Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Hashtag #TropTrip and other Rays twitter suggestions

I follow the twitter accounts of all the Tampa Bay area baseball teams, from the majors to the minors to the college teams.

While their audiences range in size, from the Rays 167,000 twitter followers to the University of Tampa's 1,067 followers, they all share the common goal: to push information. Even the Rays secondary accounts, from the mascot's account to the Rays' community account create awareness of the brand.

But the Rays accounts don't do what the account of many of the other smaller teams do: they don't retweet fans' experience. The closest the Rays get to retweet the joy of fans is Raymond retweeting mentions about Raymond. They don't retweet fans saying "Had a great time at the Rays game", "Fun at the Trop", or any similar comments.

Maybe the Rays could create a @RaysTropTrip account to retweet fans experiences and showcase anyone having a good time at a Rays game.

(Unless they could get @RaysExperience or @TropTrip, both of which are seldom used accounts.)

The Rays could also promote the hashtag #TropTrip and suggest fans to use it as they travel to Tropicana Field or as they enjoy a game. A twitter search of the hashtag "#TropTrip" brings up two tweets without much reference and my own original idea:

Perhaps the Rays could also suggest fans tweet the time it took them to get to the ballpark. There is a bad sentiment that Tropicana Field is too far away for most folks. While traffic might be tough to navigate, the Rays and the general public could learn a lot from fans on the ground and on the road tweeting their #TropTrip. If it takes an hour and a half to get from USF's Tampa campus to Tropicana Field (as it does for me), #TropTrip will say so. If it takes 10 minutes from downtown St.Pete to Tropicana Field, #TropTrip will say that as well.

The #TropTrip hashtag could also carry on to Instagram, Foursquare, Vine, and any other social media platform.

Currently, a trip to the Trop gets a bad rap. People often call it the worst ballpark in baseball. The Rays could try to sway that opinion with the voices of their fans.