NBA Best Practices: Portland Trail Blazers use All Star selection to bring fans closer together

It’s been nearly two seasons since Peter Robert Casey and I broke down the Digital NBA Landscape.  The landscape has changed and teams have evolved.  It’s time for us to take another crack at things.  Let’s wrap up another week today!

Our mission:  To share Best Practices of how NBA Teams are leveraging digital and social, and give you thoughts on how to apply that in your world.

Here’s a look back:   Warriors | Celtics  | Clippers  |  Nets | Lakers | Knicks | Suns | 76ers | Kings | Raptors | Mavs| Bulls  |Rockets | Cavs | Grizzlies | Pistons | Hornets | Pacers | Spurs | Bucks| Timberwolves | Bobcats | Nuggets | Hawks | Thunder | Heat |

Next Up: the Portland Trail Blazers

I’m normally not a huge fan of anything that stands in the way of getting where you want to get, whether you’re talking life or a visit to a website.  But my visit to the Portland Trail Blazers site showed that sometimes you can be surprised with some amazing learnings.  As you can see below, my trip to their site redirected me here, to a page congratulating first-time All Star Lamarcus Aldridge.  But it wasn’t seeing a team congratulate a player that made this cool… it was the fact that the page was an entry point for you, the fan, to congratulate him that was.

 

Clicking on the link to Congratulate Lamarcus takes you here.  It’s a pretty powerful thing to read (and write) well wishes for a player. It brings you closer together, as these are the kind of notes we normally write to a friend or a co-worker who gets good news.  In any case, it is a simple thing that makes a big impact.

 

 

Now, shifting gears, I clicked on the Blazers Facebook page, here.  As you’ll see in the image below, the Blazers simultaneously rolled out a post with an All Star photo gallery.

 

Clicking in takes you to the gallery below (or here).  It’s a pretty sweet collection of pics from the first half of the season, and it’s great to see these elevated into one spot at the right time.

 

So how do we take this energy and make it better?  First, I’d love to see these ideas merged.  Ask fans to not only Congratulate LA not just on the Blazers site but also on Facebook.  And what if they could congratulate him not only through words but through a picture that shows their love for him? Finally, what if we could take this combination of photos and words and provide it to Aldridge, just as one would provide them to a friend or coworker?  As we’ve seen here, it would make an impact not just on the player but on the fan base too!

One more team to go in the West…

But first, head over to Peter Robert Casey‘s site tomorrow for another Eastern Conference squad.  Then I’ll be back, here, on Thursday.  As always, follow along on Twitter – I’m @andypawlowski or on Facebook, here.

Thanks.

Andy