Challenges and Issues

Despite the benefits and value of using social media, and related activities and strategies as a site to build brands and develop relationships with fans, participants also indicated that there were a number of perceived challenges. The challenges were described as: meeting fan expectations, adaptability and flexibility, and synergy with offline marketing.

Meeting fan expectations. Participants identified this challenge as the most

crucial barrier that inhibited their ability to try to build their brand and relationships with fans. The increasing prevalence of social media has changed the way fans communicate with brands and, in turn, participants thought their expectation of brands has altered. They are aware that fans currently view social media as direct communication portals and expect brands to provide real-time engagement:

Fans expectations these days are that somebody will respond immediately. They

turn to social media first. They won’t go to the website; they expect a quick

response and interaction on social media.

It never stops. Fans expect that information, and expect it all the time, especially with a global audience. It just never stops.

Therefore, while we try to build those relationships and build that trust, social media have knocked down all those walls where people expect everything from a brand and they expect to be answered.

The challenge of meeting fan expectations appears to be further compounded by the sheer volume of data available and the need to provide content that adds value.

Volume of Data. Participants acknowledged that a catch-22 situation could arise when using social media. Admittedly, while one goal of social media use is to increase fan and follower base, participants noted that increased numbers of fans and followers can

lead to an increase in the volume of data media personnel are exposed to, creating a situation that participants termed “feeding the beast”:

When you have such large followers and engagement, you simply cannot respond to them all. Some people will get irate about that and they will be very vocal in criticising you for not caring about the fans. Therefore, I think the volume is definitely the challenge.

[Fans] want to communicate with you the way that they want to and they are not thinking from the social media person's point of view, they are just thinking, “I

asked a question and I haven't had an answer”. The volume is massive. You have

to see them [the question] in the first place to do that [answer them].

This indicates that social media managers and personnel need to be mindful of the resources required to support their social endeavours and have strategies in place to deal with this accordingly. Without the development of such strategies, there is the potential for sports events to run the risk of alienating or angering fans who expect instant gratification and responses from personnel on these channels.

Unique value added content. As identified in the previous section, platform uniqueness and the content displayed on Facebook compared to Twitter was one key strategy that is thought to help to develop their brand and relationships with fans via social media. However, participants signalled that this presents an inherent challenge:

It is a challenge to know what content to provide on channels. Should we be doing Facebook ads? Google+ has Google Hangouts; Instagram is all about getting the photos up there. Tumblr is a different beast altogether and the same with Pinterest. Therefore, it is not a one-stop shop for all the channels.

Knowing what content is appropriate for each platform appears to be important if media personnel are to deliver value to fans on various social media. Ultimately in order to be successful on social media it is considered that sports brands must seek to address and overcome challenges associated with meeting fan expectations.

Adaptability and flexibility. According to participants, challenges associated

planned versus unplanned strategy, obtaining a level of organisational nimbleness, understanding technology and the social environment and knowing what to respond to.

Planned vs. unplanned strategy. Participants addressed the need to balance social media strategies with the ability to adapt and change in order to be flexible:

What I have discovered is that we can plan for maybe 70% of what we are going to do, and the other 30% we just do not know and we have to be prepared to change and adapt as it happens. That is the nature of this whole area and industry now. You just have to pick things up at the drop of a hat and that can be challenging.

It is a vicious cycle. In all honesty, we could be active 24 hours a day. Therefore, it is being able to plan effectively in advance while staying flexible enough with that. With everything constantly changing, that is a huge challenge.

One participant described a social media success story for their event that organically evolved from their willingness to adapt and be flexible with their strategy. Consequently, it helped in the formation of a community of fans among their social media followers:

Because we have a big audience in [different time zones], many of our fans stay up late to watch the tennis. As a result, the hashtag #sleepisfortheweak started a few years ago. We now call these people the 'sleepisfortheweakcrew'. People start talking about us months ahead of the event. It is something that was not planned but just happened.

Organisational nimbleness. Participants identified organisational nimbleness as a challenge to adaptability and flexibility whereby organisations need to support the changing dynamics and fast-paced nature of communication and interaction in the social space:

The unknown may need us to go out there and get content, or quickly pull something together to give them and continue the conversation. So really, it is all about needing to be able to adapt. However, to do that…it is also about having a good team that you can rely on in those moments.

