Please vote for me in the Last Fan Standing 2010 contest.

The contest pits 64 sports bloggers against each other during the NCAA tournament. Each blogger is assigned a team in the tournament and each time the team wins, the blogger writes another article on college hoops for the Last Fan website. I’ve been assigned the #1 seeded Duke Blue Devils in the tournament.

Click here to read my first article, on 10 of the smaller teams in the tournament.

Please click here and vote for me as the best blogger in the tournament.

I need all the support I can get! Thank you!

If you’re a tweeting college hoops fan, Conference USA has a contest for you.

The Irving, Texas based college athletic conference launched its “Tweetest Fan” contest this week and fans can enter to win instant prizes and be entered in a drawing for the grand prize, an all expenses paid trip to the 2010 C-USA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments in Tulsa, Oklahoma in March.

C-USA staffers will tweet trivia questions and other interactive challenges during the contest, which lasts for “several weeks.” Fans will tweet their answers to win prizes and enter the drawing for the grand prize. C-USA says fans can enter multiple times for a greater chance at the grand prize.

Follow @ConferenceUSA1 on Twitter to get started! Good luck everyone!

Peter Robert Casey (@Peter_R_Casey) was the first media credentialed micro-blogger in college basketball history. Labeled a “pioneer” for altering the composition of St. John’s press row, Peter’s story of social media success was featured in the New York Times, and on the pages of ESPN.com, Sports Illustrated, Mashable, and AOL’s Switched.

Both a student of the game and the business surrounding it, Peter enjoys writing about the interplay of basketball, social media, and marketing. His work has appeared on the websites of ESPN The Magazine, SLAMonline, and Bounce Magazine. He blogs at the Huffington Post and PeterRobertCasey.com.

Sportsin140.com recently sat down with Peter to discuss his new position covering St. John’s basketball and his assessment of the sports industry on Twitter.

What is your current position and how did you come to be credentialed to cover St. John’s hoops this season?

I’m starting a boutique sports marketing agency with 5 other partners in early 2010–SmashLife, LLC. We’re focusing on mobile marketing, social media activation and monetization and sponsorship generation.

Mark Fratto, Sports Information Director at St. John’s, hatched the idea of credentialing my Twitter feed back in mid-August. He had the vision, creativity and courage to make it happen. I was honored by the opportunity and immediately seized it.

What advice can you give other aspiring journalists or “superfans” interested in covering a team in a similar way? Do you think your position and responsibilities will become the norm as we move into 2010?

Great question. I covered this topic recently on Darren Rowse’s site, Twitip: “Tweet Your Way to Press Row.” The four pieces of advice I shared were:

• Listen: Monitor the online conversation; study community norms; find out who the influencers are; and know who’s following you.

• Focus: Focus on building trust, relationships, and influence, not followers. Focus on being helpful, and creating practical, value-added content. Focus on one sport or one team, and own it.

• Go off Twitter: As valuable as Twitter is, 140 character messages cannot replace the authority of a well-positioned, content-driven blog, vlog, or podcast. Long form media separates the desirous from the dabblers, and allows a publisher to hone and test their chops.

• Make the ask: If your local college or professional sports team hasn’t approached you yet, it may be time to make the ask; but, only after you’ve listened intensely; established trust and productive relationships; focused on being a valuable and caring member of your Twitter community; shared helpful content and contacts; and built a well-recognized and respected, easy-to-find personal brand across various social channels.

I hope to see more bloggers and tweeters on press row in 2010 and I think we will. After St. John’s contacted me, there was interest from the Northeast Conference, Madison Square Garden (for collegiate tournaments), and the NBA. I think that’s an indication that media relations professionals are open to the idea.

You’ve built a network of more than 55,000 followers in only a few short months on Twitter. How did you do this?

I’ve been extremely active, and I’ve tried to add as much value as I can to my niche community. It doesn’t hurt to have a strong blog, Facebook, and LinkedIn presence. Integration and cross-promoting your content are also vital to growing your network.

Do you believe there is a difference between a personal brand and a traditional brand? In what ways does Twitter and other social media sites make the two comparable or different?

In Seth Godin’s words, a brand, whether personal or traditional, is a “promise of value over time.” If you agree with this definition like I do, than it’s hard to extract any large differences between a personal and traditional brand. Humans, products, and organizations all possess brand attributes, and all should have a unique value proposition.

Social media are the tools and platforms we use to share (and sometimes deliver) our brand’s promise and converse with consumers. In that regard, I don’t think these channels make a traditional and personal brand comparable or different. They’re simply tools that we (you and I, and brand managers) can leverage to establish trust in a brand, build and engage a community, and connect with like-minded people.

In the past we’ve seen some teams and even college athletic conferences ban Twitter from the press box. These decisions have generally been met with much criticism. In many ways your arrangement with St. John’s is the exact opposite of these examples. What are your thoughts on the pros and cons of using Twitter to cover a team?

