20A - Growing Your Social Capital

1.    Who They Are:

a.    Professor Ted Spiker

                                      i.     A professor at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communication.

b.    Devon Jeffreys

                                      i.     Employee of Athlete Interactive helping to run athlete’s websites. 

c.    Andrew Zobrist

                                      i.     Director of Enterprise Sales at Sprout Social, Inc., a company that provides social media management tools to individuals and companies.

2.    What ‘slot’ the fill

a.    Domain Expert

                                      i.     This slot is filled by Mr. Jeffreys. Mr. Jeffreys is an employee for a company that runs websites and social media accounts of athletes. This makes him employed in the same industry that I am looking to start a business in.

b.    Market Expert

                                      i.     Professor Ted Spiker fills this slot as he has been teaching a course at the University of Florida titled “Sport Media and Society” since 2010. This class focuses on the crossroads of sport and social media, which makes him an expert in the field I am starting my company in.

c.    Supplier

                                      i.     Andrew Zobrist has been working for a social media management software company for nearly a year. This service, or a proprietary one created by me, would be necessary in order to run athlete social media accounts effectively. This would make Mr. Zobrist and his employer and supplier to my business.

3.    How I found them

a.    Professor Ted Spiker

                                      i.     I took Professor Spiker’s Sport Media & Society class in the fall of 2016. Following that, I have been a volunteer undergraduate Teaching Assistant for the class the past two years. This is how I both found and contacted him.

b.    Devon Jeffreys

                                      i.     After looking for other companies in the industry, I came across Athlete Interactive. Based upon my research, I determined that Mr. Jeffreys, due to his longstanding employment with the company, would be a good person to contact about my business. I found Athlete Interactive through Google, and then found and messaged Mr. Jeffreys through Athlete Interactive’s LinkedIn account. 

c.    Andrew Zobrist

                                      i.     After determining that I would need to find a social management software provider to fit the “Supplier” criteria, I researched companies in that industry. I finally came across Sprout Social through a news article online. I then went to their LinkedIn page, and after looking through the pages of several employees, messaged Mr. Zobrist through LinkedIn.

4.    Nature of Exchange

a.    Ted Spiker

                                      i.     I spoke with Professor Spiker in person about my idea for a company. Specifically, due to his numerous connections in the sporting world, I asked him about the current popularity of the idea which I am pursuing. Additionally, I asked him to review my target demographic that I outlined in my first draft Idea Napkin. Professor Spiker stated that he believes the idea I am pursuing is currently growing at a fairly rapid pace, but only covers a fraction of the athletes in professional sports. He also felt that while my idea of targeting collegiate athletes was smart, I would struggle to earn a profit from these athletes until they turned pro due to NCAA rules.

b.    Devon Jeffreys

                                      i.     I messaged Mr. Jeffreys with several questions regarding the industry. I specifically asked him questions about how they get new clients, how they differentiate their product, and how much control they take of athletes’’ social media pages. These questions were the basis of our conversation, which I plan to utilize to improve my business plan.  I expect to receive a fairly brief answer to these questions. But the message acted as my introduction, in the hopes of creating a more fruitful professional relationship.

c.    Andrew Zobrist

                                      i.     I messaged Mr. Zobrist with several questions regarding how the technology that companies such as his supply help to manage and grow social media accounts. Following my introduction, I hope to create a relationship where I can gain additional knowledge and tools that I can utilize to better help run my clients’ accounts.

5.    All three of my contacts will help me to exploit this opportunity. Professor Spiker will help me better understand how athletes are approaching this concept, Mr. Jeffreys will help me understand how companies are meeting customer demands, and Mr. Zobrist will help me understand how technology can help to grow social media accounts at an impactful rate.

Reflection: 

            This experience will help me in the future. I have learned how to better approach a new contact, and also how to approach a personal or educational contact and utilize them for professional growth. I will, at future networking events, be sure to have created good questions beforehand, as this assignment showed me how important it is. I would say that this experience was different than my past networking experiences, as I was, in this assignment, asking experts about a specific idea, rather than broad hypotheticals.