Between March 1st and March 3rd, the
PGA Tour twitter account sent out nearly 150 tweets. If social media is
supposed to be a conversation, than this one is pretty one-sided. Many of the tweets they sent out were
informative and useful to their fans.
However, finding the information you needed was like navigating the
proverbial minefield ComTechSoldier
describes.
A few weeks ago, I was one of the more than 160,000 Twitter
followers of the PGA Tour. I
needed the info they were providing so that I could mock it in my tweets and
blog posts. However, following
them required so much effort that you really couldn’t follow anyone else. How could I keep up when there were 25
consecutive updates from the 2nd round of the Waste Management
Phoenix Open to read through?
The sad thing is, their tweets were useful. I personally wouldn’t want to follow a
golf tournament, or any sporting event, via Twitter; the web is too advanced at
this point to be tracking a live event merely with text. However, if you were so inclined, the
PGA Tour account gave a nice play-by-play as the rounds unfolded. They also provided links to their site
for videos and stories by their writers, which is an essential part of a social
media campaign.
Where they got bogged down was in repeating themselves. For instance, weather caused a delay in
the final round of the Honda Classic Sunday, and appropriately, the PGA Tour
account sent out this information.
However, they sent it out 6 times in a span of 30 minutes. Each update
was different, and they included some retweets from players who posted pictures
of the bad weather. But like any
good writer, they needed to edit themselves.
Keeping the PGA Tour’s mistakes in mind, I would move forward
on my own social media campaign on Twitter with an eye toward editing. I think there should be an upper limit
on tweets that is dependent on how much content is produced on a given day. For myself, I think tweeting a link to
a piece on my blog should only happen twice a day. The first tweet should be when the piece goes up. And then later in the day I would tweet
the link again for those who may have missed the earlier tweet.
Any other tweeting I would do during the day should center
around retweeting amusing tweets or commenting on specific stories of the
day. I don’t think Twitter should
be a sounding board for my in-progress jokes or a place to hear myself talk. There is a limited amount of time that
people can spend on my work, and I don’t want to waste it by filling them up
with junk.
At this juncture, Twitter seems like the best avenue for my
social media needs. I think it’s
easier to build a fan base and connect with those fans on Twitter. Facebook and Google + almost seem
redundant when you’re using Twitter.
And YouTube would force me to focus on an entirely different
medium. One that I’m not sure I’m
ready for. Twitter allows me to
build off the writing I’m doing on my blog, and will help me to be more focused
and succinct. Which is why I’ll
keep using just Twitter for now.
Otto,
ReplyDeleteI salute you. Thank you for the reference.
I agree with you that a lot of Twitter conversations are "one-sided" with information cast recklessly into the void. Tweetdeck helps to filter but unless hashtags are used effectively, you can't always get to the information you want. Is the PGA using hashtags to keep the play-by-play separate from some of the general announcements?
You did a good job pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the PGA's use of Twitter.
I understand how tweets get lost in the shuffle, but I'm not sure if you should send out more than one tweet with a blog link. This may wear down some of your followers.
I think your social media campaign would benefit from a "Shorts4all" page on Facebook. You could run more polls, have some interesting contests, and most important–reach a different audience. However, I do appreciate the idea of streamlining your social media campaign based on the time you have available.
I look forward to seeing your voice develop on Twitter.
Hi Otto,
ReplyDeleteYou've narrowed your approach to social media to Twitter and I think that's smart. If you're uncomfortable about delving into other forms, then stick with what you know and feel will be most effective. (Although, I still want to see your My Dinner With Tim script realized on YouTube). I think a Facebook page could be helpful, too. You can send your Tweets to FB, perhaps reaching a different audience.
Your point about Tweets getting buried in the conversation is important. I follow the Los Angeles Kings hockey club and they tweet every bit of action during games. What's the point? Can there really be that many people following the game via Twitter? I haven't put my finger on it, but there is a way in which social media gets used that seems very naive. It seems everyone is frantically tweeting because it's suppose to translate into some sort of reciprocal action. Your mission to edit the amount of tweets you send seems more sensible.