Banning Twitter is a shortsighted approach to protect corporate interests. In fact, I think it’s counterintuitive. If more people are having conversations about your team, particularly if the sentiment is positive, it will increase brand awareness, provoke more people to tune in on TV/Radio/online, and drive ticket sales, sponsorship value and multimedia subscriptions.

The pros of Twitter team coverage are enormous: real-time content distribution and feedback, increased awareness (of events, games, and coverage), and building a community of engaged and loyal fans.

The only con that stands out is the potential to say or do something damaging to your brand or team’s brand. I advise that people treat Twitter like they would a radio or TV interview. If you wouldn’t say it on the radio or TV, don’t say it on Twitter. It’s that simple.

There are ton of graduate assistants in athletic departments across the country, and influential bloggers/tweeters that would jump at the opportunity to cover a team via Twitter. It’s only a matter of time before it becomes more accepted.

Who are some of your favorite athletes and sports related people to follow on Twitter?

I enjoy following Keno Davis, Shaquille O’Neal, Bill Simmons, Gary Parrish, Andy Katz, Mike DeCourcey and Seth Davis, among others.

What do you foresee in terms of the future of sports marketing on Twitter?

I see wider Twitter adoption from the sports marketing community, more experimentation and understanding, and hopefully more goal-aligned strategies to using the service. The larger brands must become more interactive, authentic and transparent in their efforts. It’s important to show a human-side of your brand. Sports marketers must understand that they no longer control the message. Everyone has a voice on Twitter.

My friend Megan Hueter from Women Talk Sports informed me that this evening at 8 PM EDT the University of Minnesota will host–and stream online–a panel discussion on the impact of social media on women’s sports.

The discussion, entitled “Facing Off Over Facebook: The Impact of Social Media on Women’s Sports,” features Penn State University Associate Professor of Journalism and Associate Director of the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism Marie Hardin, Minneapolis Star Tribune sportswriter Rachel Blount and three-time US Olympic gold medalist hockey player Angela Ruggiero.

Here’s a description of the topic from the University of Minnesota website:

Over the past 30 years, scholars have documented numerous ways in which traditional sport media marginalize and sexualize female athletes. Into this vast—and influential— media landscape appears the recent and exponential explosion of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Will this technological paradigm shift challenge or reproduce the ways in which female athletes are traditionally portrayed in mainstream sport media? Will the unprecedented popularity of social media—and the alternative “ways of knowing” it provides to traditional media—fundamentally alter how we view women’s sports? Panelists with diverse experiences and perspectives will “face off” and take on these important and largely unexplored questions as we move into the Age of New Media.

Click here to watch a live stream of the discussion tonight on the University of Minnesota website. An archive of the broadcast will likely be available in a few days.

It has been a whirlwind couple of days for the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference, the SEC.

On Sunday, St. Petersburg Times reporter Michael Kruse wrote an article detailing the SEC’s new social media policy. Kruse wrote that this new policy placed “increasingly stringent limits” on how conference schools could use social media. The real outrage, Kruse wrote, was that the policy seemingly governed fan behavior at SEC stadiums as well.

Kruse wrote that fans were prohibited from “updating Twitter feeds…posting [photos] on Facebook and Flickr…and taking videos and putting them on YouTube.” In short, the policy prohibited fans from using social media while watching SEC games.

Word spread quickly through Twitter and other sites after the popular social networking blog Mashable picked up the story on Monday. Fans were outraged.

This afternoon the SEC released a revised policy. The policy states:

No Bearer may produce or disseminate in any form a “real-time” description or transmission of
the Event (i) for commercial or business use, or (ii) in any manner that constitutes, or is intended
to provide or is promoted or marketed as, a substitute for radio, television or video coverage of
such Event. 

Personal messages and updates of scores or other brief descriptions of the
competition throughout the Event are acceptable. If the SEC deems that a Bearer is producing a
commercial or real-time description of the Event, the SEC reserves the right to pursue all
available remedies against the Bearer.

This means that fans are indeed allowed to post photos online and tweet during games. The policy does prohibit fans from posting or streaming videos of game action during the game but most fans will be happy they can continue to use their favorite social media sites during games.

SEC Associate Commissioner of Media Relations Charles Bloom clarified the revised statement in an interview with Kathleen Hessert of Charlotte based Sports Media Challenge this afternoon. He said:

“The intent of the revised policy is not to inhibit social media inside our stadiums with the exception of trying to protect our video rights as they pertain to our television and media partners. Someone in the stadium can enter Twitter feeds or Facebook entries and photographs, but the game footage video is something we will try to protect.”

Bloom answered questions about the intent of the original policy and how fan reaction shaped the revised policy. Check out the Sports Media Challenge blog for the full interview.

This incident raises several interesting questions about sports and social media. A few questions to ponder:

• What can we learn from the story of the SEC and social media?
• How much of a role did fan reaction play in the revised policy?
• Do you think this will continue to be an issue for sports organizations? Why or why not?
• How do you think teams and organizations will enact social media policies in the future?

What do you think of the situation? Have your say in the comments!