The Golden State Warriors, Oakland, California’s professional basketball team, have taken that interaction to the next level. I came across a very interesting article on ESPN about how the Golden State Warriors are using the power of social media to engage a wider fan base.

The Warriors are about to unveil a new logo for the upcoming season. Their problem was how to keep their fans from leaking it out. Their solution was to take a positive approach and get involved with their fan in the unveiling process.

Using multiple social network platforms, the Warriors leveraged their fan’s excitement by turning the logo unveiling into a scavenger hunt type of game.

Thus the “Warriors Draft Challenge” was born. Fans can sign-up on the Warriors website and each weekday from May 20-31, there will be a challenge question tied to each of the Warriors major social media accounts. If you get the answer right, then a small section of the logo will be revealed. If you get all the questions correct, on the last day you will see the whole logo.

This tactic is great because it gives the Warriors an opportunity to continually post new content during the off-season and give their fans a reason to seek it out.

They have leveraged current players like top rookie Stephen Curry to give fans clues, and subsequent clues will be revealed only when you tweet a specific message from the Warriors. Through every clue revealed, fans have an opportunity to share their experience via Facebook and Twitter.

The Warriors are giving more to their fans than just a unique interaction. Fans who sign up will be automatically registered to attend the team’s draft party at the end of June. In addition, there are also daily prizes available including a chance to be entered to win season tickets.

The Warriors also took a non-traditional approach to their public relations efforts, using Pitch Engine to post the official release.

Within the first 24 hours, the release generated over 4,000 views. A typical release gets sent out to about 400 people. The Warriors are one of the first professional teams to utilize the Pitch Engine service.

Their overall strategy is solid and speaks to their fan-base. They have come up with a unique engagement for their fans and have given them a reason to come back for more.

I also applaud their willingness to embrace new tools and strategies, where it could have been very easy to go the traditional route and “do things how they’ve always been done.”

Other sports teams should take a page out of the Warriors’ book.

What do you think of the overall campaign? What teams do you think are doing a good job leveraging social media?

When we met Greg at Blogworld, we chatted a bit about the conference itself and he shared some of his experiences and learnings as an expert blogger with Fast Company, which we found really valuable. We did a video interview with him that day, which you can see here.

His advice to bloggers is straightforward:

Based on his personal experiences with a sharp blogging learning curve, he came to a few conclusions about how writing for a blog audience is incredibly different from writing in most other media.

1. Keep your blogs short. Ideally less than 300-400 words. Your readers are just as ADHD as you are, if not more so.

2. Use bold headlines and bullets or numbers to give the reader structure when they scan your posts.

3. Stay on theme and ensure the reader can jump in and out at any point in the post and still get the message.

Listen to the Show

We’re excited to have him on the Comet Branding Radio show on Wednesday, December 2nd at 11 a.m. Central. We’ll be chatting about his experiences as a blogger for Fast Company, his knowledge and insights as a Peltason fellow at the University of California’s Center for the Study of Democracy, and his general thoughts on life in the social media fast lane.

What Greg Does

His work recently graced the cover of the Christian Science Monitor and his fresh voice keeps the message simple, yet poignant when he posts his thoughts on his Fast Company FastMinds blog: case in point. He is also an educator, public speaker and consultant.

We hope you can join us for the discussion. You can find Greg on Twitter @wikiworld.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.

Shoots straighter than a speeding bullet. (Count on him to tell it like it is.) More connected than Kevin Bacon. (16,470 followers on Twitter. But who’s counting?) And able to UStream from tall buildings in a single bound.

Superman? Nope. It’s @JasonFalls. And while he isn’t Superman, he’s a pretty cool guy.

He’s consistently ranked among the top 3 on Advertising Age’s Power 150 daily rank of marketing blogs. A prolific blogger for the past several years, Jason Falls is a force of nature. He has averaged about 20 blog posts per month for the past 2 years on his blog, SocialMediaExplorer.com. That’s about once per workday, folks. We did the math. And his content is reliably a conversation-starter, because that’s just how he writes.

He’s dialed in to what’s going on in social media and understands its relevance to marketing and PR,  which is a very valuable combination of knowledge and skills these days, as demonstrated by his extensive speaking calendar. Of particular relevance for marketing and PR-types is the tab on his blog, “How to Pitch SME,” where he details 6 basic rules for how to pitch your ideas in a way he’ll listen and what you can expect in return. How many people do you know who do that? And don’t you wish that tough-to-reach journalist at The Wall Street Journal would do the same?

