7 Questions with Lauren Teague (@LaurenTee)

7 Questions with Sports PR Summit Partner and Social Media expert Lauren Teague:

1) Give us a sense of what a “normal” work day is like for you.

I work remotely from a office next to my home near Portland, and most days do not look the same! I work Mondays through Thursdays (my husband is off Fridays so I try to work a half day or less on Fridays, so we can maximize family time), but I’ve learned that some of my most productive hours are between 9pm and 12 (or 1!) am. If I’m wrapping up a client project or writing on deadline, there’s a good chance that work happens after dark. I also travel monthly to speak at conferences and present workshops.

The majority of my consulting hours go to Convince & Convert clients, who come to our consulting group for counsel, analysis and strategy on social media marketing, content marketing and word of mouth. We do work with clients in sports & entertainment, but my experience in B2B and traditional B2C is now much deeper than a few years ago! I also carve out time for my own speaking career, whether writing, rehearsing or traveling to present. When I have a chance, I’ll also dive into passion projects like event production (co-produce Sports PR Summit and the Social Media Workshop). Currently I’m in the midst of launching a lifestyle media brand called Mom Golfs that brings a women’s voice into the conversations around golf’s evolution as a game and lifestyle at both the professional level and for individuals who enjoy the sport.

2) You worked as a Social Media Manager for the PGA Tour and have since transitioned your expertise into other roles. How have your former roles in sports helped you with your current professional role?

Nearly every day, I recall an experience from my seven seasons at the PGA TOUR and can apply it to what my clients are doing now. Its very important to me that I remember what it was like to be a social media team of one or two, and be the person responsible for evangelizing social media across entire organization. That helps me relate to the challenges facing clients and the audiences I speak to, and I can use that perspective to provide solutions and strategies that don’t just look good on paper, but are actionable and return real value.

3) How have you seen the role of Social Media change in the landscape of sports? Where do you see it going?

From where I started in sports social media ten years ago, to where social is now is a greater evolution than many professionals will see across their own careers. I started at the PGA TOUR with a LG flip phone, posting pictures to TwitPic to get them to appear in tweets, and hand-coding Facebook widgets on the first iteration of the PGA TOUR Facebook page. Compare that now to the full-on media production required for sports brands to succeed in social media today. The three key differences I’ve seen in the past decade are that social media has galvanized fans and fan behaviors, morphed storytelling from play by play to representing the ears and eyes of fans, and changed the media landscape with video streaming into YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and now Instagram, Amazon and Snapchat.

4) As a Social Media Coach, do you find that more sports entities are seeking your advice and counsel in times of crisis?

I believe Sports does an excellent job of being and acting in the moment on social media. Team and league social media managers are “always on,” and often the first line of defense when crisis is brewing. I’ve been there when notifications are popping and having to scroll through hundreds of mentions about your brand or your players, and trying to decide how to take the first step to respond. I wrote a program titled “Rehearse for Real Time,” that takes social media and business leaders step-by-step in how to prepare for the moments online when every moment counts. While its most fun to talk about real time social media for live events and covering breaking news, its extremely important to remember social is the first place fans and the media will go to when a crisis occurs. I believe that all social media managers, sports and otherwise, have to represent their channels and audiences in any PR planning for crisis communications. Preparation and rehearsal are the best ways to ensure they can move swiftly when its most needed.

5) Can you provide an example of when your strategic advice really helped a company change its platform and grow its business?

At the PGA TOUR, we did a really great job of using social media to create one-to-one connections between the audience and their point of interest to the sport, be it a player, a tournament, a charity or the sports in general. When we brought that fan-first approach to everything we did on social media, we not just grew the fan base in audience size. I was able to leverage social media to enhance TOUR initiatives like Charity, key events, marketing campaigns and even the “These Guys Are Good” brand refresh, and move in a direction that really made fans a part of everything that we did. I absoultely love the new PGA TOUR brand strategy of “Live Under Par,” because it is totally a fan-first concept, and am thrilled to have been a small part of how that came to be.

I’ve always been fascinated with what I have termed “Brand to Fan” marketing. Brand to Fan is about moving away from a traditional funnel and transactional relationship with a customer or audience member. Instead of asking someone to click a link, watch a video or buy a jersey, marketers need to be thinking of how to cultivate fans and encourage a way for them to participate and advocate with the brand. Sports is the most obvious example of this, but the world’s best brands (Nike, Lego, and Harley Davidson to name a few) have passionate fan bases that would rival Raider Nation or the Timbers Army.

6) How do you think your role will change in the next 3-5 years? Do you think that sports entities will transition entirely to social media strategies instead of using traditional advertising methods? How will this affect sports?

My role as a consultant and advisor means I always have to be thinking about what the digital media landscape will look like in the future, and lead the way to bring clients that way.

I’ve always thought of being a social media professional wasn’t really a long-term job itself. Those with primary social media responsibilities are exemplary at a number of different skills, and most likely report into Marketing, Communications or Digital — or even Customer Service teams. I see social media as a collection of skills, rather as an actual job, long-term. Think of social media today as email 15 or 20 years ago. When the medium was created, businesses needed specialists to bring their organizations up to speed and establish strategy and processes. Now that sports social media is over ten years old, we’re seeing similar shifts from hiring for skill sets that include social media competencies, instead of just for social media positions.

While sports has benefited greatly from the social media age, I don’t forsee the traditional lines of business going away anytime soon. TV rights are now augmented with digital media rights for streaming and highlight content. Print journalism has been whittled down, but there have never been more people writing about or consuming sports media thanks to online publications, blogs and Twitter. The largest sports sponsors are measuring results with traditional ROI metrics like ratings and eyeballs, while dabbling with interest in digital success metrics. The tide must shifts more to a digital-first perspective, but wont until digital can consistently demonstrate it delivers the same audience value as traditional media. Other entertainment properties may be moving in that direction, but Sports will be one of the last holdouts.

7) In the midst of the various jobs you’ve had and for other entities in your professional and personal life, what’s your key to work/life balance?

The definition of work/life balance has been a fluid one in my career. When I was starting out, it was certainly more of a “work-is-life” mentality, and the balance came from when I was doing something I loved, while not always in the confines of a cubical. Of course, it meant I was tweeting and posting live golf commentary from my couch most weekends, but truth be told I would normally have watched anyways (and still do!). Now that I’m in a different place in life, with three young kids and husband, that balance is more of a sacrifice in the amount of hours I can work per week so that I can still be actively involved as a preschool parent helper and make dinner between calls. The quality of my work is still very high, but its more concentrated now within the time I have to get it done. I expect that fluidity to continue as my kids get older, and my different business lines (consulting, speaking and golf content) ebb and flow.

###