by By Makena Rhodes
Professional sports teams in leagues like the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Football League (NFL) tend to effortlessly gain followers, likes, and comments. Die-hard, lifelong fans, families of the athletes, staff, and other supporters want to keep up with the team’s game content, practices, travel days, and more. These sports teams never have to think about whether their post will have high interaction numbers because their fans think any content is good content.
Although high numbers of interactions are present on most posts, it leaves a question for each organization: How can we gain more traction to our account from people who aren’t as interested in football? Most teams would decide to make videos of players following trends for quick 30-second clips on the jumbotron at timeouts. The Buffalo Bills? They take a different approach.
NFL teams that have not made it far in the playoffs like the New York Jets (1.2m Instagram followers) and Washington Commanders (1.1m Instagram followers) do not have as many followers as the Kansas City Chiefs (4.3m Instagram followers) who have made the Super Bowl multiple times in the last three years. A big difference between these organizations and the Bills is that the Bills’ strategy continues to stay the same. They want their fans to enjoy scrolling through their profile and seeing upbeat, positive posts. From poking fun at the opposing teams to making their own players and coaches look silly, they continue to gain fans from others that enjoy their content. Even looking through their current Instagram and TikTok following, there are organizations outside of the NFL and other leagues that follow them for reasons that could include wanting to post similar content and brainstorming ideas through there.
On TikTok, the Bills players can show their personalities through trends the social media team comes up with. In a recent post, they asked players who their childhood celebrity crush was. As expected, the fans loved this idea as it got 88.3k likes and almost 600 comments. Fans began commenting about certain answers, but also about the players’ friendships with each other. This creates another perspective that reminds fans that although they are professional athletes, they are also normal people. Additionally, a popular tradition in Seattle at the Pike Place Market is to throw fish. After beating the Seattle Seahawks, the team took to TikTok to post a video of employees throwing a fish with the words “Bills Win!” spread across it.
This organization continues to create content that can be considered funny to people outside of the football world. They listen to the comment section about wanting to see certain trends or players, along with responding to keep them engaged. Overall, the social media team for the Bills continues to gain interactions as their profile gets more funny every week. Not to mention, they have 400,000 more followers on TikTok than on Instagram.
As someone who wants to go into the social media and marketing industry in sports, the Bills account is what I look to for ideas when building my portfolio and professional skills. Follow my LinkedIn to see my progress as I do so.
