Major League Soccer is a feeder League--and that's OK.

I did not spend much time researching or writing this, just wanted to rant for a minute and hear your thoughts on Major League Soccer.

I want to be a fan of the MLS, I really do. It probably doesn’t help that I live in the Boston sports market where our MLS team, the New England Revolution is pretty bad and comes in 5^th on the priority list of the Boston media behind the Patriots, Bruins, Red Sox and Celtics.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the Revs. Not sure if it was because the league was new or because we didn’t have the access to the European leagues we have now, but somewhere along the way, I just stopped caring about Major League Soccer.

MLS is suffering from an identity crisis: they don’t know whom they are trying to appeal to—the casual American sports fan or the true soccer fan. Once MLS realizes that they will never be a top world soccer league or one of the “big” leagues in the United States, they could have real success. It’s an entertaining league that develops a lot of great players for European leagues. It attracts a lot of former greats to end their careers in the MLS—and there is nothing wrong with that. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-bSVOS-HZoz

Differentiation-Fox Soccer and ESPNFC

Fox Soccer and ESPN are both present and active on Social Media--especially twitter (@foxsoccer @espnfc).  Personally, I follow both; however, I feel more engaged with Fox Soccer than I do with ESPN. Fox Soccer makes more of an effort to actually engage with their followers. There are many examples I could use, but for the sake of this blog I will focus on the Hashtags used by ESPN and Fox Soccer on twitter.

Let’s start with ESPN. ESPN does a great job on Twitter: posting articles, videos, live scores, etc. I’ve found that their only attempt at engagement with followers is during live matches with the hashtag #FCBootroom. Fans can live tweet during the match with questions using this hashtag and select few will be answered at halftime and during the post match show.

Fox Soccer is constantly engaging with their followers on twitter. It could be by asking a simple question like “who will win tonight?” or “what did you think of this video?” or other opinions, questions on current news, scores, etc. If your answer is good or you have good timing, a re-tweet or a response from Fox Soccer is usually coming. Fox Soccer Channel has a nightly show called Fox Soccer News where during each broadcast, they will ask a question on twitter with the hashtag #Banterzone. The best responses will be read on the air. In addition to the Banterzone, if you’re tweeting during a Champions League match you can use #UCLonFox to connect with Fox Soccer and other fans around the world. Fox Soccer has not only done a decent job of engaging with their followers, but has also made it easy for their followers to engage with one another.

I could take this one step further and talk about ESPN analyst twitter accounts versus Fox Soccer analyst twitter account. Or talk about how ESPN is part of your basic cable package and the Fox Soccer Channel is a paid subscription, but I won’t. Yet.

http://msn.foxsports.com/foxsoccer/

http://www.foxsoccer2go.com/

http://espnfc.com/?cc=5901

Don't Sweat It

Don't Sweat it, there is a solution to every problem. Everything will work out.

You will mess up and when you do, learn from it and move on. If everything was perfect, you'd never learn.

Ask questions, if you don't ask you'll never know.

D's Get Degrees

When I was in college, a number of my peers lived by the slogan “D’s get to degrees”.  Most of the time they weren’t being serious, but it’s alarming that there is truth in such a silly statement.

Just because we sat in our seat in the classroom for three hours a week, took notes and were able score higher than 65% on exams, we somehow were experts in Finance or History or Marketing, etc. Oh, and expected to be ready to enter the workforce--skilled and well prepared.

It’s time to move forward, a time for students to be evaluated on what they know, not how much time they’ve spent in a class. NY Times columnist Tom Friedman, quoting historian Walter Russell Mead, “Institutions of higher learning must move from a model of “time served” to a model of “stuff learned".” 

Best Practices for Social Media

I recently read an article on SocialMediaToday.com titled “The 5 Pillars of Social Media: There is no Box!” The article identified and expanded on “five pillars” of social media strategy:

1. Listen, Search, Walk a “Daily in the Life” of your Customers
2. Rethink Your Vision, Mission and Purpose
3. Define Your Brand Persona
4. Develop Social Business Strategy
5. Build and Invest in your Community

For any industry, it is important to follow these Five Pillars when implementing your Social Media Strategy. However, in the world of Higher Education, I feel that number five, Build and Invest in your Community, might be the most important.  On any physical campus or online university students want to feel connected, have their ideas heard and connect with other members of the campus community whether it be students, faculty or staff.  Social Media Today explains that “Community is much more than belonging to something; it's about doing something together that makes belonging matter.” Institutes of Higher Learning can use social media as a way to establish community with their students, faculty and staff. On Twitter, the use of Hash tags can connect people; with twitter, the university responding to the needs of students and highlighting positive events on campus can bring the community together.  Google+ takes it even further by allowing you to create your own community to connect with others all over the world to discuss anything; the community is your own to create.

(Personally? More people need to get on Google+.)

http://socialmediatoday.com/briansolis/1249946/5-pillars-new-media-strategy-there-no-box