Social media is teeming with sports fans.
It’s where folks go to boast, gloat, cheer, jeer, and rant about their favorite sports, teams, and games.
So it seems like an obvious place to go to meet and interact with those fans and convince them that your bar is the place to watch live sports.
Winning the social media game does take a little care and thought – like all good things. The good news is that it’s achievable even for the newest bars with the smallest budgets. Here’s some concepts and goals to aim for.
One of the biggest things you can do to help your bar’s social media game is be consistent with your posting. Modern social media algorithms reward content that is highly engaging and accounts that post regularly. This also helps with your bar’s overall discovery in search and AI.
You don’t have to post every day, however. Industry standard is 3-5x a week but it’s more important to find a schedule that you and your team can sustain over the long-haul. You can always increase frequency later or for special events.
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An easy way of getting content out there is by posting what games you’re planning on showing on your TVs. FANZO makes this a breeze with their automated social media content generator.
Simply update what games you’re showing on your FANZO profile and it will automatically sync and post to your social accounts every week. You can also choose between still images or animated video.
It’s easy to set up, helps get regular content onto your socials, and has the added benefit of also cross-posting to FANZO’s website integration that you can easily embed onto your bar’s website.
👉 Get started by signing up for a FANZO account.
Plan to post your schedules early-to-mid week, so local fans have a chance to plan for the weekend. According to a Kantar study, 78% of sports fans say they would go out more often if it were easier to plan ahead for major events.
By posting your game schedule ahead of time, you not only create useful content but also help fans find you and plan to come visit to watch the games.
A huge win-win.
Like we mentioned above, you don’t have to post every day. In fact, quality should still matter over quantity.
If your social media posts are dull, it’ll just become background noise that folks will start to ignore. It’s better to throw fewer punches but make sure each one hits harder.
Look for posts that make an impact. Some ideas:
📅 Your TV game schedule (mentioned above).
📹 Fan reaction videos. Show the excitement and energy of watching games at your bar. These can be instant reaction videos or previous videos to help promote an upcoming event.
🍗 Game day specials. Show off the food and drink fans can enjoy while visiting you.
🧢 Guest-made content. Aka user-generated content (UGC). Encourage guests to tag your bar and/or use branded hashtags that you can explore and then re-share to your own accounts. This is essentially a word-of-mouth promotion of your business.
According to that same Kantar study, atmosphere (50%) is the single most important factor when choosing a venue to watch sports – outweighing both convenience (44%) and price (43%).
In short: build hype.
Look for ways of getting local fans excited about the games you’re going to show and to visit your bar.
Fan reactions are perfect for this – especially video. It shows the atmosphere of what watching games at your venue is like. It shows excitement and energy. It shows the fan community and social aspect that folks crave when looking for a place to watch live sports.
Now fans aren’t just picking your bar to watch a game. They’re now choosing you to enjoy a complete sports experience.
You can also build hype by highlighting marquee games you plan on showing. Preview what game day specials, contests/raffles, and more that you have in store. Memes and friendly trash talk can also build energy leading up to a big game (assuming this matches your brand).
If your bar has more of a low key atmosphere, that’s cool, too. Just make sure whatever media you post onto your socials match what folks are going to get when they come visit you.
If you’re looking to improve engagement on your social media, you need to create opportunities to interact with guests, fans, and followers.
Posts that can garner a lot more likes and comments not only improve your discoverability on those social platforms, but also on search and AI as well.
Obviously, you want your own account to perform well here. And there’s a plethora of ways of interacting with your followers.
A simple way of doing this on posts is asking guests a question.
This will help encourage some interaction. What sports fan doesn’t like voicing their own two-cents on a subject?
You should also think beyond just posts and reels and look at stories. In case you’re new to social media marketing, Facebook and Instagram Stories are content with a short lifespan, disappearing after 24 hours instead of living on your feed in perpetuity. It’s good for temporary posts, building connections, and driving action.
These stories have several tools (called “stickers”) that you can use to interact with fans and followers. Here’s what should be on your marketing radar:
🤔 Quiz. Test fans and followers’ sports IQ with a series of multiple-choice questions. You can go a step further and give a prize (such as a discount) to folks who get the right answer. A great lead generator.
💭 Questions. Let followers send in Qs with their questions sticker. You can reply privately or publicly either with video or text written over an image. It’s a great way of giving your brand some personality.
🔗 Link. You can also link from your story directly to your website. Send them to your menu, an event page (like your embedded game schedule), or maybe even a secret page.
📍 Location. Add your bar with the location sticker. Anyone who can see your story can tap the sticker and view the location page for your bar. There they’ll find other posts about your bar that folks have geo-tagged.
Lot of fun ways of getting your followers to interact with your account.
Think outside your own account and interact with posts from other accounts. Essentially, leave your digital house and interact with the outside digital world. This is a great way of getting in front of more people who might not otherwise find you or know you exist.
For example: If you’re looking to increase the number of Detroit Lions fans that come visit your bar, sift through posts talking about the Lions. You can do this with search functions or by clicking through relevant hashtags.
For hashtags, use a mix of official team hashtags and fan-created ones. For example, using the Lions: #DetroitLions, #DefendTheDen, #OnePride, etc.
Once there, find posts from fans to both like and comment. And don’t just drop “cool post” replies and then leave. Make your comments thoughtful. This could be a first impression with a fan. It’s a great chance to build a connection and show that you’re also a huge fan.
To quickly summarize, here’s your social media game plan:
Good luck and have fun!