Helping users kick ass is a great way to approach any kind of online community. But, as someone working in the sports industry, defining what makes our fans kick ass is probably a little different and even less tangible.

In many ways, because we’re dealing with a very real type of celebrity, there are legitimate concerns regarding safety and well-being of the players and their families that need to be considered for them to engage in cafe shaped conversations. One of the things that needs to be considered in this industry is how much access makes the fans feel intimately connected to the team without compromising the safety of the players or the cohesiveness of the team (their ultimate goal is still to win games).

Also, because we deal with a product that derives much of its value from its ability to entertain, the ways in which we are able to add value are inherently different. In our case, fans really do want to know about the organization. While there are a lot of opportunities to have different cafe shaped conversations around the facts and stats, or around the community involvement of the team or hockey as a sport, fans really do want to know about the players and behind the scenes activity of our organization.

Maybe this varies from team to team, or even league to league, but I have also been surprised to learn how hungry the fans are for our unfiltered marketing messages. For instance, one of our most-linked and trafficked blog posts is about a promotion. Granted, I did my best to tie in other activities in and around the city that could also help add value for those looking to save money, but I’m sure the link is being shared simply because of the value promised in the promotion.

There’s so much room for exploration in this topic, I’m sure I could go on! Thank you so much, Tim for such a thoughtful post.

One of the grand challenges for larger businesses getting into social media (including Hoover’s, I might add) is to come up with new ways to create many “cafe-shaped conversations” with smaller groups of users who, with the right kind of support from the company, can be enabled to kick far more ass — and feel great about the company while doing it.

This is the thing I continuously grapple with i.e. how do big businesses maintain the intimacy of a small business while keeping things scalable and manageable. Obviously social tools go a long way in helping companies accomplish this goal but the MOST important thing a company can do to make this happen is to empower it’s employees to act as individual proprietors while keeping them within the guardrails. Obviously, this is more easily said then done but companies like Zappos are doing a nice job in this regard.

By the way, thanks for helping to make my job easier by providing ideas on ways to “create a toothpaste” community. Time to get to work on brainstorming ideas for ball bearings and Draino!

Best,
Aaron | @astrout