NHL Social Media Audit
By Jack Morgan:
For this audit, I did the NHL. The National Hockey League is widely considered one of the four major sports leagues in the USA. Despite that, they are certainly not the most popular of all of them. Hockey is mostly a niche sport, and they have trouble generating a lot of interest from casual sports fans.
Hockey is For Everyone
NHL's Motto:
Hockey is For Everyone NHL's Motto:
For years, they did have the fighting aspect going for them, but since the beginning of the 2010’s, the fights have become even fewer and far between. It obviously makes for more safety, but it also chips away at the most popular part of the game.
I tried to take that into consideration when doing this audit given the intensity of the 4 Nations Face Off. Sweden, Finland, Canada and the United States make up the four teams involved in the tournament. The tournament format features three pool play games (each team plays each other once) and a championship game for the two teams with the most points. This tournament is taking the place of the all-star game.
In years past, the NHL has tried to capitalize on the opportunity to have all the best players in the world on the same sheet of ice at the same time. But the pace of the play has been lethargic. It isn’t a secret that all-star games in every major sports league have decreased in value. So, the NHL tried this tournament as an alternative, and it has been wildly successful. With that being said, I did take into account that the engagement count could easily change in a week if they can’t build off the momentum.
All the posts on their socials are in preparation for the championship game on Thursday night between USA and Canada. The first time they played, there were three fights in the first 9 seconds. This is pretty rare these days, but the casual fans ate it up. They loved it, so obviously, you have to capitalize on that, which to their credit, they have. The game was very entertaining as well, so if you look at the last 25 posts, you will see a lot about the game. As I writing this, the game is over, so the NHL has tons of content for Canada, like the trophy ceremony, highlights from the game and interviews. The game ended with a game winning goal from one of the best players in the world, Conner McDavid. As a result, there is a lot of content praising him for good reason.
The NHL isn’t very active in their comment section, and I was not able to find any recent engagement with their commenters. However, I think that makes sense because they are a league, not a retailer. Maybe their NHL Shop account would, but the actual NHL wouldn’t. The comments usually consist of reactions to the games and people either complaining or rejoicing about their team’s game.
There are also very few times where they have to block users for comments or activity detrimental to them. I have done searches on twitter and the internet and haven’t found many people say they are actually blocked. Which is interesting to me, because I would want to keep hateful people away from my social media brand. Maybe they are trying to be as inclusive as possible for everyone to grow their following, but it certainly isn’t common.
I asked ChatGPT what they thought about the NHL and their social media. I focused on Instagram in my prompt, with the exact prompt being:
“Please review and analyze comments about the NHL on their Instagram. What are the top qualities of this product do people mention? What ideas to go with the product do users suggest? Are there any other trends that you notice?”
The first thing that ChatGPT gave me was a breakdown of their Hockey is For Everyone campaign. They praise the campaign and say that users are very impressed and appreciate the initiative. This initiative has been around for a few years to the best of my memory, and every NHL team has a page on their website that talks about what they are doing.
They do give a suggestion for the accounts, saying that they should aim for more videos with players and behind the scenes.
“Fans express a desire for more personal interactions with players, such as behind-the-scenes content and direct communication, to foster a stronger connection with the sport.”
The NHL does a good job with posting playful posts about players according to ChatGPT. This is something I found to be true as well. In the age of TikTok, shorter and more funny reels are going to get more views than serious ones most of the time. In my opinion though, there are also times and places to be funny and serious.
For example, in the middle of the season, when things start to hit a lull, you want to lift the fans up and continue to keep them engaged. But also, on a night where Canada and USA are playing in an intense and massively important game, you want to get people excited and show the seriousness of the game and how much it means to these guys.
In the end, the NHL is trending in the right direction. I learned throughout this how to keep posts engaging, how the NHL captures its’ audience, and how they can build on this new wave of fandom following the championship game. I also was alerted to the fact that competitors like the NBA need to recapture its’ audience by make things engaging again, find their own way to gain momentum and then capitalizing on it. The NHL set a good precedent with their coverage of the 4 Nations Face Off and in looking at their social media audit, it seems like they are riding a big high wave.