Sports marketing guru Russell Scibetti’s “four Cs of Twitter”

Sports marketing guru Russell Scibetti writes about what he calls “the four Cs of Twitter,” or key elements every Twitter user, athlete, team or otherwise, needs to remember to get the most out of Twitter. While I won’t reprint his entire post, I’d like to focus on the one element that I consider important than all others: conversation. Russell writes:

3.  Conversation: Twitter was designed on the concept of following other people’s updates and being able to respond back and engage with your Twitter friends. Simply pushing a message down to followers without conversing with them will quickly get tuned out. Hopefully if you post something interesting, you will get a few replies back. When that happens, reply back to those people and start a dialogue.  Others will see what is happening and join the conversation. Now your followers aren’t just reading about you, they are engaging with you. Also, if someone follows your account, follow them back. Even if you’re not actively reading their posts, they’ll appreciate the reciprocity and be more interested in looking for your updates.

He’s absolutely right. Twitter is all about communicating with other people. The site is one big conversation and if you’re not talking to your followers and learning more about them, you’re missing the point entirely.

To put this into the context of sports, the most successful and impressive sports franchises on Twitter stand out because they engage their fans in a dialogue. I’ve seen all kinds of interesting ideas on Twitter, such as holding giveaways or asking for fan feedback, and the best organizations engage their followers and fans repeatedly. Remember: Twitter is not a one way street. If you put time and effort into developing relationships with your followers and those around you, you’ll enjoy a much better experience.