Episode 224 Snippets: Kyle Benzion of the Orlando Magic

@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
On episode 224 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil
chatted with Director of Social Strategy for the Orlando Magic.
What follows is a collection of snippets from the podcast. To hear the
full interview and more, check out the podcast on all podcast
platforms and at www.dsmsports.net.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 224: Kyle Benzion

Kyle’s Career Path
“I graduated back in 2014 from the University of Florida [with a degree] in
telecommunication and production. At the time there really wasn't studying
much social media or anything in college, so I did a lot of on camera off
camera hosting, radio shows, at the news desk, things like that. My first job
was out at the University of Nebraska. That first job, getting it is tough. I
applied for almost a hundred jobs, got a couple different interviews and got
one offer, and it was at the University of Nebraska with the Huskers. I worked
out there as a digital media video specialist…editing video, doing some on-
camera stuff.

“But man, that's where I really developed one of my first mentors in the industry,
Kelly Mosier. He was running the social media out there and all the time I would go
in his office after work or during work [and ask] ‘Hey, Kelly, why are we doing what
we're doing? What do these analytics mean? How'd you decide to do that? How'd
you do that? Why didn't you do this?’ I picked his brain like crazy and he set me up
to start running and learning social media, which was awesome.
“I was there a couple years and worked with Kelly to kind of figure out what my
next step was, and we thought me running social at a smaller university was
probably my next step. So I took a job out at George Washington University in DC
as social media coordinator and was there for about a year. I think I learned a lot in
the sense of it's good to understand what a positive culture and a negative culture
is. For me, I didn't necessarily like it during my time there, but it taught me a lot
about the type of culture that I wanna be in and surrounded with in my career.

“From there, I was at GW and Nikko Tan, who I met at Florida - he was a few
years younger than me — but I left a good impression on him the one or two
times I talked to him in Gainesville. He DMed me one night and was like, ‘Hey
man, I wanna pick your brain about social. I'm a video intern at the Atlanta
Falcons and I wanna talk to you about social.’ We talked that night for about an
hour and at the end of the conversation, he's like, ‘Hey, by the way, the Falcons
are hiring two social people. I think you could be a good fit if you're interested,
send me a resume and I'll put it on my boss's desk.’ So I was like, heck yeah,
man, let's go! Well, those two positions that were hired for social with the
Falcons, he got one of them full-time and I got the other. So yeah, man, Nikko’s
my guy. He's at the [Chicago] Bulls now.

“So yeah, I was there [with the Falcons] for about five years, experienced
a lot of highs, a lot of lows. I was brought in as a social media
coordinator and then I was promoted to social media manager a couple
years in. And then this past October 2021, I got an opportunity, I saw it
on LinkedIn and I was like ‘I think I could be a really good fit as director
of social strategy with the Orlando Magic back in my hometown. And
the rest is history. I just finished my first season with the Magic and it
was a total dream come true. I'm excited about what our team’s building
and the future of Magic social and digital media.”

On deciding to pursue his career in social
“That was definitely when I was out at Nebraska. I mean, when I was in
college, I was just like a lot of people and I wanted to be the next anchor
on SportsCenter. Then when you start learning to do that you may have
to go to some middle of nowhere town in Wisconsin and go cover some
high school ice hockey, and I was like I'm good. So when I was out at
Nebraska I did get some of those opportunities and I was doing some of
the on-camera stuff, but I really learned to enjoy connecting with our fan
base and connecting and interacting and speaking with our fan base.

“For me, it was so cool to see the passion. I mean, the Huskers have one
of the most passionate fan bases in the country by far. And so to be able
to constantly create and understand their wants and needs on digital, to
me that was really cool. I was like, whoa, this is something different; I
can get into this. So it was definitely my time out there and, look, having
the video and production skills then helped a lot, and I still use them
from time to time now, even. But that was when I was like I wanna try to
kind of switch gears a little bit and become that sponge and learn
different skill sets and ultimately get into social media.”

On going from a small D-I school in GW to the NFL team Atlanta Falcons
“So two things there. Number one, it gave me great perspective going from GW
to the Falcons. And what I mean by that is a couple times I heard people in
Atlanta — I'll never forget this; my first couple months there they were like, oh
man, like, we don't have enough people, we don't have enough cameras, we
don't have resources. And I'm looking around and thinking, no, we have
everything we ever want compared [to GW]...I still have that appreciation. I
think going through that, maybe it wasn't the best thing for me at the time, but
man, it was so good for me to grow and appreciate things like that in my career.

