Monday, July 20, 2009

Which Islanders Would You Like to Tweet on Twiiter?

The Washington Capitals’ Alexander Ovechkin does it. Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban does it too.

Patrik Elias, The New York Rangers, Martin Havlat, Kelly Hrudey, Beat Writers (example of two: Tarik El-Bashir, Anthony SanFilippo) and even Stan Fischler use Twitter.

Countless teams across the four major North American sports league do it.

From my estimates, the Washington Capitals do it best in the sporting-sphere. Aside from Ovechkin, they have three members of their PR staff Tweeting individually about the Caps, they also have a Twitter account for their media staff as a whole. That’s separate from their website’s Twitter account. And both their two major beat writers Tweet too. Maybe it’s borderline excessive, but if you’re a Caps fan, you can get all of the Twitter updates you can handle. Oh, Ted Leonsis -- The Caps’ owner -- Tweets as well.

To my knowledge, the Islanders are not currently on Twitter. There was a brief experiment with Bruno Gervais and Brendan Witt in 2007-08, but it was short lived.

So, which Islanders would you follow on Twitter?

I personally would love to read Garth Snow’s quick wit, but I doubt he would be up for it (but I would loved to be proved wrong!)

More realistically, I wouldn’t mind seeing team president Chris Dey Tweet about the plethora of off-ice activities of the team. Maybe John Tavares can bring us through the trials and tribulations of his rookie season. 

It would be cool to get a scout to Tweet through his journeys, but that would result in a breach of competitive edge. Understandable.

If I realized what a great outreach tool Twitter was last season, I would have tried to Tweet the team’s travel experiences (editor’s note: I was responsible for the on-site travel coordination of the Islanders last season).

Twitter can be tied into a team’s website, beefing up the quantity and timeliness of news updates. The Thrashers have their website coordinator Ben Wright not only take care of their website and write a blog, but quickly throw updates about the team and the website on his Twitter account.

A lot of teams are using their website departments to promote their website through Twitter. It’s easy to see when they Tweet about a new story on their website or to add extra content. And providing extra editorial content is becoming increasingly important as team’s website are becoming more of a marketing tool as oppose to a means to provide editorial content. Which is in their right.

So back to the original premise, which Islanders would you like to start using Twitter and how would you like the team to use it?

Comment Below.

3 comments:

  1. Corey-

    While I would love to see JT...I think Rick DiPietro would be great with everything he has gone through and Dougie Weight would bring great insight as well being a gray beard on a young team.

    What about Ryan Jankowski? Would love that.

    mm

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  2. I dont twit, have not twittered, whatever you want to call it. Honestly, Id be more interested in reading blog entries and informal interviews. Im in the minority however, it seems that twitter is the new black.

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  3. Kyle Okposo is quite gregarious amongst friends so he could be interesting. Jack Hillen would be another or a bruiser's perspective like Tim Jackman perhaps.

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