It’s been great getting back to face to face events this year, the opportunities to randomly catch up with old colleagues, meet new ones and yikes, even listen and learn a bit.
Case in point was Wednesday when we dropped in for a day at Sports Business Journal’s first day of their Media Innovators conference, the last event for the most part of the 2022 year.
This year’s event drew some additional new faces as well as some familiar ones, one of which is the always interesting and entertaining Omar Raja, the creator of Bleacher Report’s House of Highlights and now leading ESPN’s social digital success. You can listen to all about Omar on the podcast we did with him last year but some key points were also made today with John Ourand and how social engagement is changing, and what has worked in his ever growing and engaging career.
Five quick takeaways:
As we passed Small Business Saturday, how many brands TikTok’ed Their Way To Sales? Omar preached the value of TikTok not as a short form video platform, but as a well used opportunity for cost conscious community minded brands to go from unknown to known with a younger demo. He cited the sales of creative and affordable PPP masks during the Pandemic, as well as the utility other hyper local brands have found in the short form video world. Now its not easy, but the path to engagement, with a call to action for usage and sales, is quickly coming from TikTok more than any other tried and true social platform.
Meet Fans Where They Are: Often times teams, athletes, leagues try to be everything for everyone when in reality they aren’t looking and listening and watching where their core community is congregating. The teams and leagues that are growing their social engagement…not just their numbers…are the ones that spend time to understand and cultivate an established audience first, and the only way to do that is to know where they are engaging, and what they are looking for.
Explain What We See Every Day: He talked about the effective use of YouTube as a tool for reaching an audience, and sometimes the simplest of ideas have worked the best, because they are the things we see every day. The UFC for example, has grown engagement by explaining to fans what they do…how a weigh in works, why athletes put Vaseline on their skin, what foods help cut weight etc…they aren’t glitzy, they are simple and direct and answer that “I had no idea” question that the casual fan wants to learn and the die hard fan understands as value add. Many times the rush to create content is for what we think we want the consumer to know, vs. what is right in front of us and can be addressed, and explained, pretty easily.
Don’t Waste A Users Time: Often times the mistake brands and even teams have made is to do too much or deliver too many messages in video form, especially on a platform like TikTok. Thinking through the choice of images and delivering the simplest visual message possible to an audience that is attention challenged, has deliver more impact and resonance than videos that are slickly produced. Tell them what you want to know right away, and make it easy to share the message.
And then, Be Real: What platform does Omar have his eye on? The photo and community sharing app has been mentioned constantly as Raja ventures to colleges around the country, and is the one he said he is watching, and using more and more with a demo that craves authentic utility. It was selected as one of Apple’s “Best of” for 2022, and will continue to gain in popularity for tis easy of use.
So there you go…five good takeaways from a short burst of a conversation, with ideas to learn from and one new opportunity to watch, from a rising leader who is always learning himself.
