The following is a guest post by Rob Shaw, Facebook Sports Partnerships.
Comcast SportsNet (CSN) is the collection of regional sports networks in the NBC Sports family. The networks regularly produce sports content targeted to regional sports audiences on their digital and broadcast properties. To better engage and extend their reach to their regional fan bases on Facebook, CSN coordinated a posting strategy for on-air talent and sports journalists augmented by the CSN Facebook pages and broadcasts. The innovative journalist-focused strategy was activated in several markets around their MLB coverage from the season’s start (April) to the MLB All-Star break (July).
Goals
Strategy
CSN included six sports journalists/on-air talent from six markets (San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, Boston) to engage in a new Facebook posting strategy. This new strategy was focused on real-time engagement on Facebook with the support of the broadcast. Brodie Brazil, Steve Gelbs, Dan Hayes, Michael Jenkins, Sean McAdam, and Reuben Frank increased their post frequency while engaging with their audience more regularly and often using Facebook Mentions.
On-Air Integrations
CSN Bay Area posted to its Facebook page asking fans to submit questions that were later answered by Kruk and Kuip during the pregame show.
The video clip of the broadcast segment was also posted natively to their Facebook Page. This activation had an enormous response on Facebook, more than doubling its average post reach in June. The content not only reached a large community of potential viewers for the broadcast, but the activation also resulted in 1,500 additional Likes for the CSN Bay Area page.
Results
CSN Research
CSN Referral Traffic
“This partnership with Facebook was successful on several levels. Onboarding our digital insiders and broadcasters increased the visibility of our talent and networks, and by integrating Facebook content during our live game broadcasts, we significantly extended our overall reach and engagement.”
Jen Franklin, VP of Digital for NBC Sports Regional Networks