Earlier this year an undrafted Canadian Football League prospect received an NFL contract via a YouTube clip. Offensive tackle Joel Reinders was signed by the Cleveland Browns after team management had seen his highlight clips via YouTube uploaded via his agent. According to this article, Reinders was contacted by three NFL teams after his videos were uploaded. The agent put together the YouTube videos instead of supplying teams with actual VHS footage. Riley is taking a different approach. He is trying to capture interest of scouts and team management before they ask for game and workout footage.

I couldn’t find Philip via a Facebook search or simple searches on other social media outlets.

I feel Philip have better results using image ads in a site-targeted instead of using text ads run on the content network. If he didn’t generate any visits via the ads by NFL scouts, he’d at least get quite a bit of buzz in the sports community if the campaign was targeted correctly. There is no phone number on the website; just a contact form to fill out promising a response within 48 hours.

I’m interested in keeping track of his success with this approach and will be looking for his name on an NFL roster this Fall. Has anyone come across any other athletes running social media or online marketing campaigns in order to get a contract? If you are an NFL or CFL GM or scout visit Phil’s website to contact him.

Thumbnail Photo:Wilder Graves Penfield (1891-1976) while a football player at Princeton University.

Recently, a better approach to find and communicate with others who share your same interests has emerged: Twitter. This web-based mass-communication application enables you to have conversations with multiple people whether they share your interests or are simply interesting in their own right. Even if you do not want to openly communicate with strangers, you are not forced to aggressively engage people in conversation. Twitter enables you to follow people that interest you and just watch the conversations unfold between them and the people they connect with.

Twitter forces you to communicate in 140 characters or less, but you can also share links to longer blog posts, news items, or websites or anything else on the web. Barack Obama used Twitter to organize his supporters and keep people informed about what was happening in his bid for the president. Twitter enabled his supporters to organize and was a key element of the door-to-door canvassing.

To use Twitter simply sign up for an account and get a username. The process is easy and only takes a few minutes. You should also select a picture of yourself so people can attach a face to a username.

Now that you have created an account you need to start finding people to follow. One great method is to input your email account into the interface and Twitter will show you if people you already know are using the service. Use the Twitter search tool to find people who are talking about topics that you want to follow. If you sell Apple hardware, do a search for terms such as “MacBook”, “APPLE”, and other terms like these. This will enable you to find an audience that is relevant to your ecommerce goals.

To expand your list even more, try searching for other topics that might interest you. I enjoy videogames and am working on a book about the history of sports videogames, so I searched for a number of relevant terms and then followed other people who enjoy similar things. This has allowed me to join in on conversations with my target audience: sports videogame enthusiasts. As I have gotten to know these people through our Twitter conversations, I have been able to talk to them about ideas for my book, and even get some feedback on some of my chapters. I know that once I release my book, I will have a built-in audience that is not only interested in my work, but has also participated in its creation.

Once you start following people, you can begin to see their conversations and whom they are conversing with. Start following people you find your Twitter followers are talking with. One thing to keep in mind; whatever you post will be viewable by everyone unless you send a direct message to an individual user.

Be very cautious of just sending out sale offers for your website. Many companies that have tried this approach have failed and are shunned by Twitter users. Smart companies will actually engage Twitter users in conversations and learn what they want. This enables them to market themselves better and gain loyal customers. It is ok to send out occasional sales offers, but the real benefit is giving your company a personality and being able to find a highly relevant audience in which to engage.

Are we all one-dimensional? I also write a hockey blog, love reading, videogames, graphic design, indie rock and travel and try to follow a number of different people who tweet about those topics. I don’t want to list all of my interests in my bio as I’m attempting to brand myself (yes, I know how THAT sounds).

So, before you block someone who might not seem to be interested in what you tweet about, give him or her a chance. Sure there are tons of spammers out there, but quite a few aren’t. Look at the most recent tweets of a person to see if they actually are looking to engage with you instead of just their bio.

If a company wants to establish itself on Twitter, the marketers (or PR dept or social media marketers) need to be prepared to receive complaints and questions along with positive messages. A Twitter user will feel that if he sends a message to the brand’s Twitter account that it is the same thing as sending an email, filling out a contact form or calling a customer service number. If a message goes without a response it is the same as a consumer being ignored by one of those contact methods.

Tony may not have any control over shipping issues, but when I sent him a message with an issue I had, he directed me to the right department and told me to follow-up with him if I did not get a response. I have heard that JetBlue, Starbucks, WholeFoods and Comcast do a pretty decent job at responding to issues as well.

When I had an issue with another company who was using Twitter, my message went without a response, yet the company representative continued to send out messages during the hours around my message. While I do not expect the person manning the Twitter account for the company to solve my issue, I do expect a response because they represent the company. Even a canned response to a direct message or @ reply is better than no reply at all.

As Twitter usage grows, we will see more and more consumers turn to Twitter first before turning to a company website. Tweets spread fast through Twitter through messages being re-tweeted and damage can be done to a company’s brand quickly if issues are not remedied.