NBC’s Sunday Night Football Expands Social Media Presence

Sunday Night Football on NBC

I was reading an old NBC Sports press release this morning and an interesting note caught my eye on its growing use of social media as a tool in reaching fans. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all will feature much more prominently in the networks pro football efforts.

The first thing I saw was that for what seems like a first you will be able to get live video updates from the sidelines of Sunday Night Football. It seems that NBC’s broadcast team sideline reporter will be posting updates directly to Twitter.

As the ultimate in mobility, if not image quality, it looks like instead of a traditional camera they will be using an iPhone, according to Mashable, to record the updates that will be provided by reporter Michele Tafoya and then post them to @SNFonNBC.

I think that this is a great idea because it will enable her to expand beyond the role that sideline reporters often seem to fall into such as asking blindingly obvious questions to the coaches and occasionally providing an injury update when they can squeeze them into the broadcast.

During sports broadcasts I do not like the breakways from the action that seem to increasingly occur. ESPN almost ruined Monday Night Football for me by having a guest in the booth and talking with them and showing the conversation rather than the action that was on the field. I did not tune in to hear Mark Wahlberg tout his latest movie!

Apparently the Twitter effort started in the preseason and I managed to miss it, as I followed my tradition of not watching preseason games, or pretty much caring about their results aside from the injury reports.

For the second year NBC will also be employing Instagram as a tool to send images to fans, both ones that it generates from the control truck, field and locker-room but also fan-generated ones as well who can submit via Instagram using #SNF that be sent into a special Instagram tab on the Sunday Night Football Facebook page.

The centerpiece of the social experience will be its Facebook page, Facebook.com/SNFonNBC that will serve as an aggregation site for all of its various properties including NBCSports.com, ProFootballTalk.Com and RotoWorld.com as well as the Twitter feed and the Instagram postings.

I think this is one of the best uses of social media by a broadcaster and shows that as the broadcasters, at least this one, are getting a grasp on the fact that fans view events and gather information about them with a greater variety of media tools than ever before and that reaching them all takes a more concentrated effort.