Social media popularity can mean bigger paycheck for athletes

Did the interesting, entertaining, sometimes cutting edge Tweets by “Double D” (Darnell Dockett) play a factor in his new $48 million contract extension? Who knows, but one thing is for sure, he has used Twitter account well as a communication platform…

USA Today: Thanks to a compensation formula introduced by her HuckNRoll.com adventure sports team, Rusch can add her social media skills as a source of income.

“Our fans are those hundreds of thousands of people who live for the two weeks a year when they can go skiing or ride their mountain bikes in the real mountains,” says Jon Atencio, the “team wrangler ” for the HuckNRoll squad. “We have skiers, snowboarders, trail runners and bikers. Our athletes have to do more than be at the top of the podium, we want genuine people who care enough to create conversations with their fans through social media.”

Under the HuckNRoll.com plan, its top athletes get a salary that is augmented by payments for their skill at getting fans to read their media offerings and also make purchases from the HuckNRoll.com retail website.

“My career is absolutely a business and I have a degree in marketing,” says Rusch, who is also sponsored by Specialized Bicycles. “There is more to my job than just training and racing. I am constantly looking for opportunities for myself and my sponsors to increase exposure and value.”
Read more at: usatoday.com

Bengals Rewarded in Social Media Activity by Chad Ochocinco & Terrell Owens

Media and marketing power come in many different forms. Whether good or bad, publicity can bring in the $. Who knows if these 2 characters can survive together on the same team, but for now, the Bengals will reap the rewards.
examiner.com – Go ahead, ask me how I found out T.O. (Terrell Owens) signed with the Cincinnati Bengals. Did I find out through ESPN? No. NFL Network? Wrong again. How about the Cincinnati Enquirer? That’s three strikes and you’re out! Oops, that’s a baseball term. We are talking football here. Actually, we are talking social media. I found out the Cincinnati Bengals signed T.O. from Chad OchoCinco on Twitter.
I got a tip early Tuesday morning, July 27, 2010 that T.O. was signing with Cincinnati. A friend of mine who was near Paul Brown Stadium confirmed that several media outlets were lining up outside the stadium. I quickly came to the conclusion something big was going to happen. Unfortunately, I was not able to officially confirm that T.O. was being signed. Instead, I read news articles saying the New York Jets were potentially interested in signing T.O. I tried to dismiss those reports, but nothing else was being posted about T.O. signing with the Cincinnati Bengals. This led me to start looking at online buzz for more information about where T.O. was going to sign. Online buzz showed the Bengals were the front-runner in the T.O. sweepstakes, at least from a conversational stand-point.

Facebook Late to the Check In Game

This article is interesting, no matter how mislead. Will a FB checkin app get good traction out of the gate? Well, of course it will. FB has the biggest social pool to pull from, but lets not fool ourselves, FB has never been a geo-targeted application. Not to mention, several years late to the party. Good reading none the less.
buisnessinsider.com – One of New York’s hottest startups, Foursquare, is under heavy fire from more established Silicon Valley players.

A source briefed on the matter tells us Facebook is working on a feature that will allow users who access the network from mobile devices to “check-in” and broadcast their current location to all their friends.

Huge local business reviews site Yelp rolled out a similar “check-in” feature earlier this month.

Allowing users to “check-in” is Foursquare’s primary function.

Facebook, with its huge scale and wealth of engineering talent, could squash Foursquare. Mainly, that’s because like with Foursquare — and unlike with Yelp or Twitter — Facebook friends are your real friends. They are the kind of people you want to see that you’ve checked-in at a bar, and then meet you there.

We’d caution that this is a single source and that plans can always change. At a place like Facebook, lots of things are always being hacked together, but no one is ever quite sure what will make it as a full release product.

Read the rest at buisnessinsider.com.

Coca-Cola Social Media during Superbowl

adweek.com – Coca-Cola today launched a social media campaign on Facebook that teases its upcoming Super Bowl commercials while raising funds for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

Through Coke’s Facebook fan page, members can send friends virtual gifts of Coke — a bottle image that appears on their profile pages and newsfeeds. In return, senders get 20-second previews of the new commercials the beverage giant plans to air during the Super Bowl. Coke donates $1 to the Boys & Girls Clubs for each gift sent. At noon on game day, Feb. 7, gift-givers will receive both full ads before they are revealed to the general public on the CBS broadcast that night.

“By using our Super Bowl ads to invite people to join us in supporting Boys & Girls Clubs, we’re going beyond simply airing great commercials on a terrific live television event,” said Katie Bayne, CMO of Coca-Cola North America. “We’re reminding people that whenever they enjoy a Coca-Cola, they play a role in helping us make a difference in the lives of others. By opening a Coke they create a happiness multiplier.”
Read more at

NFL Warming up to Social Media

Double D has had some interesting, and crazy funny tweets this off season.

AP: The NFL said Monday it will allow players to use social media networks this season, but not during games. Players, coaches and football operations personnel can use Twitter, Facebook and other social media up to 90 minutes before kickoff, and after the game following traditional media interviews.
During games, no updates will be permitted by the individual himself or anyone representing him on his personal Twitter, Facebook or any other social media account, the league said.
The use of social media by NFL game officials and officiating department personnel will be prohibited at all times. The league, which has always barred play-by-play descriptions of games in progress, also extended that ban to social media platforms.
Earlier this summer, Chargers cornerback Antonio Cromartie was fined $2,500 by the team for criticizing the food service at training camp on Twitter.
The Miami Dolphins imposed restrictions on players, reporters and even spectators at their training camp, and several other teams also set up some restrictions on practice fields, including the Broncos, Patriots, Bills, Colts, Saints and Lions.
Read more at AP

SM Will Never Replace SEO

This article definitely falls under the “no shit” category. SEO is not dead? Really? To think that the latest community/communication trend will have a major impact on search is a silly discussion, but since some feel it’s relevant, here we go…

brafton.com: With the increase in the number of people using social media to help increase their online presence some have said there will be less of a need for search engine optimization (SEO), but at the SES San Jose conference this week the assessment was that SEO is not dead.

InfoWorld’s Paul Krill writes that at the “Search: Where to Next?” panel discussion, panelists agreed that there are benefits to social media, but there is still a need for search engine optimization in a web 2.0 world.

In what might be a combination of search engine optimization (SEO) and social media, Krill notes that Eli Goodman of comScore says there are more than 3 billion searches each month on YouTube, meaning people are becoming more accepting of performing searches outside of traditional search engines.

“[What] you have to remember is that the places where people are comfortable in getting relevant results is spreading out,” he said.

Read More at: brafton.com