Twitter Associate Partnerships Manager for U.S. Sports Leagues & Teams David Herman (@TwitterSports) has quickly made his presence felt in the world of social media, joining Twitter in January ’16 less than a year after graduating from Michigan. He said, “Coming out of school, I definitely wanted to do something in sports, so I kept my search pretty broad -- tech companies, social media companies were always on the radar.” Twitter has a wide array of sports partners who either live stream games or produce original content for the platform. But it is also the interaction among brands that excites him. Herman cited the example of QSR Wendy’s poking fun at the Warriors, only to have their Bay Area neighbor, the A’s, come to their defense. Herman said of similar interactions, “That’s what makes us so unique and special, and I hope our partners get involved in that conversation and extend the reach of that brand.”
Driving people to live sports partnership content:
We work real close with our live team to get that content but also make sure it’s discoverable. We feel that marriage of the live conversation of a Twitter timeline and live content is an intriguing and exciting opportunity for fans. We like to pair those together for a really strong organic conversation around our live events and the video to support it. It’s how we work with our partners when we have live events. We know we have a live event coming up on Twitter, but how do we generate more conversation around it?
Different partners, different strategies:
It’s not that the strategy is changing, but it’s more of an extension of what we are already working on with them on Twitter. Whether that is the NFL, where we have an existing relationship with live highlights and other programming. General conversation is organic to the NFL. The live show only enhances that.
Lessons from live streaming:
The biggest lesson that I come away with is in such a complicated space, experimenting with live content on different platforms is so important. Our partners realize whatever live content they have, it’s worth experimenting with and trying out.
Thoughts on Amazon’s NFL live stream:
The stream, from a consumer standpoint, looked great. But it’s hard to say in general of any comparison. We’ll give it a full-season go and see what a full season looks like.
Teaching brands to better use Twitter:
It’s something I work on daily. It starts with data, understanding our partner’s account. Every account’s followers act differently. One piece of content that works well for one account is not necessarily going to work well for a different account. And really understanding the unique characteristics of one follower base and understanding how they are engaging and interacting with that content.
Working with athletes, teams on verifying accounts:
Verification is also the question of the day. Verification is held as part of our support team. They have a series of guidelines that they follow. We work closely with our partners to ensure that they understand the guidelines in place, how to submit, how to reach out to us and also work with us to make sure the accounts that should be verified are verified. It’s always a tricky question. The guidelines are kept internal by the support team. They ultimately make the final decision on all account verifications.
The benefits of 280 characters:
The biggest piece with this is, it’s an experiment still. As we mention in our blog, we want everyone to be able to express themselves on Twitter. Part of that is engaging with longer character limits, ensuring that everyone in different languages has the ability to express in a similar manner. We are really excited to try this out, see how it performs, see how our users react to it and move on from there.
Twitter’s goals on other platforms:
Part of our brand marketing goal is to continue to push Twitter as a brand and not just as a singular platform. Our goal on our Instagram platform is to show what’s happening on Twitter and push folks back into the Twitter platform to understand what’s happening, when it’s happening to show Twitter is happening in those big moments.
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