“But you know, the expectations and things like that — [a] funny quick
anecdote is I was originally told the Falcons were, when I was going
through the process of interviewing, that they were gonna hire three
social people. And my first day on the job, they were gonna hire an
engagement specialist, which Nikko ended up getting, a coordinator,
which I got, and they were gonna hire a social manager. My first day on
the job in Atlanta, I learned that instead of hiring that third social
person, the social manager, they decided to add another video person.

“So on my first day on the job, they were like, ‘Hey, you're managing and running all
the social channels,’ and I was just like I am not ready for this. It made me grow so
much so quickly. It's things like that, man, when people leave jobs and you just have to
grow and grow into it, it really stretches you in a positive way. And that's what it did for
me. You know, about four months, five months after I took that job, we were in the
Super Bowl. So talk about having to learn quickly. I went from being at GW, a one-man
band to, five months later, managing the social media channels of a team in the Super
Bowl.
“Holy cow, my head was spinning, but it was, again, looking back, I would do things so
differently now than I did at that time. But man, that was such a great time for me to
learn and really hone in on my skills.”

On the social team and operation for the Falcons
“I'd say the most I learned there was relationships. The social team in
Atlanta was kind of like the center of a spider web, just the way we were
structured. You have to be a great communicator with graphics, you
have to be great communicators back and forth with editorial, with
video, with photo — so that was my main thing I learned during that
time is [that] I may have to talk to photo about something and then say,
okay, Hey editorial, photo's doing this. We need to pair this up for
Instagram stories, whatever it may be.

“I felt like everything runs through social and we were kind of the center of the
spider web. And at the other side of that, it's up to us if things aren't working
well. You have to look back, too. You can't just always look forward and
understand analytics and research and numbers, and then get that back to the
people creating the content. They need to understand what tweaks they need to
make and how we ultimately [get] better. So that whole thing was kind of
foreign to me.
“I quickly learned, again, under Dan [Gadd’s] leadership of the importance of
understanding analytics and communicating it back to the team. For me, that
was a huge learning curve that first season.”

On balancing aggregate metrics across social platforms vs. honing on
more specific metrics for certain platforms
“I'm never someone that is gonna just jump at the new shiny toy of the
platform. I'd rather us — instead of being the first ones — I'd rather us
wait a little bit and do our research on what other brands are doing and
honestly figuring out if our consumers or potential consumers, if that's
where they're engaging content. For me, IGTV was one in Atlanta and
things like that.

“From a numbers standpoint, I always like to look at a per-post basis. That's always
kind of been my thing because if you're looking at totals, comparing to other teams
or brands; like, if a team is posting double the amount of you, of course their totals
are gonna be [bigger]; [so] for me, I'm, I'm big on per post [metrics]. I like to look
at retweets per tweet or likes per video or video views per video or things like that.
That's how I believe you kind of put things on even playing field.
“So no matter the platform, I like to look on a per-post basis, even if it's one of the
newer platforms. But I'm never someone who's like, oh, there's a new thing, we
gotta [get on it] right now, we gotta be the first ones out there. I'd rather take our
time and make sure we're attacking it correctly rather than just go blindly into it.”

On resourcing for social media over time
“It's all about trying to find that balance, right? It all comes down to where are
our consumers wanting and getting our content, and engaging with our
content, and looking at the numbers to figure that out. You know, obviously
we've seen a lot less on Snapchat compared to the last couple years, less growth
on Snapchat and a lot more on Instagram and TikTok. At some point a lot of
brands had to say, okay, well, is it worth that person continuing to post on
Snapchat? Or should we move them over to Instagram Stories and, and
creating content for TikTok, et cetera? I mean, you only have so many hands at
the end of the day.

