Case assignment: Analyzing social media strategy at Minnesota Wild National Hockey League team. Grade: 100%. Presentation shown here had a four-page counterpart paper with further detail included into the methodology used and recommendations made.
A big data set spanning a 4 year period derived from Facebook Insights data was analyzed and qualitative and quantitative observations and inferences were made.
A combination of pivot tables and multiple linear regressions were used to quantitatively determine best engagement strategies to be adopted.
Recommendations were presented in the presentation and a four-page paper focused on increasing audience engagement, in order to maximize advertising revenues, sponsored promotions, ticket sales etc.
2. Goals
Understand the digital marketing activity
of the Minnesota Wild NHL team through
the analysis of its Facebook campaign.
Reviewed fan activity between March 26,
2008 through June 14, 2012.
3. Methodology
Formatted data into dates and used formulas to
derive data.
Wild vs Fan created content.
Weekend vs Weekday postings.
Pre-Gameday, Gameday, and post-Gameday
postings.
Type of media created: comments, pictures,
videos.
Used a combination of Pivot tables and multiple
linear regressions to quantitatively determine best
engagement.
4. Analysis
Wild created content
elicited greater
response.
Fan response was
higher the day after a
win.
Fan response was
higher day before a
game, if they went into
the game after a loss.
5. Regression
Three (3) regressions: likes, comments, and shares as
dependent variables.
Assumes R-square value > 25% was considered good fit.
Assumed P-value =< 0.05 for variables to be considered
significant to model.
Removed insignificant variables and re-ran regression until
all P values were =< 0.05
and R-Squared was > 25%.
6. Findings
We found two models: comments and likes.
Comments (R2 = 27%)
Weekday and content created by Wild were the two
variables most likely to elicit fan responses.
Comments = 1.34 + 0.49 * isWeekday + 28.2* Created by
Wild.
Likes (R2 = 33%)
Weekday, content created by Wild, post-gamedays, pre-
gamedays, and comments were the most likely to elicit fan
responses.
Likes = 11.91 + 1.98 * isWeekday + 96.58 * Created by Wild +
4.32 * isPostGameDay + 4.16 * isPreGameDay -13.42 * isText.
7. Qualitative Analysis
Reviewed Wild-sourced comments with 200+
likes. They had the following common themes:
Image-led content;
Fully edited professional video
Humanistic and emotive topics:
Introduction of new players;
when players interact on the ice (i.e. brawl);
profiling of juniors,
images from those that are serving the country,
celebrating player birthdays (injured ones
especially)
8. Qualitative Analysis
Topics that were unpopular included:
Merchandize sale posts,
unidentified non-players,
Postings with limited or no captions –
informing the reader appears to be key
considering the posting length identified in
the quantitative analysis.
Stand-alone clips were less popular.
9. Recommendations
Having a social media platform can make athletes more
‘accessible’ to fans, can promote sponsors by having
‘authentic’ interactions directly with devotees
Allowing fans to ‘scrape and share’ exclusive content to
their own networks will extend the Wild’s influence beyond
traditional media platforms.
Strategy should be postings coupled with expert timing for
the delivery of engaging competitions, emotive images
and milestone announcements (like player birthdays, injury
status).
Promotions activities (such as giveaways or ticket discounts)
should be targeted to specific growth segments.
Finally social media team should integrate and leverage
existing communications activities to increase content
richness and interest for Facebook followers.