NHL Social Media: The #NHLPick15 Contest

As opening weekend of the NHL season approached, the National Hockey League, a new client, had a unique challenge: how to create excitement through social media around opening weekend, and the whole season, for avid, casual and new fans alike.

Die-hard hockey fans had been flooding Twitter with messages like “Is it hockey o’clock yet?” for months, so they were less of a challenge to pump up for those first pucks to drop. But what about the people just getting into hockey who might only know about their local team or were not aware the NHL had merged their Twitter accounts into one super-account, @NHL?

And thus, the #NHLPick15 contest was born.

October 3, the Saturday of opening weekend, was a hockey-filled day with all thirty teams in action and fifteen total games in four countries. While most other sports routinely have all the teams in action, especially on weekends, this is a rare occurrence in hockey. Perfect set-up to get people to think beyond one team or game and instead showcase how exciting all 30 teams can be.

We conceived the contest with Mike DiLorenzo, the NHL Director of Social Media, to accomplish all of our main goals:

1. Getting fans interested and engaged in games one through 15 on October 3, and not just “their team’s” game.

2. Attract more fans to follow @NHL on Twitter.

3. Get fans not only following but also interacting with @NHL on Twitter.

4. Attract new fans with a game that would be appealing to users outside of the avid fan base.

The #NHLPick15 contest had a few simple requirements: 1. You had to be following @NHL on Twitter. 2. You need to fill in the accepted three letter code for each team you thought would win Saturday’s match ups. 3. Fill in your guess for total number of penalty minutes as a tiebreaker and 4. include the #NHLPick15 hashtag.

A combination of frequent Tweets from @NHL, NHL team accounts and supporters helped spread the word as we reached out to bloggers to help reach fans outside of Twitter that the contest was worth a look. Many media outlets ran stories, including MediaPost and PRWeek. There was also extensive blog coverage, as blogs like SNY Rangers Blog and KingsCast wrote great posts on the contest, and Mashable posted a widely circulated piece called The NHL’s Latest Social Media Push: A Twitter Contest on the NHL’s creative use of social media.

The Twitterverse was also abuzz with the contest, resulting in many Tweets praising the NHL for embracing social media and using it to connect with fans and give them a cool experience:

While there were a few hiccups in round one of the contest, the response was overwhelmingly positive and in addition to the more than 2,000 entries received, @NHL was inundated with requests to host another similar contest.

TRUTH IN NUMBERS

The success was in the numbers. Prior to running the first round on #NHLPick15, @NHL had 6, 323 followers on Twitter. By the conclusion of the contest, that number had jumped to just over 9,000 followers. That Monday, the excitement and surge in engagement with @NHL helped earn the NHL a place on the Suggested User List on Twitter, which has fostered steady audience growth over the last month.

After running round 2 of #NHLPICK15 (discussed below) @NHL followers jumped from 65,021 followers to just over 80,000 by the conclusion of the contest. Excitement over that initiative and others over the course of the week, in addition to being on the suggested user list helped @NHL gain its 100,000th follower on the evening of October 29.

“The success of initiatives such as #NHLPick15 reinforce how important social platforms are to the NHL strategically,” said DiLorenzo.

Mike DiLorenzo, who is Director of Social Media by title and ‘NHL Social Czar,’ according to the NHL Fans page he launched in August, is tasked with growing the NHL’s social media presence and finding new ways of finding and engaging fans.

“Social media helps us capture two significant opportunities. First, it enables us to create meaningful and positive experiences for fans that are tied to the NHL shield as a whole. Second, it helps shrink the distance between the fans and the League by taking the excitement of NHL hockey to the fans and potential fans where they already flock,” added DiLorenzo.

#NHLPICK15   ROUND 2, OCTOBER 24, 2009

For round two, we created a page where entrants can simply click on the teams they think will win and write in how many total penalty minutes they think there will be, and a tweet is automatically generated:

In addition to simplifying the entry process, the generated tweets increased the viral nature of the contest as they included a link back to the entry page, so any of the entrants other Twitter followers or random lurker in the Twitterverse could happen upon their tweet and decide to enter without actively seeking out the form. Pretty nifty.

The entry page lived on the front page of NHL.com for the duration of the contest which helped spread the word about the contest beyond the confines of Twitter. The second round of #NHLPick15 also helped to inspire more blog coverage of the contest, including a great write-up by the Puck Daddy himself, Greg Wyshynski, featuring an interview with DiLorenzo on the contest and other initiatives: Inside the NHL’s Social Media Innovations, Growing Pains.

Unfortunately, due to several upsets and surprises during both #NHLPick15 Saturdays, no one won the grand prize of a trip for two to any NHL game! However, there were 10 entrants chosen at random from each round who won free GameCenter Live subscriptions. And lots of users who watched (and enjoyed) games they might have skipped over before.

We are also happy to announce that we will be officially introducing an expansion of the #NHLPick15 contest next week, stay tuned for more info from @NHL.