As you can see, the series on what makes a Great Team Website is on permanent hiatus. While the content was informative, I never felt like I was adding anything to the equation with it. What I was suggesting was obvious, and in fact many people are implementing it, but they just weren’t doing it well, and doing it well is more important than just doing it. Until such time as I can craft a useful series on the differences between going through the motions and providing real value to fans and sponsors, the Great Team Website series is defunct.

Secondly, you may have noticed a few changes around the site, including a change from sports business to small business. While I still enjoy working in sports and will always have a few projects going, my coaching, consulting, and advice is needed farther and wider than sports. This means I’ll likely pepper the blog with more posts on more topics, but happily will then likely do so more frequently.

Finally, I’m off to Europe! Not permanently, but will be there to do my work with European Cycling Camp Velo Veneto. I’ll be in Italy from 25 June until at least 6 August. Just prior to and after that period, I’ll be in Paris. If you know of any small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMB) in Paris that can use any of my marketing services, let me know! My mobile won’t work in Europe (though I will have a euro mobile in Italy), but my office phone will ring over there.

In the meantime, I thank you for your support, and wish you tailwinds, smooth ice, and oil-slick free beaches!

-Jason

Social Media platforms are incredibly popular and therefore a necessary part of any web content plan. You can’t participate on Facebook, Twitter, etc. without a roadmap for what you are going to publish, when, and who’s responsible for it. This doesn’t mean planning out each individual Tweet in advance, but it does mean understanding what is and is not helpful from the perspective of helping the team accomplish its goals. It is especially important because too often businesses diving into social media do so by using it to broadcast messages, when the real purpose of, and success stories in, social media involve listening to and interacting with fans/customers.

Twitter should primarily be used to provide news, behind-the-scenes info and pictures, and answer fans’ questions in real-time. While it should be used several times per day year-round, it provides the most value to fans (and therefore sponsors) just before, during, and just after races. Not even live TV, radio, or cycling media text updates can provide a complete picture of everything that’s happening at a race, making team-supplied updates a valuable commodity. Since races are incredibly hectic, a plan needs to be in place for who is responsible for tweeting, what they can and cannot say, and, if they have to stop to care for a rider, who steps in to let fans know why the stream has gone quiet. One thing I have yet to see, but would be a fantastic use of Twitter, would be a staff member answering questions during the race about what is going on. Hard? Yes. Sure to generate growth in engaged, interested followers? Definitely.

Where Twitter is the live update and interaction stream, Facebook is the place to cultivate deeper connections with fans. Its robust capabilities to share news, images, and video, and for fans to share the same with you, creates a unique environment where you can interact on a meaningful level. It provides the ability to create an incredibly detailed portrait of your technology savvy fans through polls, surveys, and day-to-day interactions – it is the environment online where people feel the most comfortable sharing personal information. This also makes it a great place to introduce your sponsors to fans in a meaningful way. Polls and contests are ubiquitous and expected, so don’t seem so much like the interruption marketing we all hate so much – just be careful not to overdo it! While the creation of a Facebook page is simple, the maintenance of it (which is the critical part of success), is time intensive. Even though updates can be less frequent than on Twitter, because it is a less anonymous medium, they take longer to create and fan interactions must be more personal.

Video is one of the most effective media for attracting fans, but means frequently updated content, which can quickly use up server space and bandwidth, the two potentially large variables in Internet costs. Fortunately, hosted platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Ustream provide a cost-effective way to provide video content on a consistent basis, and also to allow fans to post their own videos, further drawing them into the experience. The quickly falling price of quality video components has driven the cost of video down from the 10s of thousand of dollars into the low hundreds, with little discernible loss in quality. Ubiquitous Internet access makes it possible to upload video from virtually anywhere, but has created the expectation on the fans’ part that video will be uploaded from anywhere. Because of that, a simple, realistic plan for uploading video on a regularly scheduled basis is a requirement of any modern web content strategy.

The following list includes a few assumptions; you’re not an elite in any frequent flyer program (that can lower some fees), you’re flying discounted coach (full-fare & business can lower fees), you are flying from the US to Europe (other regions have their own fee structures), and your flight handles baggage on the “piece concept” (meaning you get 2 bags with a max weight, not a max weight with unlimited bags). It is true as of 12/24/09 to the best of my knowledge. As we all know, the airlines can be fickle and change their policies on a whim. Check the included links for more info and call the airlines to be sure. This is only a rough guide; if you don’t check and get hit with an unexpected fee, don’t come crying to me!

¹$200 in US, 200euro from Europe
²$300 in US, 300euro from Europe

A couple of other notes. The fees have been converted to US$ (if necessary) from Euro, and weights converted to kgs. If you are travelling on a code-share (e.g. Lufthansa ticket but United planes), it’s best to assume the most restrictive fees and weight limits will apply. The weight limits are often the most difficult to figure out, so definitely double-check these before heading to the airport. If there is a standard checked bag fee, that has been added in already (e.g. American is $50 + $100 bike fee).

If you’ve had other experiences or better information, please let us know in the comments.

Back in the days when women’s cycling was developing, most, if not all, sponsorship was “in support of”. Meaning, there’s little-to-no business value, but someone at a company had influence over the budget and chose to spend it due to an interest in women’s cycling. We’ve moved beyond those days, and women’s cycling is now well past the point where sponsorships can justify themselves from a ROI standpoint. Cycling in general offers a great return for corporate sponsors used to multi-million dollar investments in Baseball, Soccer, or F1, and women’s cycling offers what is, IMHO, the best ROI value in all of sports.

