Mashable has a lengthy post about how World Wrestling Entertainment has used social media to engage its fans.
Perhaps the most interesting part about WWE’ strategy is that it has somewhat abandoned trying to ensnare people on its website and has instead taken to reaching its tentacles out into the social sphere:
The WWE digital strategy team takes a strong stance that it’s important to go where “people are nesting,” instead of spending marketing dollars to cajole them to consume branded content within the confines of the WWE website.
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That includes maintaining a branded YouTube page, independent of the video content on WWE.com.
Being present in advance like that has become a theme in the Ted Williams viral video saga. The Columbus Dispatch, the newspaper that “found” Williams, posted a video of Williams to its site, and the video was later copied to YouTube, which helped its popularity skyrocket.
The Dispatch pulled the YouTube video a few days later and was criticized by some for doing so (“The Columbus Dispatch is an idiot,” NYU Professor Jay Rosen Tweeted).
The Dispatch eventually found itself reacting to the phenomenon that it helped create: it launched its own YouTube channel, created a page on its site dedicated to Williams and used Storify to chronicle Williams’ sudden rise to fame.
WWE, it would seem, is a case study in being ahead of the ball, should it find a viral hit on its hands.