'We’re trying to get people to stop and look': Inside the Patriots' social media operation

'We’re trying to get people to stop and look': Inside the Patriots' social media operation
By Jen McCaffrey
Jan 28, 2019

FOXBORO – The video of Fox Sports’ Rob Parker flashed across the Patriots’ Twitter and Instagram accounts last Tuesday evening right around commuter time.

It was a strategic plan, laid out by the Patriots’ social media team.

Parker had been on Colin Cowherd’s national radio show a few days prior to the AFC Championship  Game, lambasted the Patriots dynasty and all but guaranteed a Kansas City victory. It was set to be “Independence Day for NFL America,” Parker said. He declared (facetiously) that if the Patriots won, he’d move to Mexico.

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The Patriots won in dramatic fashion, of course, but instead of letting the slight slide by, the Patriots took advantage of the opportunity on social media.

They mixed an ominous black-and-white, 55-second clip of Parker with colorful footage from their come-from-behind overtime victory and punctuated it with radio analyst Scott Zolak’s call of Rex Burkhead scoring the winning touchdown.

“America’s worst nightmare is back,” Zolak said.

And the Patriots social media team pounced to remind their millions of followers.

“Sorry to reign on your celebration,” read their simple caption under the post.

Such is the life of the Patriots social media team, the voice of the mega-successful organization to millions of its fans across the world.

The Patriots’ Twitter and Instagram accounts have the most followers of any team in the NFL with 4.3 million and 3.4 million, respectively. Their official Facebook page has another 7 million followers and their YouTube page has 76,000 subscribers.

All of the content spread over the various social media channels is created and managed by just five 20- and 30-somethings, one of which is a full-time intern. And this week, their work will be amplified to an even bigger audience with the Patriots set to face the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII.

Patriots head coach Bill Belichick may scoff at platforms such as “MyFace” or “Yearbook.” But the Patriots’ social media team are pros at cultivating and growing one of the biggest digital audiences in the sports world.

So what’s it like behind the scenes of such a massive social media presence?

In a word: Organized.

Cecily Faenza has worked for the Patriots since 2011, starting in the media relations department credentialing reporters and typing up postgame transcripts before becoming the team’s social media manager in 2015.

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Over the last four seasons, the Patriots’ Twitter account has tripled in size from 1.45 million followers in September 2015 when Faenza took over to its current 4.3 million. The Instagram account has gone from 1.3 million to 3.4 million followers.

“It’s super interesting because it just moves so fast,” Faenza said. “When I first started in the 2015 season it was when people were still linking to websites for video.” Now those videos are embedded in the feeds you scroll through.

What once was Faenza’s solo endeavor has grown into a still relatively modest team of five. Two years ago, Lauren Spencer graduated from an intern to a full-time member of the social team. This past year they added two more video producer positions, Mackenzie Knoop and Marquis Harper. Jordan Steward is their full-time intern. They are the voices behind every tweet, Instagram story, Facebook post and Snapchat video.

“We’ve grown in staff size but just we’re doing so much more than four years ago,” Faenza said.

“The 16-game season hasn’t changed so every year is new and you have a rhythm of it. But then you’re like ‘Oh shoot, Snapchat is a huge deal, Instagram story is a huge deal,’ so you’re constantly tackling something new within this structure of something you understand.”

A typical week (one not preceding the Super Bowl) focuses on the previous game on Monday and Tuesday before flipping to the upcoming game on Wednesday. They try to plan some content out, but there’s only so much that can be set up ahead of time.

Planning meetings are where some of their edgier ideas might come to light, like that Parker video. The Patriots relied on another (former) villain — Eagles quarterback Nick Foles, who beat the Patriots in Super Bowl LII last year — for one of their other notable posts this season.

On Dec. 23 when the Patriots clinched the AFC East by beating the Bills, there was a flurry of content to be posted once the game ended, but Faenza was among those watching the Eagles-Texans game. Minutes after the game in Foxboro ended, a late Eagles field goal sealed a Texans loss and boosted the Patriots into the No. 2 seed in the playoff field, which comes with a first-round bye.

