If I Can Be Serious For A Moment 11.05.09: A New Frontier

Hey yo. Welcome back to If I Can Be Serious for a Moment, your weekly dose of intelligent wrestling discourse with me, Chris Lansdell. Is it safe now? Is anyone going to sign anywhere, quit anywhere, or do anything stupid? No? Well finally, a calm week.. With things being mostly quiet in terms of news, I can finally bring you a column I’ve been planning for a while and one that I think is especially relevant today. Join me for that right after the

BANNER!

Get Yourself Connected

A few years ago the term “Web 2.0” was coined, and I ignored it. I was not the technophile that I am now, and all I cared about was that I could still access this new internet (no doubt invented by Al Gore) from Netscape. After all, who uses Internet Explorer??? As things progressed and the tag “social media” got applied to the various sites, I was sceptical. I didn’t want my information shared with the world on this new MySpace thing. Who is this Tom guy, anyway? He sure has a lot of friends. I was most definitely NOT an early adopter of any of this technology.

By and large, major corporations were slow to cotton on to the tremendous power of social networks for advertising, brand growth and marketing. Many companies avoided MySpace altogether, and it became the domain of bands both famous and would-be-famous, as well as attention-starved teens who spent far too much time on things like glittery layouts and camera angles that made them look “gangsta”. As the medium exploded, with everything from LiveJournal to WordPress to Piczo to the now-ubiquitous Facebook and new contender Twitter, people started to realise that there was power to be channelled here. Facebook has over 300 million registered users. Twitter shows double-digit percentage growth almost every month. YouTube has videos getting hundreds of thousands of hits in short timespans. The very nature of these networks is viral, and they make for an excellent marketing opportunity with minimal effort and investment. How are wrestling companies using these services to grow? How can they do more? What are the dangers?

For the purposes of this column, I’m going to consider YouTube, Facebook and Twitter as “social media”, since they are the three with which I have the most experience. The term properly encompasses picture sites like Flickr, blog sites like WordPress, other social networks like Orkut and MySpace, RSS feeds and aggregators and even the new Google Wave.

The Tip Of The Iceberg

As we said above, the wrestling industry is only just beginning to utilise social media more fully in order to connect with fans on many levels. When you consider that the price of a TV commercial in prime time is well into 6 figures on most networks, the cost to put the same ad on a Facebook page is far more appealing. Say you want to promote your pay per view. You can produce your video and upload it to your pre-existing fan page on Facebook, blast a notification to all the people who are fans of the page, and you’ve reached your primary audience. Better yet, upload the video to YouTube, but the LINK on your fan page and then allow others to embed the video on their own pages, thus increasing the viewership.

WWE has a large Facebook presence, including several unofficial fan pages. They also set up fan pages for certain superstars so that people could become fans of their favourites. They also set up a large social network (the famed “WWE Universe”) on their own site, with regular posts from superstars and others like Howard Finkel and Joey Styles. You can also use this service to access live chats with wrestlers, mostly during pay per views. The WWE Universe YouTube channel is mostly hype videos, but also contains videos on WWE’s Community Outreach programs. Despite not really publicising it, the channel is chock full of clips that will catch you up on the week’s happenings and, of course, let you know what you can buy from WWE. The @WWE feed is almost totally a link conduit for WWE.com, with some hype for guest hosts thrown in. @WWEUniverse is more concerned with hyping blogs on the WWE Universe site. It’s worth noting that WWE does very little to promote either feed. The popular WWE Mobile service also provides updates on events, post-match interviews, backastage happenings and so on, all in a kayfabe, managed environment.

TNA has taken their involvement a step further. They too have a mobile service that provides all the same information as the WWE equivalent, but they also have something WWE has given up on: web shows. Each week they show a web-exclusive match on YouTube and on TNAWrestling.com, and they have shows such as Spin Cycle available throughout the week. On their official YouTube channel, TNA has Impact recaps and PPV promos as well as a strong band of subscribers. They also have two seemingly identical Twitter feeds which bring a wealth of information, including live house show and PPV results. The Hogan signing was also announced via Twitter before it officially hit the TNA website. Jeremy Borash also sends out some company-related tweets on his own Twitter feed.

Of the three largest promotions in North America, Ring of Honor has worked the hardest at establishing a social media presence and building its brand. They have a VERY active Twitter page (@RoHonHDNet), where you can find everything from live event pictures as they happen to retweets of wrestlers and links to articles about RoH. They also tweet out show information, sales in the RoH store and hype for HDNet broadcasts. The majority of this information is also posted to their Facebook page. In fact, some would say that RoH takes it TOO far., especially with the promotional information. It’s not uncommon to get the same tweet or status update from them several times in one day. It has also been suggested that Ring of Honor’s fanbase is more entrenched on the internet than other companies, which might explain the huge social marketing push that we’re seeing from them.

