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in your community with interest in your club or the sport on a one-to-one basis is as good as it gets, short of you discovering every last one of them and taking out a billboard in their living room. Website staff, community relations people, marketing staff, ticketing people and team mascots can all be tapped to contribute to the effort to outreach to the key SSEs. PR people can make sure that their news gets placed on the news and larger social SSEs as well.

Pick a "face" for your presence on the web. These sites, after all, are personal. We use my ugly mug on most of the MLN Sports SSEs. Does that mean that I'm the one blogging them? Most of the time, no. I have a few other things to do, and I have assistants who post most of the general news to the blogs

Which SSEs should we participate on?

Which ones should you do? All of them that were mentioned above are worth setting up shop in. Facebook and MySpace are the biggest. Of the sports-specific sites, currently Ballhype is the only one that specifically caters to minor league sports, while ArmChairGM is the easiest to add content and categories for minor league sports.

Sports Social Search Engines       One of the newest SSEs for sports, FanNation.com is backed by Time Warner. Poorly built. They should have bought one of the others and upgraded. PROS: CNN/SI Backed and Connected CONS: Clumsy and harder to use. You may have to leave a story in two places to get it seen. One of the first of the sports SSEs. First sports engine to put in dedicated minor league categories. Well read, particularly for baseball and hockey. PROS: Easy to use system. Easily add your off-site blogs and RSS news feeds to their services. CONS: Personal page is a bit blocky.         Very major league, so much so that they don't even have many rookie players listed even after call up. No minor league categories. We list here but this dog doesn't hunt well. PROS: Nice look and feel; Easy to put in stories CONS: No minor league categories; No way to add categories or players; hard to make friends connections OUR BEST PICK: ArmchairGM gets a lot of regular read and has a very active member base. Best system we use. PROS:Wikimedia (Wiki) based system is easy to use and ver easy to add minor categories and playes; Great readers participate;Easy to build audience of friends. CONS: Lots of sports fans, but many major league fans who look down their nose at the minors.             More international site with fans that have car racing on the brain. Does have minor league categories PROS:Minor league categories; CONS: Poor look and feel.           General Social Search Engines             Heavy student emphasis. If you're in a college town, it is a must. PROS: Good contact with 14-25s CONS: Very clunky interface; Not a huge sports focus; You need a college kid to speak the lingo. The biggest SSE. Almost too big. A ton of sports interest. This is a must-do, but bring your waders: It can take a long time to get through all of the groups and friends. PROS:Minor league categories; CONS: Poor look and feel.                     Low sports, high poetry site, but has exceptional tools and reaches a higher-end audience. PROS: Exceptional design; CONS: Sports is under-served.

 

How to Set Up on an SSE

In a truly social SSE, you establish a space of your own, usually with the ability to create your own blog, and groups. You might set up separate spaces for your club site, your mascot site, and encourage your booster clubs or rooters to set up a third site.

You should set up a blog, which is simply a bulletin board to post messages that will be featured

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