Introduction
Planet Sport Group produces some of the most engaging sports content on the web. Its brands are familiar to sports fans worldwide such as PlanetF1.com, Planet Rugby, Football365 and TEAMtalk. Both across its nine titles and in partnership with some of the industry’s most recognizable names like Sky Sports, Planet Sport Group’s content has a global reach, with its sites alone gaining over 25 million monthly users.
Challenge
- Optimize social posts without social media expertise
- Reduce a complex workflow
- Increase Facebook traffic
Approach
- Use Echobox to automate social posting to Facebook
- Work with Echobox’s Customer Success team to learn best practice
The Challenge: Reduce a busy workflow
Historically, Planet Sport Group has used social media primarily for referral traffic. As Mark Holmes, Planet Sport Group’s Head of Publishing, explained to us, “we’ve never had separate teams to produce content purely for our social channels, so they have always been primarily a way to direct people back to our websites.”
As such, they wanted to focus on Facebook with Echobox, easing journalists’ workload there while allowing more time to be spent creating native content on platforms like TikTok and YouTube.
“Facebook has traditionally been the most important platform for us,” Holmes said. “Social media referrals have taken a big hit for everyone over the past couple of years, but Facebook is still a relatively large traffic driver.”
They had no problem producing great content. Instead, the main hurdle that Planet Sport Group had to overcome was how it distributed that content. “The journalists who populate our websites with content each day, also manage all our social media channels,” Holmes said. “We don’t have separate teams running our social channels.”
“We weren’t at 100% in week one,” Holmes said. “But as performance on social improved, so too did the trust to allow Echobox to choose when content should be posted.”
Without a dedicated staff, Planet Sport Group’s journalists carve out the time to post from their busy day. Adding this on top of a heavy workload makes optimizing the social posts all but impossible. “The guys would publish an article, grab the link and then post it to social, often without optimizing the share messages,” said Holmes. “They just didn’t have time to do much more than that.”
In addition they “were trying to space posts out over the course of the day at least.” But usually “there just wasn’t the resource available to look into the data and tailor our posting schedules.”
The Approach: Social automation to the forefront
Planet Sport Group was looking for a solution that would relieve the burden on their journalists, as well as ensure the best performance.
They turned to Echobox and our industry-leading social media automation.
With Planet Sport Group’s journalists’ busy workflow, having a smart solution that could let them know what to post when was a game changer. “It was a huge appeal to know that Echobox could do all of that hard work for us.” It means “the guys can spend more time making their content stand out.”
Planet Sport Group’s use of Echobox is heavily centered on the use of automation and performance predictions. This unique feature uses machine learning and AI to understand audience engagement patterns. Through this, it lets them know which piece of content is likely to perform best at any given time. But getting buy in was not without its difficulties. As Holmes told us: “It was definitely a challenge initially to convince everyone that posting that article you think is important and needs to go on the feeds right now might not produce the best results.”
“It’s taking up less of people’s time now to manage our social channels, not more, yet performance has improved.”
Reluctance to entrust even smart technology with certain parts of a workflow can be difficult to overcome. Nevertheless, as Planet Sport Group’s deepened its usage of Echobox, the results convinced them that they could trust it. “We weren’t at 100% in week one,” Holmes said. “But as performance on social improved, so too did the trust to allow Echobox to choose when content should be posted.”
A close partnership
That trust extended from the platform to their Echobox Customer Success rep, whose advice and insight has been a valuable aid for Holmes and his team.
“The key metric we were looking at after starting work with Echobox was referrals to the website. And they increased on six of the seven titles almost immediately, but Tennis365 went in the opposite direction.
“We couldn’t identify the issue ourselves so asked for the Echobox team’s thoughts and were provided with some fantastic insights about share message lengths. We followed the recommendations and then quickly saw Tennis365 jump to being one of our best-performing channels. Now we’re encouraging other teams to look at what Tennis365 are doing!”
“Allowing Echobox to choose what to post and when has unquestionably been the biggest driver behind the good performance. But the teams have also got a much better understanding now of the type of messages, tone, length and images that drive performance. Echobox has essentially been a social media training platform for our journalists.”
In general, the ongoing guidance from their Echobox Customer Success rep has been a huge help. “We’ve continued to benefit since then from the Echobox team’s advice on how we can get even more out of the platform.”
Results: Facebook referral traffic up
Using Echobox’s social media automation, Planet Sport Group has seen increases of as much as 50% in referrals from Facebook.
And, as per Holmes, that has been achieved despite journalists spending less time on the platform. Furthermore, they have gained valuable insights from how best to curate and present their content on social media.
“It’s taking up less of people’s time now to manage our social channels, not more, yet performance has improved,” Holmes said.
“Allowing Echobox to choose what to post and when has unquestionably been the biggest driver behind the good performance. But the teams have also got a much better understanding now of the type of messages, tone, length and images that drive performance. Echobox has essentially been a social media training platform for our journalists.”
It’s this mutuality between Echobox and the journalists that has been a primary driver of success. As the staff have gained trust in Echobox, they have been freed to focus more of their time to do what they do best: create the kind of great content that will resonate with their audience.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that Planet Sport Group’s implementation of Echobox has been a success. Holmes and his team have already started to explore other ways in which they can leverage Echobox. For example: “We’ve recently started using Echobox to manage some of our Instagram accounts and are already seeing good results there too. As with the other channels, our teams had their opinions on when things should be posted, but Echobox has been picking some share times they wouldn’t have dreamed of that have transpired to deliver much better performance.”
But Planet Sport Group’s use of Echobox is not confined to simply implementing social media automation and handing over the reins of their social accounts. Instead, Planet Sport Group also uses Echobox to learn. “We’ve been A/B testing a lot too and are constantly learning things we wouldn’t have expected by running small experiments.” As Holmes puts it, “Echobox is proving the old adage that there’s nothing more powerful than machines run by humans.”
And finally, would Holmes recommend Echobox to other sports publishers? “Absolutely. If you don’t have a team of highly-trained social media experts or just want to reduce the time spent on the boring stuff — beating the algorithm — to focus on the quality of your output, Echobox is going to help you. Just make sure you trust it!”
