Here at Cowbell Kingdom, we concentrate most of our efforts on the action on the court. On Saturday evening, before the Kings took on the Dallas Mavericks, we were asked to do something a little different, which was to cover an event put on by the Kings PR department.
As many of you know, the three cogs that make up Cowbell Kingdom- Zach Harper (@talkhoops), Noam Schiller (@noamschiller) and myself, James Ham (@jjham15), as well as Cowbell Kingdom, the site (@cowbell_kingdom), can be found on twitter. As bloggers, we count on social media tools like twitter to promote our product, get the latest in breaking news and network globally with others. Little did I know, there is a website that can analyze and track how much influence you or I have on twitter and other social media websites.
Klout.com is a company based out of San Francisco that uses advanced analytic tools to take the raw numbers (followers, retweets, tweet ups, etc.) hiding behind your social media accounts and give you a score. That score will hopefully represent the standard measure of influence your account has on others.
Why is this information important? Because it can help you not only improve your own way of promoting your product, it can lead you to new, untapped resources that are already thriving in the art of disseminating information in your area.
Led by entrepreneur CEO, Joe Fernandez, Klout has began to carve a niche in the social media world.
“Disney, Virgin America, all these great brands come to us to connect with people that are influential in social media. It’s really exciting.”
-Joe Fernandez, CEO Klout
The Sacramento Kings are on the cutting edge as far as professional sports teams and new social media is concerned. To date, the team has over 59,000 facebook followers and they are approaching 20,000 followers on twitter. They use both social networking sites to promote their product, offer exclusive deals and keep fans informed of all kinds of events.
As the event was getting under way, I was able to chat with Kings VP of Marketing and Communications, Mitch Germann about both Klout and the importance of the Kings using social media as an alternative source of building their client base:
“We are looking to spread the Kings’ game experience to an audience who might not know about it or might not have experienced it in person.” Germann added this, “We are always on the lookout for the next thing that is good for our fans.”
One of the more interesting aspects to this particular event was that the invitees were chosen for their overall Klout score and not for any allegiance to the Sacramento Kings. The range of people in attendance was wide, but they all had one common denominator, a local following/voice amongst the social networking platforms and the ability to hopefully reach new markets for the Sacramento Kings.
Andrew Nicholson, the Kings New Media Director was the MC for the event and Kings starting power forward Jason Thompson, an admitted twitter fanatic, came up and spent some time with the group before the game. Overall, the event seemed like a success, with the Kings showing that they are willing to use cutting edge technology to reach the people of Sacramento.
It is this type of forward thinking displayed by the Sacramento Kings at this event, which has led to the amazing access that both Zach and myself have been granted as bloggers. Very few professional sports franchises open their practice facility, locker rooms or media boxes to non-mainstream media sources like the Kings do. Although they may not be winning on the court right now, off the court the Kings are doing a great job of stepping into the new age of social media.
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