The sports industry has taken full advantage of the available social media technology. Sports teams, brands and athletes have been actively involved in social media and have brought some interesting strategies to the table.

More than 80% of sports fans use social media while watching a game on TV, and more than 60% when watching a game live. With those numbers, sports brands have excellent opportunities to use social media, here are some of the best examples:

1. London Olympics 2012: On Monday, Facebook launched an official page for the 2012 London Olympics. The purpose of this page is to connect fans with their favorite athletes, teams, sports and countries. This full access hub for the Olympics creates an easy to navigate community for fans which and will no doubt influence future events.

2012 London Olympics Facebook

2. NASCAR: Recently, twitter unveiled its first TV ad and hashtag page in partnership with NASCAR. The totally branded page presents photos and a stream of relevant tweets. The possibilities for social media marketing strategies for other brands and companies to use are huge. The landing page basically created a micro-site social network within twitter specifically for NASCAR.

3. Major League Baseball: As far back as 2011, MLB realized they had the opportunity to harness the popularity of social media to further engage baseball fans. In March 2011, the MLB Fan Cave was created – two baseball fans watched every game and blogged about them, while engaging people on various social networks in the heart of New York City. The results was award winning success for engagement. Furthermore, MLB saw a 36% increase in all-star ballot-voting as a result of hashtag campaigns.

KT Tape released the following infographic that further presents the success and innovation of sports in social media. It will be interesting to see how the ideas behind these campaigns are adapted for upcoming events like the 2012 presidential election.

Sports and Social Media Infographic

To plan your social media strategy contact Wild Frog Studio at 914.428.2645 and download a copy of our free eBook on social media.

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