Sports public relations practitioners are now able to focus on a more interactive form of social media: message boards. Through these message boards, Sports PR people are able to easily and efficiently survey the wants and needs of their publics in an organized environment. The message boards also help to get the message from a PR person across to its publics. I feel that this form of two way communication between a sports organization and its fans should be utilized through more often.
For this week’s blog, I came across a study that was conducted in 2006 by Chang Wan Woo, Seon-Kyoung An, and Seung Ho Cho about the usage of message boards on eight Major League Baseball Sites. The study focused on what motivates internet users to write on the team message boards, the topics that are brought up, and the amount of topics for high winning teams and low winning teams. The data from the research can help sports public relations practitioners connect with their publics and adopt a two-way communications system with message board users.
The results of the study showed that the amount of posts on a message board positively correlated with how well the team was doing, and that the frequent reason for using this medium was for cognitive reasons (furthering ones understanding and knowledge of a team). This information can help sports PR people because those teams that are doing well relative to other in the league can direct organization information with their publics through message boards. Also, they can expect heavier traffic (comments, concerns, complaints) on their message boards and will have to address controversial situations if they are brought up.
Messages boards could be considered a growing social medium and with the help of its publics, sports organizations can strengthen their community relations with such a medium.
Click Here to view a write up of the study.
No comments:
Post a Comment