Tag: Social media

Do Social Media Benefits Really Benefit Sponsors? 15th September, 2011

Social media has not only changed the way an audience can interact with a sponsorship property, but also with how they can interact with the sponsors of that property and vice versa. Without fully understanding social media for the organisation in question, it would be impossible to try and deliver value to a sponsor associated.

Here are some top tips and questions to ask yourself before you consider integrating sponsorship benefits within your sponsorship proposal.

Do You Have an Online Audience?

Many sponsorship proposals include social media activation with their audience for prospective sponsors; however, this is typically even before they’ve even set up the account. Many rights owners do not realise that it can take a significant amount of resource to develop and manage social networks so make time to do your research before you promise brands something you aren’t able to deliver at the point of signing the contract.

The benefit of social media is that it is instantaneous, but if you haven’t developed your social network before you offer the rights over to a sponsor, you aren’t offering much of anything.

Is Your Social Network Engaged?

Once you’ve built your social network, you need to ensure that the users are engaged with your content. If you don’t have an engaged audience then there is no benefit to a sponsor of your property because their message will be falling on deaf ears.

5 Tips to Creating Engaging Content:

Be relevant
Provide insight
Offer competitions or money-can’t buy benefits for engaging with you
Provide exclusive content they can’t find anywhere else
If possible, try to be genuinely funny

Does Your Social Network Want to Hear From Your Sponsors?

Your network is important and needs to be treated with care. Do not sign them up and then bombard them with messages that they do not want to hear. This rings true for any and all communication, but especially with social media as it far easier to individuals to block messages online than it is through the post.

Make sure to listen to your audience and provide them content that they find valuable. As long as your sponsor’s messages fall in line with these guidelines you can ensure that you are truly delivering the benefits you are offering.

To connect with Slingshot’s social networks sign up to our Blog or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Social Media and Sponsorship: Can Facebook & YouTube Ever Become Co-brandable Assets for Brands? 19th May, 2011

I recently was asked to write a guest blog for Content & Motion – a fantastic social PR agency with some great clients. They wanted some insight into whether or not their area of expertise could be used to create sponsorship opportunities for brands. It is a question I get posed often and it was a great opportunity to put some thoughts together. The blog looks at developing online audiences and how access to these audience could be turned into sponsorship rights. It also looks into specific opportunities that could be built within Facebook and You Tube.

And in the nature of social media – we’ve just launched our Facebook page where you can get a backstage pass (photos, quotes, vox pops, and competitions) for all of the events we are involved with!

Excerpt from the Content & Motion blog:

With brands utilising and recognising the power of Social Media to drive revenue, such as @DellOutlet attributing $3million in sales to its Twitter account, it’s no surprise to learn that brands are trying to monetise the audiences they have built.Although the majority of social platforms already have built in advertising functionality (i.e. the Video Targeting Tool powered by Google Ads on YouTube), there are additional opportunities to create new media assets within your content as long as it is not intrusive to the audience experience…

Check out the full sponsorship & social media blog post here.

Fanatic.fm – a new sponsorship model for music 3rd March, 2011

As the social media channel becomes increasingly important for brand communications, brands need to find creative ‘story-telling’ elements in their communication contents that people can easily and readily share with their friends. As music is one of the most widely shared content on social media, brands are discovering that association with music and musicians is a great way to create buzz and deliver customized/branded messages.

fanatic .fm is a platform that allows brands to select music albums to sponsor. By sponsoring music albums on fanatic .fm, brands can benefit in various ways:

● Brands can establish and express their identity through music. Starbucks, for instance, can be the #1 Jazz station while Red Bull can be the #1 Hard Rock station.

● Sponsored musicians co-promote the branded campaign to their fans because 1) they directly monetize each time their music is played, and 2) 5% of the sponsorship is donated to charities of their choice. It creates a unique message that the “brands-bands-fans-charities” relationship forged changes the world for the better.

● Fans of the sponsored musician appreciate the sponsorship in a whole new level, forming an emotional bonding to the brand. Not only can they enjoy free music thanks to the brand, but also they know that their favorite musicians are being fairly paid by the sponsors.

Samsung Case Study

Samsung has recently partnered with fanatic.fm and is currently sponsoring Sydney Wayser, an emerging artist from New York. They wanted to promote their programme called “Imagelogger” and thought that associating with emerging artists would be more engaging than going the traditional route of buying media inventories. As expected, Sydney Wayser is spreading the word to her fans through her social networks including Facebook and Twitter. In regards to investment, Samsung pays only when the music is played alongside Samsung’s marketing campaign based on detailed analytics reporting.

Premier League Football is an excellent example of how fan engagement creates a strong brand association and awareness than consumer marketing. When speaking to Manchester United fans, almost all of them would be able to recall previous sponsors: beginning with Sharp in the early 80’s, to Vodafone, AIG and Aon today.

If football fans were simply consumers of the entertainment each team provides, these sponsors would have absolutely no meaning to them. However, becoming a fan is different. It creates an emotional bond that forms between their favorite football team and those brands that support it.

fanatic.fm is aiming to create the same emotional fan engagement by providing brands an opportunity to step beyond product-consumer relationships and leverage the affinity between musicians and their fans.

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