Pro Athletes Marketing Themselves on Twitter

Apr282009By admin

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By this time, most of us are aware how great of a marketing tool Twitter can be for your company, website, product, and/or services. It’s a great way to reach a wide range of people. Most professional athletes are already millionaires, so why are so many of them using Twitter to market themselves? You would be surprised what a little bit of micro blogging can do for an all-star.

Twitter is a great way to stay in touch and communicate with your fans. It is one of the only forums, if not the only, where you and your fans can actually interact with each other. Interactions can come in the form of @replies, direct messages, and retweets. For example, if you go to Shaq’s Twitter, he does his best at responding to a lot of the people who send him @messages. There are even instances when Shaq of the Phoenix Suns and Charlie Villanueva of the Milwaukee Bucks tweeted during halftime. Needless to say that their respective coaches weren’t thrilled, but it is a great way to keep fans and spectators involved. As Charlie Villanueva states “What’s the difference between a half-time tweet and half-time interview, I am still focused on the game.” Luckily for both of them, they both won their games.

Most of these Athletes have personal websites that are pushed through their Twitter accounts. Its genius; they have thousands if not millions of fans who are driven to their personal site. Most of these sites offer player merchandise, newsletters, and even opportunities to sign up for their personal basketball camps (for a nice profit of course). Twitter also offers these athletes a chance at showcasing their personality aside from how they perform athletically. If they create their persona properly, it can lead to them being a larger than life figure, and why not use one of the largest mediums to expose this. The result of this can be a wider fan base, which can even lead to a team offering a player a higher contract and incentives when it comes time for them to be a free agent. If fans want to buy tickets to watch someone that they follow on Twitter, then you can’t argue with the results. For example, Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizards became one of the most famous bloggers. He is a great player, but many will argue that his online fame was one of the aspects that led him to get such a high contract once he hit fee agency. Many people in Washington felt connected to him not only as a basketball player, but he was showing his true character and personality through his blog, and the fans fell in love with it. He is a great example of how one can create their persona and display their personality to attain a wider fan base.

Sometimes it can be hard to find your favorite athletes on Twitter, so here is a list of some of your favorites. They might not all follow you back, but a lot of them have some pretty good tweets, and if you are a fan, you might even get some interaction.

Shaq, Tony Hawk, Paul Pierce, Dwight Howard, Lance Armstrong, Kyle Petty, Lebron James, Ryan Newman, Robby Gordon, Andy Murray, Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, Charlie Villanueva, Baron Davis, Jason Richardson, Kerry Rhodes, Tiger Woods, Chris Bosh, Eli Manning, Shaun White, Barry Zito, CC Sabathia, Chris Cooley, Warrick Dunn, Steven Jackson (Rams), Shawne Merriman, Randy Moss, TO, Derek Fisher, Steve Nash, Andrew Bogut