“You know, that's one thing that I learned a lot from college athletics to pro — when
I was at GW and I even saw it at Nebraska — it's, like, when there are all these
accounts and you have your hands in them all, all you're trying to do is keep them
all afloat. You're not trying to make anything great. You're trying to make
everything good just to keep everybody happy and do what you need to do on all
these accounts. You know, that's an advantage of pro sports. You have a lot [fewer
accounts] — you have the Magic account or the Falcons accounts, or you may have
a couple other ancillary accounts that you may have a hand in or may be running,
but you have way less [in college]; like at GW, at one point I was signed into 27
Twitter accounts at one time. How am I supposed to make all those great? It's just,
you can't.
“So that's one thing for me, again, it goes back to perspective; let's channel our
efforts to make sure we're making great channels where we can.”

Platform strategy with audience in mind
“For me, it all starts with the audience. Like, I don't care what we're
good at. I've seen — I'm not gonna call out any brands or anything — but
I've seen teams put out incredibly creative content that I look at and I'm
like, damn, they worked on that for days, and then I'll look at the
engagement and it has like 13 retweets and four comments just on
Twitter. And I'm like, they never asked themselves why will our fans
care? Why will our fans want to engage with this content? That's where
everything should start.

“All the time people say, Hey, I have an idea in a brainstorm. I have an idea.
And instead of saying, Hey, I have an idea, what I'm gonna say back to you is,
like, how do you know your idea's gonna work? Before you say, I have an idea —
based off of what I know that's going to work and the research I've done about
our fan base. Hey, I have an idea based off of that. I think all the time people
jump straight to brainstorming — it's like, wait wait wait, just because you have
an idea, doesn't mean it's gonna work. Let's do our research to make sure we're
brainstorming on the right things.”
“I think that's where a lot of brands sometimes go wrong. Is they just have a
creative idea instead of asking themselves do their consumers actually care.”

Looking at tangible and less tangible and measurable metrics on social
“It's a healthy balance. You want to represent your brand well, of course,
but you do wanna stand out because we're living in this scroll-happy
world where everybody's just scrolling and you gotta ask the question of
— what we're saying on social, the content that we're trying to put out,
why is someone gonna stop and look at this and give it more than one
second of attention and then scroll right by it?

“So I think it's a battle for attention. That's what social media is right now, it's a
battle for attention. And so what can we do to be different, stand out and not be
cookie-cutter? Like if you know what — the Orlando Magic or the Atlanta
Falcons or any other brand — if you know what to expect from them
consistently, in today's world, that's not gonna do it because then people are
gonna scroll right past you because they know what to expect from you.
You gotta catch people [so they’re like] whoa, that's cool. What's that? Get their
attention [because] otherwise in this scroll-happy world you're gonna get about
one second, if that, of someone's attention ans they’ll just keep on going.”

On minding how a given team/organization goes about capturing attention
“Every organization is very different as far as comfortability on those
things. And every organization is different with like leadership, even up to
like CEOs or CCOs or whoever having a hand in it…It’s so different
organization to organization and I think it's gonna change a lot as this
younger generation become people in the C-suite who understand social
and digital a little bit more and understand that it is entertainment. It is
official team news, but it also is entertainment. It has to act as
entertainment.

“I think you're gonna see it change; that line's gonna change a lot. Not
that a brand should be disrespectful or belligerent or anything like that,
but just understanding that it's bigger than just team statements and old
school ways of thinking about news. It's like this has to be conveyed as
entertainment. So I think it's a tough question because every
organization is so different, but I do think as the younger generation
moves into that C-suite, I think you're gonna see changes here in the
next few years or several years in the sense of freedom and expression,
and, honestly, just moving digital from a news-based view to
entertainment.”

On moving away from the role of actually pushing send on the social
posts
“It was extremely difficult, first of all. It just becomes [such a] part of
your habit, and I don't think we have enough appreciation for social
media managers and stuff. Because they're doing all this stuff, they're
sitting in all these meetings and they're brainstorming and they're
maybe touching paid social and they're doing all these different things.
But I think a lot of people forget, they're also scheduling or hitting send
on everything else that you're not thinking about.

“So I was just used to [going] boom, boom, boom, like hitting send, hitting seed, going
in [to a] meeting, scheduling, scheduling. Just to be a social media manager and have
any sort of work-life balance you have to become efficient and almost like a machine.
So it is really tough — suddenly when you're not doing that anymore, it's like almost
like, wait, what do I do with my hands? Like, what am I supposed to do? You have to
take a step back and kind of view things differently from a much bigger picture.
“[It really was] a difficult adjustment. My switching into this role, initially, yeah, that
took time for me to get used to. As far as being like overly critical and stuff, I'm not
overly critical or even like hybrid, or this is how we should have done it. For me, I have
a perspective of just because it's not the way I would've done it doesn't mean it's the
wrong way. And that's okay.

