10 Social Media Tips For All Roller Derby Leagues

As social media becomes increasingly important in marketing your team and creating a relationship with your fans, friends, and followers, I've noticed a lot of roller derby leagues not utilizing social media to its full potential. Therefore, I've put together a few tips to get you and your team on the right track.

1. Make one person or a small team of people dedicated to social media. If possible (with smaller teams this might be a goal to work towards, not a realistic immediate change), you should have at least one skater on your team specifically devoted to operating the team's social media. If positions must be doubled up, then the person handling social media should be the person also handling public relations (or if you have all marketing under one umbrella, then she should be your person in charge of marketing). The individual operating your social media should not be your web designer, as social media management and web design are two totally different animals and your league web designer might be missing the point even with the best of intentions.

2. Do not link all of your social media accounts. While it does save time, it looks tacky. For starters, if you have fans following multiple social media accounts then you will overwhelm them and then very quickly bore them with repeated content. Additionally, each social media platform has a different flavor and purpose, and content should be tailored to each platform specifically.

3. Be careful with what you post. With each and every post and comment you make, you must be thinking very seriously about the image it gives your team and the sport as a whole. Do not glorify penalties, and if you have any skaters under 21, think very carefully about how you portray drinking. Decide how your team wants the public to see you and make sure that each and every bit of content fits that image.

4. Don't go handing out admin rights to the whole team. Only skaters specifically involved with social media should have admin or posting rights. If too many skaters are involved, it can become a disjointed mess with content being repeated or contradicted. If someone wants something posted, it should be emailed to the social media manager, who will then create fitting content out of the material and post it herself. This also means that team captains and league leadership shouldn't automatically get admin rights to everything, though any opinions they have on content should be taken seriously.

5. Create content series. This is where you can get really creative, and hold the interest of your fans really well. Create a series of related content spread out over a period of time (it can be something that is posted every day for a week, perhaps related to a holiday or an upcoming event) or posted regularly indefinitely (such as something posted the night before each game). Some examples of content series I've seen before include Bout Day Breakfast, gear reviews from skaters, Where Did You Get Your Derby Name, and derby letters to Santa.

6. Include the whole team. While you shouldn't be giving posting rights to the whole team, you should definitely include them in your social media. Ask them for ideas for new content, and have them send in pictures. If you have a social media platform that includes asking questions, let fans ask the team questions and have different skaters answer (Tumblr is great for this). Remember to credit each answer to the proper skaters.

7. Schedule your posts. Most social media platforms allow you to schedule a post for a specific time or day, and social media management programs like Hoot Suite make it even easier. By scheduling your posts, you can make your social media channels seem more consistent and active, and can also help you seem more on top of things. Schedule a New Year's post at midnight, and wait for all of the impressed comments about how you are so dedicated you put down your drink to wish your fans a good holiday. Just let them believe it.

8. Post your scores right after each game. Even if you lose. Fans and other teams really want to know how you played, and you should tell them! People also appreciate gracious losers, so don't get embarrassed and "forget" to post your losing score. Your fans will still love you, I promise. You should also include halftime updates. Posts like this work especially well with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

9. Respond to fan posts, comments, and questions. Don't ignore your fans. Respond to their posts on your pages. This makes them feel more involved and invested in your team, and helps build a relationship that will lead to repeat customers at your games and events. Remember to always be professional in your responses, and if you don't know how to respond, don't be afraid to ask a teammate for their opinion.

10. Never stop monitoring your social media channels. You should have your social media updates all coming in to your phone. I know that not everybody has a smartphone, but if you are running social media for any organization, you really should. While it's no fun to have to take time out of your one night this month away from derby to deal with a social media disaster, it's definitely better to just handle it in the moment before the whole situation explodes. If someone is drunkenly trashing your ref staff for the last game, you probably want to get that off your page before the refs see it and never come back. If someone is posting offensive comments about your teammates, you want to address that now before feelings are hurt or your league gets a bad image from it. This isn't to say that you have to be glued to your phone all day long, but it is to say that no more than a few hours should go by without someone checking up on all of the pages.

Facebook
Tumblr
Twitter
Instagram
HootSuite

A Photography Pet Peeve of Mine

When pictures are taken of blatant penalties (a bunch in the face, a low block, an elbow to the gut, a hit with a helmet) and they are posted and glorified by the photographer and/or the league. 

