How to Watch March Madness Online for FREE*

After years of lagging behind the curve, sports organizations are finally getting it right. This year’s superbowl was broadcast live over the internet, MLB is offering its games online, and most importantly the NCAA will be offering all March Madness online through a sweet interface.

*ok, it’ll cost you $3.99 but 67 games for a cup of coffee is practically free.

NCAA got a couple of things perfect with this offer.

It is multi-platform. You watch live games on your computer, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and select Android phones.
It promote’s user interaction. View create your own bracket and you can view brackets by region, round and date to see what’s happening and what’s coming up in the tournament.
It has social. You can post updates to Facebook and Twitter and track social activity around the tournament.
It has a Boss Button. When the boss walks by your computer, click the and..

…this fills your screen.

It looks like you are working

So, why am I shilling for the NCAA?

Well, to highlight what you can do with a good title to a blog post and to ask you a question:

What is your company doing to participate in March Madness?

Why is this a good social media opportunity?

This is a gimme of social marketing opportunities:

It is lasting: The tournament lasts for the entire month. So, you get to a month of content to push to your screen.
It is popular: ESPN alone had 5.9 million bracket entries into its tournament.
It has to be done on the web: Nobody wants to calculate the bracket scores on paper anymore which means that your customers will already have a profile online with their entry.
It is non-denominational: The tournament is already so popular that pretty much any organization can grab on and participate. Look at the disparate sponsors from the website.
Everyone likes competition: One of the biggest barriers to getting buzz on social media is individual participation. Your staff doesn’t want to push your content to their individual friend feeds and conversation on your main feed is one directions. A little competition between staff and clients is a great way to build traffic on your Facebook page – especially since everyone will be watching the games instead of working anyways.