How team marketers keep their socials active year-round

For many sports fans, their social media feeds are dominated with highlights, scores, and all the other news and drama when their favorite teams are in season.

But team social media managers still have to feed the content machine during the dreaded offseason.

“I want to make sure that the Liberty is at the forefront; that you’re not going to forget about us,” Charlie DeSadier, social media coordinator for the New York Liberty, told Marketing Brew. “We’re still going to give you that grade-A content that we’re going to give you in the regular season.”

Without consistent access to players and in-game action, that job gets a little harder, and many team social media managers have to contend with declines in engagement. Still, they’ve figured out ways to keep their teams’ pages populated, even without the action of the season.

Get engaged

No true fan can ever forget about their team entirely, but by and large, social engagement for teams tends to dip when they’re not in season, social media managers and marketers told us.

“We have spent many, many years talking about trying to skip the dip,” said Michael Russell, head of production for Manchester City Football Club, which has a short offseason of just about six weeks in the summer. “We absolutely set our KPIs with June and July in mind…You accept that June and July are downtime.”

When there aren’t any games to watch, engagement goes down for the NWSL too, according to Meg Patten, senior director of brand strategy, commercial marketing, and merchandise for the Washington Spirit. Ditto for baseball, according to Izzy Meckfessel, client services, social media, and promotions manager for the minor-league team the Hartford Yard Goats.

Without games, social content also changes substantially. The Spirit focuses on highlighting new players, transfers, and trades on social when the team isn’t playing, Patten told us, and some teams slow down their posting schedules as a natural response.

“We’re not pumping out quite as much content in the offseason,” Tim Walsh, director of digital marketing for the Seattle Mariners, said. “When you’re playing every day and things are happening, you can capitalize on moments, and content kind of creates itself in a way.”

The Chicago Bulls slowed down social activity this postseason, and since the team wasn’t in the playoffs, engagement took a bit of a dip, Luka Dukich, VP of content for the Bulls, said. But the Bulls are among the most-popular pro teams in North America on social, with more than 45 million followers across platforms, so they can find success online even in the offseason. One of the team’s most popular posts from this past season came out of training camp, according to Dukich.

Meme culture

Many teams post recaps and highlights when their seasons end, sports social media marketers told us, but sometimes, their most popular offseason content isn’t about their own records—or even their own sports.

Man City, for example, posted a photo of manager Pep Guardiola alongside Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla when the Celtics won the NBA Finals in June, and one of the Yard Goats’ most viral posts was of Tom Brady photoshopped into one of their jerseys when he announced his retirement, Meckfessel said. (Translation: Boston sports are apparently good for engagement.)

“I want to make sure that the content we’re putting out there is engaging,” Meckfessel said. “I try to make it not just seem like I’m just pushing out content to push out content, so really trying to tie it into what’s going on in pop culture.”

A recent high-performing post for the Liberty had nothing to do with sports at all: Instead, DeSadier had players weigh in on the Drake/Kendrick Lamar beef, which engaged hip-hop fans who might not typically come across the Liberty’s content otherwise, she said, a key part of the team’s marketing strategy.

Similarly, the Bulls have been able to stay active in the offseason by showing up at events in the city, like Lollapalooza, Dukich said. A couple of years ago, the team’s drumline performed on stage with electronic music duo Odesza, and last year, mascot Benny the Bull was in attendance and Billie Eilish wore a Bulls jersey during her headlining set after meeting Benny.

“Wearing a basketball jersey is a fashion statement that never gets old at festivals, and we noticed a lot of those jerseys were Bulls jerseys,” Dukich said. “You just try to find ways to participate in stuff where it’s natural…If you’re at Lolla as a fan and Benny the Bull shows up on stage, that’s awesome, that makes sense, and you’re excited about it. It’s not awkward or weird.”

Inside the locker room

Crossover content can shine in the offseason, but many fans still want to keep up with the players on their favorite teams, so team social marketers also try to lean into their rosters for offseason content.

When USWNT member Casey Krueger signed with the Spirit in January, the content team posted about baby-proofing the facilities for her son, part of a larger strategy of focusing on “player narratives and stories,” Patten told us.

“It ended up being a really cool piece that did get a lot of engagement in the offseason,” she said.

Last year, when Liberty forward Betnijah Laney-Hamilton was at USA Basketball training camp in Atlanta, DeSadier tapped her to do a Q&A with fans on Instagram Live. Walsh has also been able to get Mariners players to interact with fans via Instagram Live during the offseason, he said. Fans like content that highlights player personalities off the field, he said, like the Mariners’ recent series of digital shorts, or its documentary about 2020 MLB Rookie of the Year Kyle Lewis.

Team handshakes also seem to perform well among basketball fans: DeSadier said a compilation of Liberty players doing their handshakes stood out on TikTok and Instagram, and the Bulls have a handshake series on TikTok that has more than 101 million views and 16 million likes across about 13 videos, according to the team. It’s “one of our most consistent hits,” Dukich said.

For Man City, which has no shortage of stellar on-pitch footage to share after its men’s team won its fourth consecutive Premier League title in May, personality-oriented player content works year-round, according to Russell.

“The best stuff here is just the mundane, the stuff with players just being themselves, literally walking in in the morning,” he said. “We are trying to get a worldwide fan base to realize that these are human beings.”