NBA Digital Disciple Series: 5 Learnings from the Portland Trailblazers

30 teams. 7 weeks. 2 bloggers. 1 mission: to share our learnings of how NBA teams uniquely leverage digital tools to build fan community.

As students, or disciples of the game, we'll supply you with the doctrine - 5 takeaways per team plus one way to make that even better. Then, we'll wrap it up, pick a winner, and send you on your way.

Cool?

Thus far, we've covered the NJ Nets, Minnesota Timberwolves, Washington Wizards,Sacramento Kings, Philadelphia 76ers, Golden State Warriors, Detroit Pistons, LA Clippers, NY Knicks, New Orleans Hornets, Indiana Pacers, Memphis Grizzlies, and Toronto Raptors, Houston Rockets, Chicago Bulls, OKC Thunder, Charlotte Bobcats, San Antonio Spurs, and Milwaukee Bucks.

Now it's time for me to go home. It's time to review my hometown squad, the Portland Trailblazers.

Here we go....

Let's take a look at the digital connections made by the Portland Trail Blazers (link here).

1. An amazing navigational set up

I try to stay out of design in these recaps, but the set up of this site is just brilliant. Take a peak, at this image and see how it just asks you to explore. The Blazers use an interactive grid to elevate the top news stories around the squad, then as you highlight a story it fills up another square on the grid. So it's very much an exploratory site.

Plus One: What if this navigation stuck through the full site? Right now when you click on The Team it takes you to a roster image, but it leaves the grid. I'd love it if the top navigation was just a filter for this incredible design.

2. Dynamic and Fan Centric Player Pages

This one actually has me giddy. If you take a look at how the Blazers handle player pages, it is addicting and, to be honest, a little enchanting. I'm going to paste examples of both Brandon Roy and Marcus Camby's pages below. And I want to call out a couple of things we should all take note of...

• Fans can make the player their favorite, add them to their starting 5, or to their huddle. And you can see just how many fans did that for each player.
• Fans can post comments on this player's page, shown on the right hand side of the page.
• Naturally, you get access to the latest player news, photos, and blog posts.

Clicking on "My Fans" even shows you who loves each player the most... solid stuff here!

Plus One: You can publish this to Facebook to share with your friends. Cool. But why not find a simple way to put in the Facebook "Like" buttons into each player's page? That way you can track the number of Likes and enable a viral way to share the Blazers, while effectively creating the official Fan community pages around each member of the squad!

3. Fan posts become visual expressions

Fans are pretty active, posting comments to player profiles as we shared above. On the official Blazers Fan site, here, the team takes an image of the player and mixes it with a post from a fan to create a visual masterpiece. Check this one.


I love the simplicity of this -- we can all do this, but not only is it visually powerful and something fans would want to own, it elevates the fan who made the comment. Nice!

Plus One: Take these visual collabs and allow fans to download them easily to become their mobile or computer wallpaper. Or, make them into posters that fans could order up/win on the site. Fun!

4. Why are you a fan?

Nothing connects us more than feeling positive vibes from those who share our passions. Linked here and shown below, the Blazers ask fans to share why they are a fan, and then let others vote on these. Simple but it definitely is a beat of the pulse of the fans...

Plus One: Could they come up with a way to group these and then visually aggregate them? For example, put them all into a grid like we saw on the home page, with the sizes of the grid determined by the quantity of fans in that area. NBC did this with their Twitter tracker, here. And this would encourage the same style of exploration that's worked well thus far!

5. Facebook fosters connection

Things are going well, but the Blazers want to get better. Linked from their Facebook page, here, the Blazers are asking fans to help. They posted a survey to learn a little about who is going to their Facebook page, what else they like, and why they go. This is something great, as the more you understand what fans want, the more likely you are to be able to delight them.

Plus One: Publish the findings. How often have you filled out a survey and wondered what became of it? (For me it's happened a bunch...) Let fans see how their opinions differ from others, and understand the pulse of the fan base. It's in Facebook, so this would allow fans to actually comment on the findings in a simple format as well.

That's a wrap, but this journey isn't done yet!

Follow along with us on Twitter. He's @peter_r_casey. And I'm @pawlow34. Tomorrow, Peter Robert Casey Monday (here) as he takes on the Miami Heat.

Andy