Marching towards the mainstream – UFC & Twitter
The UFC and Twitter are both brands who are marching exponentially towards the mainstream.
In the last week, the UFC at UFC107 (where Diego “Nightmare” Sanchez got badly beaten by a Marv Marinovich built BJ Penn) up’ed their use of twitter as a channel by displaying live tweets during sections of the event. In parallel real time tweets began appearing in Google results, Twitter with a similar deal with Bing as well now has a dependable revenue stream. Twitter takes one more step towards the mainstream.
The UFC and in particular their President Dana White has focused on connecting to current and potential UFC fans through social media. Dana and UFC fighters are featured in video diaries before big events on the UFC’s youtube channel. These provide a raw, behind the scenes view of the UFC. It also means fans are connecting to the brand – and perhaps more importantly to individual fighters. Now the UFC is encouraging their fighters to use Twitter even more. The UFC recently ran a three day workshop (fighter summit) to help their fighters understand the opportunity social media offers their individual brands and equip them with skills to use the different platforms.
By empowering their fighters to build their own brands and connect with fans through social media, the UFC will benefit.
“I want you to twitter your as*es off.” – Dana White
See: Digital Royalty (Powering UFC’s Social Strategy)
