Organizational Twitter: @ONUSports & @SpiritAirlines

Twitter is has been the most important tool to catch fire within the social media revolution over the last year. I believe that if you had asked the average organization or individual one year ago, if they would be on Twitter, the answer would likely be, no. Over the last twelve months, many users have learned how to use Twitter more effectively. Over the last week, I’ve observed two organizations that I follow and would like to offer some comments on their tweets.

As a student here at ONU, and one who knows a number of our student athletes, I follow @ONUSports. This week has been a big week, as not only students begin to wrap up our academic quarter, but also for many fall sports, they begin to enter postseasons and tournaments. Keeping followers up-to-date, @ONUSports does a nice job updating the status of award winning players, and updating tournament standings. The following are some tweets posted in the last week from @ONUSports.

Dan Otanicar earns ESPN the Magazin/CoSIDA First Team Academic All-District honors http://bit.ly/2heHHp

Men's Basketball has solid performance in 75-66 loss in exhibition game at NCAA Division I-foe Kent State http://bit.ly/24tRA2

Men's Basketball has solid performance in 75-66 loss in exhibition game at NCAA Division I-foe Kent State http://bit.ly/24tRA2

No. 6 Volleyball sweeps Mount Union in OAC Tournament Semifinals http://bit.ly/2oq0jx

No. 6 Volleyball wins fourth straight OAC Tournament Title with 3-2 win over No. 19 Heidelberg http://bit.ly/H7POA

As I look to utilize a networking opportunity in Orlando, which is quickly approaching in December, I am looking for a cheap airfare. I was told by a friend to check out Spirit Airlines. I have logged on to their website a few times, and liked what I saw. I figured with this assignment, I should see if they had a Twitter account. Sure enough they do. No later than the end of Thanksgiving break, I plan to make my plans final, and very likely that I will be making a seat reservation on Spirit Airlines. I find their tweets to be exactly what I would be looking for, as I am about to purchase a flight myself: all about saving money. Here are the tweets I read in the last week from Spirit Airlines.

Coupon clipping is cool! Why not use one when booking your flight? Spirit is offering $35 & $24 coupons*! Click here:http://bit.ly/2Wq0Yn

Take advantage of your Spirit's $24 Coupon*! Book today and save on your next flight. Hurry, this offer ends tonight.http://bit.ly/1iYCHl

Use our $35 and $24 coupons now to save big on your next flight. Find the coupon that works best for you and book now -http://bit.ly/3cs1uN

"Falling Fares" at Spirit! Watch our fares fall as we roll through autumn! Our fares are falling as low as $9* E/W

- http://bit.ly/p6FBn

Overall, I found the two organizations that I followed this past week to be very interesting to me personally, and fairly effective for their purpose. @ONUSports kept followers up-to-date as new news about our sports teams became available. @SpiritAirlines was effective in offering coupons to people searching for flights, while not bombarding with annoying tweets. Many companies can do too many in short periods of time. Spirit kept their tweets to at least twenty-four hours apart, so never read more than one a day.

Is NASCAR Opening Up?

Often considered the sport most heavily dictated by executives, NASCAR may be opening up a bit. If so, it is only a small estimate. NASCAR is at least providing an easy avenue for which to interact and communicate with fans.

Starting last week, NASCAR is going 2.0! One of my favorite blogs to read, The Daily Planet, released an article last week, discussing how NASCAR officials have expanded their offerings on the web to MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook (You will find each of the NASCAR pages linked). In addition to the article, I also obviously noted the signage on the NASCAR.com homepage (which is operated by Turner-Sports) touting the new and enhanced community features.

The development that seemed of the greatest importance, noted by The Daily Planet, was the MySpace page. Last time I used MySpace was in high school, and I deactivated my account. Instead, I am on Twitter following the official NASCAR account, in addition to the tweets posted from NASCAR_com.
Since I started studying the social media phenomena, the main idea is that everything revolves around relationships. Considered a fan friendly sport, NASCAR seems to be providing an easier, more direct line of communication for fans. After all, we the fans are what make the sport go round, or at least what I'm supposed to believe.

The first topic of conversation I noticed on the Facebook, Twitter, and NASCAR.com home page was the topic of a shift to more two-day events. For you non-NASCAR followers, the average race weekend consists of arriving at the track Thursday night, qualifying on Friday, and practice Saturday, before the race on Sunday. The thought is to condense the weekend by practicing and qualifying on Saturday and go racing on Sunday. Logistically, a two-day weekend would work wonders for a team's financial burden of travel and hotel accommodations.

