The Cincinnati Bengals social media misstep

In today’s sports world, social media is quickly emerging as one of the most popular tools in which to create fan/athlete interaction.  Over the past few months, we’ve seen players use Facebook to sell playoff tickets (Amar’e Stoudemire), promote events (Hines Ward, Rajon Rondo, etc.) or just general back and forth banter with fans.  Twitter has seen similar usage; event promotion, fan interaction, and even contact signings and re-signings (Kevin Durant and Lebron James).

Love it or hate it, social media is married to the world of sports.

That makes the Cincinnati Bengals oversight all that more disappointing.

The Bengals signed former Bills receiver Terrell Owens to a contract on July 28th.  Searching the Bengals site, Owens’ name appears in 32 search results over the last 15 days; more than 2 times a day.

Search a little more and you’ll discover that the Bengals have a page dedicated to following the blogs and twitter profiles of the various Bengals players utilizing those forms of social media.  Noticeably absent?

Terrell Eldorado Owens.

Presently, Terrell Owens has his own website (terrellowens.com), another website dedicated strictly to selling T.O. t-shirts (totees.com), a facebook fan page, and a twitter account with over 400,000 followers.  To say he’s rooted in the world of new media is an understatement to say the least.

And yet he’s absent from the Bengals social media page.

Sure, the mistake certainly isn’t the end of the world.  But, with social media’s emerging importance, and when the Bengals’ personnel and local and national media made such a big to-do about Owens arrival, wouldn’t it behoove the Bengals to have up-to-date information about Owens and his social media platforms on the Bengals’ site?  Especially when its likely the site has seen an increase in visitors since Owens’ signing…

Who knows, maybe some of those new Bengals website visitors were interested in checking out T.O.’s site, or following him on Twitter?  Maybe learning more about T.O. leads them to purchase a T.O. jersey (side note: yes, 3 different T.O. jersey variations are plastered on the front page of the Bengals shop) or some other Bengals apparel?

Of course, although I disagree, some would argue that it does nothing at all.

Regardless, if you’ve taken the time to create a page for various athlete social media accounts, adding the accounts of one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent player on your team certainly couldn’t hurt.

Tags: Cincinnati Bengals, social media, Terrell Owens

Category: Football