Ideas for Creating Interactive Content on Social Media to Increase Fan Engagement and Loyalty
Fans are essential to the growth of sports teams. Wether its live sports, televised sports, or e-commerce, fans are essential in building a strong loyal brand. Engaging with an audience on social media is not just about posting updates anymore. Marketers need to create meaningful content that relates to fans. Interactive content has become a powerful tool for brands and/or teams looking to increase engagement and loyalty. Marketers have found that tools like polls, quizzes and giveaways are essential in creating engagement. From a fans perspective, polls and quizzes show that the brand cares about their audience and their opinions. In this blog post, we'll explore some creative ideas for creating interactive content that will help you connect with your audience in new and exciting ways.
Why Interactive Content Matters
Interactive content on social media is so essential in growing fandom and maintaining it. Interactive content like polls or giveaways help brands reach new fans that they haven't previously reached. For example, a brand might do a giveaway on Instagram and require everyone to share and like the post to be entered. Requiring fans to engage with the post allows it to be spread across social media more and will be more visible to users.
Types of Interactive Content
Polls and Surveys
Polls are a great way to better understand your fans and audience. According to Forbes in 15 Ways Using Social Media Polls And Questions Can Benefit Brands, "Social polls can be a subtle way to get a little market research done under the guise of playful engagement. If you have a good social following, consider pitting some of your products or uses of them against each other..." This will allow you to better understand the audiences tastes, likes, and dislikes.
Polls also bring lots of engagement. The point of polls is to get a wide range of results to better determine certain things in the market. The more that people engage with your poll the better understanding of your fans you will have and can better cater content to these fans.
Quizzes and Trivia
Quizzes/Trivia are a great way to engage fans and gain new fans. Rory McEvoy says it perfect in Unleashing Fan Engagement Magic: The Power of Quizzes and QuizWizards when he says, "Quizzes have a unique ability to transform the sports arena into an interactive spectacle...Fans relish the opportunity to test their knowledge, engage in friendly competition, and be rewarded for their expertise." Fans are constantly itching to say they are the biggest fans. Quizzes and Trivia brings the competition to life and allows fans to truly compete with each other creating lots of engagement. While Rory talks about this at live events, the same works in social media.
Contests and Giveaways
Giveaways and contests are great ways to get fans excited and very active on social media. I know when I worked at Metabilia, a sports memorabilia company for professional teams in the NBA, MLB, and NFL, we did weekly giveaways. These giveaways would bring in hundreds of customers engaging on our social media and website. To fans, nothing is better then getting something for free. Giveaways and contests might create the most amount of engagement and interaction on your social medias. While everyone wants to just win the prize, making people repost or share a video to be submitted to the giveaway can lead to more engagement. For example at Metabilia, we did a giveaway of a Patrick Mahomes helmet at one of the Chiefs games one weekend. Fans had to post their tailgate game day pictures and tag our page to be entered. Things like that bring lots of engagement and new customers to the brand.
In conclusion, creating interactive content on social media is a powerful and very useful strategy for growing fan engagement and loyalty. By incorporating polls, quizzes, and giveaways into your social media strategy, brands can create more sustaining interactions with their audience. This not only grows the engagement but also helps build a loyal fan base that is actively participating on social media.
Works Cited:
Hendrix, J. (2023, September 12). Leveraging social media to amplify sports fan interaction and engagement. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leveraging-social-media-amplify-sports-fan-engagement-jason-hendrix/
McEvoy, R. (2023, June 30). Unleashing fan engagement magic: The power of quizzes and QuizWizards. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unleashing-fan-engagement-magic-power-quizzes-rory-mcevoy/
Panel®, E. (2022, May 30). Council post: 15 ways using social media polls and questions can benefit brands. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2022/05/27/15-ways-using-social-media-polls-and-questions-can-benefit-brands/?sh=672d2a7c30ef
Yellowbrick. (2024, March 21). Boost fan engagement: 10 strategies to drive interaction & loyalty. Yellowbrick Marketing. https://www.yellowbrick.co/blog/sports/boost-fan-engagement-10-strategies-to-drive-interaction-loyalty/
