Self-confessed sports geek Sean Callanan is a perfect example of how someone with passion and expertise can strategically use social media and online publishing platforms to leverage themselves into a bigger game.
It wasn’t all that long ago that Sean was an IT coder toiling away in obscurity in suburban Melbourne.
Today, thanks to his embrace of social media including blogging and podcasting, Sean has found himself:
- consulting to some of the biggest names in the sports business,
- speaking at international digital sport conferences, and
- securing an interview with Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of NBA team, Dallas Mavericks, for his popular Sports Geek podcast.
He also regularly appears on ‘ABC Grandstand’ with Francis Leach and on ‘Harf Time’ with Daniel Harford on radio 1116 SEN.
Sean’s mission is to connect sports, fans and sponsors using technology; his business Sports Geek is connected with over 1,000,000 digital fans with clients in the NBA, AFL, NRL, football and cricket.
Sean is a big podcasting fan and has founded two podcasts that over the past 12 months have amassed 100,000 downloads.
Beers, Blokes & Business, which he produces along with Melbourne-based entrepreneurial types (including Steve Vallas, Jim Stewart, Scott Kilmartin, Steve Sammartino) accounts for approximately 60,000 of those downloads, while Sports Geek is the top ranking sports digital podcast on iTunes.
Jump on a plane
In this episode of the Reputation Revolution podcast, Sean tells us of his journey from suburban coder to digital sports influencer, and discusses how perhaps his most successful strategy to date has been to jump on a plane and visit industry contacts in the US and UK. It’s these relationships, reinforced face to face, that have had potentially the biggest impact on his career to date.
What works well for Sean’s business
- Building long-standing relationships with key influencers on and offline.
- Publishing a content-rich podcast on a regular basis (it brings in leads and sales, says Sean).
- Curating interesting articles and sharing them through his various social channels.
- Incorporating in his regular newsletter links to the top 10 most shared and clicked-on curated articles that he shared during the week (“…they become the articles in my weekly newsletter”, he says).
Connect with Sean
- Sean’s business Sports Geek
- Twitter – @seancallanan and @SportsGeek
- Beers, Blokes & Business podcast
- Sports Geek podcast
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