The Championship Instagram Guide for the #LakeShow
Welcome to the #LakersFamily!
Hi, and welcome! We hope you’re as excited to join our world-renowned organization as we are to have you! As you’re well aware, you are now a part of our Instagram team for the Los Angeles Lakers, the legendary NBA basketball team for Los Angeles, CA founded in 1947. We’re glad to have you as a new member of the #LakersFamily. The Lakers Instagram account currently has 16 million followers, and we hope to reach the 17 million count soon to match the franchise’s 17 trophies, tied for most in NBA history! We know you’ll become a crucial part in our journey towards growing on Instagram and furthering our commitment to the wonderful Lakers community!
Following
The Los Angeles Lakers Instagram account follows less than 100 accounts. These include all active players on the team’s current roster, coaching staff, and the organization, as well as former Laker legends like Shaquille O’Neal, James Worthy, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, and of course, the late and great Kobe “Bean” Bryant, and his close family. We also follow fellow professional sports franchises based in Los Angeles like the Rams and the Dodgers (but never our rival team, the Clippers!), the Lakers G-League team and the L.A. Sparks WNBA team, the team’s official photographer, other NBA teams, and the team store. We try to keep the “following” count below 100 always.
Highlights
No, we don’t mean the team’s highlight plays (not yet, at least)! Our Instagram’s highlighted stories are compilations of former stories showcasing cool snapshots of the team’s active players, either on the court or in the pre-game arrivals showing off their unique fits. The cover photo for each highlight should be the player’s number with their last name, initials, or nickname as the title.
Example: Anthony Davis’s highlights, with the title being “AD” and the cover photo being his number in purple and white and the background in gold, just as they are on an actual Lakers jersey.
Most of these are snapshots from some amazing plays by the players showcasing their incredible athleticism, but we like to have fun with the highlights and add some pre-game warm up plays or unique team moments. Another one of our highlights is “Wallpaper Wednesday”, showcasing all the cool Laker wallpapers posted every Wednesday for fans to screenshot and add to their collection.
The Lakers organization fully stands with the Black Lives Matter movement and proudly displays a highlight of the players showcasing their support for the movement. This one won’t be going away any time soon, trust us.
2020 CHAMPIONS — The 2020 NBA season ended for the Lakers in what all other teams strive for during a long and difficult season: the 2020 NBA championship! Of course, anyone should’ve expected a ton of posts and stories for this glorious moment. We’ve kept a highlight of all Laker stories uploaded during the 2020 NBA Finals against the Miami Heat, serving as a unique championship highlight. We hope to see greatness repeat and add another highlight for a new Lakers championship soon.
Posting
Now we’re talking. If you’ve seen our feed before, you’ll notice we stick to a fun and interesting mix of highlight reels, cool player snapshots, pre-game outfit-of-the-match looks, and honoring huge performances or feats by our amazing players! We tend to keep our captions with short but strong lines, while at the same time delivering a clear message, especially after a well-earned victory or performance. Take this post of the team coming back from a 20-point deficit to beat the Memphis Grizzlies, highlighting the top 3 players’ performances for the night: notice how we were able to deliver the message without more than a few words. The fans seeing this will immediately realize that the Lakers came back from the deficit to take the win.
Of course, some posts are deserving of their own unique flair and not just our standardized photo and highlight reel post combination. Take LeBron James when he reached the 35,000 point club, becoming only the third player to ever achieve this. What better way to honor this than by putting in the time and effort in creating a specially designed picture and posting it for all fans to like and share this incredible moment? Here’s the post in all its Kingliness:
We also tend to follow up these special posts with an additional one or two more at the most. Birthday posts for the players are also tradition, so be sure to add their birthdays to your calendar! It’s all about getting a feel for the posts and keeping the feed active but not cluttered. The usual times for posting are pretty simple to follow: before and after games, on days without games looking back at some key moments from past games or in preparation for future games, and on special occasions like the aforementioned players breaking records or birthdays. Remember to tag the players on the photos or posts they are in, always!