Despite a top women’s team offering great sponsorship value, I don’t think anyone in their right mind could assume that The Team would help Skyter move more 30+ ft. yachts. There is one cyclist in the world that runs in that kind of crowd, and he’s not on The Team. That means this sponsorship likely came about due to the old boys network being activated, and since even a team of that stature is a tiny percentage of Skyter’s budget, a contract was agreed. But in an economy like this, when big yachts don’t sell/lease quite as quickly as they used to, even small percentages all over the budget get analyzed. Somone at Skyter figured out that this was not a good use of a few hundred-thousand euros and the deal was called off.

But was that really the company’s fault? Of course they bear responsibility for entering into a contract, but contracts are modified and canceled all the time. I place a significant amount of blame at the feet of The Team. When you have a squad of that caliber, you owe it to the riders to create a sponsor relationship that makes the best use of their incredible value. The demo- and psycho-graphics of women’s cycling open up a variety of valuable markets and market niches that companies struggle to reach. Cyclists’ early adoption of social media (they are probably the most active of any pro sport) gives potential sponsors a low-cost and easy way to figure out that landscape. It is, in short, valuable well beyond the “support the sport” stage.

The Team would have been much better off using their Skyter connection to be introduced to customers that would receive a much bigger benefit from sponsoring a women’s team than Skyter itself. Until teams (and events and riders) stop looking for people to “support the sport”, they will always pigeonhole themselves into that corner. And that corner lends itself to small prize lists, poor support, and low salaries, not to mention easily canceled deals.

Will everyone stop criticizing social media please! Not only is my jury out on this one, but I think all of your juries should be. A) It’s just a tool. B) It’s in its infancy. It’s a good thing the early adopters of the car or bicycle didn’t listen to their detractors and hop off at the first signs of criticism, no matter how valid.

The history of the bicycle is littered with what are, in retrospect, poor designs. Clunky, awkward, impractical, or otherwise a pain-in-the-ass designs abounded. But this was an early stage where innovative ideas were being explored, and has eventually led to a wide variety of adaptations that are useful in their own specific space.

Of course, they have always been, and always will be, used by dumb people to do dumb or useless things. From tight-jeaned skidding through red lights to lycra-clad snobbery, there will always be someone doing something that somebody else doesn’t like. Who cares! Run with it. If you want to tweet about your morning coffee, go ahead. Own it! If people don’t want to listen, that’s their business. Just like failed bike designs, the market will determine if you succeed or fail in your chosen endeavour, but even “failing” doesn’t mean your time has been useless.

Social media to you might be a way to “hang out” with friends and family spread around the world. Maybe these people are interested in what you have for breakfast because it helps foster that banal connection that is part of being proximate to friends and family. Less than 5% of Twitter users have more than 100 followers, meaning that 95% of you are connecting with a close, intimate group. That’s cool. Write whatever you want. Hell, Lance has >1,000,000 followers and he still tweets about useless stuff.

My rambling point is this. Neither I, nor anyone else, knows which structure and use is going to become the diamond frame design of social media. So go ahead and play. See what works, what doesn’t, what’s interesting to you, and what isn’t. But remember it’s just a tool; it’s just another way to communicate. Just like the bicycle, I’m sure after 100 years of social media, there will still be people annoying the crap out of us. That doesn’t mean it’s useless, but it doesn’t mean you deserve to make a living from it either.

For me, it’s my clients.
Freedom Bicycles – who trusted me (and Scarlett) to help them build the first website for a new brand, without any industry “chops” to point to. Thanks Marcus (and Dain).
Joan Vernikos – for letting me (and the rest of the team at Mains Associates/Connell-Whittaker) build out her personal brand one step at a time.
Hot Rod Cameras – for having a lot of patience for me playing around with different solutions. Trial and error can be frustrating for clients, but Illya not only rolled with it, he came back for more!
Solvang Cycling Clinic – a lot of back-and-forth would have made it impossible to meet our tight deadline, so Chris gave me the ball and let me run with it.
Meredith Miller – for trusting me with her website, giving me rides to races, couches to sleep on, travel cookies, and mostly being a great friend.

THANK YOU!

My dad was in sales, so he taught me a few basics, worked with me on my pitch, and then sent me off into the cold, cruel world. I was enthusiastic. I was going to sell so many sponsorships, I would make money playing hockey, and I was only 13! (we’ll stick with that age for now) I walked a long way up one side of Pearl St., going in every business, talking to the manager, and getting nowhere. I walked a long way back down Pearl St., going in every business, talking to the manager, and getting nowhere.

By this point, I was getting depressed. Not only was I not going to make money, I wouldn’t sell a damn thing and have to beg my parents for the full fee. This was not going to go over well.

Just as I got back to the corner of my street, I walked into a Great Cuts feeling pretty down. Still, I psyched myself up and delivered my pitch to the district manager, who happened to be in the shop at that particular time.

“Huh, that’s interesting. We could probably do an ad for you,” she said. “How big of an area do you cover?”

I was SO excited! “Man, if I tell her about all the different places we go to for games, she’ll probably want to take out a full-page ad! Maybe even a two-pager!” I told her about all the different places we go to; Detriot, Buffalo, even as far as Chicago and Toronto! Then I started counting the money in my head.

“Oh, for an area that big, we’ll have to run this through the regional office then. Give me the info and I’ll pass it along.”

As you might guess, nothing happened, I got no ad from them, and I was not a Pro pee-wee player. Weak.

The sales manager in me looks back on that experience and cringes. It’s a common mistake, and one that occurs all too often in sponsorship sales. A property walks in to a potential sponsor and spends more time talking about what they have and what they need than finding out what the sponsor is interested in and how they can help.

Thinking back, the audience for that yearbook – the parents and grandparents of the players in the Cleveland area – were exactly the audience she was trying to reach. But since I never asked what she wanted, the opportunity was lost for both of us. Too bad I didn’t have sales training videos to learn from…