagram contests that will increase fan involvement with their team during the game, or between period, whether it be trivia and you have to tweet the answer, or posting a picture tagging the team's handle and hashtagging the picture.

Many athletes have their personal Instagram's or Twitter's in which fans follow. With these the fans are sometimes able to communicate with their favorite players to either just express their admiration or ask questions about teams! Athletes sometimes use their social medias to update fans on their training, their retirements, their progress, or even if they've been traded. Sometimes when an athlete posts a picture of themselves training on Instagram it shows the players commitment to the game and team, which fuels the pride in the team and players. With the use of Social Media teams are able to post real-time pictures and videos of highlights or players to keep fans, but follow the team, that maybe can't watch on the game on tv informed with what is going on, or even just keep them updated scores of games or injury updates of players.

At times teams and athletes use Twitter to talk to each other, to show things their players are up to, to update fans about new players, drafts and trades. At times even teams will tweet back and forth to each other. When the Chargers moved to LA they tweeted their new team logo and when it went public the Tampa Bay Lightning tweeted at the LA Dodgers about the new LA Chargers logo looking similar to the two of their current logos combined. Fans feed into this, especially because of the humor, and because they think it is interesting that teams from two opposite ends of the country, and not even the same sport, would tweet back and forth to each other.



The New York Yankees have been utilizing Instagram to countdown until opening day in a creative way, by using pictures of retired players with single digit number jerseys, on the field playing to generate excitement for the beginning of the new season. A lot of the time excitement of the fans is what motivates the players to play to the best of their ability and hopefully at the end of the season win the championship.

Feedback Frenzy

Customer Feedback is a huge advantage of Social Media Marketing. For a company to be able to one on one communicate with consumers is extremely helpful in the sense that they receive different insights on how they can innovate their company. Through tweets, comments, shares, and likes companies can see first hand the response consumers have to new products, any issues a customer may be facing with the company or product, they way they're reacting to changes, and thoughts people have about the companies. They can do all this while simultaneously creating and maintaining their brand image, and also increasing awareness and recognition of the company.

If anything is true about people it is that they LOVE to be involved, whether it be with companies, restaurants, events, or even just other people's business. They want to know everything first and they want continuous updates about everything. Social Media acts as a tool to help the customers get involved with companies. Through gratitude, complaints and suggestions social media is right there helping companies receive this customer input. A lot of the time you see on twitter people complaining about the product they received, or an experience they've had and the company tweets right back trying to diffuse the issue and compensate the customer. This helps companies with their awareness because it gives off the image that they care about their customers and they do not want anyone having negative feelings towards the company, but it also helps their customer service department so now customers feel like, if theres an issue with a business it can be resolved without having to wait on the phone for hours.

Another way customers can get themselves involved is on Instagram. If you enjoy a product and want to tell the world it is encouraged that you post about it, especially with pictures. People love pictures, personally I use pictures that companies have of ordinary people whether, reposted, retweeted, or tagged as a sort of customer review of the product. Some companies have competitions where they'll post the picture on their own page in a way to market their product and make the customer whose photo they're using feel involved. I know a lot of companies even send free stuff to customers with a high following to post on Instagram or Twitter and advertise/market their products as an ambassador for that company.

Insta-Marketing

Instagram is so popular, especially today. Businesses and companies use Instagram as promotional tactics to increase brand awareness and to spread ideas and knowledge about the company. I see this first hand every day. I work at a place in Tampa called Fruitwood Standup Market. It is a small, made-to-order restaurant that also caters. Most, almost all, of their marketing is done strictly at fundraisers and catering for non-profits, but they also have an Instagram page in which our boss is a stickler about. He thinks it is so important for the restaurant to self market through our Instagram page. Every Monday morning, when my manager walks into the establishment, he turns to me and the one of the other girls I works with and says "we need to Instagram today." He feels like two Instagram's a week is very important. I think he feels this way for a few reasons. One, because it is not an overload where we are posting pictures everyday and blowing up peoples timeline. Two, because it keeps Fruitwood in customers awareness. Three, if we're promoting food and juices that we have, it increases interest which makes people want to try, which can increase sales of those items. So, now with the use of Instagram, Fruitwood isn't just marketing to new customers at events that they cater for, but they are marketing to current customers and increasing the brand recognition and knowledge of other products. It is even better for the Fruitwood image when people comment back and draw more attention to the posts, cause attention to the posts means attention for the company.

