If you cover high school/low-level college, do you "@" the players/teams on Twitter?

I swear on my mother, I didn't embellish that much with @mydingaling_69 (no pun intended). I had a kid with a twitter handle that actually included dingaling which caused problems when he tweeted something I wanted to quote in a story.

 

Speaking of "inappropriateness" with the kids' handles and such, it's funny to look at some players' feeds. Soon-to-be college athletes, who probably have college coaches looking at the profiles, RTing posts about marijuana, sex, etc.

 

He just wanted that as his Twitter name so he could tell his friends, "All the girls in the school follow mydingaling."

 

Agreed, and the kids here also love to be mentioned.

I use real names in Tweets when possible, and wacky @usernames after the text if there's space. We also have hashtags for each sport which seem to be shared across most area papers. Those were particularly useful while searching for football scores.

 

Don't cover hs anymore, but if I did would definitely @ the players/teams. Kind of insane not to do that. How many people look at twitter vs. how many people buy the local paper. Twitter is the perfect forum for that. Can be used like a tease for the feature article.

 

I only tag the teams and usually do it during an early afternoon tweet saying I'll be at Podunk High tonight for football as they host North High. Game starts at 7 p.m. After that, I won't tag them again until I post my story later that night. Several team twitter accounts are run by the parents and coaches and will tweet live updates during games. They will retweet me if I'm there so no need to tag them more than once. As for players, I rarely do, unless they tag me in a tweet and need a response.

 

If you aren't tagging players and coaches in tweets, you are losing an opportunity to increase your readership. One re-tweet from the right person can make web hits skyrocket for a story. If you're comfortable with your story not having as wide an audience as it could, then don't tag them. If you want to try to extend readership and increase web traffic, tag them.

 

If you do tag them, know how Twitter works.

If you intend for people to actually read your tweet, don't start it with the @. It severely limits your overall reach since only people who follow both you and the tagged person will see it on the timeline. It just looks bad, too.

It's amazing how many people I run across that still don't know this simple concept.

 

They all search their names after the games anyway. Even college players. I had a college punter retweet me 5 minutes after a game ended because he searched his name. He was very excited.

 

If you're tweeting relevant info, it'll get noticed. All the tags and hashtags are just too much for me. Reeks of desperation.

 

Not if it isn't seen. That's the main purpose of the tags and hashtags.

Unless you already have thousands of followers, your tweets likely won't reach as many people as they could unless you use the tags.

 

If you really want to be noticed use hashtags with dirty words, sex acts or body parts.