The National Football League is looking to draw gridiron fans online more often for longer visits with new social media features.
The latest feature enables fans to comment on articles archived on NFL.com. Fans will be able to post comments with social networking personas and rate articles they read on the site.
“It’s part of a broader strategy that we’re doing in terms of community,” says Noah Fischbach, NFL.com director, digital content. “We’re trying to embrace the users and give them more reason to consume the content.”
A live chat function activated at the start of the season lets people interact with a fantasy football editor every Sunday, and also engage in cyberspace dialogue with NFL officials.
Through a new multimedia feature, Replay Recutter, visitors can select from a menu of game clips the league uploads to the micro-site weekly and self-produce edited versions. The Adobe program powering the Recutter provides fans with logos and music from the NFL Films archives.
The Recutter is proving to be a popular feature, drawing approximately 2,000 edited clips to date. One recent clip posted from a Dallas Cowboys game drew 15,000 viewers on the site.
Traffic to the site and average time per visit are both on the rise, according to Fischbach, who declined to quantify activity compared to last season.
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