“I talk with our social media manager a lot about like, Hey, what could we have done to
tweak this? Or let's look at these numbers, what could we maybe do differently next
time? You know that's not me saying I would've done it this wayl it's, again — I like to
base things off numbers — there's always gonna be some stuff that maybe doesn't work.
So what are the small tweaks we can do?
“At the same time, there are things that our team does with the Magic that I never
would've thought about doing. So that's great. But that transition, man, it's tough.
Like…in the NFL there's transactions multiple times a week…you gotta pull over on the
side of the road and get the transactions out. The NBA doesn't have transactions or
anything like that, which is really nice.
“But yeah that was a big adjustment. It's something that I don't even know nine months
into this job that I'm still for sure over…It's kind of a breath of fresh air. It's kind of like,
wow, I've been doing that for several years, it’s good to get away a little bit from it.”

On going from the Falcons to the Magic and how that shifts social media goals
“So from the content side of things, I've always been a huge advocate for
CrowdTangle and Sprout [Social] and things that you can do to compare to
other brands and other teams. We lived in CrowdTangle in Atlanta comparing
ourselves to other teams. But the Magic, I definitely compare to other teams,
but honestly, with where we're at right now, I just wanna see progress year
over year versus ourselves. I want to see, with where our team is on the court
and what we're trying to do on digital, I just wanna see year-over-year
progress for us on social.

“But you had a really good point there from [a] games [perspective]. I
mean, in the NFL you got 16-17 games, like eight or nine home games,
and then you have 41 home games in the NBA. That was a big
adjustment for me too, honestly. Because, in Atlanta, the Falcons have a
PSL [personal seat license] system. I mean, you have to sell tickets all
the time; in the offseason, you're trying to get people to buy PSLs. There
was so much pressure there for digital to drive PSLs; a ton of pressure.
Whether it was right or wrong, I'll let you be the judge. But there was so
much pressure that digital and social was gonna translate into PSLs.

“So I kind of expected similar things like that in Orlando. It's not [like that]. We do have
have a huge international following huge because…the NBA is a global game and Orlando is
a huge tourist city. I mean we have Brazilian accounts that are in Portuguese for Instagram
and Twitter that we have an agency run and they do a great job. So for us it's way less about
— season tickets are huge and all that; I'm not discrediting that, but single game tickets are
a huge opportunity for us. Because you want, when people come to Orlando and they're
saying, Hey, I'm gonna go to Disney, I'm gonna go to Epcot and Animal Kingdom, and then
they go up to their concierge and say, Hey, what should we do tomorrow night? The
concierge needs to say, oh, well, there's a Magic game. You need to go to this Magic game.
It's such a cool experience. That's part of the Orlando experience. So that's been a really
cool adjustment to see.
“We have tons of group sales for Magic games, for individual games, and that's been a really
cool adjustment for me to see two completely different ticket [sales] outlooks and
strategies. So that's been kind of a cool learning experience for me.”

On how social fits into the sales and marketing strategy, and tracking its effect and success
I think you just hit it on the head. Dan Gadd is like the godfather of doing exactly what you
just said. He's really good at finding different ways to lure people in to to be a part of the
process, even if it's the start of the process. You want engaging content or sweepstakes or
emotional videos that they're gonna get people to feel in that moment like, oh, I care about
the Falcons. I want to be there. ‘And then all you gotta do is give us your name and email.’
And that was our job to get those leads; to your point, digital wasn't necessarily driving all
the ticket sales, we were driving leads and we were trying to drive the right leads to get
those sales.
“So there was a lot of attention on digital for getting those type of leads. So yeah, it’s all
about being part of that process, right? Like to your point, people aren't gonna click buy,
but you just want to get it in the hands of the people that in the organization that can get
them to click buy.”

