On 9th March 2022 we hosted our monthly spotlight webinar looking at ‘Every moment matters: Getting it right with social content in sports and event.’ Click here to watch the recording, or read on to see social content insights from our star speakers.

Covering all platforms with social content

Kicking off the discussions, Gareth asked the panel more about their current strategies for social content and video and what has worked. Sofía from Dorna Sports shared more about their current social media strategy –

“Our current strategy is to cover and be present on all social media platforms and personalize content as much as possible. We want to give the audience what they are looking for in each platform, for example, on Instagram we have different content for video, Reels, and stories.

In the past, we had a more formal tone of voice but with the introduction of Instagram Reels and TikTok, we now have a new, more informal, tone that is a lot more personable. When we see a curious or exciting moment from one of our riders, we immediately recognize the type of content as a short form piece for TikTok or Instagram Reels, and then after the race, we use the clip in a longer-form content for YouTube with other moments.

We want to ensure we keep the balance between short content clips and long formats as we don’t want to forget about our loyal YouTube subscribers. Speed to market is also so important as people want to feel like they are there live and want to watch it as soon as possible. So if we don’t post it, someone else will so it is important for us to collaborate with the riders and the teams to push to social too.”

Take a look at one of the great Dorna social clips –

Growing digital audiences with social video

Moving the conversation to growing audiences, Gareth asked the panel, how do you balance your efforts between the loyal, traditional followers and the new audiences? Does your social content strategy account for that? Carl from Global shared more about one of their radio channels, Classic FM –

“You find that a lot of the time the online audience is quite different to the radio audience and Classic FM is a great example.

The average radio listener of that station is going to be around 40 years old plus, but the digital audience is actually quite a lot younger who enjoy the memes and funny social media clips going viral about classical music. We have even set up a TikTok account which is proving to be really successful for us.

Whereas the on-air audience has a different focus when it comes to content so it is important for us to educate ourselves and recognize that the radio audience doesn’t need to be the same as the social media audience. These people enjoy classical music and Classic FM, but just want to be entertained in a different way on social.”

Audience poll results

Building human connections

Gareth turned his focus to Ben from Somerset County Cricket Club (SCCC) to hear more about their original approach to growing audiences both domestically and internationally using social, and YouTube in particular.

“We were quite lucky as we are in a fairly unique position for a sports club as we are also a rightsholder for the live broadcasts. Any of the games not on Sky, we can produce our own broadcasts which started out as a little webcam set up around five years ago and was never thought about as a key driver. However in the last five years, we have seen a huge surge in popularity the thirst to watch the games live, so we have created a mini studio with our own camera operators and commentators!

We are very fortunate to have a loyal fanbase in the UK already, but we looked at how to grow SCCC globally using this jump in live streaming Cricket on socials. We have numerous athletes from overseas so we looked at our strategy at how we can use these athletes in our content to grow our brand and reach outside of the UK.

Baba Azam and Azhar Alia are two premier cricketers in Pakistan and both played for SCCC over the last few years so we used the live broadcast to show the nation of Pakistan they can watch their heroes live on YouTube as we have no geo-restrictions. However, we also wanted to show the human side to build a connection with the global audience.

To tell the story of the T20 campaign, we used body cameras to show the real behind-the-scenes story from the players’ perspective and we captured some great moments!”

Take a look at the clip Ben provided showing a combination of broadcast and body-cam footage –

Watch the full recording to hear the full panel discussions and how they answered the audience questions. And make sure you take a look at all the upcoming webinars so you can join us live!

For more information on how we can help you can make every moment matter and hear from social content insights, get in touch.