The Kitchen Sink: Kareem, Israel, U of Miami and Social Media
Springtime in the sports world means changes. On the professional side of the house, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey Association begin playoff runs for the teams that have earned it while many others start a long off-season. College athletics slows down as well. Spring football practice briefly emerges but the time is focused on college baseball and softball.
As the season changes, so do jobs. Sports executives consider new opportunities and reevaluate what and were they are working. Mind you this happens all year long, but usually at a quicker pace from late April through the end of summer.
One such example happened at the University of Miami last week. The Hurricanes announced last week that Shawn M. Eichorst has been hired as the new Director of Athletics.
His experience to become Director of Athletics?
Since 2009, Eichorst has served as Deputy Athletic Director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his responsibilities under Director of Athletics Barry Alvarez have included serving as the Department’s COO, overseeing daily operations, legal affairs, trademark and licensing, and merchandising. Under his leadership, the Department operates from a $90 million budget, which consists of 23 intercollegiate athletics programs, 850 student-athletes, and 320 full-time employees. He has been involved in the construction of a new $100 million ice hockey/swim facility and athletic performance center for football.
You can read it all in this press release.
My point is this is just one of the many changes taking place all the time and more frequently during downtime for team’s. Make sure, if you have your eyes open to new opportunities that you are looking in the right places for changes.
Kareem Goes to Israel: One of the local Israeli news outlet, YNET, is reporting that Los Angeles Lakers great Kareem Abdul -Jabbar is headed to Israel this summer. The story, while brief, provides some really interesting insight into Jabbar’s personal life, specifically his father who helped liberate the Buchenwald Concentration camp, also came across a young child who is now a very prominent Rabbi in the country, Israel Meir Lau. I encourage you to spend a two minutes and read the story.
Terrific Social Media Report: As anyone who regularly reads this blog knows, social media and marketing go hand in hand. Sports teams are quickly coming around to the importance of using these new tools and a report I read from Social Media Examiner provides real insight. Here are just a few of the results from the report’s summary, which is loaded with good stats.
Marketers place high value on social media: A significant 90% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.
• Measurement and integration are top areas marketers want to master: One- third of all social media marketers want to know how to monitor and measure the return on investment (ROI) of social media and integrate their social media activities.
• Social media marketing takes a lot of time: The majority of marketers (58%) are using social media for 6 hours or more each week, and more than a third (34%) invest 11 or more hours weekly.
• Video marketing on the rise: A significant 77% of marketers plan on increasing their use of YouTube and video marketing, making it the top area marketers will invest in for 2011.
• Marketers seek to learn more about Facebook and blogging: 70% of marketers want to learn more about Facebook and 69% want to learn more about blogging.
• The top benefits of social media marketing: The number-one advantage of social media marketing (by a long shot) is generating more business exposure, as indicated by 88% of marketers. Increased traffic (72%) and improved search rankings (62%) were also major advantages.
• The top social media tools: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs were the top four social media tools used by marketers, in that order. Facebook has eclipsed Twitter to take the top spot since our 2010 study.
• Social media outsourcing underutilized: Only 28% of businesses are outsourcing some portion of their social media marketing.
You can download the report for yourself by clicking to this website and then downloading the .pdf
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