My opinion aside (although I’m not opposed), the various sites lead fans to places like the Community on NASCAR.com or direct Twitter followers to comment on the Facebook page, to leave opinions and thoughts. On Tuesday, the Facebook page had 145 comments. As of Friday evening, I saw more than 560! What a great way to easily, and relatively effortlessly gain voluntary opinions.

Knowing that the stakeholders besides fans, like track-holding companies, team owners, etc, will have a greater influence over any major decisions, NASCAR has proved that they are willing to make changes to please fans and generate better competition (i.e. Double-File Restarts). Plus, any way that owners can save more money to help the cars go faster, should have support in the garage area.

Of all these advances with the social media and the sport I love, I have a couple concerns/thoughts:

1.      People take the opportunity to speak with some authority and intelligence (yes I’m aware of the NASCAR stereotypes)

2.      NASCAR continues to learn and grow with the social media trend, and establish stronger relationships

3.      Hire me! I’ll help do it!

That’s my time for the evening. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, or take any other ideas to blog about in the future.

Democratizing Control of Information

In the latest chapter reading from the book, Citizen Marketers, it discusses how the blogosphere has granted the power do distribute information, among a larger group of people, at a rapid rate due to the ease and speed of many social media technologies. As I read, I tried to highlight some of the most interesting statements and I want to offer some of my thoughts on a couple topics.

First, I think it is amazing to take the ability to find an inadequacy, fix it or offer an alternative, and be able to make money. It's the classic, "if I'd have only thought of that first" mentality. The book's example is how the Trott's were able to make blogging a more user-friendly and accessible experience through creating Movable Type. For those, who are unware, the latest version has a significant number of features. One allowing individuals or groups to create a social network. The first one that comes to mind is President Barack Obama's site, which was part of his influential social media campaigning, in the last election. Putting power in the people's hands, Obama's campaign mastered this theory. Obama's site allowed his supporters to go online, host individual rallies, encourage voting, and watch election results. These were all events that were previously organized by campaign officials that were now allowed to happen at the free will of avid supporters.

The biggest challenge in blogging and spreading the word (of yourself/company) is to gain attention and followers. It helps having a strong brand, or a celebrity-esque name. Look at Twitter, and the number of people who follow large corporations, or celebrities like Shaq and Ashton Kutcher. (Follow Me here!) Also, Citizen Marketers recommends you become a "prolific linker." I'm not sure how many links per post make you prolific, but I at least try to link terms that make the most sense to the relevance of this post.

To wrap up, I know it has been mentioned to drop this book from the reading list, but I have found myself enjoying the reading in CM, the most so far.

How do you watch your sports?

I think it is fair to say that the advances of social media has really changed many aspects of our lives. Not only do we have the ability to notify everyone (who subscribes) on Twitter, what we are doing at any particular moment, we cam share images via Flickr, or share our opinions on a blog, recently, social media has recently made its way on to my television during sporting events - NASCAR specifically.

I've always been biased towards the NASCAR on FOX coverage, because I grew up a fan of Darrell Waltrip. Also, I can't get enough of the veteran commentator, Mike Joy, lead pit reporter, Dr. Dick Berggren, and number crunching-guru of the garage-tech Larry McReynolds.

However, Kyle Petty, since stepping out of the car and into the booth, he has proved he is all about the fans. Using his Twitter account, before, during, and after the race, Kyle is always tweeting something unique going on. He also responds to questions from fans during races.

One particular moment I recall during the July race at Daytona, there were a number of wrecks. Television viewers are accustomed to getting interviews with drivers after they fall out of contention. Petty stated that he was getting lots of questions about why no drivers were being interviewed after falling out. His response was that all the teams/drivers/crews were busy repairing cars or were back out on the track, and unavailble for comments.

I can recall a number of times during races I've watched where the commentator fail to connect to the fans parts of the current storylines. Twitter, and Kyle Petty have helped bridge that gap.

In addition to the race itself, Michael Waltrip, a driver/panelist, on weekly re-cap show, This Week In NASCAR (TWIN), occasionally invites viewers to Twitter along with him during the broadcast of the show on the SPEED Channel.

It only makes me think that it won't be long before more sports commentators will take the time to learn Twitter, and utilize it during broadcasts for a more interactive experience. More-so than any single "mailbag" or trivia question has ever done.

How do you feel about making televised sporting events more interactive? I think there will be an increased quality of coverage, by letting fans ask pertinent questions, but also, not let it consume the commentators task at hand calling the game.