Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s triumphant return to Monday Night Raw to announce that he will host Wrestlemania XXVII was fueled by Johnson’s Facebook page. In fact, a recent article on social media blog Mashable spoke with WWE’s digital team to discuss its social media strategy.
The WWE identified 4 parts to its strategy.
- Learn from the evolution of web usage
- Produce original content for its sites
- Extending the storylines from the television shows
- Building the brand of individual stars
Some interesting takeaways from the Mashable article:
- WWE claims an online fan base of about 14-15 million unique site visitors globally. Its fans are vocal and passionate and spent much of their online time of social sites, primarily Facebook,
- The WWE digital strategy team takes a strong stance that it’s important to go where “people are nesting,” instead of spending marketing dollars to cajole them to consume branded content within the confines of the WWE web site. On that principle of going where the people are, WWE has focused its efforts on making sure its content is available on the key social sites where its community is flocking, namely Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
- WWE produces about 1,500 unique pieces of content for its website per week, which it then optimizes across its social sites.
- On Facebook, WWE maintains 108 unique pages; including the main WWE page, Stand Up for WWE, pages for most of its top talent and pages for individual TV shows.
Payout Perspective:
While the UFC is the industry leader in social media when it comes to MMA, the WWE is the gold standard. Obviously, the two organizations have differences as the WWE strategy is predicated on the fact that the organization operates in unison. Meaning: its sports entertainment and the matches are predetermined. Thus, it can advance its stories and determine future matches and use its entire complement of social media to promote the events. The UFC (or Strikeforce as we saw this weekend) cannot predict who will win, lose or will be out with an injury. In addition, I assume that the WWE has many more people on staff dedicated to social media. Also, it has a vast global reach, something the UFC aspires to do.
An interesting take from the article was that the WWE attempted to make its own community web site: WWE Universe. The site was fueled entirely by WWE fans. From April 2008 to January 2011, 750,000 fans created accounts but the WWE decided to shut it down as it found that the Facebook pages received more traffic.
Dwayne Johnson’s web page has over 1.6 million fans and the number probably increased dramatically after The Rock announced his Facebook address live on Monday Night Raw. The Rock’s appearance last night even received a tweet from UFC head Dana White in which he tells his followers to follow The Rock on twitter. The Rock’s twitter has been up for one day, with only four tweets. Yet, he already has 84,468 followers (as of 9:56 am west coast time).
As an aside, I was flipping channels and caught The Rock’s appearance and could not turn the channel. Even seven years removed from wrestling, everyone remembers his catch phrases and the fans were in the palm of his hand.
If the WWE is the gold standand with respect to social media, why do their recent financials suck?
Because being the gold standard with respect to social media does not automatically = $.
I think MV is correct. Its a look at the WWE’s social media strategy. The WWE had a bad 4th quarter as costs cast a shadow over the increase in revenue. Social media doesn’t solely address the fact that PPV rates were down as well as live event attendance. With the Rock, the WWE should receive a bump as well as a solid PPV out of Wrestlemania XXVII. Take from it what you want, but the Motley Fool also shrugged off the recent WWE financials citing the WWE’s potential revenue increase abroad, tv rights, toy sales as well as a potential WWE network.
These are things that the UFC hopes to follow in the future.
What’s the point then, if your company can’t convert it to a monetary stream.
“…Take from it what you want, but the Motley Fool also shrugged off the recent WWE financials citing the WWE’s potential revenue increase abroad, tv rights, toy sales as well as a potential WWE network”
The only reason the Motley Fool shrugged off the poor results is because of WWE’s dividend payout ratio, an extraordinary 12%.
This is a really good article. Social Media has a lot of indirect monetary benefits. For example, the WWE mentions opportunities for story lines beyond the events. That is an interesting benefit. Relationships with fans and deepening the long tail of the fan bases of personalities will certainly have monetary benefit. People want to feel like they can reach out and interact with their favorite characters. This will allow them to sell more ideas and products to their fan base as well.