NBA Best Practices: LA Lakers Use Real-Time, Authentic Photography to Power Facebook

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Makes me wonder what an amazing picture at the right time that hits your emotion is worth?

The Los Angeles Lakers recognize this and take their photography serious.

You can grasp this from one glance at the Lakers Facebook page, shown below or here. You'll note the imagery that pops within each post. The beauty of this, of course is that this imagery will also pop inside your news feed alongside those images of your favorite niece or your friends' vacation, if you are one of the roughly 8M fans to follow them.

I'll zoom in on a particular post, moments after the Lakers clinched the first round over the Hornets. It's celebratory, and timely (exactly at 0:00, right?) And, naturally, it is set up to easily share -- as thousands have done.

But click in, here, and check out the beauty that is this image. Amazing stuff!

How could this be better? I love the image, love the treatment, love the style of posting. Now the challenge is how can you encourage fans to use this for good. (for themselves) To spread Lakers visuals onto their identity inside social? I'd love to see this image quickly available for setting as your profile picture, your Twitter skin, your YouTube skin, or your mobile wallpaper. It's the same image, the same timeliness -- just let people take it with them!

Come back tomorrow for another round of best practices from the NBA. And as always, you can follow me on Twitter (I'm @pawlow34) or on Facebook (Digital Hoops Blast).

Thanks!

Andy