What’s a twittering sports fan to do?
As most of you know, or at least anyone who knows me or has followed me on twitter, I’m a huge sports fan. In particular Oregon State football is my passion. I have season tickets, my outside of work wardrobe in the fall is predominantly orange and black, and I get passionate about the ins and outs of the Beavers season, as well as other happenings around the college football world.
While this is who I am, and it’s not something I’m ashamed of, it has made me wonder how I should be tweeting during the football season. You see, I follow a few different groups of people on twitter. The largest groups of people I follow on twitter are my friends, the Seattle (and general) tech community, and Oregon State football fans. From the months of January until August my tweets are generally a mix of tech, sports, Seattle happenings, general life happenings, etc. but come September through December the balance of my tweets gets very skewed with Beavers football this, random Thursday night football game this, fantasy football the other thing. However, I also am interacting with many college football fans through the same medium, which has been alot of fun.
I know twitter isn’t about numbers, but I do like the fact that it allows me to interact with people who I don’t know that well. It allows me to keep a pulse on what is happening in different social circles and all together different areas of life. I don’t know who all follows me, but I do know it’s alot of people who don’t care about Oregon State football. They might find my tweets interesting from January – August, but I’m guessing I annoy them during any Saturday in the fall where I’m spouting off tweets every 5 minutes about this play or that call. While the same people who I share sports tweets with, probably don’t find the happenings of the Seattle tech scene very interesting in the football off-season. Do they unfollow me because of this? Some of them do. Will they re-follow me in January? Probably not without a reason.
So what’s the solution to make sure that I maintain an interesting tweet stream, show who I am, yet not overwhelm people with subjects that they don’t care about? There are lists to break up who I want to see, but no lists to break up who I want to see my tweets. Should I start a second twitter account for sports obsessed @otis and keep my main twitter handle for the more reasonable, well rounded @otis? Have any of you experienced similar issues about one of your passions overtaking your online presence where you want people to still know you’re more well rounded than that? If so, any suggestions for maintaining a balance online lifestyle?
2 Comments
About Otis
I live in Seattle, Washington. I am passionate about working with and interacting with others. My work experience includes marketing, account management, and sales.
I am a huge sports fan who on top of cheering for my favorite teams (Go Beavs!) also appreciates coaching strategy, as well as the marketing behind teams, players, and events.
Personally, I enjoys exploring new cities and areas (particularly small towns) and getting outside and playing.
Otis likes football so Otis should talk and tweet about football. Or anything else for that matter. Don’t start a different twitter account unless it’s something like @superoregonstatefan69 and you have a lot of time and content to maintain it. I’m sure you have lots to say, but its a bitch managing multiple twitters if you don’t have too. I think you should just keep it real with your @otis.
Thanks Jaime. It’s that I typically have a filter when I’m talking to different groups of people (This group likes talking sports, this group doesn’t like talking sports, etc.). Twitter doesn’t really allow a social filter because you’re broadcasting one to many.
Thanks for the advice on managing multiple accounts. Not what I wanted to do, but also hate overloading people with messages they don’t care about.