For the social media case study I decided to focus on the Ultimate Fighting Championship, more commonly referred to as the UFC. I am biased because I follow and enjoy the product but part of the reason I am attracted to MMA and the UFC is because of the marketing and business side. MMA provides the greatest opportunity for expression in sports because it is not only a sport but an art. There is no one way to do it and it is encouraged to be different. Raw emotion is guaranteed and it is full of action.
The UFC captures all of this content through several modes of social media, most notably Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. What makes it so effective is that they use it as an interactive news platform. They are constantly posting fighter updates, matches that are made and video content.
It is also very interesting to see how they engage fans; they have fighter takeovers on social media. The fighters will take over the UFC Twitter or Instagram account and post photos from their point of view or on Twitter answer any questions fans may have. What is also very compelling about their social media content it isn’t intended to sell, yes they post that tickets are available but that isn’t the focus. The focus is clearly engaging content, asking fans to share their opinions and join the conversation. In fact the best thing they do is connect fans with other fans. There are often times hundreds of comments on posts. They are also able to connect fans to fighters through video content such as the embedded series. Embedded follows the top fighters on a Pay-Per-View event around each day the week of a fight, The UFC posts a video each day to show the fans what the athletes go through.
The first part of Evans Model on engagement is consumption, meaning how the consumer goes through information, as previously mentioned, the UFC does a fine job providing interesting material as well as the proper context for the material. The second part of the model is curation, when the UFC puts on an event it makes sure there is information readily available about the participants. The make previous fights available for free, the provide stats among other things. The third and often most difficult step is creation, the UFC encourages creation through simple items such as a hashtag, by creating a hashtag that everyone can follow provides a sense of community. It brings all the tweets and photos with the same hashtag together and identifies who is there and participating. By knowing that there is a community of people like each other, more people are comfortable posting their own material.
The last and most important part of Evans model is collaboration; the other steps are often done individually while collaboration is often done with several. The UFC does this extremely well by having fans interact on comment sections or tweeting in opinions about who should fight who or even what was fight of the night. The UFC also does a good job connecting its fighters and employees as previously mentioned. Almost every UFC employee is on social media and all the fighters are tagged in posts and encouraged to interact with fans. Dana White, the president of the UFC is well known for his interaction with fans on social media, even if it isn’t for the most pleasant reasons.
Overall it is very clear that the UFC gets it. The fans are the most important and they have treated social media the right way. They give fans an opportunity to interact with fighters and executives as well. They also provide unique content made to be shared and encourage collaboration between fans.
Douglas Geller 