It's what makes fans identify with a team. Sometimes it's their flash, sometimes their heart, sometimes their skill. But how do you use the fact that fans identify with these individuals for the good of the team?
Let's travel to Portland and check out how the Trail Blazers handle this topic.
Hit the Trail Blazers site and hover over the TEAM menu.
From here, you can choose a player or instead, click on roster, which takes you here. Don't you love the title of a roster page as "Your Trail Blazers Team?" Fantastic. It's not our team, it's your team.
From here, visit a player page of your choosing. I'm picking Gerald Wallace's page, here.
As you can see, fans can make Gerald their favorite player, add him to their starting 5, or add him to their "huddle" It's a tiered system of love. Then, on the right hand side of the page, you can submit well-wishes for Gerald. And the Blazers in turn can elevate fan messages to hero status in this page, or in their community, I am a Trail Blazers Fan (here).
Pretty sweet.
How could this be better? OK so fans can choose a player as their favorite, in their top 5, or in their huddle (which could be all the guys I'd guess). What's that do for the fan? How could you make it valuable to name a player as your favorite? Could the Blazers open up chat sessions with the players and only those fans who named them their favorite? Could make the start of a sweet Social Media day!
Further, how could we make this more social? I'd love to see Gerald Wallace's Facebook wall pump in here -- making it easy for fans to connect between the Blazers Fan site and Facebook. And for this page to stoke the conversation on Facebook.
But all that said, we have a system for fans to celebrate their players and to amplify the player roster like I haven't seen in any other place. Well done!
Come back next week 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
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