It should also be pointed out here that WWE and TNA in particular have been militant about shutting down sites that use their trademarks in ways that they don’t like. Videos are constantly being removed from YouTube due to copyright claims, live streams of pay per views on sites like UStream and JustinTV are shut down on a regular basis (in fact, WWE also shuts down streams of Raw, the reasons for which are less obvious but nonetheless valid), but yet fake Twitter accounts are not pursued by the companies to have them shut down. They will also allow tribute videos on YouTube to stay up in the majority of cases.

As it stands right now, the majority of tweets, Facebook posts and YouTube videos are promotional in nature. It’s basically used solely as a cheap advertising medium. Both RoH and recently TNA have asked fans to post and/or tweet their thoughts on shows (and pay per views, in TNA’s case), and have often retweeted the most favourable ones. Even RoH has yet to realise the full scope of social media and just how much it can do to promote, enhance and expand your brand.

Taking The Next Step

By its very nature, social media is easily shared and propagated, rapidly expanding the reach of a message with minimal effort or time investment on the part of the originator. Retweets, Share on Facebook, the AddThis widget and other sites like Digg, Reddit and the like have a wide area of effect, and when a video or picture “goes viral” (spreads rapidly), true success has been achieved. Apart from the obvious and already-used marketing applications of social media, what else can it do for professional wrestling?

For starters, I think RoH has some of the right ideas. Aggregating stories, links and video clips from around the web and publishing them to your fans is not only a great way to advertise, it also gives something of value (recognition from a company they obviously enjoy) to the people who wrote or created the content. I know that on the few occasions I’ve had columns linked from the RoH website I’ve been well chuffed, and not just because of the increased exposure. Posting “exclusive backstage pictures/videos” is also a great way to add value for people who follow/subscribe you or join your fan page, especially if they are from house shows or taped events. WWE has been doing this on their own website for a while, but by using Twitter and Facebook especially you allow people to get this content while on the go, creating more of a special feeling.

With the large numbers of wrestlers currently using Twitter, the potential for promotions to retweet selected tweets and thus provide more exposure for their talent should not be underestimated. Following a wrestler on Twitter and seeing the normal-person stuff they do can make fans feel closer to the wrestlers, which is never a bad thing…for a face. More identification with the wrestlers means more emotional investment in stories, which translates into hotter crowds. I’m pretty sure we all know the difference a hot crowd can make to a mediocre match. Just look at Joe vs Kobashi.

The recent release of Twitter Lists brings another excellent tool for wrestling companies to use. For those not in the know, Twitter Lists enable users to organise the people they follow into groups. Other users can then see those groups and follow them as a whole. So if WWE wants to promote Team Orton vs Team Kobe, err I mean Kofi, they could make lists on their Twitter feed for each of the teams, and people could follow each team. TNA could do similar for Lethal Lockdown, or with the World Elite. Ring of Honor could do the same with the Embassy. I realise not all of the wrestlers involved are on Twitter, but you get the idea. I can only imagine what the Royal Rumble list could do.

Finally, what’s to stop any of the companies from using social media in a storyline? Take the fairly recent Twitter jousting in which Chris Jericho and the Miz were engaged. There was some funny stuff in this “tweet war”, but it never got used on air. Now in this case it was between two heels, but the potential should be clear: one guy gets upset at the barbs and attacks the other, the feud elevates on Facebook with wall posts and Photoshopped pictures, maybe a video is posted to YouTube in the vein of the Dirt Sheet. To start with you’d have to mention on air that the fight has been taken to cyberspace, but people would quickly catch on that by not following you on Twitter or not being a fan on Facebook, they risk missing essential story development. Obviously you’re not going to have every angle involve some social elements…but the fact that some will and some won’t will keep people checking.

Wrestlers Before Wrestling

One thing I’ve noticed as both a social media and a wrestling enthusiast is that wrestlers have been faster to embrace the possibilities than wrestling. Matt Hardy, (@MATTHARDYBRAND), the one-time king of social media who quite possibly owes his job to his blog, is all over Twitter and MySpace. He’s been known to make cryptic posts just to get news sites to over-react and overanalyze to it. He frequently exchanges barbs with The Hurricane and Shannon Moore and has spoken a lot about Jeff’s legal issue. Matt also follows a lot of other wrestlers and has surprised me with some of the things he said. As an example, he had a conversation with Christopher Daniels about matches they’d had with each other. I don’t recall them facing off in RoH (though they may have), so I can only presume this was early in Matt’s career. The exchanges between Helms and Hardy in particular can be very funny. Both guys have been known to spontaneously decide to answer the next X questions they get sent to them, which can make for some fun scrambling. Chris Jericho became the first wrestler to be a trending topic on Twitter when his followers started making him the focal point of Chuck Norris-style one-liners. Recently he’s take to posting song excerpts, but we love him nonetheless.

