Information in this blog was obtained from Hootsuite, SportsPro Media, and Hubspot.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship was worth $2 million in 2001. In 2016 it was sold for over $4 billion. With mixed martial arts being one of the fastest growing sports in the world, social media marketing was and is a focal point in the success of the business. In this article you'll discover how they leveraged and continue to leverage their platforms to achieve billionaire status.

YouTube Vlogs: UFC Embedded Vlog Series

Ever wonder what goes into preparing for a UFC fight? With the UFC Embedded Vlog Series you can get a sneak peek at the lives of the fighters and all the goes into preparing for a UFC main event. This allows people to feel as though they are experiencing the event without leaving their home, making for a much more satisfying experience than watching the fights alone.

Scrolling through the Ultimate Fighting Championship's YouTube page you will notice a couple things that Hootsuite recommends to optimize your business's YouTube channel. With 14.2 million subscribers it's important for the UFC to have ease of access through their channel.

• Grouping videos into playlists (As shown above)

• Creating an engaging video thumbnail

Just in the thumbnails above you see multiple aspects of a UFC event. The preparation, the face-offs before the fight, and the personal lives of the fighters outside of the cage.

In the buildup to the recent UFC 279 event, each of the Embedded Vlogs racked up over 1 million views to the channel, not to shabby for a small portion of their channel! As a fan, I love seeing this content from the UFC and it's safe to say, they do a good job given the amount of viewership.

Facebook Highlights and Videos

In sports, there is no better way to showcase your promotion than to show them the action firsthand. In an action-packed sport like mixed martial arts, it's safe to say videos of the action account for a majority of the social media posts.

The UFC boasts over 40 million followers on Facebook, and of all the viewership on its social media channels, Facebook had the most video views, racking up 7.1 billion in 2020, according to SportsPro Media.

On the UFC's Facebook page it is rare to find a post that doesn't contain a video, which according to Hootsuite is one of the ways you can optimize the Facebook reach. The wonderful thing is that they can never run out of topics to post about as the history is rich and the fights hosted by the UFC are only multiplying weekly. Whether it's talking about its upcoming UFC 280 event or talking about the reign of Conor McGregor, you can never run out of stories to tell with the sports-rich history.

A big reason why the UFC is the leader in mixed martial arts promotion is its use of social media platforms. Something about grown men and women doing hand-to-hand combat in front of millions of viewers draws a huge fan base.

Snapchat Stories of the ACTION

In a sport with so much violence there comes a lot of hostility, and whenever something drama-filled happens at a UFC event, some fans say "Man I wish I would have gotten that on video". Luckily, the UFC does a phenomenal job at utilizing their Snapchat account for giving fans a POV of what goes down at various UFC events. From press conferences to face-offs, to the actual fights, the UFC adds a unique perspective to their marketing when utilizing Snapchat.

According to HubSpot, users of Snapchat would much rather see the unpolished, realistic perspective of a business, the UFC takes this idea and runs with it! Prior to any UFC event (Fight, press conference, weigh-in), you will see what goes on behind the scenes as if you were in attendance. As a fight fan, this gets me beyond excited to view the events and makes me feel connected with what is going on.

Overall, the UFC is a great example of how an organization can add its unique perspective to social media marketing and can be a game changer regardless of if it's in and out of sports.

For more information on how to help optimize your social media marketing efforts, check out my colleague Mike's article here.

Resources

HubSpot. (n.d.). Snapchat Marketing: The ultimate guide. HubSpot. Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://www.hubspot.com/snapchat-marketing

Study: UFC's facebook following up 75% as social media numbers surge in 2020. SportsPro.(2021, January 22). Retrieved September 16, 2022, from https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/ufc-social-media-followers-2020-facebook-instagram-twitter-youtube-grabyo/

The Complete Guide to YouTube Marketing in 2022. Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. (2021, December 7). Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://blog.hootsuite.com/youtube-marketing/