Moving from event coverage to stories

As sports teams and leagues continue to grow massive social media audiences, sports marketers should find clever ways to engage these sports fans. To help sports marketers get a sense of what some of the biggest and best sports brands are doing on social media, we analyzed the Instagram posts of NFL teams. As you can imagine, there are a great deal of video highlights from games and pictures of in-game accomplishments on social media. A lot of what we'd call event coverage.

But sports teams are not new to social, and they're starting to use social to hit on themes that go beyond the event. These themes can be crafted into stories and used for branding and content marketing.

Here are some of the content categories that emerged from our analysis:

Schedules and countdowns. Many brands are using countdowns to games, schedules, and rivalry match-ups to drive excitement about upcoming games and seasons.

Hometown pride. Clever brands are expanding their social media reach by including other regional teams in their social media content.

Behind the scenes special access. Sports fans are hungry to know how their favorite teams operate and get closer to the athletes they love. Sports brands realize this and are starting to give looks behind how teams travel, train, and even select their players and staff.

Nostalgia and loyalty. Sports brands know they strike a cross-generational cord, and they've gone further into their archives to surface more than just old game footage. We see brands celebrating their retired legends and former players even if they're still playing for other teams.

These are just a few of the more than a dozen content categories that emerged from our analysis. We see this organization as an important first step to give shape to the "on-field" social media product sports brands develop.

Sports marketers should view seemingly random photos and posts as part of larger themes. The best sports brands on social media will start to create systems for producing, scaling, and monetizing this content so these themes emerge.

On air, sports marketers know what to buy. The inventory is well defined. On social it's less clear. That's changing. Here's a great example of how the Boston Celtics are developing branded social content systematically. It's a way to give shape to their social inventory and work with brand partners.

Sports brands and marketers should work together to identify and create these themes. They will be the foundation of future sports stories that engage and grow your social audience.