Palm Beach Post high school sports writer Jeff Greer is not only active on Twitter and Facebook, he takes full advantage of a wide spectrum of social media by being heavily involved in blogging, reader feedback and video.
His use of Twitter varies. He tweets recruiting news, announcing reported scholarship offers to high school football and basketball players. He live-tweets sporting events, from the Miami Heat and Florida Marlins to high school softball. I interacts with his followers by asking questions such as, “Name your top five NBA players of all-time.” He’s also been known to post the occasional joke, such as this lighthearted photo.
On The Post’s PBGametime Facebook page, he and his fellow high school sports writer post photos, links to stories that don’t come through the feeds and interact with users. The page has 1,995 fans and counting.
Other examples:
Tiger Woods, whether we like it or not, is the most popular golfer in the world. When he entered his first Honda Classic this March, Greer followed him. Literally. He went hole-by-hole, step-by-step, ranging from 10 to 200 feet from Tiger, tweeting his every move and blogging every hole. The blog was wildly popular, gaining more than 2,000 page views each day that Greer posted.
Greer did these running blogs while still doing the Tiger Tracker – not sure how his phone handled it:
- Inside the ropes: Day 3 at the Honda Classic
- Inside the ropes: The sights and sounds from the Honda Classic
When he wasn’t in Tiger’s pocket or annihilating the Honda Classic’s delicious media dinner spread, Greer was following the rest of the tournament, posting photos and commentary from around the tournament, which has become extremely popular for fans and non-fans alike.
And here are a few of his post-game blog posts, which have become a fan favorite:
- Game Rewind: Thoughts on the Glades Central-American Heritage Classic
- What changed the game and other observations from the Glades Central sideline: There’s no team like Glades Central. Look the school up on Wikipedia. It has produced the most NFL players per capita of any high school in America. And the players are as entertaining as they come, both on and off the field. Not only are they good, but the Raiders provide the kind of motivation needed to write lengthy post-game blogs at 2 a.m. on a Friday night. These are great chances for Greer to go deeper into a game that the quickly written and rushed game story that we need for print.
This is blogging that happens when Greer’s mind wanders:
- Inside the EA Sports’ NCAA Football ’12 ratings for area players
- Area coaches take you inside Glades Central-American Heritage
- A Florida high school football plus-three playoff? Why not?: Nothing worse than a blogger gone mad, right? These are three posts that give Post readers something to think about – whether it’s inside-the-lines football analysis or fun video-game studies that get people talking.
Then there are the PBGametime videos, the weekly high school football videos that preview the week’s upcoming games. Greer and his partner write the script Monday nights and film the show on Tuesday mornings. Their costumes and lines are their own creations, and they have a ton of fun doing it. These videos became so popular, they eventually brought the demise of our Game of the Week videos, which were previously quite popular for our high school football fans. Let’s just say this: Last year’s season finale involved Greer, a cheerleading uniform, pom poms and a busy intersection.
