The sports industry might be one of the biggest industries to use social media. Typically, you don’t see many sport teams or sport organizations using blogs; however, they use Twitter and Facebook like it’s going out of style. Now, that’s not to say there aren’t thousands of “professional” sport blogs out their but just looking at teams and leagues specifically it’s all about Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is really the sports industry’s go to outlet. But, do they use good practices when using Twitter? Well, it depends on what your definition of good is.
One practice that the sports industry excels at is the “Keep it controversial” portion. This is from Blogging Best Practices provided to our class from Dr. Myers. If you look at team’s or leagues Twitter accounts you won’t see many controversial topics or posts; however, all you need to do is look at almost any professional athletes page and you hit the controversial jackpot. I would highly recommend checking out complex.com’s top 50 most controversial tweets in sports history. It is humorous, sad, and disgusting. Prepare yourself for several emotions. http://www.complex.com/sports/2013/06/the-50-most-controversial-tweets-in-sports-history/ Obviously, these athletes went a little overboard on the controversial side. However, you can’t say they didn’t create a buzz.
Itbusinessedge.com has a list of nine rules for Tweets. One of them is keep it short. On Twitter, you are limited to 140 characters. This doesn’t seem like much but when rolling through your twitter feed, people easily lose interest in long drawn out Tweets. In the sports industry, I have noticed that the longer the Tweet the bigger the controversy. So it ties back into the previous portion. Keep it short and maybe it won’t be so controversial that you commit career suicide. http://www.itbusinessedge.com/slideshows/show.aspx?c=94507&slide=4
“Provide a call to action” is another point made in our notes. This is basically encouraging whoever reads your post to go and do something, whether it’s a comment or just to visit a site. Athletes and sports figures are amazing at doing this. Typically their posts get many comments or likes. I have mentioned Mark Cuban before and he makes everyone really want to comment on his statuses especially when he goes after NBA officiating. It’s even more enticing to comment when he makes it a regular habit to comment back to his followers. I have also mentioned UFC president, Dana White, several times. His tweets are often about fight decisions, referees, athletic commissions and so on. He has mentioned several times that he wants fans to write letters to the governor of Nevada in order to help with the athletic commission. I have a strong feeling that many people do so. He is also like Cuban in that he responds to several followers’ comments. However, don’t make him mad or he will call you out over Twitter. The man is passionate about his company and sport, and apparently Tweeting.
Photo Credit: http://prommanow.com/2012/06/10/pacquiao-loss-shocks-boxing-world-arum-and-mayweather-sr-react/
I feel that our course and materials easily found online can really help to make blogs and posts better. As far as the sports industry, they seem to be doing pretty much be practicing all of them and some of them a little too much!
Nic's 