Didn't Miss a Tweet

Despite the lavish lives that athletes enjoy, many have come accustom to expressing their off-the-field personalities through their social media accounts.  Some have millions of followers, like Lebron James and Kobe Bryant.  Others are fairly tech deficient to the whole social media buzz and choose not to have such accounts on Twitter or Facebook.  There are also players like Julian Edelman, wide receiver for the New England Patriots.  He is up and coming in the "Twittersphere", with some recent success in the NFL, he has acquired a wave of followers in the past few months.  A marketing class at Emerson College in Boston is challenged every fall by their professor, David Gerzof Richard, to get in direct contact through social media with a local athlete or celebrity.  One team of students decided to pursue Edelman after checking out his Twitter activity and seeing his interaction frequency.  After some back and forth they were able to get Edelman to come to their class (below).

Edelman is evidently a hamburger connoisseur.  He openly states that he asks about good places to get a burger from time to time, but people now directly associate him with burgers.  "Do I eat burgers every day? No. But everyone thinks I eat a burger every day. So, you’ve got to be careful what you put on there because people absorb it.”

Burger Time!

Athletes that may not be as publicly recognized as others can now use social media to create an  identity for themselves that was not available ten or more years ago.  Most athletes today are embracing this opportunity to directly interact with fans or even critics.  Social media is the interaction of the future as fans and players alike have taken positively to the technology.  It somewhat eliminates the middle man of marketing and advertising and fans now don't necessarily need to be sitting court side at the game to let the opinion be felt and weigh in on the sport world.  It helps propel athletes into the spotlight faster, sometimes in good or in bad ways.  This also impacts the team in some manner.  Many marketing agencies are now hired to monitor what players put on their social media accounts so as not to deface or embarrass the player or the company they play for.