This is a guest post by Anthony Alsop. Anthony is a blogger and consultant at sportspiel.com.au. He has worked previously in both the IT and Sport sectors. Anthony is from Melbourne, Australia was was recently named the sporting capital of the world and he has consulted with sporting organisations both in Australia and in the United States. You can find him on Twitter @anthonyalsop or via email anthony@sportspiel.com.au
Since social media started to gain popularity in sports around 2008, we have seen the same question asked to leagues and teams “Do you have a social media policy for your players?”. Do teams tell players what they can and can’t tweet? Until now, we weren’t really sure.
There has been players fined for criticising the catering of training camp, and last years NBA and NFL guidelines on when players can tweet, but never have we seen a policy on what to tweet. Taken from this Mashable article, New York Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis tells us how the Jets handle it with their players:
There are certain things both the NFL and the Jets try and prep you on with how to use Twitter. Some people still say whatever they want and that gets you in trouble sometimes … There’s also some people just don’t want to interact with fans and at first I wasn’t even on Twitter. But I started seeing how it was progressing and people were showing it to me so I got into it. I was missing out.
Thanks to John Shumate @JSHU06 we found out one way the Jets try to implement a policy with their players.
It’s interesting to note that their first point is “Verify Your Account”, as their own star quarterback Mark Sanchez is on Twitter, and he has not been verified. It’s easier said than done to get an account verified as Twitter are notoriously picky as to who they verify and there is no public knowledge as to how they truly give out verified accounts.
With 9 boxes on the wall and titles like “Do It”, “Do Not”, “Great Tweets” and others, the Jets are laying out simple and effective guidelines for their players to follow.
What do you think they might be saying?