How to use paid social
“It's interesting to see different teams’ paid strategies, too. Some teams put
money behind some of their worst content to reach certain KPIs for partners and
in my mind I'm just like, what are y'all doing? Because you're getting your worst
content in front of more eyeballs. And that's how you wanna be viewed as an
organization and the type of content that you guys are creating?
“I've always viewed it and kind of learned from Dan [that] you want the best
content to get more eyeballs…So I struggle when I see teams boosting and putting
paid behind their worst content just to reach certain benchmarks for partners.
It's like, Ugh, that's how people are gonna learn about your brand. So it's tough.”

On paid social/ads and sponsored content strategy
“So first of all, I think that content is good sponsored content when it doesn't look like
sponsored content…it goes back to your fan base, right? Like, what do they care about?
If it looks like an ad, I mean, there's some brands that do this horribly — I’m not gonna
name 'em, but their digital ads look like billboards. They just look like billboards — and
some of them put them on organic [social], too. And when I see it and their
engagement, it's like nothing. And you're just asking yourself, like, clearly, you can see
that their partnership team and their digital team are not on the same page. It's so clear
to see that. And then you see other teams where their sponsored content is all stuff that
they would be doing anyway. And that's what you want because ultimately that stuff is
gonna be doing better from a number standpoint, your fans actually care about that,
and that helps the numbers both from a content view for the digital team, but also that
brings more impressions and everything else that the sponsor wants.

“So, like I've always said, like when a partner comes to us and says, Hey, like we
wanna do [something] with the Magic, with the Falcons, whatever, you don't
wanna create a new piece of content just for them — sometimes you do. [But] a lot
of times it's like, Hey, here's our inventory of everything we're doing — what can we
do that guys wanna hop on that will meet your KPIs, but also satisfying the digital
content? So that's always been my view is when you're just looking at billboards
and things like that, there's such a disconnect between digital and partnership, and
it's very clear to see. So, again, it all comes back to why will our fans care? And do
fans care about a sweepstakes? About a cooler at your local grocery store? It's like,
no, that's not why they're following you or interested in you. So I think that's where
there's still a disconnect in the industry when it comes to paid.”

About social media ads
“I think those are different types of content that you can test out. I think
there are static images and things like that, too, that can do well
sometimes. For me, as long as it's still basketball-related content and not
a straight-up sales ad — like ‘come see us’ or just a clear marketing
message — that's what people oftentimes will go right by. You gotta draw
them in — why will they care? And I know I've said that probably 20
times on this podcast, but that's what I always say to my team, to myself:
why will our fans care about this? And you've gotta be able to answer that
to figure out what type of content you want to create.”

On scaling ads as platforms and content types grow
“TikTok is its own different beast in my opinion, because we develop
strategies for every platform with the Magic. That's something that I've been
able to do during my time here; we have a now clear, defined strategy for
Facebook with our goals and our tactics of how we're gonna reach our goals,
and our goals and our tactics and how we're gonna reach our objectives on
Twitter. And same with Instagram and all that stuff. TikTok we've got our
content buckets of what we know if we do a piece of content that hits in two
of our five content buckets, it's usually a formula for success, if you will.

“But still TikTok to me is a little bit of the wild wild west. Sometimes you're like
this piece content is gonna blow up, then it gets posted and you're just like, what
just happened? It did not do anything. Or sometimes you're like, this is not gonna
work on TikTok and then you look at it and it blows up. So I think that one's been
the most frustrating probably to a lot of people in our industry because the
science, if you will, of the strategy and formula, it's been way more inconsistent.
“Obviously it's extremely fast growing and all that, but I mean, going back to your
question with ads, it's the same thing. It's like, well, you would think it may [or
may not] work, but like TikTok is its own beast right now that I think we're all
still trying to figure out a little bit.”

On maximizing the value created around tentpole events
“In Atlanta and here [at Orlando] you have your five, eight, tentpole events a
year and, you know, it's a huge moment for the brand, especially for a place like
where we're at right now at the Magic — it’s our Super Bowl, with where this
team is at. The [Draft] lottery and the Draft, it's a huge opportunity to give fans
hope again. That's on us with content. It's like, let's give them hope. We saw it
in Atlanta, too. I was part of the Super Bowl team and then I was part of a year
when we started 1-7. And the off season, no matter if you go to the Super Bowl
or if your head coach and GM get fired and you have a terrible year, the
offseason's the time to build hope.