Other participants noted that, from an organisational perspective, nimbleness has been a tangible issue, yet one they are continually striving to overcome:

We have tried to become more nimble as an organisation. We had this reputation of being bureaucratic, like I am sure some of the other slams do, but we want to be able to react in real time. It is a challenge if you are not.

Technology and social environment. Technology was viewed as a challenge and barrier to these brands’ ability to adapt and be flexible, such that participants claim that media personnel need to be current with relevant changes in technology and social media spaces to keep one-step ahead of increasingly media-savvy users. Participants advised that this is not a time for complacency:

Some of the biggest challenges are staying up-to-date on all the channels.

From the technical perspective, everything changes all the time, on any number of social platforms that you use day-in and day-out. It is a constant challenge and then there is so many new social entities popping up all the time.

You could spend ages on developing something and making it fit perfectly and then they [social media sites] change their API17 and it is then broken and you have to go back and fix it.

Furthermore, with changes in technology and advancements in the social space, comments reveal that participants consider that new opportunities exist for brands. However, the challenge is ensuring there is a clear purpose and strategy relating to the use of each platform. Without this, resources (time, personnel and finances) are deemed wasted on social media trends that may not provide any return. One participant provided a detailed account to illustrate this situation:

Twitter said to us, “We've got this Twitter mirror. We would love to give it to you. [Event X] is going to have it. It's been very successful at the IPL.” We thought, great - it will be something fun for the players to do. We put it on the player lawn, but Twitter insisted on staffing it themselves, and managing it themselves. Therefore, it is a perfect example of something, a slight fad that did not necessarily serve its purpose.

17 _{In computer programming, an application programming interface (API) is a set of routines, protocols}

and tools for building software applications. Designer and digital media expert Maeda (2005) has suggested the following accessible metaphor for conceptualizing APIs: [An] API can be thought of as a

company’s internal telephone book with descriptions of key personnel’s titles and job descriptions where you (the outsider) are free to call those people up to do your bidding… You [access] a running computer

application [via] an interface (the “phonebook”) that one can program (the “phone call”) externally.

Knowing what to respond to. The final issue mentioned by participants in relation to adaptability and flexibility was the idea of knowing what exactly personnel should respond to. As previously discussed, all participants indicated that interaction and maintaining a conversation with fans was considered important. However, participants recognised that one of the challenges to attain this was identifying which conversations were advantageous for the brand to be seen to be part of and which ones to withdraw from. Participants noted that this was particularly important when ensuring that they provided content and communication that they believed would foster both engagement and add value for fans:

It is finding that fine line between tracing trends and latching onto things that are big for the sake of doing so. One recent thing comes to mind, the Royal baby. You see all these brands trying to latch onto it. It is always very tempting. We constantly have dialogue going on. Should we get into the conversation around xyz? And why? What result is that going to give us? We have really moved past the point of those basic measures. It is not just about how many followers you are able to obtain, it is about the deeper level engagement.

Others elaborated on the issue concerning the labyrinth of responding to fan criticisms and potentially making a bad situation worse:

I think it is about feeding the beast, in a way. Once you start to engage with people, you could make a small problem a worse one. … You do not want to get

into a wrangling match with someone. … [At times] it is much more this is the situation and that is it.

Synergy and integration with other marketing activities. While social media

appear to be growing in popularity, it is suggested that their usage by sports brands needs to be managed in partnership with more traditional marketing practices. Participants revealed that one of the challenges in using social media is the potential to become engrossed in it to the extent that they disregard other online and offline strategies. As one participant indicated:

We always have to remind ourselves that while social is sexy and in the news right now at the end of the day, it represents a small, but growing, percentage of our overall business. The challenge is to realise for as much as we do through social,

we still need to spend as much time, if not more time, thinking about traditional media.

Another participant, who acknowledges that marketing efforts by brands need to be managed and coordinated accordingly, discussed such synergies between traditional and social as well as between differing social platforms:

The challenge for everyone with social media is how you integrate it with everything else that you are doing. It does not just exist in isolation. You can be too caught up in them [social media] as a whole all on their own, but you need to work out how they fit in with everything else.

Furthermore, while social media use is emerging, participants admitted that they are aware that not every fan or potential fan uses this media. As a result participants claimed there was still a need to communicate with fans via other avenues. Despite the identified benefits and value of using social media as a site to build brands and develop relationships with fans, participants acknowledged this use was not without its challenges. Indeed, their comments revealed the need to be mindful of aspects related to meeting fan expectations, adaptability and flexibility, and synergy with offline marketing when developing and crafting their social media strategy.