Welcome to "Four Things We're Seeing ...," a series from Slate where we'll dive into the world of social media through the eyes of some of the best professionals in the field. Thanks to these savvy social experts, we're shining a spotlight on the latest trends, strategies, and noteworthy moments unfolding across the internet.

Introducing Ryan Delgado, Senior Manager of Social Media for the Atlanta Falcons and the leader behind their social media success in 2023.The 2023 season was HUGE for them, seeing: 

• 2nd Largest YOY Growth in Engagement Rate in the NFL

• Doubled Interactions from 2022

• 40M+ Paid Social Impressions

Let's dive into Ryan’s tips for driving social growth and learn from the Falcons' rise to the top! 📈

Four Things We’re Seeing to Help Social Growth 

1. Doing More of What Works, and Less of What’s NotOur ability to dig into different content types was a key to growth this year. Single-photo Tweets were performing well for us, and we used more of those as the season went on. We paid attention to what was working for us throughout the season, looking at our data as well as league-provided data on content types and how they compare across the league.

2. Innovate on What We’ve Always DoneOur “Roof Cam” footage was our crown jewel of performance and growth in the 2023 season. We could have used the television angle, like any club, but our staff found a way to innovate and provide one of the best highlights of the NFL season routinely.

3. Leveraging Sponsorship on Instagram StoriesUsing Slate, we were able to index higher on sponsored posts by building out templates and quick turn assets to use on game-day. These assets led to higher impressions than they did in the previous season, even by bringing them onto stories instead of our main feed.

4. Be More Selective on the Finish LineOn any given gameday, we could see thousands of assets come across our screen. In a climate where there are various accounts and places for content to go, we talked as a staff that “not everything needs to go everywhere”. Some assets are best in an IG carousel, others may be good as a solo photo on TW, another may be a good TikTok, etc. We cut back our post volume by a large percentage across platforms by selectively looking at data and going through post by post.

5. BONUS: #5:  Elevate High-Quality AssetsWith proper cropping and watermarks, our assets went up a notch. With Slate, we’re able to quickly crop based on the platform specs and give ownership to our images on digital in seconds.

To see what Ryan and the Falcon’s crew are creating on the daily, check out the Atlanta Falcons on Twitter/X, Instagram and TikTok.https://twitter.com/AtlantaFalconshttps://www.instagram.com/atlantafalcons/ https://www.tiktok.com/@atlantafalcons https://twitter.com/_ryan_delgado 

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