“The team’s fan base is always [full] of hope at the start of the season. So there's a lot of
these offseason tentpole moments — in the NFL, it's the Combine and the Draft and free
agency and start of training camp, and [in the] NBA it's similar. It's Lottery, Draft, season
tip-off and training camp, Summer League is probably a mini one. And then, obviously
playoff runs or rivalry games, things like that. So you definitely have to put resources to it
and you have to think ahead. And schedule release [is another] of course, especially in the
NFL.
But have to plan ahead and put time on it. That's part of the tough thing with social, and
as a social leader you always have to be thinking two steps ahead. Sometimes I have to
pause and be like, alright, for the next three months, what big events do we have? We
have these big events, like, let's start working back now and let's get ready for this. So
yeah, [those tentpoles] are huge. It's a balance between doing the day-to-day and making
sure we really hit home runs. I think we had some really big home runs in Atlanta…”

On connecting dots across department in the Magic organization in his role
“That is a large chunk of my role…I talk with people on global partnership every
single day. I talk a lot with our head of design, I talk a lot with our app and
strategy team, our PR team. It's a lot more bigger picture and bigger strategy, if
you will. I mean, like I mentioned earlier, we have an agency as well, who helps
run our accounts in Brazil, our Portuguese accounts. So it’s a lot of connecting
the dots of, like, okay, this is working really well, we gotta make sure we get
these assets to people who run our app or to people who are running email and
our marketing team, and sharing content and sharing information.

“You know, I did this massive [presentation], I think it's 60 slides —
season overview, analytic recap. I broke it down by partner on every
platform, what worked, which partners worked best, which didn't and
why; by player on every platform, which of our players perform best,
which didn't [and] broke it down by our top content or bottom content
and all of our averages, our year over year. I've gone over that with our
video team, I've gone over that with our marketing team. I've gone over
that with our global partnerships team. It’s important.

“That data is important for them to know as well. You know, in-market ads are
different and do have different audiences than digital ads, but there can be
some crossover there. I wanna make sure the analysis and data that I'm doing
to help our social team — a lot of that can cross over in some way or form to
those other departments. So my view is if I'm doing all this analytics and data
capture, I might as well share it with everybody that can find the impact. Same
thing, I share it with our tourism team [to learn] maybe which players they
should be marketing more of or less of and things like that.
“So yeah, you have to be a great communicator as you kind of move up and I've
learned that and it’s really important.”

Kyle’s most memorable call from his team broadcasting as a University
of Florida student
“Florida lacrosse against Penn State. I did radio broadcast with them,
but that game I did TV. It was elite eight NCAA women's lacrosse and
that was on Sun Sports [TV]. It was Larry Vettel, who was a mentor of
mine in college and it was a blast, it was so fun. I loved calling those
Gators women's lacrosse games.”

Kyle’s favorite sports broadcaster growing up and his favorite sports
broadcaster today
“So growing up — easy — Mick Hubert, the broadcaster [for] Gator
football. He actually just retired, it breaks my heart, a legend. Today, I
love Tom Rinaldi…he can storytell unlike anybody else. But I wanna add
to that, too — she's not sports now…but Robin Roberts is the real deal.
The way she can storytell and get emotion out of somebody — I've
actually just finished her book this week. I love the way she can help
people tell stories. She's really, really good.”

The most memorable game at UF during Kyle’s time as a student there
“Alright, I'm gonna cheat on this. Because the Gators were really bad [in
football] during my four years there, so I'm gonna go the year before I
was in school, so when I was a senior [in high school] and I was a die-
hard Gator [fan], then too — Tim Tebow's senior day [against] Florida
State. [We] kicked their butt like usual and it was great. The swamp was
absolutely electric…That was pretty special.”

