LeBron James has been getting some digital marketing advice

So we all know what happened last week.  LeBron James held his press conference and announced he was sucking the life out of his hometown going to play for the Miami Heat.  Some people freaked out.

That same week his digital marketing went into a full court press.  He created a twitter account, @kingjames, a few days before and I quickly and incorrectly predicted that he was going to announce his decision via that channel.  What I realized though as I started poking around is that LeBron was quietly beefing up his digital strategy.  Seems he might have taken a page out of Obama’s book on how to maximize the web for a personal brand.

Check out his properties:

Lebron James Website

His website is pretty basic at this point and I’ll be curious to see how much content he puts here vs. on Facebook.  Currently the Facebook page (below) is much more vibrant than the website.

Lebron James promoting brands on his facebook page

His Facebook page has more content than his website, which I think is probably the right direction, but whoever has been managing this channel for him doesn’t quite understand the medium.  It’s not Twitter, where you can send out the same message many times and expect people to be cool with that.  For instance, these are seven posts in a row:

July 1: Prepare Yourself.  Something’s Coming.

July 1: Prepare Yourself.  The unveiling has begun.

July 2: Sign up and become part of the unveiling.

July 2: Sign up and become part of the experience.

July 2: Sign up and become part of the experience. (yes, exact same post again)

July 3: Getting closer.  Sign up and be the first to know

July 6: Sign up today and be the first to know.

I mean, that’s a pretty lame string of “updates”.  Plus I think whoever is doing this doesn’t realize that posting on Facebook is not an awareness medium to get new people to sign up, these people have already signed up!  Anyway, we’ll chalk this up to growing pains.

LeBron promoting VitaminWater on his Facebook page

What I find very interesting (and fairly smart) is that LeBron has made his Facebook page a marketing vehicle for his sponsorships.  So here he’s essentially selling an ad for VitaminWater on his Facebook page.  Brilliant.

And here we have LeBron joining Twitter “finally” and using the channel to promote (and enhance) his one-hour special to announce his decision.

We’ll see where he goes with all of this and if he continues to build these platforms out.  I’d like to see him consider using services like Foursquare or Hot Potato to start telling people what he’s up to (selectively of course).  I’m also surprised he’s not pushing more of his products via these channels, so we’ll see if he becomes his own e-commerce site as well.