Social Media

At Game Day Communications, we have been helping clients with social media – how to use and engage their fan base. We thought Twitter Madness would be a good research project to share with our clients.

We decided to launch the sportswriter/blogger competition after we researched the men’s coaches who were using Twitter. We created a bracket for them and it was clear Coach Calipari was running away with his Social Media usage. Coach Calipari has over one million fans on Twitter and about 200,000 Facebook fans.

We also decided to take a look at the writers. I researched to find the “big guys” (ESPN, FOX, CBS, SI) then I decided to find bloggers. I found about 100 different writers that use Twitter and about 40-50 of them are specifically college basketball. I decided to edit the field to the top 32 writers/bloggers that use Twitter.

The most prominent statistic that you can't see from just looking at their account is how interactive they are. You have your ESPN tweeters and the "big guys" but then you have your Greg Doyel (CBS), Andy Glockner (SI), Peter Robert Casey and Jeff Goodman (FOX). These are four great writers you should follow who are for the most part agenda free and interactive. They do this because they love to write about basketball. You can tell the writers that care about what they do, they are the ones who tweet 900 times over two days about a couple of tournament games (Glockner).

Social Media is important. It is the future of news and sports coverage. It needs to be embraced by the writers. The ones who are embracing it now are the trend setters and as a fan I would like to thank them.

Quick list of writers worth following:
@greggdoyelcbs
@Peter_R_Casey
@aglock
@goodmanonfox
@chrisdenker
@JamesonFleming

Here is our complete Twitter Madness bracket: http://bit.ly/c5PMWZ