Fellow sponsorship/sports marketing blogger, Russell Scibetti of The Business of Sports is spearheading the first annual Business of Sports Awards. According to Russell:

“Unlike other sports business awards that recognize the  people working within specific organizations, the goal for these awards is to recognize those individuals, companies and websites that create and share the best sports business content and provide the most benefit for the rest of the sports industry.”

Sounds like a great idea to me! The Business of Sports Awards are being awarded in six main categories, all nominated by YOU, the industry. Here are the categories:

• Best Sports Business Blog – The overall best sports business blog
• Best Individual Sports Business Twitter Account – The best individual use of Twitter to help the sports business community
• Best Sports Business Content by a Company – The company that best uses social media platforms across their organization to create and share sports business content
• Best Alternative Sports Business Content – The best sports business content distributed via an alternative, non-blog format
• Best Up-and-Coming Sports Business Contributor – The best new contributor of sports business content (must have just started within the past 12 months)

Click here for more information and to make your nominations, but be quick – nominations close Thursday, 15 April!!

I’m really loving the whole social media space. I’ve been doing Facebook and LinkedIn for a while, have been blogging for years, and have recently started on Twitter.

By and large, it is fantastic to be able to interact in real time with people all over the world, with all their disparate interests, passions, and challenges. When it comes to sponsorship seekers, though, the people involved with social media seem to be either getting it very right or very wrong, with hardly anyone in the middle.

I’m not an expert at social media, but I am definitely an expert in corporate sponsorship, and though the communication channels seem to be under almost daily change, the principles of best practice sponsorship seeking still hold true.

Here is my advice for sponsorship seekers using social media:

Do…

• Use social media to make connections with both well-connected industry influencers and industry newcomers looking for advice.
• Use social media to demonstrate your industry knowledge by providing, or making reference to, a range of useful information and resources.
• Use social media to demonstrate your approach to sponsorship – partnership-oriented, creative, flexible, and more about the needs of the sponsor and the target markets than your own needs.
• Use social media to demonstrate that you are helpful, insightful, professional, and human.

Don’t…

• Use social media to directly flog sponsorship opportunities. You will never touch the degree of customisation and sophistication being demanded by sponsors in a tweet that reads, “Need sponsor cash for snowboard tour. I will wear your logo and love you forever if you send me a cheque.” Ditto for LinkedIn headlines. I don’t care how desperate you are, this is highly unlikely to net you any money and highly likely to damage your credibility with potential sponsors.
• Use social media to hunt down potential sponsors and badger them until they crack. First off, they are far less likely to crack than to simply block you from contacting them. Go ahead and seek out potential sponsors, but control yourself (see the list of “Dos”). Doing the social media equivalent of glad-handing them will be a huge turn off.
• Use social media to badmouth other sponsorship seekers. They’re colleagues, not competitors – you don’t have the same brand and you don’t offer the same target markets, benefits, or creative leverage ideas. Putting them down as an attempt to build yourself up will make you look unprofessional.