Social Media and Professional Hockey Teams
By Corbin Smeal
More
and more professional ice hockey teams are following suit of other franchises
and getting involved in the numerous forms of social media. In the past, hockey
teams would use their own websites to post blogs, photos, and videos along with
other news in order to keep their fans up to date with the events surrounding
their organization. In 2004 when Facebook was introduced, the Chicago
Blackhawks were among the first to establish an account and have since been
very active on it and have a following of just around 2.1 Million followers
today.
Hockey
teams use these Facebook to interact with fans, share content, promote events
and more. However, with Facebook becoming less popular to young adults and
teens, many teams have created Instagram pages to increase their reach to this
demographic. Instagram is commonly used to showcase off-ice events that the
team partakes in, or to show scores and highlights of games. The dying platform
of Twitter is used mostly to show lineups for games, news updates about teams,
or clickable links that bring users to external sites.
One
social media platform that a lot of pro hockey teams don’t take advantage of is
Snapchat. I think that more teams should have Snapchat accounts for a few
reasons. They can be run by pretty much anyone, and multiple staff members can
have access to the teams account. Snapchat can be used to show a behind the
scenes, and more personal view into what a hockey team does. For example, in
addition to putting out content on Instagram and Twitter, Snapchat can be ran
by an equipment manager for the team and he can film what goes on before the
game such as taping sticks or sharpening skates, or showing the team warming up
and getting ready for the game. Which is something that a lot of hockey fans
may have never experienced before and would be some really interesting content
and would be widely popular for just about anyone.
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