Last modified: 2015-09-17
Abstract
Professional sports teams are increasingly utilizing social media as a marketing strategy to promote their team and reach fans in real time. Social media outlets allow fans to engage with their favorite teams in various ways including retweets, likes, and favorites. Marketers need to capitalize on this ability and design messages that encourage fan engagement. This study measured the effectiveness of teams in building fan engagement by analyzing the type of social media message sent and the amount of fan engagement (retweets, likes, and favorites) across the platforms of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook with the intent of establishing best practices. The findings suggest marketers have to design unique messages across each of the three social media platforms to effectively engage fans.