SOCIAL MEDIA: ARE YOU MAXIMIZING YOUR PRESENCE? Dr. Ann Pegoraro Associate Professor, Faculty of Management Laurentian University

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ocial media is no longer the new kid on the block, especially in the sports world. We have experienced this new communication medium for a decade and the constant shifting of the digital media landscape can make it tough to consistently maximize your organization’s presence. During one of the Canadian Olympic Committee NSF Enhancement seminars we presented various social media strategies and this article will try and help by providing some simple steps that any organization can use to enhance their digital presence.

1. Know your audience 2. Be Prepared The analytics provided by each platform (Twitter, Facebook) give some good insight into who your audience is, when they engage with you and what content resonates the most. These are good tools to start from when planning your digital strategy and useful to monitor as you roll it out. There is some very robust software out there too that will help you move beyond demographics to understand your audience’s behavior.

This also applies to social media. Sport provides unbelievable and sometimes unpredictable moments to celebrate. Preparing visuals, templates and even text content ahead of time that you can instantly use will definitely pay off. On Twitter sport lives in the moment and being prepared for that moment can have a big pay off for your organization.

Dr. Ann Pegoraro is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Management at Laurentian University. A holder of B.A., MBA, and PhD degrees, Ann is also the Director of the Institute for Sport Marketing a research centre at Laurentian. She is an active researcher, who has presented at international conferences and published in refereed management journals in the areas of marketing, communications, digital media and sport management. Her research primarily focuses on marketing and communication, with a focus on the digital world. 12 Empowering sport organizations through strong leadership

3. Leverage your assets As a sport organization you have some of the most amazing assets in your athletes. They provide the moments that create the amazing content. Some athletes have awesome personalities that shine in the social realm, so using them to build your digital brand makes sense. This of course also comes with the need for some training. Invest in your athletes and it will pay off. And these are not your only assets – don’t forget fans. Fans of your sport can spread your digital content to their networks and provide new content at little to no cost. Locating influencers in your digital networks and leveraging these fans is a good strategy to consider.