Baseball is known to be an “All American” sport that originated many years ago.
In the day of Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantel there was no social media platforms for players and teams to spread their breaking news and even team stats.
Today, not only do major league baseball teams have social media accounts but the individual players themselves use social media to reach their fans.
Scott Lindholm of SB Nation, Beyond The Box Score said that “teams are using Facebook and Twitter as their primary social mediums”
In his repot, Scott Lindholm shows how each major league baseball team ranks in their Twitter and Facebook followers.
Each team on the ranking had a link to their own page that showed when their next game would be played.
Lindholm also compared major league baseball with other sports and it showed that baseball is not as popular as the NBA and NFL in followers.
Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram is a way for players and fans to connect with one another.
According to Mark Fidelman of Forbes, by using social media, teams “encourage and engage their fans, they make it fun, they build fan relationships, and they sell.”
Fidelman also says that fans become more loyal to their teams by seeing them on social media platforms which has a greater “effect” on ticket and merchandise sales.
Rafael Rodrigues of Crush City Astros says that “amazing graphic design, daily updates and information, and great promotions at the stadium” can be a way to draw in that city’s fan base.
Brysan Brown of Global Strategy Group says that companies can learn from Major League Baseball and their use of social media as a platform to spread their brand.
Brown says that like MLB, companies can:
Make it ridiculously easy to find all of your social media channels
Sometimes an old standby can pay off-win free merchandise
Put a human face in the digital space
Brown also states that, “social media is allowing players to communicate without the filter of the beat reporters and columnists.”
By getting information and updates from the players themselves, fans can get a feeling that they truly know that player.
Players can show their other sides to fans as well. They can show their families and interests outside of the sport which in turn can create more fan