2300 Thoughts

The Power of the Fans

ReAL Salt Lake has made it to the Eastern Conference Final against the Chicago Fire, but the game is going to be played in Chicago, at the Chicago Fire’s home stadium. Since the fans at Rio Tinto stadium have been so instrumental for ReAL Salt Lake this year ReAL Salt Lake’s public relations department decided to make a great public relations move…

Create a blitz of Facebook fans, trying to get more fans than the Chicago Fire have on their Facebook fan page before game time! It has really created a unified group of fans online. The goal is to reach 7,000 fans (the Chicago Fire have 6,000 and something) by Saturday morning before the team leave their hotel to head to the field. So in a nut shell they wanted to get 7,000 fans in two days, well I think they will make it. On Friday at 3:00 p.m. they had 6,976 fans on their Facebook page.

It is really amazing the power of social media in marketing, image management, branding and so many other facets of public relations. I think ReAL Salt Lake was super smart in this social media blitz. They were smart to turn to social media and they really created lots of buzz around this game.

They also encouraged their Twitter followers to become fans of the team on Facebook. Their blog has really improved and was a great place for them to also promote this fan page blitz to “put out the Fire in Chicago.” I think the play on words really helped them get more “fans” and increase the team loyalty and indirectly promote the game and encouraging fans to remember to watch this crucial away game for ReAL Salt Lake.

I think ReAL Salt Lake has hit a home run with this simple media campaign that really did not cost them anything, just a little time and maybe some research to find out about the Chicago fan page on Facebook. I think it was very well done and nicely executed. I certainly hope they make it to 7,000 fans by their deadline.