Tomorrow during my Sports Media class with Bill Roth, we're having Pete Moris come in and be our guest speaker about social media and what he does and how social media has such a large impact on sports in general.
So, if you had the chance to ask him any questions, what would they be? Not guaranteeing I'll get an answer, but I might try to ask a few if I see a couple that are good
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I don't have a question for Pete Moris but I am insanely jealous you get to experience Bill Roth's class. I would have killed to have that class when I was there.
I realize this doesn't help you... sorry.
No reason to apologize!
I'm lucky to be in it as a 2nd semester freshman. Only reason is because I transferred in enough credits/took Summer Academy classes where I have the prerequisite amount of credits. So I took advantage of that. Going to be a really fun class.
Mama always said if you don't have something nice to say don't say it at all.
Can we get all alligators toothebrushes?
I have the feeling this won't turn out well. I will bet a ratio of 40% real to 60% /s
Ask him if he can openly and honestly answer how often coaches DM recruits.
I heard it goes down in the DM.
Wow. I'm curious as to who tweets. There is easily a typo once a week. Also, why do they feel they have to tweet so much that he is often retweeting his own tweets, many of which aren't news. Why does he often tweet "fake comments" by former players, for example: "Tyrod Taylor says that everyone should buy their season tickets!", with a picture of Tyrod. Today, he made fun of his own typo (misspelling Sam's twitter handle) instead of fixing it. What would he say if he know that many people mute the VT football account because it is frustrating to see typos and errors. I would much rather see fewer, carefully crafted tweets than the often overkill of emojis and nonsense. Also, why don't they respond to serious complaints? Does Pete think he is above the readers, that we have nothing to offer?
I am typing from my cell phone - my apologies for the typos, but at least it isn't my job! Thanks for the opportunity to share this. I've been very, very frustrated with the account lately and lack of response from Pete and Desiree, his boss.
Mute: I don't think it means what you think it means
you don't text to voice twitter?
If it bothers you this much you should probably just not follow the Twitter account.
I don't and it still arses the hell out of me.
That makes zero sense to me.
let's just say some organization you loved was being represented by someone in a way that made the organization you love look foolish at times (sometimes downright embarrassing). Would you just stop following that person and ignore the fact that they're representing the organization you love poorly or would it upset you just a little that they consistently provided material to casual observers to paint the organization you love and everyone associated with it (yourself included) with broad strokes in any negative way?
Cuz we don't have to follow Pete Morris but he represents Hokies in general and as Hokies I think it makes perfect sense to be at least a little peeved with someone who makes us look silly or stupid.
There hasn't been anything that has just been egregious though. It's just little stuff that doesn't matter when looking at the big picture. Until something makes headlines it's not a big deal. The Twitter account could be better but you can do a lot worse than being one of the higher regarded Twitter accounts in college football.
Making a joke about an earthquake that affected peoples' lives is pretty egregious if you ask me. And I get that you can't always have perfect grammar on Twitter due to the limits but it makes us look pretty uneducated when our twitter account is consistently tweeting out poor English. To each their own, I suppose. You have your opinion and I have mine. I guess we'll just leave it at that.
Uh... According to who?
I'm guessing it's from polling data
Well in my experience I have heard only negative things from outsiders about @VT_Football. I wish I was exaggerating but it has literally been 100% negative feedback. It's embarrassing.
...I was making a joke. I don't twitter but based on TKP polling everyone either dislikes or strongly dislikes the account except for Fireman who just thinks it needs more money.
Pardon me. I thought maybe there actually was some sort of data for the popularity of twitter accounts I don't know. But my response still stands it just shouldn't have been in response to you.
I disagree. It's not like saying "if you don't like Justin Beiber's twitter, don't follow it." It's more similar to how I was told to watch what I say when interacting with fans as a Marching Virginian. If I said offensive things in uniform Dave Mckee (band director) wouldn't have told the offended party to just not listen to MVhokie69, he would have chewed my ass out, or kicked me out of the band depending on severity because what I say and do represets Virginia Tech, just like how the Twitter even more directly represents the VT brand.
This isn't an official press release. It's not in the news paper. It's Twitter, it is about as informal as can be. Your analogy doesn't fit.
Tech uses Twitter to publish press releases.
None of the complaints people have about the Twitter account relate to them though.
That's the thing. Twitter is a combination of newspaper, comic strip, tv commercial, and Jerry Springer episode. Not all that different than this site for that matter. Expecting rigid professionalism out of a Twitter account makes no sense to me. Also, THIS IS HOME, not a business office right. To each his own opinion, but I have never understood the mass hatred toward that account.
To be fair, I didn't use to understand the hate either, but over time the little things add up. While I'm not expecting "rigid professionalism" from our twitter, I do expect to see a better product than my 15 year old self could put out, which it currently reads like. For example, can we hire the Belk Bowl social media group, because they are consistently on point.
That's interesting that you like the belk account because to me I would say they are very similar. Goes to show you the differences in perception I guess.