Voice and Captions
If we were to define the Lakers and their loyal fans in one word, it would be: passion. We follow a passionate voice in all our posts, as well as one of pride and excitement for the team. We do our best in adding relevant content to our post’s captions and the same goes for our hashtags and emojis. You’ll find the gold and purple heart emojis on a lot of our posts, as well as the #LakeShow and #LakersFamily hashtags. We also like to spice it up a little: posting an insane dunk from LeBron James? Real recognize real, so it’s only fitting for us to add the crown emoji to posts for the one and only King James.
The commentators for the games do a great part in helping us out for hashtags! They tend to come up with all of these unique and catchy nicknames or catchphrases for players. Take Lakers guard, Alex Caruso. On more than a few occasions, Caruso has showcased some insane talent and explosive ability, which left the commentators awestruck and with only one thing to say to that: The #CaruShow is on, ladies and gentlemen! You also have guard Kyle Kuzma, who will get the commentators praising him for his #KuzControl when executing a smart and athletic play.
Remember: not every post needs a hashtag. The Lakers brand is well known throughout the world. The main purpose of the usage of hashtags on our posts is to encourage fans to follow Laker-specific hashtags, and ultimately share their own user-generated content like fan creations, jersey show-offs or photos taken at a game. Some posts benefit more from hashtags than others, so be sure to keep an eye out for this and maintain a balance of posts with and without hashtags and/or emojis.
We understand that not every fan is able to watch a game when it’s live. Not every Lakers fan is in the Pacific time zone either, and some may have even forgotten. No matter how passionate a fan is, we know that life happens, and so, we always publish stories and posts when a game is on. The game is fast pace and anything can happen in the span of a few seconds, so try your best to keep up with the game. The stories come in handy for this, as we can add the current score for the game to a given story (don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with ready to go templates for stories!) Halftime gives you a little breathing room, so don’t be afraid of holding on to some posts or stories for the 15-minute break. It lets you catch up on the stories and posts, and it gives the fans something to look at other than just the commentators discussing the game and commercials.
The Community
Remember, the Lakers play for the fans. This amazing franchise is where it is today in due part to its loyal fans. The fans make up most of the #LakersFamily, so it’s important to always listen to what they have to say and make an effort in letting them know that we are doing so! Although we lack customer service, we make up for it in listening to the fans, acknowledging their voices and reminding them that they are loved and appreciated. Take action in liking their comments and replying to a few comments from our fans here and there to show that we stand with them in supporting the #LakeShow! Our posts get a ton of comments, which is great, but not so much for when we’re trying to get back to every single one of them. Keep that in mind and understand that it’s okay if we don’t reply to every one, so long as we’re showing that we are active, we are liking comments and we’re getting back to a few comments on each post.
No one likes to lose, but at the end of the day, it’s still just a game. Remember that some fans may take losses worse than others and may post highly inappropriate comments attacking the players, the staff, and maybe even the organization; some attacks can even get personal and target family members or friends. While we must understand fans’ frustrations with bad plays, turnovers, and losses, we must also take appropriate action when dealing with downright rude and offensive behavior that is unwarranted, and keep these to a minimum. We can’t do anything about a player missing a shot or turning over the possession, but what we can do is actively monitor fans venting about these situations and ensure that hostility, threats, flaming, and overall offensive behavior is limited.
Ready for the #LakeShow
Looks like our practice and pre-game warm up has concluded, and now you are more than ready for the #LakeShow! You looked at the film, you studied the plays, now it’s time for you to go out there and play! Think, analyze, and execute. Make us and the Lakers proud, and who knows, maybe we’ll be seeing some highlight reels of your own soon enough…
(Disclaimer: This is a fictional document created for the purpose of completing a student assignment.)
References
Los Angeles Lakers [@lakers]. (n.d.). Posts [Instagram profile]. Instagram. Retrieved February 21, 2021, from https://www.instagram.com/lakers/
