Nov

21

Nine examples of sport teams using Twitter

Filed Under Social Media, Sports PR 

Below are links to the nine professional sports teams that I know use Twitter. If you know of any other official Twitter team accounts, please let me know and I will update this post.

Atlanta Thrashers

Chicago Blackhawks

Chicago Bulls

Detroit Pistons

Detroit Red Wings

Miami Heat

Memphis Grizzlies

Philadelphia 76ers

Portland Trail Blazers

After examining these nine Twitter accounts, I found a few differences as well as similarities. The ones I found to be most effective were ones with links to relevant articles about the team, notices about team signings/trades as well as promotions (essentially team press releases shortened to 140 characters), and interaction with their followers. Accounts that only broadcasted their own “stuff” without linking to non-team run blogs or websites or articles and without engaging fans didn’t seem to be as effective and the number of followers appeared to reflect that.

Twitter is a pretty new platform and sport teams have just started diving into it so I feel like a lot of it is trial and error to start off with. As Shannon Paul and Dave Wieme discussed in their interviews with me earlier this week, teams should use Twitter as a way to better engage and interact with fans. If used properly, Twitter can act as a great tactic under the community relations umbrella and provide a unique outlet to reach out to the tech-savvy fans.

Jason Peck has an interesting post up entitled “Why Teams Should Get Involved With Social Media” and it’s certainly a great read to check out. In the coming weeks, I hope to spend some time devoted to the use of social networking sites by teams to engage with fans.

Comments

4 Responses to “Nine examples of sport teams using Twitter”

  1. Christopher Byrne on November 24th, 2008 3:52 pm

    I am curious how you are defining Twitter as a “pretty new platform”? In Internet time, it might be considered fairly ancient (as it was established in 2006). Perhaps it is the teams that are only now discovering it, and its potential uses? As it stands, most teams are way behind in social networking as a tool (as are most companies).

    You might be interested in a couple of social networking blogs run by a colleague of mine:

    1. The Social Networker at http://thesocialnetworker.com/

    and

    2. The Social Geeks (a podcast site) at http://thesocialgeeks.com/

    Keep up the awesome work on this site!

  2. Christy on November 24th, 2008 6:30 pm

    Christopher - Thanks for the comment!

    You are definitely right, two years is a long time concerning the online world and that probably wasn’t the best choice. I guess what I was going for is that the popularity and usage of Twitter seems to be skyrocketing in the past year now that it is becoming a bit more mainstream instead of just having the early adopters. And yes, it does appear that teams are behind when it comes to social networking.

    Thanks for the tips on those two sites - I have added them to Google Reader.

  3. Chris Miller on November 26th, 2008 12:35 pm

    Wow, thanks for the mention. A lot of the teams are also choosing the right tool to post. From the simple web interface to SMS. We run another site that only lists tools for Twitter (should be over 180 right now). http://EverythingTwitter.com and it is sorted by category on the right.

    Thanks again for the mention and checking the site out. A new podcast is due out this week.

  4. Christy on November 29th, 2008 9:23 pm

    Thanks Chris for the comment and the link to the helpful website.

Leave a Reply