Case assignment: Analyzing social media strategy at Minnesota Wild National Hockey League team. Grade: 100%. Presentation shown here had a four-page counterpart paper with further detail included into the methodology used and recommendations made. A big data set spanning a 4 year period derived from Facebook Insights data was analyzed and qualitative and quantitative observations and inferences were made. A combination of pivot tables and multiple linear regressions were used to quantitatively determine best engagement strategies to be adopted. Recommendations were presented in the presentation and a four-page paper focused on increasing audience engagement, in order to maximize advertising revenues, sponsored promotions, ticket sales etc.

1. Minnesota
Wild
Social Media Analysis
Team 3Z

2. Goals
 Understand the digital marketing activity
of the Minnesota Wild NHL team through
the analysis of its Facebook campaign.
 Reviewed fan activity between March 26,
2008 through June 14, 2012.

3. Methodology
 Formatted data into dates and used formulas to
derive data.
 Wild vs Fan created content.
 Weekend vs Weekday postings.
 Pre-Gameday, Gameday, and post-Gameday
postings.
 Type of media created: comments, pictures,
videos.
 Used a combination of Pivot tables and multiple
linear regressions to quantitatively determine best
engagement.

4. Analysis
 Wild created content
elicited greater
response.
 Fan response was
higher the day after a
win.
 Fan response was
higher day before a
game, if they went into
the game after a loss.

5. Regression
 Three (3) regressions: likes, comments, and shares as
dependent variables.
 Assumes R-square value > 25% was considered good fit.
 Assumed P-value =< 0.05 for variables to be considered
significant to model.
 Removed insignificant variables and re-ran regression until
all P values were =< 0.05
and R-Squared was > 25%.

6. Findings
 We found two models: comments and likes.
 Comments (R2 = 27%)
 Weekday and content created by Wild were the two
variables most likely to elicit fan responses.
 Comments = 1.34 + 0.49 * isWeekday + 28.2* Created by
Wild.
 Likes (R2 = 33%)
 Weekday, content created by Wild, post-gamedays, pre-
gamedays, and comments were the most likely to elicit fan
responses.
 Likes = 11.91 + 1.98 * isWeekday + 96.58 * Created by Wild +
4.32 * isPostGameDay + 4.16 * isPreGameDay -13.42 * isText.

7. Qualitative Analysis
 Reviewed Wild-sourced comments with 200+
likes. They had the following common themes:
 Image-led content;
 Fully edited professional video
 Humanistic and emotive topics:
 Introduction of new players;
 when players interact on the ice (i.e. brawl);
 profiling of juniors,
 images from those that are serving the country,
 celebrating player birthdays (injured ones
especially)

8. Qualitative Analysis
 Topics that were unpopular included:
 Merchandize sale posts,
 unidentified non-players,
 Postings with limited or no captions –
 informing the reader appears to be key
considering the posting length identified in
the quantitative analysis.
 Stand-alone clips were less popular.

9. Recommendations
 Having a social media platform can make athletes more
‘accessible’ to fans, can promote sponsors by having
‘authentic’ interactions directly with devotees
 Allowing fans to ‘scrape and share’ exclusive content to
their own networks will extend the Wild’s influence beyond
traditional media platforms.
 Strategy should be postings coupled with expert timing for
the delivery of engaging competitions, emotive images
and milestone announcements (like player birthdays, injury
status).
 Promotions activities (such as giveaways or ticket discounts)
should be targeted to specific growth segments.
 Finally social media team should integrate and leverage
existing communications activities to increase content
richness and interest for Facebook followers.