How many Twitter followers did Brad Keselowski, aka @keselowski, gain during his on-track tweeting from the Daytona 500, when the track-drying truck fire caused a two-hour delay? The folks at Twitter put out a handy graphic to show the meteoric rise, when he added more than 100,000 new followers before the checkered flag was waved:
Here’s a chart of @keselowski‘s growth in followers 2 hours after sending this Tweet: twitter.com/#!/keselowski/… twitter.com/TwitterSports/…
— Twitter Sports (@TwitterSports) March 1, 2012
That’s what viral is all about. Anyone else doubting that Twitter spreads like wildfire? Or that it is the way sports personalities will “talk” to their fans going forward?
This is a fantastic story. The 100,000 adds for Brad Keselowski demonstrates how a single sports moment — even a notorious sports moment — can give an athlete’s handlers marketing clout they never had before. Many of this new legion of followers will never unfollow him.
As mobile sports social media matures, I anticipate that more and more athletes will be able to monetize their fan base by selling sponsored tweets, sponsored contests and e-commerce product endorsements (that directly link fans to the point of the sale).
Keselowski is better positioned than ever before to cash in on those dollars when they start to flow.
Finally, after reading this story, this is something else that really interested me: can you imagine how many follows Giants Bobby Thomson would have gained after he hit “the shot heard round the world,” or how many adds the Say Hey Kid would have after he made “The Catch” in 1954? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dK6zPbkFnE