Background: A fan had been tweeting under Shaquille O’Neal’s name on Twitter, yet because this was occurring prior to Twitter’s rollout of a verification process for celebrities, Shaquille O’Neal couldn’t publicly disprove the credibility of his impostor. Not only that, but if Shaquille O’Neal did create an account on Twitter, how would he humanize his mega-celebrity status in order to thrive in a social networking environment like Twitter?
Approach: Digital Royalty trained the basketball superstar, @The_Real_Shaq, how to tweet both strategically and tactically on his “ShaqBerry” (as he likes to call it) so that he could tweet himself; authentically. Most importantly, to turn followers of Shaquille into friends and brand loyalists, Digital Royalty developed the concept of Random Acts of Shaqness. The idea behind Random Acts of Shaqness was that not only would followers get to interact with a virtual friend in a tangible, real-world way, but followers of Shaquille would be rewarded for following Shaquille and for how closely they followed his tweets.
Results: Shaquille O’Neal is currently ranked among Twitter’s top 10 celebrity users according to WeFollow.com. In addition to having a well-established presence, 2.5 million followers strong, the threat of imposters have been abolished. Not only is Shaquille regarded as an early adopter, but his tweets often become news – a testament to his credibility in the space. Additionally, Shaquille is a groundbreaker for furthering the idea that celebrities on social networking sites can be active participants of a community—engaging, responding and meeting followers. And since pioneering Random Acts of Shaqness, the concept has been adopted by celebrities of all types on Twitter who include Ellen DeGeneres, UFC’s Dana White, Lenny Kravitz and Chad Ocho Cinco.
November 19, 2009
Athletes and Social Media. It’s a hot topic. Traditional professional sports leagues have recently published their social media rule books which, in some cases, have earned new fan-assigned nicknames like No Fun League.
But contrary to the direction of their ‘No Fun League’ counterparts, The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), a Digital Royalty (dR) client, has taken a different digital path. UFC brought the dR team in for a three-day strategic and tactical training session with more than 200 of their professional athletes. Below are some of what these athletes learned in the three-day event.
Strategic Training: Athletes learned how to use social media to monetize their brand, become their own media outlet and navigate through crisis communications situations. In addition, Digital Royalty taught this group of athletes that the connection with fans can be beneficial beyond their athletic career, and in lue of this, how to grow their brand by establishing relationships with new fans and strengthening relationships with existing fans.
Tactical Training: Account setup, optimization and use of handheld social media applications were also part of the presentation.
