Barstool Sports’ Effective Social Media Strategy during Covid-19

When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, many companies realized they had to change up how they presented themselves online to communicate and reassure their audience appropriately. The company Barstool Sports had a creative way to effectively produce content and also follow the quarantine restrictions that arose from Covid-19 in their own unique way.

One of their strategies was having employees send in weekly videos of what they have been up to during quarantine, which provided some comedic relief and a way for their audience to relate with them during this time of uncertainty. They would post these weekly updates on their YouTube channel along with their other shows in which the hosts would have to creatively come up with ways to keep the shows running, mainly by utilizing Zoom. This strategy ties in with Alex Josephson’s blog post of Brand communications in times of crisis, where Barstool Sports knows their brand and how to appropriately communicate to their audience. Their audience is there for the sports entertainment and the comedic shows that come from Barstool Sports, so the company was going to come out with content to the best of their ability, while also following the restrictions set in place.

Another effective strategy that Barstool used is trying their hand in cause marketing as explained in Pratik Dholakiya’s blog 4 Ways Brands can use social media appropriately during Covid-19. Barstool realized that small businesses were starting to lose a lot of money due to less business so they started the Barstool Fund where supporters can donate money to help small businesses. The Founder of Barstool, Dave Portnoy, would post updates on Twitter FaceTiming small business owners to let them know that they gathered enough funds to support them and used the #BarstoolFund. So far, the campaign has raised over $36,000,000 for small businesses. They also created a page that lists every single business that they have helped out to show how impactful the campaign has been.