What should college athletics learn from pro sports when it comes to social and vice-
versa?
“I just think perspective and resources. Resources, like we talked about earlier, but
perspective, too. So much of college athletics now on social is targeted to 15 to 18 year
old kids because of recruiting. [Whereas] pro sports is so different because you're just
targeting your fan base, no matter their age. So I think there's a lot to learn there
because they're so different. I think everyone, if they're able to, should try to work in
both at some point in their lives because it's like two completely different target
audiences, and the way you have to think about content is completely different when
you're talking about for a 15-year-old kid that you are trying to convince to come to
your school compared to someone you [just want to] make a fan. I think just that
perspective…”

The most memorable social post or content from Kyle’s time with the Falcons
“That one’s easy for me, it was the most impactful — [former Falcons player]
Hayden Hurst, we helped tell his story. He attempted suicide when he was back
in college and our video team just freaking crushed it; the most impactful piece
I've ever been a part of. [It] had several million views; the amount of messages
that we got coming from that video literally saying this video saved my life —
I'm never gonna be a part of another piece of content that is that impactful. So
for me, that's such an easy answer and I don't foresee it ever changing. That
was really cool to be a very small piece on a team that helped just crush that
story…”

“[The genesis for that was story] was our video team went to PR because
Hayden had already done a story on Player's Tribune, a written piece.
We read [it] [and] when we traded for him a few years back — he's not
even on the Falcons anymore — but when the Falcons traded for him, we
all found that piece and we were like we gotta build a relationship with
him to see if he can open up on camera about this. And we did, and it
was — I mean kudos to him and his family and everybody that were in
the interviews, then our video team was awesome…”

About being on the Falcons social team during the Patriots 28-3 Super Bowl
comeback
“Short-term it was pretty terrible. I don't know how many times I've seen 28-3
sent to the Falcons, like thousands and thousands. But long-term it was something
that we had to help build our fan base back up. I mean, truly, like crisis
communication. It was difficult, but it happened. It happened. It was one of those
things that has stuck with me forever. I'm not gonna sit here and say that game
still doesn't hurt, it still hurts very bad. But it was a great learning experience for
me because it was, it was my first season in the NFL and I instantly had to worry
about crisis communication and learn how to change perspective for a fan base.

“The end [of the game] was easy. Nothing…Your fan base is very angry
and it's okay for them to be angry, so do we need to post anything for a
day or two? No, like they’re angry. That's okay. The end was the easy
part. It was the downfall in the fourth quarter and overtime — that was
the tough part. But yeah, I mean it was one of those things you hated to
go through at the time, but looking back, it taught me a lot about having
to understand your audience. You have to understand how pissed and
angry they were.”

The most valuable tools Kyle uses/has used in his job
“Sprout [Social] — their analytics and their scheduling and everything is
great. And then I've always loved CrowdTangle.”

The best meal to get in Atlanta and where to get it, and
same question for Orlando
“I have celiac disease, so I eat gluten-free and so
probably a weird answer, but Atlanta, for me, I love —
it’s in Snellville, like 20-30 minutes outside of Atlanta
— Lavender Asian Bistro. It's phenomenal. [It’s a]
Chinese and Thai spot. Oh my god, please go to
Lavender Asian Bistro. I miss it very much…Their
chicken pad Thai, man. My wife loves their sushi. I'm
not a big sushi guy, but their chicken pad Thai…
“[Then] Orlando Boathouse down at Disney Springs;
Boathouse is the best meal in Orlando by far. We love
their gluten-free shrimp and lobster mac and
cheese…it's really good, I highly recommend it.”

The player on the Magic that we should all be following on social media
and why
“I'd say Cole Anthony. The dude's got a personality bigger than you can
imagine. He's a walking piece of content and his personality is easy to
fall in love with.”

Kyle’s Social Media All-Star to Follow
“So this is kind of a weird one, but for me I’m not gonna give you a person, I'm
gonna give you a company or two. For me, Front Office Sports and Sports
Business Journal — I consume very differently now than I used to and so for me
I really like — like if you're a young person trying to get in the industry,
following Front Office Sports and Sports Business Journal and understanding
the sports business side of things I think is a huge strength. Read that stuff,
understand [it]. So, call me a nerd, whatever, but I get a lot of value from
companies like that that are keeping you up to date with digital media and
sports business, I love that.”

Where to find Kyle and the Magic on digital/social media
Orlando Magic / @OrlandoMagic on all social platforms
Kyle is @kylebenzion on Twitter and find him on LinkedIn

@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
Thanks again to Kyle for being so generous with his time to share his
knowledge, experience, and expertise with me!
For more content and episodes, subscribe to the podcast, follow me
on LinkedIn and on Twitter @njh287, and visit www.dsmsports.net.

Episode 224 Snippets: Kyle Benzion of the Orlando Magic

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Episode 224 Snippets: Kyle Benzion of the Orlando Magic