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Sports Social Media: How to “Get’em To Tweet You Back”

url-4Do you want “big time” athletes and sports broadcasters to Retweet you? If you go about it the wrong way, getting a Retweet can be a real pain in the rear. Most websites will tell you to engage with people by putting @Username in your message so the tweet will appear in their Interactions stream.

This will work, but in most instances your conversion rate will be low. Perhaps one out of 50 if you’re targeting active users and get lucky. But how about converting three out of 10 with the added bonus of going viral?

I know you’re not here to eat salad, so let’s get to the main course. I’m going to give you some things to think about and look for when targeting a Retweet. I’ll follow that with real world examples demonstrating how I’ve successfully applied those concepts in the past for my Fantasy Football website FantasyKnuckleheads.com.

Top Target Areas for Sparking A Retweet

  1. Capture their personal interest
  2. Catch them at the right time
  3. Make them laugh
  4. Promote their brand(s)

Example #1

In my first example, I hit three of the four top target areas when I tweeted a photo of Mark Schlereth. Mark has his own product called “Stinkin Good Green Chile”, I created a humorous photo of Mark inviting someone to try his Chile during a game. This got me a Retweet from Mark as well as several other large Broncos based twitter pages. I captured his personal interest, made him laugh (or so he said) and also promoted his brand.


I did however make a pretty good FUBAR while posting on twitpic.com, I used the incorrect Twitter handle for Mark!! Didn’t notice until the following day. No big deal, I tweeted the image URL with @markschlereth in the tweet and he replied within 24 hours. The photo didn’t go viral but did get Retweeted by several people.

Example #2

In this example I captured 1, maybe 2, of my top target areas. Dustin Keller just got his Twitter account verified (catch them at the right time) and my tweet helped him promote his personal brand and newly verified Twitter account.

Here’s his reply:


Catching someone when they’re looking to promote their personal brand or have just gotten a verified twitter account is a great time to pounce. You could target people at they go pro or land new positions at ESPN, for example.

Example #3

You might call this one an epic fail, well not really. I tweeted both Larry Fitzgerald and Troy Polamalu in this TwitPic trying to capture 2 target areas, make them laugh and promote brand. Obviously I need to work on my stand up. I figured Troy would Retweet this one because at the time his “dandruff” commercials were in full swing, no mass.


On the upside, the photo has over 1,800 views and considering it took me all of 4 minutes to post I think it’s fair to say the squeeze was worth the juice.

Remember, the fastest way to get these people to Retweet you is to promote their personal interest, humor helps a ton and an image is worth a 1,000 words. Catching people at the right time is also key, simply looking at their stream will show you when they’re “online” and active on twitter. I hope these examples spark some creative juices in your head.

Let us know what you do in the comments below and I’ll Retweet your work! Make sure to send a tweet and a follow to @SportsNetworker

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