The prominence of social media requires absolutely no discussion. There is not a person reading this article that needs to be told how important Facebook and Twitter are to sports, marketing and business in general.
Twitter’s appeal, in large part, is in celebrities opening a window into their life for fans to peep through. Unlike Facebook or MySpace or anything else, Twitter allows the larger-than-life folks to communicate with (as they would say) the commoners, without having to deal with that riffraff talking back.
While other sports generally discourage tweeting with Internet supporters and detractors, the UFC takes a polar opposite stance. Though the NFL hangs on what can go wrong, MMA promoters realize that the one-on-one interaction that Twitter offers is valuable at every level of the company from executives reminding consumers about events to fighters connecting with fans.
The thing is, all those executives and all those fighters are still human. Humans, by and large, are not perfect and therefore, make mistakes. As Hayley Williams, Gilbert Gottfried and Rashard Mendenhall can all attest to, one poorly thought out post on Twitter can quickly change the public’s perception of anyone.
Regardless, the UFC is always looking for publicity. A strong presence on Twitter offers them the chance for bonus headlines
Ultimately, the results have been somewhat mixed, leading many to weigh the pros and cons of the UFC’s tweeting enthusiasm. Figuring out whether or not this is a net gain for the UFC is difficult, but something worth pondering. So what, then, are the pros and cons of all this?