Knicks Fans "Like" What They See with Splash Page on Knicks.com

As the New York Knicks head into the 2011 NBA Playoffs, the team is featuring a terrific splash page on its official website, http://www.nba.com/knicks (ala Knicks.com), that encourages fans to "like" their official Facebook page. The creative digital marketing tactic serves as an effective way to drive interest and awareness for the team's social media initatives amongst 200,000 unique site visitors per day (per Compete.com, the Knicks' website attracted 6.2MM unique visitors in February 2011).

To drive fan participation in their social media efforts, the Knicks are offering a variety of incentives, including access to an exclusive pre-sale for all playoff tickets, a chance to win a pair of free tickets to see the Knicks take on the Chicago Bulls on April 12th, and a chance to win a $50 gift card that is redeemable via the Knicks' official online team store.

Once fans click through the splash page, the Knicks are providing a call-to-action via interactive digital inventory on the team's official website. Since the Splash page was posted on March 12, "likes on the New York Knicks' Facebook page were up 27% (130K total) and their Monthly Active Users spiked 18%... pretty remarkable success.

Check out some visualizations of the campaign below. Hats off to the Knicks on executing such a terrific campaign!

A special thanks to Lowell Berg of Ohio University for his insights and contributions to this column!

 

 

"Must-See" Site of the Day: KnicksNow.com

A few days ago, the New York Knicks officially launched an innovative social media oriented site that has become a hot topic of conversation in the digital sports space. The site, KnicksNow.com, is a team-operated community that provides real-time social media insights and nuggets of information in a concise, digestible format.

KnicksNow.com offers a tremendous amount of high-quality content in a simple format - two aspects of digital media that fans are looking for. The site features a plethora of videos, high-res images, post-game interviews, blog posts, relevant tweets, live Facebook integration, content sharing features, headlines, quotes, daily photo uploads, and caption contests. Fans can feature @thenyknicks in their Tweets throughout Knicks games for the chance to be featured on KnicksNow.com.

Per Howard Jacobs, EVP of Marketing and Sales for MSG Sports, "KnicksNow.com is the next digital step in our total fan engagement strategy. It's the ultimate destination for our most passionate and loyal fans to access exclusive, behind-the-scenes content on the team and fully engage with other Knicks fans and our players in the dynamic, ever-changing conversation that's taking place across the social media landscape."

The interactive site could soon become a benchmark for organizations across all sports looking to host their social media initiatives all in one hub. Check out some screen shots of the site below: