Emirates Team New Zealand have a new home for their web presence – www.etnzblog.com The new ‘blog’ powered by DELL, is a way for the team to engage with fans outside of the America’s Cup environment that challenging teams are forced to use.
The team has said they will ‘Live in Social‘ as response to the protocol which dictates that all teams, no matter what sailing activity they do outside of the America’s Cup, must divert their primary URL to the official America’s Cup site.
The social media based site means that fans of Team NZ’s Volvo Ocean Race campaign with Camper, or the team’s Extreme Sailing Series activity, don’t have to go to the America’s Cup site to read about it. The ‘blog also gives ETNZ more ways to give promience and exposure for their sponsors.
The new online presence, built on WordPress, was put together by the same team that runs Southwest Airlines blog – Nuts About Southwest, and DELL’s huge social media presence which includes 8 Blogs and more than 20 Twitter accounts.
Grant Dalton says in the first post on the blog:
So today is my very first blog which puts into question the saying “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. I used to think email was hard enough, now I am part of a new on-line community and you know what, it’s pretty cool.
What gets me so excited about the blog is that it gives us the ability to really engage with the people who support us at all levels. From the sponsors and suppliers of the team who we can’t live without to the young upcoming sailors who are one day going to take my place.
It will be interesting to see how other America’s Cup teams use social media to engage fans. Most don’t have the capacity to put content on the official site, let alone generate content for multiple platforms.
