CBS Facebook page
March Madness began in January for Patrick Herde, vice president, product management and marketing, CBS Sports, as he prepared for the NCAA basketball tournament. If you haven't noticed, March Madness is now here for the rest of us.
The brackets are out. Today, office productivity will drop as employees email, print and fill out their choices for the NCAA Tournament in lieu of more pressing company business. Expect even less productivity when the tournament actually begins on Thursday.
From my perspective, CBS Sports has done a terrific job in using its Facebook page to leverage the power of social media. Its Facebook bracket application is expected to engage millions of users, whether they are die-hard fans or casual observers.
By capitalizing on a newsworthy event, CBS is taking advantage of the viral nature of the brackets that will determine the winners of the office pools. CBS is using Facebook to:
- Build buzz
- Generate traffic
- Extend the brand and existing media properties
- Create an online forum for fans to interact
- Bring value to an existing community
- Leverage technology to spread the brand experience to non-CBS sites
The Facebook application includes such features as live updating scoreboards and the ability to create customized public and private bracket groups. And in the process, CBS Sports has made its sponsors happy. For the next couple of weeks, on a daily basis, its Facebook page may be the most actively visited site on all of Facebook.
CBSSports.com website
To appreciate how CBS took advantage of Facebook, it's interesting to compare its Facebook page to its website CBSSports.com.
Note Facebook leads with community and then content. Their website, "one of the most trafficked sites on the web" leads with more content and then community. CBS understands the relationship of each property to their user base. Each appeals to a different audience. CBSSports.com targets a little older 18 - 49 year old male demographic who often have a strong interest in fantasy leagues. Their Facebook site appeals to a teenage - 34 year old demographic where users can create team pages, talk smack and engage in tournament "pokes."
Facebook also represents a new way to reach different audiences that may not normally follow college basketball.
A central component of CBS's online experience is its 2008 NCAA March Madness on Demand service, which will give users the ability for the first time to view all 63 games of the tournament online. MMOD is a video player that provides live streaming video.
The player allows CBS to maximize the network's NCAA bundled rights across all its platforms. It provides greater exposure and greater participation (at the price of less work in the office).
CBS Developer Platform
As CBS Sports said in its March 11 press release, it has also dropped its registration requirements for NCAA March Madness on Demand, giving immediate access to the video player to a large network of sites across the Internet. CBS Sports has created a Developer Platform, giving sites all the necessary tools and information to link directly to live streaming video from the NCAA tournament.
NCAA March Madness on Demand will be available at NCAA.com as well as links on CBSSports.com, the CBS Audience Network, sites for CBS television and radio affiliates, YouTube, other major sports websites such as ESPN.com, Yahoo! Sports and SI.com as well as Facebook.
Herde expects to "blow the doors off" expectations for Facebook application downloads. Fortunately, CBS does not require a large team to manage the Facebook page. Much of the resources are automated, and CBS can draw heavily from existing content on CBSSports.com.
As I have said before, Facebook is not right for every company and having a Facebook page is only one tool in a social media strategy. But what I like best about CBS Sports is its ability to take advantage of the NCAA tournament, filter it through its traditional and new media properties and virally build a community of millions of users who will interact with its brand.
Let me get back to you.
Technorati Tags: NCAA Basketball; NCAA Tournament; March Madness; March Madness on Demand; CBS; CBS Sports; Facebook; Brackets;
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