Greg Ferenstein over at Mashable.com has written a very interesting piece detailing how the UFC uses social media, in particular Twitter, to communicate directly with its fans. He covers everything from the UFC’s social media boot camp, to Dana White’s rather candid approach to tweeting, and the unquantifiable power of Twitter.
Payout Perspective:
Most people are aware that Dana White has a Twitter (the UFC plugs this fact on every show), but few people understand exactly how he uses the account. He’s not just posting quick news hits, but also interacting with the fans: he’s answering their questions, giving away tickets, and occasionally telling people to get lost.
I tend to believe that one of the reasons why Twitter meshes so well with the MMA demographic is the nature of the 140 character messages lends itself well to the attention span and need for instant feedback that characterizes these fans. It’s a simple and efficient medium, but also flexible enough to afford a degree of creativity.
I’m not sure that Dana necessarily knew what he was getting into when he started Twitter, but I do think he and the UFC deserve credit for their willingness to explore every potential communicate medium possible. The company is doing its best to help fans consume content, regardless of the medium:
- Youtube
- UltimateFighter.com
- UFC Vault
- UFC on Demand
- Flo TV
- Roku
- UFClive.com (Germany)
- Sohu.com (China)
Perhaps the most interesting part of Ferenstein’s piece was the section that detailed Zuffa’s effort to push its fighters towards Twitter. The fighter summits are a good idea even just from a company culture and regulatory standpoint, but they become even more effective when you can leverage the meetings to begin teaching the fighters how to better market themselves and manage their daily lives outside of the cage (PR classes, personal wealth management seminars, etc.).
I found it interesting with how far the UFC was going with this. I think the company name was Digital Royalty that is helping them out. Anyway I believe the representative said they even set up one on one help sessions with fighters and are available to take phone calls as well to help out. It surprised me that Zuffa is going to that length to help the fighters get what interacting through social media can do for them. It seems like a very good perk they are providing for their fighters that could potentially help them out greatly in marketing themselves. Which should in turn help them in getting sponsors. At least for the ones that embrace it and can utilize it.