On a recent trip to the US, Anthony Alsop caught up with Nick Monroe, who is the Head of New Media Development for the Milwaukee Bucks.  He was nice enough to answer a few questions about the team, his other roles at the Bucks and how the Bucks came to be in new media in the first place. 

Anthony Alsop: Nick, how did you come to work at the Bucks?

Nick: I graduated from college with a degree majoring in Internet-Based Marketing, so I’ve always had an interest in the internet. I arrived at the Bucks the same summer Andrew Bogut was drafted. I started in the sales department where I sold season tickets.

AA: What is your current role at the Bucks?

Nick: My main job right now is the senior lead of season ticket sales and retention; I help manage the team that renews our season ticket holders. I am also the head of New Media Development which social media is a major component of.

AA: How did the Bucks get started in new media?

Nick: We kind of fell into it in 2008, when I started the @Bucks Twitter account. I was using Facebook and Twitter at the time, but the Bucks had no presence on either of these platforms, so I thought why don’t I start the official Bucks accounts? These days, if you see me around the Bradley Center (Milwaukee’s home court) I’ll more often than not have two phones out, updating either the Facebook or Twitter accounts. It’s great to keep our fans up to date with what’s going on. Twitter is a great platform to reach our international fans, or those around the US who can’t get access to the game via the internet, TV or radio.

Nick is a busy man on game nights 

 AA: Tell us about a typical day for you?

Nick: I’ll arrive at the Bradley Center around 830-9am, and prioritize my day. In terms of new media, I use an application for our Twitter account that allows me to set up automatic tweets, so I can do 10-15 tweets in as many minutes in the morning. This allows the account to be active throughout the day while I do other things. For each home game, our PR department puts out news and notes, and I like tweeting some cool facts or figures from them. I’ll also aim to get two or three Facebook status updates as well.

For my non-new media work, I look after my clients in the season ticket department, so I’m handling additional ticket requests and returning lots of phone calls.

AA: What benefits have the Bucks seen from their involvement in new media?

Nick: I love hearing feedback from the fans on Twitter, so I’ll try and reply to as many tweets that I can. Social media has definitely driven more traffic to our website. Whether it’s for a game preview or for ticket sales, we’ve definitely seen increases in both as our presence on social media grows. Being able to send our fans to specific parts of our website through links on Twitter, is quite powerful. If there is a sale on tickets or merchandise, we can tell them exactly where to go on Bucks.com.

We’ve also been lucky that Jim Paschke (our long-time TV commentator) has been willing to do some videos for Bucks.com. We see the market demanding more video as both the internet and social media evolve, so it’s fantastic for us that Jim is willing to do some video content for the site.

AA: Do the Bucks have a social media policy for their players?

Nick: We brief all our players on social media and web strategies, but our players are smart enough to know what to say and what not to say. The NBA has their own Social Media program in their induction week for rookies, so we don’t need to do too much on our end. I think we have one of the most active teams on Twitter. You can find Andrew, Brandon Jennings, Charlie Bell, Danny G, Luc Mbah a Moute and Royal Ivey all on Twitter.

AA: What impact does social media have on your international fan base?

Nick: With one of our best players coming from Australia, you can imagine we have a pretty good following from down there. But it’s not only Australia, we also have players from Cameroon, Argentina, Slovenia and Turkey. In terms of international fans, our biggest market place is Australia, and then South-East Asia – we have over 10,000 fans from the Philippines alone and we’re also quite popular in Malaysia.

We’ve never really had an official channel to greet these fans before; I doubt these fans could point out Milwaukee on a map, but they can tell you who the Bucks are and who their favorite player is. That’s really cool.

AA: In terms of mobile, do the Bucks have a presence in the mobile app market?

Nick: We sure do. The NBA has released an official app for each team and you can get them for your Apple, Blackberry or Android mobile device (pricing depends on which country you are in).

AA: Tell us about your #FearTheDeer social media campaign

Nick: That came about from a mention on SportsCenter, and we heard about it and we ran with it. On Twitter you can set up a movement or a slogan by adding a hash symbol to a phrase, so we added a # in front of “FearTheDeer” and it kind of became our slogan by default. It’s been great though, the fans have backed it 100% and we’ve just released some merchandise with the slogan. We also just launched a “Jennings 4 ROY” Facebook fan page to help promote Brandon Jennings’ fantastic rookie season, and we have 55 reasons why he should win.

Everyone is embracing #FeartheDeer 

AA: Has the team’s recent on-court success lead to social media success off the court?

Nick: Absolutely. The more the team wins, the more people want to know about the team. Whether that’s content on our website, tickets for the game or merchandise, we’ve seen our overall web traffic really take off since the All-Star break. This has come about as we’ve had a great run of success on the court. We also run weekend web specials for ticket sales, but we’re seeing a ten-fold year-on-year increase for ticket sales via our website; the demand just grows every year as our brand awareness increases.

The wins on the court definitely lead to more success in social media as well; our Facebook and Twitter accounts have added a few thousand fans in the past few weeks, fans that weren’t in our community before. When the team is winning, everybody wants to get involved, and we’ve managed to see a financial return on that as well, which is fantastic.