Companies That Get It: Kansas City Wizards
This is the third post in our “Companies that get it” series that works to highlight businesses that are on forefront of social media using creative and effective uses of emerging technologies to run and improve their business.
Company – OnGoal, LLC. Owner of the Kansas City Wizards
Description – The Wizards are Kansas City’s professional MLS soccer team and started in 1995 as one of the league’s 10 charter teams. They have been winners of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, Supporters Shield, and most importantly in 2000 were crowned MLS Cup Champions.
Social Media Usage - Blogging, Twitter, You Tube, MySpace, and message board community engagement.
How They Stand Out – The Wizards excel at the most important aspect of any social media strategy. Content creation. Their official blog Hillcrest Road does a great job connecting with, and informing fans. News items and blog posts that are KCW related are pulled from all over and relayed to the Hillcrest Road readers. Every aspect of the organization is covered in the original content they create. Interviews with the players, behind the scenes access on road games, updates on players’ involvement in the community, as well as more game related information. The blog also does a great job of getting the fans involved. Last season they got input from HR readers to give a name to a common goal celebration that takes place (think of a soccer version of the Lambeau Leap) at the games. Twitter and MySpace is used as an outpost and You Tube is used as an outpost and a content source.
One of the interesting things that came from putting KCW under the social media microscope was seeing the CEO of OnGoal Robb Heineman jumping into fan message boards. Message boards are interesting places, they are filled with informed passionate people however the relative anonynimity can give communities a “Lord of the Flies” type feel where people with good intentions can have really bad experiences. Robb has gained a lot of integrity with fans by giving them info directly and showing he has a passion and excitement for the team that you don’t see often from a person in his position. We stress treading lightly in message board communities.
It is great to see Kansas City based companies understand the value of social media and connecting with customers in new ways. Best of luck to the Wizards in 2009.
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Tags: Hillcrest Road, Kansas City, Kansas City Wizards, Social Media
Jan 26, 2009
[...] Companies That Get It: Kansas City Wizards [...]
Jan 26, 2009
The Wizards have done a good job leveraging social media tools although there are a few steps I think they’ve missed. The biggest for me is the use of Blogger – they should be building their brand on a site they own/control, not a free service with TOS that will change.
Facebook is lacking, while there is a sales rep who is listed as an admin on the Group page, there is no RSS feed included from the Blogger site. Same with the Facebook Page. They are treading lightly trying to work with whoever created the Page but it points to the need of all ‘brands’ to capture control early in these arenas. Will they need to ask for a takedown order to control their copyright? If you are a business, establish a Page now!
Jan 26, 2009
Ole, I agree especially about the importance of hosting your own site. However I have never seen a blogger site designed to not look like one as well as Hillcrest Road.
At the very least brands do need to stake their claim to all of their names across social spaces to avoid problems. Even if you are not going to be active.
Feb 05, 2009
BigSoccer has some sort of partnership with the league, though, so some kind of ’synergy’ makes sense.
Also, it has dramatically more users than any site the league could start up could build for years.