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Faenza was ready. She had cued up a photo of Tom Brady embracing Foles with the words, “We never thought we’d say this in 2018, but…Thanks Nick Foles! #StNick”

With a smile, Faenza said, “We thought about it ahead of time.”

It might be common sense to plan out content, but before this season there were a lot less pre-planned posts. Everything was moving so fast. Now a bigger social media team requires more coordination.

“We were kind of working reactively where it was ‘Oh this team is doing this cool thing we should do something similar,’” Spencer said. “But now it’s more proactive like ‘OK, Tom is about to hit this milestone. What can we do?’ So it’s a lot more organized in that sense.”

On game day, the social team follows a routine.

A 1 p.m. game in late December, means Spencer arrives around 7:30 a.m. The first thing she’ll do is take photos of the players’ jerseys lined up in the locker room. The equipment staff has the jerseys ready by 8 a.m. so Spencer and team photographer David Silverman get their photos and then head out.

The players arrive shortly thereafter. So while Spencer is cropping and editing the locker room photos for different platforms, Knoop and Steward are positioned to get the important video of Tom Brady arriving. No matter how many times they post that video of Brady walking through tunnels of Gillette Stadium, they know fans devour it.

Steward shoots raw video of Brady on her iPhone to directly upload to the various social platforms while Knoop has a handheld camera. Her higher quality video will be used for a produced piece later in the week on Patriots.com.

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“It’s the speed of the iPhone vs. the quality of the camera and audio vs. having both,” Faenza said.

“It’s a lot of orchestration and quick decision-making.”

Once the arrivals are posted there’s a mid-morning lull. Faenza and her team reconvene on the field around 11 a.m., ready to capture players during their pregame warmups.

On this day, Steward is ushering around two Brazilian fans who won an all-access pass from a contest on the Brazilian Patriots Twitter (@patriotsbrasil).

“It’s good for international reach because they’ll have this amazing experience then go home and say, ‘Oh my gosh they’re so great,’” Spencer said. “They’ll meet (Patriots owner Robert) Kraft.”

The Brazilian account, with more than 16,000 followers, is one of four official international Twitter accounts for the team. They also have accounts in Germany (@patsdeutsch) with almost 6,000 followers and another Patriots social media account in China through the Weibo app. Those are managed by third-party agencies that are in frequent contact with Faenza.

Meanwhile, Martin Morales is part of the organization’s content team and manages the Spanish version of Patriots.com as well as the Twitter account @PatriotsEspanol, which has almost 30,000 followers.

“I don’t know where we’re at numerically internationally but we’re definitely one of the more robust presences in other countries, probably because of team success,” Spencer said. “But from a social standpoint, we try to capitalize on it because as the league starts to have more international games, it’s important to grow them.”

Once Faenza gets word Brady is headed toward the field for warm-ups, everyone gets into position for his arrival. When Jay-Z’s “Public Service Announcement” starts bellowing around Gillette Stadium (Brady’s personal warm-up music), Faenza shoots the close-up and Spencer takes the long shot of him running.

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Throughout warmups, the social team gathers, along with Silverman and media relations photo coordinator Eric Adler, pictures and videos from the sidelines. Faenza takes her photos via her iPhone horizontally while Spencer takes video with her phone vertically so it fits better in the Instagram stories and Snapchat formats. The minor details make a big difference in presentation.

During warmups Robert Kraft walks onto the field with special guests Linsday Vonn and P.K. Subban, creating more good content for the social team.

A few minutes before kickoff, Faenza and Spencer head upstairs to the press box for the game.

Each person on the social team handles every platform, but on game days, Faenza is usually the one tweeting. (Spencer usually handles most of the tweets throughout the week.) Faenza posts about scoring plays, milestones and interesting notes from the media guide. She also has TweetDeck open on her laptop, tracking @Patriots mentions and hashtags as well what the Patriots’ beat writers are saying.

Spencer spends much of the game shifting through photos and graphics, cropping, editing and watermarking them with the Patriots logo. Every NFL social team also gets help from two league employees who are on the sidelines during the games sending video clips from the field for Snapchat or Instagram stories. The pair sends their clips to Spencer who edits and posts them. Knoop is also on field during the games and sometimes helps with this as well.