It signifies one of more of the following:

• The photographer doesn't understand the rules

• The photographer doesn't respect the rules

• The league doesn't understand or respect the rules

And it leads to:

• People thinking that elbowing someone in the eye (insert other penalty here) at a game is legal

• People thinking that elbowing someone in the eye at a game is cool

• People thinking that derby is about elbowing people in the eye

• The skater looking like an idiot (even if she isn't and it was a totally rare thing that she/he got called for and never does again)

• The sport seeming less legit

Penalties happen. Of course they do. If they didn't, we wouldn't need herds of zebras. 

What shouldn't happen is the glorification of these penalties. It doesn't matter if it's a pretty picture, it's doing the league, skater, photographer, and sport a disservice. 

Reasons Roller Derby Can't/Won't be an Olympic Sport Anytime Soon

• There isn’t enough of an international presence. Even though the sport is in many countries and strengthening all over the world, a substantial amount of nations could not field an Olympic level team of athletes any time soon. The sport is too young. At this point, only the US could put forth a team anywhere near Olympic level. Once the World Cup becomes highly competitive, then you know the sport is probably Olympic ready.
• Because the sport is so young, rules, strategies, and even the type of surfaces skated on and equipment used are changing and evolving rapidly. It’s awesome, but it makes it hard to predict exactly what a sport will look like 4, 8, 12 years in the future. Since the Olympics are planned ridiculously far in advance, they would choose a more stable sport over derby. Once the sport settles down and rule changes and adaptations become minor adjustments and not alterations that cause vast differences in gameplay, then I think it’s ready.
• There are currently no roller sports in the Olympics. People have been pushing to get them included for a while, and I think it will happen soon. When it does, it will make it much easier for derby to get in later on. But do you seriously believe that the Olympic committee would choose roller derby over roller hockey or speed skating? Both which have counterparts in the Winter Olympics already? 
• Roller derby is still a greatly misunderstood sport. Now, a lot of other Olympic sports are as well, so this isn’t an ultimate deal breaker, but it definitely doesn’t make it any easier. Many, many people within the sports world don’t understand or even know about roller derby. The sport has to make itself a bit more understood for anyone to truly think it belongs in the Olympics.
• We skate under silly fake names and wear fishnets and tutus. Some of these names are not just funny but are either offensive or will never be considered appropriate enough to show on primetime, and not nearly appropriate enough for a country to want a skater named after reproductive organs representing them overseas. While I think clean names are a lot of fun and go hand in hand with the sport, there is a good chance that they have to either go completely or follow very strict regulations before the sport is Olympic ready. The absolutely ridiculous outfits will have to go too. I think it’s rad to play with colors and patterns, that’s a part of derby and a part of individuality, but there really isn’t enough practical reason to wear fishnets and tutus for it to look like we take ourselves seriously on a highly athletic level. 
• Some leagues are working against the leagues pushing to be accepted as a sport as athletic or more than others. When adult only games and versions of roller derby that truly are more spectacle than sport are presented along side the more family-friendly athletic versions, then it becomes very hard for the sport to push forward on one direction or the other, and paints a very strange picture for the outside world. This is probably because a lot of derby skaters do like the more risque and showy side of the sport, which is fine. The sport needs to pick a direction overall, though. The other side can still exist, I just really don’t think the two extremes can coexist at the Olympic level. 
• Olympic athletes train their entire lives in the sport they compete in. Michael Phelps started swimming at age 7. That’s about the norm, with some variations depending on the particular sport. I’m not saying that the top derby skaters aren’t incredibly good at what they do, but they’ve got an absolute maximum of 10 years or so under their belt, and all of them started when they were well into adulthood. 

Now, this is not to say I don’t think roller derby will ever be in the Olympics, or that I don’t consider it to be much more grueling and athletic of a sport than at least a small handful of the Olympic games, I just don’t think it’s ready yet, and it’s a bit delusional to think we’ll see Suzy Hotrod at the 2020 games. If we all keep moving in the right direction, though, we could definitely see it there one day.

I don’t mean for this to start a riot, but I’d definitely like to hear your opinions, no matter which side of the debate they come from.