I’ve been writing a lot about our plans to grow MyColts.Net as large as it can be. While we do want our fan community to expand nationally and globally, we also want to maximize fan participation in Indiana, which is our primary trading area. One way we plan to do that is with “Geographic” groups like the one you see below:
You’ll notice that we have the ability to design this “mycolts” group page to look completely different than the rest of the site. This will come in handy as we design “sponsor” group pages as well. The point here, however, is to give the visitor from Fort Wayne a place where he or she feels extra special. If you are a huge Colts fan, but you don’t live in Indy, this group is one way you can show yoru pride and localize it / personalize it, and connect with people who live nearby.
Local media companies make great partners
In this example I show the local newspaper Website, fortwayne.com and our local radio affiliate, WOWO, as local media partners. They will help promote the “Fort Wayne” chapter of the Colts Fan Network using both offline and online channels. In exchange, we’ll feature their content on the page. They’ll send this content to us via RSS with links back to the media company Websites.
Here’s the rest of the page:
As you can see, local fans can participate in the Fort Wayne group in many ways. They can chat in the local forum, they can be among the “top bloggers”…they can even buy a localized, “Ft Wayne” T-shirt.
Much more to local groups:
As our local groups grow, they will serve to keep fans engaged. They will help us build up localized databases which will make it easy to promote our events and special offers to targeted regions, and it will give us a means to channel sponsor offers to localized audiences as well. In addition, we are layering our community relations programs into these groups in hopes that we can inspire Colts fans in places like Fort Wayne to be active volunteers and charitable givers inside their own communities, all under the Colts umbrella.
