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How Twitter Is Part Of The 'Fabric' Of Sports In 2014

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This article is more than 9 years old.

A global sports bar. A telephone. A brand builder. A news aggregator.

A waste of time — depending on what college football coach you ask.

And yes, that was roughly 140 characters. Only fitting since we’re talking about Twitter.

Since its launch in early 2006, the social media platform’s current 255 million monthly users cast roughly 500 million tweets a day.

Whether you’re Jay Bilas (ESPN College Basketball Analyst), Christy Berkery (New England Patriots Social Media Manager), Rand Getlin (Yahoo! Sports Investigative Reporter & Legal Analyst) or Dr. Jimmy Sanderson (Assistant Professor at Clemson University), your underlying purpose for utilizing Twitter varies. From sharing breaking news to conducting a classroom Q&A with a Major League Baseball player to sharing unique content for your fans or consumers, Twitters’ users have the ability to customize their own timeline based on their short and long-term objectives.

Even with other channels like Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat and YouTube, Twitter clearly remains the vehicle of choice for sports, especially with fans. According to Navigate Research — a Chicago-based research, measurement and analysis company — sports fans are 67 percent more likely to use Twitter as their second-screen viewing experience compared to non-sports fans. The platform’s versatility and its concise messaging make it the industry’s ideal real-time content provider and now a built-in part of the sports world.

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By providing consistent content in a unique way, a user can slowly develop his or her own “voice,” a common description of Twitter that it’s become cliché to say in 2014, and yet, still very true.

When ESPN sports anchor John Buccigross joined the Twittersphere back in 2008, he did so as a way to say ‘thank you’ to sports fans for enabling a network like the Worldwide Leader to become what it is today.

“I feel I owe them a connection,” Buccigross said. “I like to use that small, digital pulpit that I have to be an evangelist for the sport and people of hockey. The hockey fan is drastically underserved in the U.S., and I am doing all I can to serve and to fill the cracks.”

Compared to Facebook, for example, Buccigross said that he has more “control” over Twitter whereas he felt like the former platform controlled him. Three years ago, Buccigross piloted a Twitter contest during the Stanley Cup Playoffs called #BucciOverTimeChallenge. What had been an old game that Buccigross played with his colleagues on ESPN’s NHL Tonight in the 1990s slowly transformed into a cultural event. It’s never unusual anymore to see the hashtag ‘trending’ on Twitter on any given playoff night. Just as common is hearing Buccigross mention the Twitter game on the late night SportsCenter.

Through #BucciOverTimeChallenge — which he pegged ‘North America’s Favorite Twitter Game Show’ — Buccigross has cultivated a community of loyal followers to the point where the contest is synonymous with Stanley Cup Playoffs and overtime hockey.

“I just randomly started with retweets and now it's become a fundraiser,” said Buccigross, who recently donated $40,000 to hockey-related charities through fans’ purchases of hats, t-shirts and other accessories. “I was shocked how people took to it.”

The organic rise of not only Buccigross’ contest but other Twitter initiatives certainly speaks to the influence of social media. With a substantial online presence, it doesn’t take much to create talking points either, for good or bad reasons.

ESPN’s Jay Bilas — who is widely known on Twitter for his affinity of the urban philosopher and rapper Young Jeezy — experienced that firsthand when he linked NCAA merchandise sales with college players’ numbers. His actions further escalated a conversation surrounding amateurism and athletics. Bilas’ public stance combatting the current collegiate model was not anything new at the time, but his tweets shined an even bigger spotlight on the issue, even if he had “no intention of getting any sort of response from the NCAA.”

“When (the NCAA) disabled the ‘search’ capability, a lot of media took that as an admission of wrongdoing, which I believe it was,” Bilas said. “That’s when the temperature of everything really ratcheted up. That’s when a lot of mainstream media became more interested. …You get a lot of help from the Twittersphere.

“When the NCAA shut down the ‘search’ function, a lot of followers reached out and said ‘You put in this URL in order to get around it’. I started doing it, and I tweeted that out, too. It showed the power of the medium and how fast things can move.”

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Social media managers and communications specialists commonly use the word ‘storytelling’ when describing how they share content across different platforms. Each medium allows for teams, athletic departments, brands and leagues the opportunity to distribute unique information in order to extend their story with a wider audience. The Twitter conversation pertaining to global sporting events like the Olympics or FIFA World Cup has reached another level of significance in past couple of years.

For this summer’s 32-day World Cup, 672 million tweets were sent, the highest number ever recorded for a single sporting event. At the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, fans sent out 150 million tweets during the 16-day event. Furthermore, sports programming comprised 50 percent of tweets from September 2013 until the end of the past year, according to a report from Nielsen, an information and measurement company.

