What makes March Madness such a great event is how it attracts both the hard-core fan as well as people who don’t usually watch college basketball.
Millions of brackets have been filled out, and people in offices across this country follow their favorite teams on their computers, tablets and smart phones.
CBS, Turner Sports and the NCAA are fully aware of how social media has become such an important part of how fans interact during the tournament. They have gone to unprecedented lengths to make sure that the fans’ interactive experience is a good one.
Michael Adamson of Turner Sports Interactive discussed their ambitious plans.
How is Twitter used during the tournament?
Adamson » “We have created Twitter handles and feeds for all 68 teams in the tournament, as well as a dedicated March Madness feed. We also have one for the tournament itself. This will allow fans to be involved with interacting with fans of their team or talk smack to fans on another team. You can access the feeds at NCAA.com. We will have our broadcast teams and analysts tweeting from all the games and our game producers will be sent some of the best of the tweets that they can include in the broadcast.”
What about Facebook and other social media?
Adamson » “We have a Facebook page that people can post to which again you can access through the NCAA.com site. There will be plenty of fun questions and posts by our broadcasters. But we have something very special and that is on the NCAA.com site you will be able to take a clip from a live game and instantly post it to your Facebook feed and share it with others. So if a fan sees a great play that they want to share with others then we make it simple. Also, we will be keeping track of the tweets and the Facebook sharing and each day we will post the top 10 schools that have the biggest social media following.”
Examiner columnist Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this!