The analogy absolutely fits. Twitter or not, it is the official account of the largest revenue sport in the institution. Words matter. My lawyer said it better than I could: HokiESQ's Comment re VT Football Twitter
I like the idea of utilizing HokiesFB as the "fun" account and VT Football as the dry, official account.
I've got to disagree with you on this one. The account is an official communication channel of the university and the football program. It should be held to a higher standard than the random 18-45 yr old trolling for likes, hearts, or re-tweets. Can it be irreverent, satirical, and funny - absolutely. Are some abbreviations or errors allowed/expected due to the character limit and the impromptu nature of the medium- sure. However, that should not excuse the account from maintaining a presence that is held to the standards and core values of the university.
With all due respect, you clearly do not understand modern social media marketing and branding.
This.
I work in the marketing and social space and while my personal twitter is a smorgasbord of misspellings, poor grammar and half-cocked rants, you better believe my client marketing is perfect. Vetted with at least one other set of eyeballs and double then triple checked before hitting send. There is literally not one good reason the VERIFIED VT_Football account should not be doing the same.
THIS
Ask why he thinks Pele would be a fan of the Hokies
What is the direction the Hokie Social media is heading? With more budget from a growing Hokies club is social media future a full time stand alone job?
Ask him if he runs his tweets by anyone before tweeting them. A little quality control.
Ask him if he would be willing to let the TKP community run the twitter account for a day/week/month/ever
It would just be day of Emma Watson gifs and kennyhokie inside jokes
I fail to see the problem here...
No problem. Carry on.
And nonstop glorious pictures of cake.
Pete Morris, is that you?
Why are there two "official" verified Virginia Tech football accounts, and if given the opportunity from Twitter, would he choose to merge them?
This is something that bothers me. I understand one is for recruiting and one is for the more general population. But re: the professionalism argument, it seems logical to me that @HokiesFB should be the one sending out emojis and memes and all that stuff while @VTFootball should be kept strictly professional. The logic behind having two accounts that operate as similarly as they currently do is lost on me.
If anything @HokiesFB is the one which is more professionally run at the moment, which is bananas to me.
I know there are tons of complaints for how Pete runs the social media platform at Tech, but I for one have no problem with it. In my opinion what he is doing is actually very strategic in expanding the VT Brand. What he is tweeting and sharing is not always for us (Virginia Tech fans that follow), but rather for people that are not associated with VT at all. That is why, IMO, you see the random tweets tagging random brands, companies, ex players in the NFL, etc. its with the hope that these entities or people retweet/share with their followers thus increasing the exposure of VT exponentially. Yes sometimes the tweets come across as childish or corny but you can't deny the fact that since he has taken over the accounts our social media following has increased dramatically.
You can knock it out of the park on Social Media without coming across as childish and corny. And really, it didn't take much for us to get a bigger following than it was getting from the past where we literally made as little effort as possible.
I'm still embarrassed by the joke this account made at the expense of the Oklahoma earthquake last year before any extent of how bad the earthquake was could be known. We got lucky that didn't devolve into an utter PR disaster. My fear is with the complete unfiltered, unedited, and unchecked nature we have with our Official Verified account, its only a matter of time before that kind of PR disaster hits.
I'm still embarrassed by the joke this account made at the expense of the Oklahoma earthquake last year
Agreed that was, and still is today, the only tweet that has been sent out under his regime that I truly thought was embarrassing and in terrible taste. That said I still think overall he actually has done a very good job of promoting and expanding the viewership/followship of VT Athletics.
So, to try and get things back on topic a little bit I guess some questions that we have would be:
And a followup "are you drunk when you post to twitter?"
To be fair, it is very hard to say whether or not a marketing campaign, voice, brand has done well or not done well without knowing the context of the business goals.
If the accounts job is to increase presence and awareness of Virginia Tech alumni who are football fans who have money to donate substantially and are between 45 - 65 year olds and who use Twitter - then Id say theyre probably doing an okay job, spelling errors/blunders aside.
If the accounts job is to increase presence of 16-20 year olds who are looking to attend Virginia Tech and a top tiered football program will influence their decision to attend such school - then they have failed.
I dont know the answer, because I dont know their goals...my guess is its not option b, at least I would hope its not option b.
Why do you constantly promote your affinity for shitty music?
Here is how I look at the job Pete Morris has done since he came to Tech.
- has social media presence increased since he took over- YES
- has media attention on not only Buzz and Beamer/Fuente increased but also Olympic sports - yes
- have the basketball and football coaches been on more national interviews on radio and TV- YES
- has the overall content improved on social media platforms ( because it goes beyond twitter for football folks)- yes
Pete may not be everything people want in a social media/twitter presence but you can't deny his work running the PR/media side of the athletic dept has improved things around Tech sports dramatically.
Now for the truth many want to deny, Pete doesn't write most of the content for the football twitter account, another staffer does, I won't list her name since she doesn't deserve the hate either, but blaming Pete for everything isn't the answer either.You don't actually think the reason Buzz Williams and Justin Fuente have been getting more national attention is because of a Twitter account, do you?
