Can Social Media Help Michael Vick?

Man what a hot button topic. I personal think if he wasn’t Michael Vick, He never would have seen the inside of a prision cell. His fame made him a martyr for the cause. They striped him of his title, yanked his money and locked him away, but I digress…

Social media can be good for a rep or bad, it just depends how it’s used. I don’t think MV the person needs SM right now. He needs to pick up the pieces, be happy to be free, and repair the relationship in his life in person. SM could be way too over bearing in this case… my two cents.

mashable.com – There was a time when Michael Vick was one of the most popular athletes on the planet. Of course, today sees Vick in a far different circumstance, as the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback was released from federal prison (and will finish his 23-month sentence under house arrest) and awaits a job making $10/hour in construction.

For now, Vick’s football career is in doubt, as he remains suspended by the NFL, and signing the athlete would be a huge PR risk for any team. But Vick is already taking steps to try and rebuild his image – in addition to his humble blue collar job, today it was announced that Vick will be working with The Humane Society to help stop dogfighting.

Read the full story at mashable.com.

NFL and Social Media

brandweek.com – Each April, the National Football League holds the spring Draft, an annual event during which it recruits new players (mainly from colleges) to join its teams. In the past, this selection process was an “institutional event,” where football fans knew the drill and creating buzz around the event was not as necessary. In the age of Twitter, Facebook and mobile technology, however, the NFL is changing up its game. This year, the League is aggressively using social media to promote the two-day Draft, which takes place April 25-26. NFL Online general manager Laura Goldberg spoke with Brandweek about the shift online, how it’s able to better engage fans, and what the NFL is doing differently with this year’s Draft. Excerpts from her conversation are below:

Brandweek: The NFL is leveraging social media—perhaps more so than ever—in its 74th Draft. Why so?
Laura Goldberg: I would call it fan engagement. The fans are incredibly engaged in the Draft and all things NFL. Frankly, they want more and more information. They want to know immediately which [team] is picking which player—whether they are sitting in front of their TV on a Saturday afternoon or taking their kids to the park or need to go to a baseball game, they want to be there. The fans are so passionate about the NFL and about their teams and what’s going on that they want to be able to talk about it. They want to be able to interact with personnel and players and that conversation is happening all around the Web, and a lot of that also happens [outside of] NFL.com, but the idea of engaging with social media is to broaden that conversation.
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