Building relationships with fans: how sports organizations used twitter as a communication tool

This study examined how NBA clubs used Twitter as a communication tool to build relationships with their public through a content analysis of 5,561 tweets on their Twitter sites. This study found that sports organizations used multiple Twitter communication tools such as hyperlinks, hashtags, public messages, and retweets, among which hashtags were most frequently utilized. There was a significant association between relationship dimensions and sports organizations’ use of communication tools. Furthermore, their use of specific communication tools of Twitter (i.e. public messages and retweets) influenced public engagement. The theoretical and practical implications of this study were also discussed.