He is one of the leaders of the Blog World and New Media Expo in Las Vegas in a few weeks, working to build up a great lineup of experts for the Social Media for Business track. Al Krueger and I are heading to Vegas for the event and are looking forward to a lot of great discussions and to catching up with some of our social media friends from all over the country. Will you be there?

Jason is joining us on Comet Branding Radio on Wednesday, September 30th at 11 a.m. Central. We’re really excited to chat a bit about what it takes to achieve such a distinguished ranking for a blog, how he went about building such an engaged following, and discover the social media tools he can’t live without. And we’ll be taking your questions live on Twitter, as usual. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.

Jennifer has been on the SohoBizTube Presents: Comet Branding Radio Show twice to discuss the “Changing Role of PR as Media Evolves,” so I trust her and I followed the link.

YOU SHOULD TOO.

If you scroll down a little ways, you will find me. I was pretty shocked and honored at the same time. One of the most interesting parts of her post though, we the term she used: Social Business. The term resonated with me because I never really felt that the terms “social media” or “social networking” fit the purposes many business-minded folks use the social web to accomplish.

Social Business feels pretty good to me. It underlines the idea that we are all being quite social, personal and open, but points out that we, indeed, are all professionals trying to do something important and cool.

I’d like to thank Jennifer for being such an engaging participant on the radio show and for including me on a list of very smart and successful people. What an honor. The flip-side? I need to write more frequently and push myself to improve my skills and voice. Thanks for the added pressure!

Leggio covers social media and security and her story discusses the risky business of “Copy + Paste Blogging.” Click on the image to the left to read the full entry.

According to my Google Alerts, the story was picked up for a bit by the NY Daily News as well, but it was gone by this morning. Pretty cool anyway.

This opportunity developed entirely on Twitter, proving yet again that Twitter is good for business and connecting with others. You can follow Leggio here (twitter.com/mediaphyter) – I recommend it.

I will write an entry next week about Twitter and there social media applications and my direct experiences with them…it will include some tasty nuggest from IDC Researcher Caroline Dangson (twitter.com/CarolineDangson) as well.

You can follow me on Twitter as well: twitter.com/alkrueger.

Thanks for reading.

After the meeting, I had a conversation with Steve Glynn (@spreenkler on Twitter) and I made a comment about blogging strategy that stuck with me. We were discussing how it’s easier for us to fire off Twitter posts than sit down and write a thoughtful piece for our respective blogs. Maybe we’re getting lazy or just too busy.

The second part of the conversation, that really stuck, was notion that with this blog, I want to drive original, relevant and meaningful content and not simply offer some sort of regurgitation of other people’s or outlets’ content. Doing something like that, seem kind of insignificant and that makes me sad. Sometimes I will comment and put my perspective on things that are being discussed elsewhere and push that on to this blog, but hopefully that’s as far as I go with it. I know I’ve broken this rule in the past, please forgive me.

Hopefully this blog will continue to develop and include Comet Branding’s unique and growing perspective on branding, marketing, public relations and Milwaukee.

Thanks for reading.

by: al krueger, president | brander
source: comet branding

As a note: The August 6th Spreenkler meeting will feature guest speaker Harper Reed, CTO of skinnyCOPR., which operates Threadless, Naked & Angry and Extra Tasty .

To learn a bit more about Harper Reed, check out his blog at harperreed.org

A useful strategy can include presenting a “humanized face” to a brand by opening the virtual doors to the company by promoting (showing) the people that do the work and letting them talk. Through this, customers can feel a connection with real people who are just like themselves.

A recent video from The Wall Street Journal posted on The Social Media Marketing Blog helps underline this point and promotes allowing employees from every level of companies communicate instead of just CEOs. Making the point that high-level executives might not be as relatable to mainstream consumers.

Although this is just a hutch, this may be due to perceived scripted corporate rhetoric and excessively high salaries. Some old guy making $12M/year doesn’t face the same challenges that I do, so why should I listen to him?

This same video also discusses the importance of communicating in a personal way with all forms customer contact and complaints. My own experience of securing phone and internet service for this agency was a frustrating maze of calls, misdirection and hints of condescension. Things improved when a very nice lady, Edie from AT+T, treated me like a real person and helped me out.

If you can show customers real people who care, they will care and you will win their heart.

Thanks for reading.

by: al krueger, president | brander
source: comet branding, The Social Media Marketing Blog, The Wall Street Journal