FastModel Sports (FMS) is the leader in basketball coaching technology. I’m responsible for creating all digital content to communicate with customers, partners and coaches all over the world. This includes writing blog posts, crafting email newsletters, editing content pages and managing social media accounts. While the company sells software, its ultimate goal is to be a valuable resource for coaches to learn, therefore growing the game of basketball.
Content Marketing for FastModel Sports
Email Marketing
I write and design weekly emails using Mailchimp software that are delivered to a coaching audience of over 56K subscribers which consistently earn above a 15% open rate. These content emails are packed with information and value for coaches split into three categories: Plays of the Week, Blog Roundup and Video Roundup. I write and design sales emails as well for specific promotions and seasonal events.
Blog Writing
I write posts for the Team FastModel blog on trending topics in basketball from a coaching perspective that organically use play diagram images from FastModel’s FastDraw program as dynamic content. I also work with FMS coach contributors to concept, edit and format posts authored by them which speak directly to other coaches.
Social Media
I manage the FMS Twitter account which is the premier social channel for the company boasting 33K engaged followers. This includes writing tweets in the moment and also scheduling evergreen posts. I’ll also live tweet major games and other basketball events, like March Madness, to capture high engagement and participate in the conversation with the coaching community.
On a random Sunday night in January, I tweeted seven simple words in an attempt to foster a discussion around a topic I knew basketball coaches were split on. Hundreds of coaches from all over entered the debate to share their opinion and provide insight into this issue.
I was also able to turn this tweet into a blog post to not only recap the debate but continue the conversation and bring more coaches into it.
Next, I created an email around that blog post to continue the content distribution cycle, getting as much mileage as possible from this tweet that clearly struck a chord with the FMS audience.
Not bad for seven words!
Video Content
I manage the FMS YouTube page which has grown by over two thousand subscribers in just six months of my investment in the channel. This includes brainstorming, producing, editing, publishing, writing description copy and adding the appropriate links for all videos, always keeping in mind SEO key phrases.
Site Management
I manage the FMS Playbank, a site dedicated to hosting free basketball plays, drills and playbooks for coaches to view and download. I again work with coach contributors to edit and publish user-generated content in the form of play diagrams, amassing more than four thousand pages under my guidance. The Playbank averages over 500K visits per month, making it a hub for coaches to develop themselves, as well as introduce potential customers to the brand.
View an example of user-generated content on the Playbank here.
Content Campaigns
I come up with creative content campaigns that include tying together all of the above channels – along with Instagram, Facebook, and various sponsor and partner opportunities – to form a consistent voice around a specific event, product, promotion or important date. A recent example of this was #FastModelMadness21 which connected our entire coverage of the women’s and men’s NCAA tournaments by building a campaign which delivered engaging content while also successfully generating revenue for the company.
Campaign stats
The hashtag generated over 2M impressions on Twitter for FMS
FastModel’s Playbank site earned 520K page views and saw over 6K individual play downloads
The FMS YouTube channel added over 2K new subscribers and gained more than 80K views
Overall the two-month campaign generated over $100K in consumer sales
Get the full picture here.