You get the message — Twitter’s (insert adjective(s)).

When Lauren Teague actively started managing the PGA Tour Twitter account in 2009, not too many sports properties were using the platform to tell their story. With fewer than 1,000 followers at the time, Teague still remembers the early days of promoting the Tour and covering it from the event side. Five years later, and it’s just assumed any major property will naturally have a voice on the platform.

Teague said it’s even more imperative for the PGA Tour to produce planned, anticipated and reactionary content during tournaments because it is the only time when players are not allowed to tweet. As a result, the Tour’s digital team can steer the online narrative however it wishes.

“Twitter has always been the place we go to for live content,” said Teague, adding that fan-favorite Bubba Watson has really embraced the platform to show his personality to fans. “It’s a way to connect our fans on a deeper level to the game of golf, whether that’s in competition, direct communication with our fans through Twitter takeovers or different ways to engage in our brand.”

Similarly, Christy Berkery of the New England Patriots, who boast the league’s most Twitter followers, called it the “cornerstone of our social media presence.”

The level of thought and strategy behind each 140 characters has intensified, so much so that the Social Media Manager described the Patriots as almost having to earn the “right to market to our fans.

“Yes, sometimes there will be messages or information that we want to get out to our fans that may not be the most exciting behind-the-scenes photos, and that’s OK,” Berkery said, “but we better work every day to make sure that we’re earning the right to send those tweets by providing tons of great content that they do want.”

The occasional Twitter takeover. Q&A sessions. Various integrations with Vine and Instagram.

They all describe the enhanced creativity, which the platforms allows, besides the everyday real-time information that fans and consumers immediately crave.

Through a recent two-year stint at the University of Miami (Fla.), Chris Yandle and his communications/digital team both developed and fine-tuned its use of creative infographics following football and men’s basketball games. The creative digital content became the new box score for fans looking for easily digestible bits of information.

“Initially, (the infographics) were accepted so quickly because they were new,” said Yandle, who is now the Assistant Athletic Director for Communications/Public Relations at Georgia Tech. “It was a new way of telling a story. We all wanted to see things that were pleasing to the eye. As part of our digital branding, we wanted to offer digital content that looked good and was aesthetically pleasing. Infographics were another way to show our personality.”

Added Craig Pintens, Senior Associate Athletic Director of Marketing/Public Relations at the University of Oregon: “Twitter is just another tool in our arsenal in our quest to become 'the' national brand in college athletics. We use it as a public relations tool to tell some of the great accomplishments and stories at the University of Oregon.”

Additionally, use of the platform has been embedded by sports-focused professors into the curriculum at a growing number of universities, including with Assistant Professor Jimmy Sanderson of Clemson University. Dr. Sanderson — who teaches media and communications courses — encourages students to discuss content related to his classes using a course-specific hashtag. His forward-thinking has allowed for sports business professionals to offer their own opinions on classroom discussions. Through Twitter, Dan Wetzel (Yahoo! Sports) and Gregg Doyel (CBS Sports) have served as guest lecturers along with Seattle Mariners left fielder/first baseman Logan Morrison, who Skyped into one of Dr. Sanderson's classes last year to discuss Twitter, professional baseball, college sports and other related topics.

“Twitter is a powerful relational tool; it's real power lies in building and developing relationships,” Dr. Sanderson said.

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Rand Getlin does not “cater to the masses” when he tweets, says the Yahoo! Sports Investigative Reporter & Legal Analyst: breaking NFL news, sports agency insights, photos of high-end luxury cars and politics. Getlin’s variety of topics allows his followers to gain a sense of the individual behind the 140 characters.

“I'm into quirky things, stuff I would say I 'nerd out' on,” said Getlin, who graduated from University of Southern California Law School in 2009. “…If I don't get a tremendous amount of bounce at whatever it is that I am looking at, I don't worry too much about it. For the most part, what I try to do on Twitter, is to find things that are of interest to me.”

By providing not only breaking news but also a nuanced level of insight into certain issues — like the NCAA, which Getlin feels passionate about — he has cultivated a steady stream of followers the past six months. Looking at arguments through a different angle or with a legal perspective, Getlin aims to differentiate himself from the Twittersphere’s quarter billion other users.

And so, what used to be considered an afterthought as part of a reporter’s job description five years ago has now become “part of the fabric of the sports world,” according to Mashable sports writer, Sam Laird. If you work in sports media and journalism, like Getlin and Laird, chances are you're integrating Twitter into your everyday role as well.

“Twitter went from something that I thought would be a useful thing to know about but something I could never see myself using in any major sustained way to being something that now is super central to my work and also to my life,” Laird said.

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