Twitter recommendations from Mark Cuban

I just followed Mark Cuban on Twitter, and got my first taste of Twitter’s Who to Follow recommendation engine. I love it. Immediately made me want to know more about the folks (pictured above) who are presented as people I might like to follow. Also made me wonder who would get recommended after someone follows me? (Smart people, I hope).

Since I work in B2B world (not B2C), I wonder how Twitter’s recommendations might compare to the folks I see on a LinkedIn page (where it says people who looked at this page also looked at…). It seems Mark Cuban’s LinkedIn page was also viewed by people looking for other people named Mark Cuban.

It’s early folks.

Maple Leafs lead NHL in social media growth

Over 30 days from June 16 to July 16, the Toronto Maple Leafs grew faster than any other NHL team in terms of percentage increase of both Facebook “likes” and Twitter followers (Data from Sports Fan Graph).

Facebook: Leafs grow 37% versus a league average of 13%

As of July 16, the Leafs had 113,570 “likes,” which put them in 9th place among NHL clubs, but they are the only club to grow its base by more than 30% in in this 30-day period.

Twitter: Leafs grow 18% vs. a league average of 8%

Leafs ranked 8th in NHL in total Twitter followers with 15,307 as of July 16, but Leafs were one of only 8 clubs that grew their Twitter followers by more than the league average of 8%. Canadiens have nearly 60,000 followers, but grew by just 7% in this 30-day period.

I asked Maple Leaf Sport’s Director of Digital, John McCauley, about the Leafs league leading growth. Here’s what he said:

“I think the reason is everyone was expecting big news to happen at the draft and/or free agency … and it did. Plus we promoted a big THANK YOU on mapleleafs.com to our fans for allowing us to hit 100K mark on Facebook. That combined with our regular amount of engagement seems to have given our account some buzz.”

McCauley went on to say: Just launched a big contest last week that should keep our growth going … search #cokezerofansfirst on Twitter. Big winner. Here’s a link to that promo

John will be among our speakers at the upcoming Sports Marketing 2.0 VIP Summit in Atlanta on October 21.

King James draws Miami Heat fans faster on Facebook than Twitter

Lebron’s move to Miami is causing quite a stir on social media. The number of hoops fans following the Heat on Twitter and Facebook is increasing so fast the growth curve looks like, well, a hockey stick. Given the unprecedented hype of this media event, a jump like this is not surprising, but on closer examination, we notice that the Facebook growth is significantly faster and larger than the growth on Twitter.

Given Facebook’s critical mass, it’s not really big news that the Heat have more FB likes than Twitter followers. Still, the rate of growth on Facebook is so far outstripping Twitter than it is worth noting.

The inflection point occurs on July 8, when King James made his historic pronouncement. Since then, the number of fans following the Heat on Twitter has grown by 5,154 (25%), but the number of fans “liking” the Heat on FB has grown by 38,576 (143%).

According to TNS Research, the Heat have just over 2 million Americans (12+) who say the Heat are their favorite team. Sixty-two percent of these “favorite team” fans live outside of Florida, and just 442,240 (20%) live in the Miami DMA. Obviously would expect these numbers to swell both inside Orlando as well as in Florida, throughout the U.S. and abroad. More

It’s also important to note that Lebron has over 400,000 fans following him on Twitter, ranking him #8 on the list of top NBA stars; and the super star has over 2.6 Facebook fans, which makes him as big as the NBA on the social platform, and ranks him 199th on the overall list of largest FB followings.

Sports Marketing 2.0 VIP Summit – call for speakers

Can you see yourself in this picture?
Pictured above are a few of the wonderful speakers from our recent Sports Marketing 2.0 VIP Summit in NYC. (From left: Williams Flaiz (Razorfish), Tom Richardson (Convergence Sports & Media), Eric Herd (Sportsfanlive.com), Joe Dupriest (Washington Capitals), Shripal Shah (Redskins), John Demarchi (DesiHits.com), Kirsten Corio (NBA), Adriana Rizzo (ESPN), James McDermott (Webtrends), Ian Hall (Octagon), Pat Coyle (Coyle Media).

We are looking for speakers for our upcoming events Sports Marketing 2.0 will hold (2) more VIP Summits in 2010: September in San Francisco and October in Atlanta. Qualified speakers will have expertise in sports media plus social media, mobile, and / or digital strategy. If you are interested in being considered as a speaker at one or both events, please follow this link and complete the Speaker Form.