User:Dubnugstyle/sandbox

Marketing of Athletics through Social Media websites
With technology growing at such an exponential rate, marketing someone's product or team, etc. through certain media sources can result in positive revenue and create more attention to the not only fans but the broader audience. With the rapid growth in social media websites and the easy-to-access ideal through smart phone apps, this form of marketing can become very beneficial in the long run. Several different sports groups and companies have attempted to market their products to create team awareness and popularity through social media websites. The most commonly used websites to promote a companies products through social media are Facebook and Twitter. Facebook has received more than 1.6 billion visits a week and twitter receives more than 400 million visits a month, so marketing products and teams is a very handy way to create recognition and make one's name heard. Here are a couple of examples of companies and teams raising awareness through Facebook and Twitter account pages:

Baylor Rewards Program: When fans decide to "Like" or "Follow" Baylor athletics on either Twitter or Facebook, they are given day-to-day updates on their favorites teams. From a marketing aspect, the Baylor athletics page on Facebook and Twitter (@BaylorAthletics) keeps track of fans who have "tweeted" or "commented" on certain links, posts, or tweets. There is an incentive for these fans to post and tweet because at the end of each year, the top three posting or tweeting fans who are selected, receive prizes, from free jerseys and merchandise to season tickets.

Michigan Presale Incentive: Michigan created a very clever way to enhance the total amount of "Likes" or "Followers" for their Facebook and Twitter Pages in order to obtain recognition. In order to have the opportunity to apply for pre-sale tickets for their Michigan football games, at the largest football arena in the nation 'The Big House', fans are required to "follow" or "like" their page on Facebook or Twitter, which allows them to be able to purchase pre-sale tickets for any game that they desire, making this method of marketing a great tool to gain awareness for their team and many other things.

Louisville Slugger Scavenger Hunt: After the Cardinals won the World Series in 2011, the baseball company known as the Louisville Sluggers, created a scavenger hunt through twitter in order to raise awareness for their company. The hunt involved baseball hats, scattered all over the city of St. Louis, Missouri. The Louisville Slugger twitter page posted "tweets" that hinted at where the hats were located within the city. The fan or participants used their mobile phones in order to be up to date on the specific "tweets" referring to the hunt. If a fan or participant found one of the several hats, the participant was told that they were to be kept by the seeker. The reason this company held a scavenger hunt was to receive recognition and to increase their followers on twitter. The statistics shows that their fan base skyrocketed 143%. Because of this marketing tool, these fan based website pages have increased greatly in numbers and give them the recognition that they were looking for.