This blog is an academic exercise meant to chronicle the official Reddit account of Major League Baseball (a.k.a. “MLB”), officially known as /u/MLBOfficial, as a study in brand and fan interaction. Subsequent blog posts will largely be focused on social media marketing, as Reddit is one of the most powerful and influential social media platforms today and has a culture all its own. Paired with the fandom of MLB and baseball as a whole, /u/MLBOfficial has put in great efforts to craft a unique brand voice and fan engagement experience.

Although MLB is progressive in its use of digital media products, such as the creation of live-game video streaming platform MLB.TV in 2002, MLB’s marketing and social voices have historically been bland and uninspiring. As a family-friendly sport with a global footprint and international business interests, MLB has always been extra careful not to offend its audience (its players are good enough at doing that on their own). On the other hand, Reddit was created to be “the front page of the Internet,” and as we all know, you can’t control or censor the internet. Reddit has become the first point of contact of viral social media stories and many of the Internet’s most popular memes.

Enter /u/MLBOfficial, who wrote his first post on the community baseball subreddit, /r/baseball, on May 6, 2015 (the account author has been confirmed to be male, but also has a team of content creators). It should be noted that MLB didn’t create the subreddit, like it would for a brand pag eon Facebook, but rather, jumped in to Reddit. Initially, the account assumed the same type of voice with generalized posts such as “Let’s talk about the greatest living players.” and “Which is your favorite All-Star Game moment of all-time?,” but soon enough, the account allowed its content and comments to develop alongside the /r/baseball culture to generate interest in other MLB properties while not becoming dull. This included jokes that are Reddit and /r/baseball-centric, using memes to make fun of players, creating media to drive traffic to other platforms, or referencing legacy posts within the subreddit.

/u/MLBOfficial poking fun at /r/baseball culture.

/u/MLBOfficial took a planned, phased approach, with its first post stating “This is the official MLB account for reddit. The primary goal of this account is interact with you, the fans, and to simply talk baseball. Down the road, we plan on getting some AMAs, weekly features and other fun discussions.” Over the course of these blog posts, we will examine specific examples about how it has created goodwill with the fans while becoming an off-brand voice, while still promoting MLB’s business.