Lauren Spencer (left) and Cecily Faenza at work during a game in Foxboro. (Jen McCaffrey/The Athletic)

“Lauren and I will go through, mostly Lauren, which (photos and videos) to use on Instagram and which to use in the moment,” Faenza said. “Then I’m using them and talking with our graphics company to figure out halftime graphics, final score graphics, all of those photos lined up. And then those photos line up on our website as the in-game gallery, the international agencies we work with also have access to those.”

Spencer heads down to the field shortly before the game ends while Faenza remains in the press box. Usually after a win, Spencer is on the hunt for a player she can film post-game to add to the hype.

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https://twitter.com/Patriots/status/1076953371599405056

Knoop is stationed in the press conference room for Belichick and Brady’s post-game remarks. Her feed streams onto the Patriots’ website and Twitter.

With the Patriots having just clinched the division, the social team already has pre-made graphics celebrating the 10th straight division title that are posted immediately. There are also posts about what the official championship apparel looks like. There’s little superstition in the social media business.

“I’d say the big thing people might not realize is what goes into each post,” Faenza said.

“We look at everything before it’s posted whether it’s a video or article just to make sure we know everything we’re posting,” she added. “Some stuff you know is going to travel so you read it a fourth time rather than just a third time.”

Faenza, Spencer and their team each have two phones — one personal and one professional. It allays fears of accidentally posting a personal tweet or Instagram post to millions of followers on the team’s account.

“I keep them totally separate,” Spencer said. “I’m not logged in to any on the opposite. We’ve joked about that before.”

Is there any pressure being the team’s voice to several million fans?

“Definitely when I first started and it was a million (followers), it was like ‘Wow. Here we go,’” Faenza said. “I think the big thing is you’re always living on the edge of that. Especially the funnier you try to be you’re always on the edge of – we think of all the different ways you could interpret a tweet or what it could mean or what’s going on around us. It’s a double-edged sword of power, you realize that everything you tweet matters even if it’s just the 99th tweet you’ve sent that day. Make sure you’re paying attention to everything you’re doing.

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The small size of the Patriots’ schedule, with just 16 regular-season games, seems to make every game — and the social media operation around it — feel extra important. That’s especially true this week.

“When the game is a really big deal like the Super Bowl, it’s like ‘Treat this the same way,’ and in the back of your head you’re like there’s ‘X-number of people watching,’ Faenza said. “(You) try to keep in the back of your head ‘Really don’t screw up today,’ but I think you kind of just live with that knowledge, which is good because you know this is important and don’t get too comfortable. But you kind of have to move past it too or else you’ll be re-reading your text 84 million times and not sending it.”

Another overlooked aspect of the job includes fan interaction. Despite the popularity of the team and the seemingly astronomical amount of mentions on social media, Faenza says her teams reads most of their replies, the good and the bad, even if they’re not responding to each person individually.

“We do a lot of private messaging and Jordan (Steward) manages our Facebook inbox which is just a huge customer service inbox, basically, so we’re paying attention to everything that gets said,” Faenza said.

After a game ends, depending on the time, Faenza spreads content out throughout the night or saves it for the next morning. They don’t want to oversaturate their audience, but they also recognize they are competing for users’ eyeballs and time. The key is to find what will resonate most with fans whether that’s a hype video about the win or a link to post-game analysis.

“It’s not so much that we’re competing with other NFL teams or even other Boston teams (on social media),” she said. “We’re competing with whatever someone is following in their feed. We’re competing with your nephew and Khloe Khardashian and whatever you’ve decided to follow on your Instagram, so in some cases that is the Red Sox and in some cases it’s not. We’re trying to get people to stop and look at whatever we’ve posted.”

It’s an intensely synchronized effort and this week leading up to the Super Bowl will be no different, expect there will be just a few more million people watching.

(Top of Lauren Spencer with Sony Michel: Courtesy of the New England Patriots)

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Jen McCaffrey

Jen McCaffrey is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Boston Red Sox. Prior to joining The Athletic, the Syracuse graduate spent four years as a Red Sox reporter for MassLive.com and three years as a sports reporter for the Cape Cod Times. Follow Jen on Twitter @jcmccaffrey