Why it's Hard to Show Marketing Effectiveness of Social Media in Sports

I have always been intrigued as to why sports firms have been so slow to use social media to promote their products. As we all know, social media has incredible breadth in terms of sports fans. So, why don't firms promote their brands on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets?

Well, it's still really hard to gauge the effectiveness and return on marketing in social media. With traditional print and digital media, companies rated effectiveness on cold metrics. Cold metrics are what you normally think of with marketing effectiveness - reach, frequency, page views, impressions. But social media has a different reach then traditional media and needs to look at warm metrics. Warm metrics deal with engagement, levels of "viral", community conversation. Tricky stuff to compute.

Traditional media is a monologue, meaning that it's one way communication. Social media is two way; the company promotes their product and fans immediate respond. Think of it this way, traditional media was a speech and social media is a conversation. Conversations naturally are harder to analysis.

Intrigued like me? Then check out this unbelievable guest article in the Sports Business Journal by Amy Martin. You'll thank me later when you can't fit your brain through the door.