Digital Media Cafe Blog Week Five – David Granger
December 4, 2013
Hello, welcome to this week’s iSportconnect’s Digital Café blog, where we look at what happening in the arena of horse racing, skiing, rugby and very small football players.
Team In Focus
We start with a look at how Cheltenham Race Course. While for most people, the Gold Cup is what brings the Cheltenham course on to their radar, the site takes great pride in promoting the other year-round offerings: both races and otherwise. Additional hospitality and attractions are right to the fore and cover a variety of different spectacles – it’s not often you get the words Rizzle Kicks and Ladies Day on the same page. Or perhaps it is.
Their digital content is also impressive in its breadth of media. Stories, images sit along side a great library of video and audio content. They’re also not afraid of using guest writers to boost their output, of particular note is the AP McCoy blog which is well worth a read.
Their Facebook Page encompasses two standard issue functions, there are some great shots of the course outside race days and also they frequently push content and events.
But perhaps it’s piece de resistance is this, the Cheltenham song. More venues should do this:
Athletes Getting It Right
This week’s athlete is American skier Lindsey Vonn. A world-class athlete, Vonn has also hit the headlines because of either injury or her new partner, another word-class athlete not unused to the media spotlight – Tiger Woods. Being particularly photogenic, Vonn makes – understandably – good use of Instagram and takes a great selfie. She also gets bonus points for the snow flakes currently drifting across her home page.
Nice seasonal touch.
Fan interaction
This week’s great use of social media is sport comes from the Scarlets Welsh Rugby Union team. Their Sit Near Me function on their Facebook Page means you can not only book your ticket for games, but also see which of your Facebook Friends are already going so you can… that’s right, sit near them. This cleverly means social and sporting friends are likely to interact and encourage each other to join the respective communities.
One for your lunch hour.
If you have five minutes to spare then check out the Shrunken Footballers Twitter channel. The name kind of gives the game away, essentially it’s a Twitter feed devoted to pictures of soccer stars who have been shrunk. Not the cutting-edge of sports business, but very very funny. Especially the one of a tiny Maradona.
Watch this week’s Digital Media Cafe below:
