Did you see Beyonce featuring the Super Bowl? She was amazing and the game kept me occupied until it was showtime, but then I realized it was really just a cover up to announce her new tour... All jokes aside congrats to the Broncos and Peyton Manning, they played a great game and I can't wait for the Cam Newton memes to go viral on everything. Lets recap Super Bowl 50 from a Social media standpoint...
Here is my review of the Sports Stadium feature. My first con is that the app is not an actual app as I was led to believe from reading an article. It is actually a feature on Facebook that you access by typing in "Sports Stadium" or by typing in the team names into the search bar. I only had 8 out of 561 Facebook friends interacting on this feature. I'm not sure how they got the word out about it, but that is pretty surprising and I didn't get much out of it at all. The news feed was strictly about the game, but it wasn't a lot of activity. The live stats and expert comments were a nice touch, but it wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. As much as we are on our phones we sometimes miss plays, so it was nice to have that as a part of the news feed. This is also only available for American Football and no other sport. With the NBA Finals coming up in June, hopefully Facebook will have it ready for that. I know that this is a brand new feature for Facebook and they will work out the kinks so we will see how they develop this feature over the next few months.
As far as the other social media platforms go I think that they were nothing out of the ordinary. Snapchat was my favorite platform over Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook because of the story feature. Snapchat normally has the story feature, but they had two for the Super Bowl: Super Bowl and Super Bowl worldwide. I don't think most people consider that there are American Football fans around the world. I guess it is not any different than us celebrating a Futbol game in Europe, but it was very cool to see celebrate Super Bowl 50 with us. I thought it was a great example of how social media makes the world a smaller place and how it can also bring us together.
Next week is Super Bowl 50, but the Panthers and Broncos are not the only ones preparing for the championship game. Social media platforms have been preparing to out perform each other this year. Facebook is launching an app called Sports Stadium where fans can talk about all things sport and it includes features like play by play, game statistics, and commentary from sportcasters.
Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram are typically busy during major sporting events. From criticism about the officials to Game Day pictures, if something is happening in the Sports world it is being mentioned on social media. For Facebook to step up and make an app solely for sports is a major step and could possibly put it ahead of the pack for fans. Twitter is normally the platform of choice for live events because it's short and sweet and in real time. (Let's be honest no one wants to see you update your Facebook status ten times in a row during the game, but I will gladly favorite your tweet as i'm scrolling down my feed.)
Snapchat has also brought some fun to the game with having geofilters and stories specifically for sporting events. You can easily see what your other couple thousand Falcons fans are doing while watching the game live or at home. Instagram has recently introduced a feature that allows you to see posts related to the same live event all in one place similar to Snapchat's story feature.
Twitter has been called "The World's Biggest Sports Bar". Who can forget Oreo making light of the lights going out at the Superbowl XLVII by tweeting that you can still dunk in the dark. That was a great way for advertisers to take advantage of an unexpected situation during a live event. For the Sports Stadium app it is set to be adfree, but will it eventually include advertising?
Twitter is a big competitor for Facebook with it's other apps, Vine, Q&A, Camera and Challenger and Periscope. Twitter has reported $132 million loss while Facebook has reported $1.56 billion in profit with advertisers so having an ad free app may not hurt them, but it may not last long either. There is just as much anticipation and excitement if not more for the Super Bowl commercials as the game every year, but could this eventually be a future Super Bowl commercial replacement as advertisers and marketers look to social media to further promote their brand? Or an additional part to the multi-million dollar 30 second tv spots? Probably not this app alone if it ever does begin showing ads, but as social media continues to become a major part of our world it could be the beginning of some major changes for advertisers and marketers.
The app will be released in time for next Sunday's big game which will be a great test to see how well the app will do with sport fans.
How many times have you been scrolling through your feed on Instagram to run across one of your favorite celebs showing of their brand new teeth whitening kit or skinny tea? And so you think I am one step closer to being just like you! I don't hink I can go a day without seeing BOOTEA, MateFit, waist trainers, teeth whitening kits, detox teas and other products being promoted on my feed.
I get paid $10 an hour to Tweet, Snap, Instagram, and post to Facebook five times a week about recreational sports. Don't get me wrong I like my job, but when I found out that athletes, celebrities, and popular social media users were being paid anywhere from $1,000-$300,000 per post to basically do the same thing...I realized I was in the wrong business!
The fact that some people are simply mentioning and showing a company's product and make up to 30,000 times what I make is amazing. It's obvious that the requirements to promote these products are to be a celebrity or have a high number of followers and to be attractive. They send you the product for free and you gain them a couple of thousand new customers. The promoter probably doesn't even really have to use the product. I mean there is no requirement to other than to tell your millions of followers that you do anyways. So who really wins here?
Let's face it; as annoying as it may be to see these staged promotions it's smart marketing. Using someone with a lot of influence on social media to say "Hey I use this, you want to be like me and look like me so you should use it to. Oh by the way use my discount code for 15% off as an extra incentive and so the company knows it's working." Though the company pays per post, the cost varies and it is so much cheaper than making an advertising campaign. I also think it reaches more people because it's not just one actor, model, singer or athlete. They use the "inbetweeners" of Hollywood celebrities and everyday people. Fashion bloggers, makeup gurus, fitspos, dancers, etc. In a way you want to trust them just a little bit more because it's not a huge celebrity who always gets paid to do this. It's someone who you feel like you relate to and they wouldn't do this if it didn't work. You learned how to conture because of this person, there is no way they would steer you wrong now. As a marketing student, even though I know exactly what these companies are doing I have been slightly interested in a detox tea or two. Great job guys, it's working.
