The bowels of Miami’s AmericanAirlines Arena are grey and
charmless, the sort of place designed to discourage lingering.
At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, two and a half hours before the Miami
Heat and Dallas Mavericks tipped off for Game 2 of the NBA
Finals, the place was thick with bored sports reporters–both the pasty, anxious writers (and that’s a
self-description) hoping for some merciful scrap of action and
the beautiful, camera-ready TV types, who were content to be
admired and wait for their cue.
Just then a lone media guy cut through the ranks, parted a black curtain and entered the glorious, shiny
center of the arena, where Dwyane Wade was warming up by
shooting long-range jumpers. The guy held up his iPhone from
the sideline and took 57 seconds of video, then tweeted it out
from @NBA: “#NBAFinals: Dwyane Wade is putting shots up
by himself on the floor right now. Game 2, 9pm/et ABC. https://
twitvid.com/MJQS5”
The NBA social media team calls this a “tune-in,” a reminder
for fans to do just that. The league has 117 million followers–once you count Twitter and Facebook followers of the league,
its 30 teams, and its players–and it’s of course impossible to
know how many tuned in because of that one tweet. But we
can see this: more than 100 people retweeted it, and one guy,
@rastastar09, even responded, “@NBA TUNING IN!”
And anyway, it wasn’t the last time the NBA would send out a tune-in that night or drive people to NBA.com, where
2.5 billion videos were viewed this season, more than double last year’s count. (Top that bored and beautiful TV reporter!)
The league has a sophisticated plan to keep
its followers engaged throughout the season–an effort that
goes into overdrive during big moments like this. So Thursday, to see how they do it, I followed the team members who’ve tweeted dozens of clips and pics and 140-character-or-less quips long before the traditional sports hacks score a single quote. I learned a few rules of their social media game. And then tried to
bury my tears as my long-beloved Miami Heat choked in the
fourth.
Here’s how they do it:
