NBA Best Practices: How the Orlando Magic Give Tickets Away Through Facebook

How do you stay top of mind on Facebook? There's a fine balance between making sure you show up and overwhelming fans with your updates. And the key to being on the right side of that line? Offer value.

The Orlando Magic give us a great example to follow.

Hit the Orlando Magic Facebook page (here and below) and scroll down.

You'll see a series of posts under the header "Fan Fugitive." The Magic announced inside Facebook that they would be giving away tickets via Facebook and would do this by sending a person out with the tickets. If you follow the Magic on Facebook and you can decipher the clues, you could be headed to a Playoff game.

As you'll note below, the clues get more specific every 20-30 minutes...

First we know the location.

Then we know it's NOT someone in Magic gear.

Then we know it's a male.

Then in a red shirt...

Feeling the urgency yet? (I sure did!)

The idea is great -- because it starts with rewarding your fans with a chance to win tickets. And it gets better because the best chance to win is to keep checking back for updates -- which seem to come pretty regularly. And of course the payoff (Playoff tickets) are very, very high value to fans.

How could this be better? I like the chase, but would love to see a little more Magic love from fans. In other words, how can we take the idea (sequential updates for a prize) and make it something that only the Magic could pull off? The idea is something that any local organization with tickets could deliver -- and the Magic have a chance to tap not just into prizes but into emotion. What if the prize wasn't just tickets but also a chance at an experience (pregame access, press conference access, congratulations call from a player/coach, or even access to be the first one in the building?) None of these ideas "cost" anything but all are things that no one else in the world could deliver.

And that's the best value!

Come back tomorrow as we check out another best practice from the NBA. And as always, you can follow me on Twitter (I'm @pawlow34) or on Facebook (Digital Hoops Blast).

Thanks!

Andy