If you anticipate producing an emotional reaction in your audience, be prepared to meet them on their terms, and on the platforms they use to vent their frustrations and gloat over their successes.

Twitter is a huge avenue for football fans. Six of the top ten tweeted sports events of 2015 were football games, and Super Bowl XLIX was the top-tweeted event of all television programming in 2015, and the most tweeted-about sports event of all time.

So, it makes sense that football fans would take to Twitter to express their outrage at the recent relocation of the St. Louis Rams, inspiring viral hashtags such as #KroenkeComplaints and #staySTL.

It also would have made sense for the NFL and Rams owner Stan Kroenke to meet their audience on their own playing field online. Instead, officials resorted to a “duck and hide” strategy that cost them the opportunity to build stronger rapport with fans and control the conversation around its sensitive relocation decision.

Read the full story here: http://www.odwyerpr.com/story/public/6242/2016-01-29/how-nfl-ignored-twitter-audiences.html