Social Media Marketing in Major League Baseball
Dear Readers,
If you’ve been reading for awhile you know I’m a Major League Baseball fan.
I love baseball and I feel there are a lot of things we can learn about our MLM business from baseball.
Take this social media marketing lesson from the Cleveland Indians.
In an effort to reach out to fans and the social media community the Cleveland Indians have created what they call a “Social Suite“.
They have a box suite (yep the climate controlled suites with the food, tv screens, wifi, etc.) just for social media mavens. If you’re a blogger, tweeter, or whatever you can register for a pass. Each home game the Indians will offer 12 free passes to the social media suite.
To apply for the Social Suite you need to visit http://www.indians.com/connect and click on the button to apply. You have to put in your links to your twitter, facebook, linked in, blog, or other social media so they can check you out. You can even select which game you’d be interested in attending.
This is a seriously cool idea by a major league sports team to reach out to their fans. Yes they’re giving up one box suite that they could sell to some corporate sponsor. However they win a ton of great publicity. Imagine all the blogs (like this one) that will talk about the Indians. I’m not even an Indians fan! I’m a Red Sox fan! Imagine all the news outlets that will run a story on the Indians social suite. Imagine how many social media mavens will mention it. Imagine how many new internet fans the Indians will pick up as a result.
If I was involved in writing about baseball or sports I would definitely apply for a pass to join the Social Suite. Why? Imagine you get to hang out with a dozen other social media connectors/mavens. Imagine the connections you can make while you’re at the game. Do that a few times a year and you’d meet 30+ other social media mavens that you could connect with. Now you’ve expanded your personal network. Being mentioned by these other social media types will probably also help you gain fans/followers.
It is a win win situation.
Bravo Cleveland Indians I hope you guys do great this year.
Also since we’re talking about baseball I want to give a shout out to Mike Jansen. Mike is a distributor on my team who is the stadium announcer for the Indianapolis Colts. This year he also will be announcing several AAA baseball games. He’ll be announcing games for the Indianapolis Indians (the Triple A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates.)
Congratulations Mike Jansen!
Mike will be announcing these Indianapolis Indians home games:
APRIL 8,9,12,27
MAY 3,16, 18, 19
JUNE 1, 20
JULY 20
AUGUST 17, 31
You can get tickets for the Indianapolis Indians here.
What do you think about the Indians reaching out to fans with the Social Suite?
- Ben Fitts
follow me on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/benfitts
