Tweet in haste; repent at leisure

As a quick surf around our company website will tell you, the core of our business is helping athletes to understand the media and to use it to their advantage. 

As you can imagine, our virtual office is always buzzing when yet another story emerges of an sportsperson coming a cropper by tweeting first and thinking second. These case studies instantly get absorbed into the athlete media workshops that we we run for organisations like Tennis Australia, British Fencing and Tennis Europe so that we can use them constructively to help sportspeople understand that their Twitter account should be handled with care. 

There have been several high-profile examples of this recently in football - notably Ashley Cole’s now notorious description of the Football Association as a “#bunchoft**ts”. His England squad-mate Ryan Bertrand also got himself into the dangerous cycle of reaction and retraction when he tweeted an angry response to suggestions that he was missing England duty because of a sore throat rather than something more serious. 

Having worked closely with athletes and seen first-hand how much distraction, stress and - in some cases - distress these media hiccups can cause, our initial reaction is always somewhat sympathetic. Of course all athletes are responsible for what they say and do in the public domain but those who have missed out on the sort of media workshops that we run can sometimes find themselves exposed in the big, wide, media world without a real understanding of what is expected of them.

Sportspeople making ill-advised comments and paying the consquences is not a social media phenomenon, but the advent of these intimate, instant forms of communication means that the line between what is said in private and what is said in public is getting harder for athletes to define. 

If our media sessions have a message, it’s that sportspeople - just like politicians, actors and anyone with a significant profile - must understand the difference between their public persona and their private self. That is not to say that they must create a facade or be somehow ‘two-faced’; instead it means presenting themselves in the best possible light. This is important for attracting, representing and keep sponsors; for promoting their sport and for acting as a role model to young sports fans. 

Some athletes are more comfortable than others with being in a public eye but these days it is an inescapable part of the job of being a professional sportsperson. That’s why organisations which take a proactive approach to media training tend to save themselves and their athletes a lot of trouble further down the track. By preparing sportspeople for life in the public eye, they are investing in a long-term safeguard for the reputation of their sport. No media/PR team at a governing body or management company wants to have to deal with the fall-out from an athlete saying or tweeting something ill-advised. 

Some might say that the difference between thinking something (or saying it to a close friend) and tweeting or speaking about it to a journalist should be obvious. Surely it’s a matter of common sense? That may be true if, like most non-athletes, you have been in a workplace or been through the experience of saying something rash to your boss but that is not the world of young sportspeople. If they have been training and competing from a young age, most have not ever worked 9-5 or attended school regularly. Their time is often spent around coaches and other athletes, sometimes in a cosseted world which revolves around them and their sport and does not necessary help them develop an understanding of how the outside world might see them. 

It can, therefore, come as a shock when they find themselves and what they say being discussed and judged by that outside world but such shocks can be avoided with a few short sessions and a bit of expert advice ahead of time. Organisations which prepare their athletes for life in the public eye might well be saving themselves from having to prepare for an an #epicfail later on.

If you want to discuss our media workshops further, drop us an email at info@theemiliagroup.com and let's talk about how we can help you or your athletes.

Playing the social tennis game

Tennis isn't the only sport we work in but it certainly keeps us busy. Few sports are as genuinely global, boast as many recognisable personalities, are played as consistently throughout the year or have as many major competitions in the course of a season.

The four Grand Slams and team formats like Davis Cup and Fed Cup create peaks in interest around the ongoing ITF Pro-Circuit, the WTA and the ATP Tours, while wheelchair tennis and the ITF Junior circuit take the sport to different interest groups and across a wide age-range. To add to all this excitement are stand-alone events like the Boodles, which is held every June as a taster tournament for Wimbledon and for which The Emilia Group provides media and social media management.

We also manage media and sponsorship for Britain's No.1 tennis player Elena Baltacha, who has a busy year ahead not just with a full schedule of international events but with a likely spot representing tennis at the Olympic Games. Elena is very active in social media and enjoys interacting and engaging with tennis fans via Twitter and Facebook, something that we help her manage with strategic advice and hands-on help.

Facebook and Twitter both enjoy a natural synergy with tennis because a global sport needs a global platform. Tennis has strong visuals, which is great for Facebook as well as You Tube, recognisable stars and manages to combine hard-core athletic prowess with grace and elegance - plus it helps that tournaments are generally played in glamorous locations.

Twitter, meanwhile, is a wonderful platform for athletes to showcase their personalities and engage with fans in a way which feels intimate for fans but safe and controllable for the sportsperson. Tennis players in the past were often criticised for being robotic and characterless but nobody who has read Caroline Wozniacki teasing boyfriend Rory McIlroy via Twitter or seen Novak Djokovic tweeting pictures of his dog Pierre could legitimately agree. Tennis fans feel closer their heroes than ever before thanks to Twitter, which has a positive commercial impact for sponsors who choose to activate player product endorsements through social media.

It's not just players and sponsors who can benefit but all sorts of tennis brands. Our client the International Tennis Federation (ITF), the governing body for the world game, understands the synergy between tennis and social media and has brought us in to support its communications team when it comes to delivering effective engagement through Twitter and Facebook. We manage the social media platforums for international team competitions Davis Cup and Fed Cup (as well as ITF Pro Circuit and the ITF Juniors Facebook pages) and recently completed back-to-back weekends making sure that each tie, play-off and player was talked about and promoted via social media platforms.

Social media may be far more economical to resource than other PR or promotional activities but it asks you to pay for it in time, by demanding constant attention and consistent updating and reaction - hence the need in this case to bring in specialist help. In a competition like Davis Cup, which has 64 countries competing and 24 zonal ties happening in one weekend, keeping up with the flow of information and news can be quite a challenge.

It means long hours, working in shifts and managing your time with care but most importantly, staying true to your strategy for promoting the brand through social media. It's easy to lose sight of that - in the race to be reactive, we had to stay focused on being pro-active as well. It was worth the effort, for both competitions enjoyed healthy growth through social media and we expect that trend to continue, with huge potential for growth. After all, we have seen enough to say with some certainty that tennis and social media really are the perfect match.