So the King has entered the Twitter building! I’m sure somewhere in San Francisco there was a company toast at Twitter HQ, but is the decision by LeBron James and his LRMR marketing team (headed up by Maverick Carter) to hop on the social media tool the right timing? More importantly, is LeBron’s marketing team really prepared to handle all of his online PR during “The Decision” tonight on ESPN?

The details behind this digital move are fuzzy.  Will LeBron answer questions in real-time via Twitter during the 1 hour long ESPN special? Probably not. Will he simply answer a few carefully vetted questions post TV announcement? If the LRMR team really wanted to push the social media envelope, they could integrate Twitter live on the TV screen during the announcement. Of course, that’s way too risky considering the polarizing nature of “The Decision” (and not my recommendation).

Which brands are activating the best social media campaigns during the 2010 FIFA World Cup? Does being an official World Cup sponsor or FIFA partner like Adidas give the brand an edge over an unaffiliated competitor like Nike?

Even more interestingly, does focusing budgets on ambush marketing actually present a greater value proposition for brands such as Pepsi whose main competitor Coca-Cola is spending millions of dollars to be officially affiliated with the most popular sporting event in the world? Read our white paper to find out more!

“LOOSE BALL!!!”…

Activ8Social is proud to announce the launch of “#LooseBall” – an experiential social media scavenger hunt featuring the Boston Celtics All-Star point guard, Rajon Rondo. Red Bull, one of Rondo’s sponsors, will be providing the contest prizes, which include 18 basketballs and branded shirts autographed by Rondo (in honor of the Celtic’s run for a record 18th NBA Title) as well as a pair of tickets to Game 4 of the 2010 NBA Finals in Boston for one lucky winner.

Starting today at 5pm EST, the streets of Boston might be in a frenzy with fans trying to win the first autographed ball and shirt that are up for grabs in the kickoff #LooseBall drop. And you never know if this will be the lucky basketball with two Game 4 tickets strapped to it by a headband in honor of Rondo and the Celtics.

Odds are if you’re responsible for the digital marketing or social media strategy of an athlete, celebrity, team, league, or company, you will be considering how best to leverage Facebook’s relatively new Social Plugins on an official website or blog.

If you meet this profile, you may find yourself asking “what features does Facebook now provide for my website, how easy is it to implement, and what does all mean”?  For an in depth look into the last question, check out our blog post from last month on the f8 conference.  For part one and part two, we’ve gone ahead and compiled a quick overview that should shed a little light on the basics.

Building on 32 years of futbol history as an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup (although a formal relationship began in 1974), the Coca-Cola Company recently launched a global ad campaign centered around its current theme of “Open Happiness” and backed by an aggressive digital strategy.

This campaign comes off the heels of the soon-to-conclude FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour which to date has seen the famed 18-carat gold trophy travel 93,958 miles (151,217 km) in over 225 days, crossing five continents and touching the lives of more than 500,000 futbol fans. The tour, which began on September 19, 2009 will do one final circuit in South Africa.

In the last couple of years, the world’s marque sports shoe and apparel company has faced increased competition from a reinvented brand in adidas and the innovative newcomer Under Armour.  Between the two competitors, adidas has a particularly strong social media presence. Their adidas Originals Facebook Page boasts nearly 3 million people that “Like” the brand while the Official Under Armour Facebook Page has over 220,000 “Likes”.

Nike elects to take a slightly different approach by leveraging fan created Pages on Facebook in addition to their official Pages like Nike Football and Nike Sportswear, but beyond Facebook and Twitter, one of the most critical keys to the Beaverton, Oregon-based company’s success is their viral video marketing strategy.  Nike protects its house by consistently reaching millions of global fans on YouTube.

In the second installment of our “Facebook Fan Page Tips” series, we showed you the basic steps for setting up your new Facebook Page such as uploading the most effective profile picture, adding information, and hooking your page up to Faceobok Mobile for the ability to update on the move.

One of the most attractive benefits of the Facebook Platform for building your digital brand equity is the massive global audience and the potential to reach new fans/consumers.  For this reason, it makes a lot of sense for you (whether a personal brand or corporate brand) to syndicate your blog to your Facebook Page where people have opted-in to join your niche conversation.  This way, every time you post new information that your fans/consumers may be interested in reading, the conversation is brought directly to them.

This week’s Saturday Night Live episode hosted by former Golden Girls star, 88 year-old Betty White, claimed the highest ratings and largest audience since November 1, 2008 when John McCain and Sarah Palin appeared. And who do they have to thank? A fan and his Facebook Page.

After White starred in a viral Super Bowl Snickers commercial, a 29-year old superfan named David Matthews took to the 450+ million user platform in an attempt to garner 5,000 fans before writing a letter to SNL producer Lorne Michaels.

After being picked up by USA Today and Perez Hilton, Matthews says the Page jumped from 8,300 fans to over 22,000. According to AllFacebook, the Page went from 30,000 to 230,000 fans last week. The “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!” Facebook Page now claims over half a million “likes” or “fans”, which is simply astonishing.

In case you didn’t already know by now, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his Director of Products, Brett Taylor (former Co-Founder and CEO of Friendfeed) introduced the next iteration of the Facebook Platform called the Open Graph to the web developer community, and it was generally well received by the public at large—at least on the content provider side.

Despite this announcement coming a mere two weeks ago on April 21, 2010 at the company’s third annual f8 conference, the Facebook Like Button was already implemented on over 50,000 websites and was seen tens of billions of times globally. In fact, the Like Button instantly exceeded 1 billion impressions in less than 24 hours with only 75 major websites using it at launch.

But what exactly does this mean for the sports marketing world, and what about you Joe fan?

Let’s get one thing straight upfront—social media is not as easy as “if you build it, they will come” for any athlete, team, league, or sponsor looking to establish or enhance brand equity.  Social media marketing is no different than traditional off-line marketing in that it requires a well thought out strategy, devoted resources, and a budget targeted at a reaching a measurable goal for the individual or organization.

With that said, social media’s major advantages—the cost-to-creativity ratio and the ability to expand reach via an engaged audience (key word here is “engaged” but I’ll explain more)—make this form of marketing so powerful that most athletes looking to enhance their salaries with fat endorsement checks should be asking their agency, management team, or friends and family why social media isn’t a part of their overall marketing strategy.