Fruitwood doesn't just use Instagram to promote new products, they use it to give credit and thanks to customers that use the catering aspect of the business, they've given thanks to magazines that wrote an article on the business. To wish their followers safe and happy holidays, and to promote other events going on that relate to the company but may not have their full involvement. Every time someone at Fruitwood does post an Instagram, our boss never fails to emphasize the importance of tagging every single employee in each post (even though every time he puts the post up he forgets) but with all employees he likes us to tag all of the local Tampa Bay popular food Instagram's to bring awareness to them as well. A lot of the posts that do promote or introduce products also show the positive energy and enthusiasm that Fruitwood has for their customers.





Follow us on Instagram @Fruitwoodstandupmarket! 
Come visit to try a salad, wrap or Flatbread! 

Sarcastic Social Media

Most of the people on social media are Millennials because they are connected and tech-savvy. A "Millennial" is a person that was born in the 21st century, between the 1980's to the late 1990's/2000. This includes myself, and probably most of the people that are reading this post. Being a Millennial means that you are part of a the first generation to be grow up with technology. Other characteristics besides connected and tech-savvy are multi-tasker, confident, transparent and most of all sarcastic. All of these combined are shown a great deal through the social media accounts of the people that fall in this category. Sarcasm and humor are so present within everyday conversation in person and on social media. Brands have taken this into account and started to use the everyday conversation of their consumers, themselves. Their use of this, and relating to the consumer, turns heads and opens eyes to bring awareness to the companies. If a company can relate to the way we feel and talk to each other everyday, the better their message will get across to us.

My favorite thing to see on social media would have to be when companies tweet either back to consumers, or to another company. Twitter users, me included, thrive off of establishment responses, especially when there super sassy. Once again fast food restaurants are a fore runner in this kind of social media. The top two I see the most are Taco Bell and Wendy's, but occasionally you see Wal Mart throw out a couple responses here and there. Wendy's is the biggest establishment to feed into tweets about competition while Taco Bell kind of only really responds to consumer tweets directed towards them. The witty and quick responses, where companies use modern day slang and catch phrases while on the low still in a way promoting their brand, always seem to keep me entertained for hours on end.

Other companies that use humor and sarcasm whether with responding or just posting their own stuff are Charmin, Old Spice, JetBlue, DiGiorno, and AMC Movie Theaters. Companies and even sports teams. When it comes to social media do not care about their image, they care more about entertainment, which is important in todays marketing society. A lot of the time what interests me, or
even an average person, isn't "what's going to give me the most information," but it is "what's going to interest me the most." Humor catches attention, humor is interesting, humor sells.

Picture Credit (Twitter & Instagram)

Fast Food, Fast Marketing

Technology today is important, whether you want to admit it or not, it is important and it is growing. If you're anything like me you're guilty of having a slight addiction to your phone, I blame social media. Something along the lines of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out, for those of you who don't know), where you might feel like, if you put your phone down, even for the slightest of seconds, you will miss every important thing to ever go on in the lives of the people you choose to follow. The constant checking, the scrolling, the refreshing, all the follows, the likes, the favorites, retweets, the tagging; just the consistent need to know what is going on in other people's lives has become a part of our everyday routines and companies have caught on, fast food companies especially. I focus mostly on Taco Bell because, let's face it, who doesn't love tacos, but there are also other companies that deserve mentioning.

One of the most involved fast food chains on social media is Taco Bell. They are a company that seem to always catch peoples attention, including my own. On Twitter, Taco Bell is always having competitions and trying to get consumers involved with decision making. They team up with different organizations, such as the MLB, for contests which also promote consumer involvement, most contests being about games in real time. With the MLB, Taco Bell has created the "Steal a Base, Steal a Taco" promotion, where if a player in the World Series steals a base, everyone tuning in to the game and waiting to see if a player does steal a base will be offered a taco deal at certain times on certain days.  The more consumer involvement they have, the more "shares" they get, which turns into Word of Mouth Marketing. Taco Bell uses their social media to strategically promote new products as well. Taco Bell uses Instagram to showcase their menu items, with clever, witty and "punny" captions that catch followers attention.

Instagram is a good outlet for free marketing when it comes to fast food restaurants because so often you see the "basic white girl" post their Starbucks coffee, and the "post what you eat" pictures, which I have to admit I'm guilty of myself. If you like to travel, or have some friends and family on the west coast, you're probably aware of some people that also post their food, especially when it comes to a fast food chain restaurant called In-N-Out Burger. Which, when my sister went to California she not only instagram'd it, but she also, tweeted, posted on Facebook and snap chatted it. All that exposure from just one customer doesn't hurt, and it made me want to travel to the west just to try a burger for myself.

Picture Credit to: Taco Bell: Twitter & Instagram,  My sister: Instagram (shout out to you Jes)