Matt Morgan is one of the most personable wrestlers on Twitter, responding to many tweets and requests for advice. He’s not shy about speaking his mind but at the same time seems genuinely appreciative of the fans he has and the work he does. I always liked the guy but my interactions with him through this medium have enhanced that. Christopher Daniels is similar but less active than Morgan. Many of the TNA Knockouts (Awesome Kong, Taylor Wilde and former Knockout Roxxi to name a few) are active on Twitter, and are well worth the effort of following.

Facebook is also home to a fair few wrestlers. Ken “Mr Kennedy” Anderson has both a profile and a fan page on Facebook. He was initially accepting friend requests as a regular user until he reached his limit for friends. The YouTube clips that were spread around the wrestling news sites were all posted to his Facebook page, and he also shares tidbits about what he’s doing at the time. He’s also on Twitter (@secondpower), but his updates are posted to both. Taz’s Facebook page is insanely popular, to the extent that a mere post of “yo” as his status will prompt a flurry of comments, questions, suggestions and ass-kissing. He will respond to many of them but has no time for people who are there just to hate, or who think they know it all. RoH commentator and SHIMMER owner Dave Prazak is also on Facebook and has posted, among other things, a load of pictures of him with various wrestling personalities old and new.

The point of this foray through some of the personalities on Twitter and Facebook is to show the variety both in users and in the way they use the services. In both ways, the talent are going further than their employers, but the employers could easily catch up simply by promoting the feeds and pages of the wrestlers.

Take The Rough With The Smooth

There are drawbacks and pitfalls to social media, however. Various sports leagues, notably the NFL, have very tough restrictions on when their athletes are allowed to tweet or post to Facebook on game days, and it’s there for a reason. Recently an NFL player was fined for a gay slur he used on Twitter. The immediacy of these media and the speed with which the news can spread can cause problems if it is not monitored or policed, and someone decides to overstep their bounds. If you want a wrestling-related example, look at D’Lo Brown in RoH. During an event in I believe Dayton, D’Lo tweeted that he was getting ready for a match. A few minutes later he tweeted again, outraged that he had been told off for tweeting from the locker room. A third tweet followed saying that he left WWE because he hated being controlled, and he would show them. Hilariously, the RoH Twitter feed was retweeting this outburst, as it often does retweet posts by RoH talent that mentions the company. Very soon after this episode, news broke that D’Lo was working with TNA as an agent.

One thing of which wrestlers need to be mindful is that Facebook and Twitter can give others an insight into your personal life. You will need to be careful what you choose to share and, in the case of Facebook, you certainly want a fan page and not a regular profile. RoH’s Tyler Black learned this in a hurry. For a while he had a regular profile up and was accepting fans as friends. He was bothered so much by so many people (this was right around the time that FB Chat launched) that he deleted all his friends and changed his Facebook name to get away from everything. He had his real friends on this profile in addition to fans and they too were being bugged with friend requests. Twitter suffers far less from this problem as people who follow you don’t have as much access as friends do on Facebook.

There are also a ton of issues for the companies employing the wrestlers. Reading some of the things that are said on Facebook and Twitter, you have to wonder if any of the posts are subject to approval. Is there or can there be language in the contracts of wrestlers that prevents them from making posts without running them by a road agent, for example? If not, how do you prevent leaks? Sure leaks can happen via email, but the social web will spread those leaks faster than email ever could. Given that WWE does have some company-made fan pages for various wrestlers, are there any out there that were made by the wrestlers themsevles and do they need approval? By making these demands on their wrestlers, are they invading employee privacy or restricting their right to creative expression? Recently, Shad Gaspard tweeted that he was recovered from swine flu, then quickly recanted. Is that an indication perhaps that tweets are monitored by WWE? For every example like that, you have someone like Matt Hardy who is as close to proof positive as it gets that nothing is monitored by WWE outside their own site.

Perhaps the most unsettling thing about the sudden explosion of social media is the further death of kayfabe. Faces and heels joking with each other, cross-company friendships, heels being friendly to fans…I would love to hear Jim Cornette’s take on it all. As a long-time wrestling fan I’ve had to come to terms with the slow, lingering death of all things kayfabe, but each little twist of the killer’s knife in the open wound of progress makes me flinch some more. I’ve laid out above how social media can help wrestling, and I believe it’s not only useful but essential for wrestling companies to embrace it to the fullest if they want to future-proof the industry. Unfortunately, there’s a price to pay for that, and this is the price.

Moment over. TWITTER BREAK!

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Well folks, me and my badly damaged back are out of here for another week. Be sure to check me out in Fact or Fiction elsewhere on the site (if I know the powers that be, it’s above me and to the left), and thank you for reading.

Stay Cool, Rock Hard. Lansdellicious – Out.