The Sports Info Business

Hello friends of sportsinfo101.com.    If you look at the time between the last post and this one, it has been a few months since I have posted to this blog.  It was the longest period of time I have gone between posts and with good reason.

I have not abandoned the idea of sharing insights, ideas and personalities, but took time out to channel my spare energies to completing a book I have co-authors with three other talented folks.  Our book, titled Social Media in Sport Marketing, has just been published by Arizona based Holcomb Hathaway Publishers.

I must tip my cap to the other co-authors that made this project possible.  First is Tim Newman.  Tim and I first crossed paths over Twitter, eventually met at a sports management educational conference and came up with the idea for this book.  Tim has been the team leader and quarterback.  I thank you, if you are reading this for your perseverance.  Two other men joined the effort and added valuable writing and knight that made the book a reality.  They are Jason Peck and Brendan Wilhide.

We have spoken countless times as a group over the phone as well as via email and Twitter, brainstorm, sharing and counseling each other to help finish this reference book.

When we started writing this book, the sport industry lacked practical resources to apply many of the developing technologies to their marketing plans and goals.  Today, the landscape is more educated.  However,  many senior management leaders are still learning what the shift means.

To understand what we wrote abut, I simply list the chapter titles:

Chapter One:  Introduction to Social Media

Chapter Two: Introduction to Principles of Sport Communication, Marketing and Social Media

Chapter Three: Social Networks and Real Time Platforms

Chapter Four: Blogging

Chapter Five: Photos, Video and Podcasting

Chapter Six:  Search Marketing

Chapter Seven: Mobile Marketing

Chapter Eight: Email Marketing

Chapter Nine:  Planning and Measuring A Successful Social Media Program

Writing a book, even with partners is not easy.  I learned a lot about myself, the publishing industry and finished a project I am proud to have seen through.

This is only half of the reason, however, why I have not published more often here.

The second reason is that I have devoted a lot of time to becoming a better photographer.

Landscape photography has become truly a passion and with it, I developed a site where I can feature my favorite landscape photographs.

©Charles Harris Photography

The website address is charlesharrisphotography.smugmug.com and I feature categories for the photographs including Sports, City Scapes, Black & White,   and the area with the most and best work, Outdoors.  I encourage you to visit the site and let me know what you think of my work.  With it of course, I started a blog there to share my photography experiences.

The site design needs some work, but for now, it is a great place to showcase what I do with my Canon camera.

From book, to photography and back to blogs, it is good to be back writing in this space.

At what point do we raise the white flag and proclaim that there is too much information to process?

The thought process for this blog started with a single Keynote slide.  For the last two weeks, I’ve had a one-page slide sitting on my desktop with details how many different ways which friends, family, colleagues and new contacts can reach me.

During my childhood, I remember we had two staples: the home phone and our mailbox.  As an adult, communication grew more complex.  We were offered choices between new business toys like fax machines and pagers.  When cell phones and email hit main stream, the world changed forever.

Consider this:

Today, we have more ways to communicate than I can count on both hands, yet, I see and hear about more miscommunication and lack of communication than ever before.  While I do not plan on deleting what I started, I hope you will play along with me as I recount the ways in which people can reach me today.

Let’s start with the phone.  Once reachable only at home, now we can find anyone, anywhere, from airlines to bathroom stalls.  Privacy?  Forgetaboutit.  I remember reading a sad story of a family burying someone who passed away and as the dirt was being shoveled over the grave, a cell phone from under the ground started ringing.  You won’t find a home phone to reach me, but certainly a cell phone, work phone, a Google talk number and texting on my smart phone are options to communicate.

The mailbox is a second method.  Home, work and a PO Box.  Three simple outlets, and while the frequency of important information has fallen, the pure spam of direct mail has not.

Email is a third option.  Personal and work email is on the check list as is a dedicated email for consulting work.  Let me knot forget a teaching email for my graduate school adjunct work and there’s always the dummy email account to check once every blue boon.  If you don’t use a dummy account, it is terrific when you need to register for something online yet do not want to give away your personal information.

The overload effect enters into the picture when it comes to social networking and social media.  In no particular order here is my personal list.  There’s my personal Facebook page, the work related Facebook pages I need to monitor and then I cannot forget the sportsinfo101.com Facebook page; Twitter – A personal account and of course my corporate Twitter account.  My LinkedIn profile and the corporate LinkedIn page for my company that needs updating and monitoring;  Finally there is Youtube Channels, Instagram, Pinterest, tumblr and Mobli to name a few more  Whew. 

Finally, there are two blogs to write, monitor and respond to.  This one on sportsinfo101.com and a photo blog I recently started, that compliments my photography website site.

Tired yet?  I am.  That’s 26 different channel, minimum and I may have missed one or two.

I will certainly admit that not everyone is as connected with new social platforms like I am.  Yet, when you take stock in how the world has changed, I ask again, when is it too much?  At what point do we say enough and just go back to basics?