You think the only thing Pete does is run a twitter account? He handles every aspect of media for HOKIES sports from getting them on radio and tv shows to press releases to social media content across every sport Tech has. Maybe you didn't notice but Beamer in his last two years and Fuente before coaches a single game he was on TV and radio more than Beamer was before Pete came. Pete works hard to get them on shows to get that brand out there.
Except this time I am. Thanks to anonymous #sauce who corrected me. I will still defend Pete as being better than the past but thanks to some new information I too would like to see Whit move in another direction.
"Have you inquired about an internship with the handler of the Belk Bowl twitter account?"
Edit: ( The Belk Bowl has the 3 person team)They have a three person team. So unless Tech suddenly finds a bunch of millionaires who want to join the Hokie Club having a single person or team do nothing but social media isn't happening.
This is contradictory. Regardless, we've been through this before. It doesn't take that much to have a functioning twitter presence.
It's not contradictory, the other staffer has numerous other duties. Their only job isn't social media. As for a functioning twitter presence, the account has grown, has been recognized by other media and Whit Babcock a guy I trust to make quality decisions doesn't see an issue with it.
Other media = Athlon Sports.
Yea not only that. XM sports talk shows, beat writers, national sports writers have all talked about the changes and improvements Pete has brought to Tech.
Not if one of those three people does most of the writing for Twitter, but only as one aspect of many that make up her duties.
His team handles many more things than just social media. They are responsible for all methods of communications with the media and the public, including handling media inquiries and press releases, marketing for the athletics department, maintaining hokiesports.com, etc.
Its actually one guy, Miller Yoho, who has several jobs and ran the account on the side. So no, I don't think VT needs to hire three guys to do one entertaining twitter account.
Source: Link
LinkedIn: Link
Yeah the idea that three people run a twitter page for a bowl game sponsored by a company that is probably not that financially lucrative was fairly ludicrous.
Seriously social media is much much more than running a single twitter page. To think thats all a social media team does/will do is absurd. From taking video, to running twitter, instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc for every varisty sport at Tech. So yes if you want a perfect social media presence it will take a team.
That's changing the entire basis of the grievance. I understand that social media is more than running a twitter page; however, the bulk of the issue is not with the VT athletics social media team. It's literally the tweets sent out by VT football. I understand that Pete has contributed in valuable ways but the tweets from VT football are a glaring problem.
Wow I didn't know they put in for the playoff. That would be awesome.
One guy tweets but he runs a social media team, every interview with him he talks about the great people on his social media team.
Fireman, we had this debate before. I think most fans are fine with the tweet frequency. It's the content that most are frustrated with. A change in content/style does not require any additional employees, funds, resources, anything. It just takes a change of direction from the guy in charge, Pete Moris. I can't find where we talked about this last but I'll link it if I can because some articulated this much better than I can.
Read up I agree. But I also think to take the next step and set the trend in social media in college sports it will require new hires.
What trend?
To show what social media can be in the future. What we have today isn't the same as we had just a few years ago. Instead of following others and what they do, Tech should be the standard for all social media sports accounts.
Ask him what he said to Frank to give us the best Frank Beamer face of all time?
Hokie20, how'd class go? Were you able to ask any of our questions? What was Pete's response?
I'm working on finishing a paper right now -- I'll comment when I'm done with a recap from the class!
Main takeaways I took from his time talking to us.
I wasn't able to ask any of the questions that were in this thread. He took a long time presenting what he had and then Roth wanted to talk about a couple different things instead of taking a bunch of questions. Sorry! But I did still get some good stuff from the class.
1. He really isn't that great of a public speaker. He uses a lot of filler words, laughed when talking about how to handle a non-anticipated event (he used a death of a player as the example??), and rambled a lot off topic. I mostly noticed this aspect of his visit because I'm in a public speaking class right now.
2. It's not just him who runs the Twitter account. He has a team of 7 or 8 people who all contribute to accounts. While he is the "man in charge" of the @VT_Football account, he isn't the only one tweeting.
3. There was a lot of talk about the "brand" of Virginia Tech. Whether that be Ut Prosim, our dining, Hokie Stone, Corps of Cadets, etc., it sounds like the athletic department is making a big push for our brand to really get out there.
4. There's going to be another open practice to students in the spring -- this isn't much, just thought I would let other students who read TKP know.
5. He seems to understand the direction that social media is headed in. He gets that videos and pictures are basically required for any tweet to gain traction now. He talked a lot about how the Tech twitters are aiming for "fast food" material -- mostly graphics or videos that get the message across quickly and stick with the person who is scrolling through. I think this is where the not so great aspect of the Twitter account comes from.
VT is really trying to push getting their brand out (as I mentioned) and I think this is the way they think Twitter can be used to their advantage. Is it used correctly? I don't think so. But they celebrated 100K followers in the middle of the football season and they're already up to 121K today. So they're obviously doing something right.
6. He called Buzz a "completely different monster" when coming to Twitter. Most other coaches and accounts are regulated by a GA or something of the like. Buzz and his account is all him. It sounded like Pete isn't always a fan of the motivational quotes overdose, but he said that he just leaves it alone. In their meeting with all the athletic department staff earlier today, apparently Buzz talked about NASA and getting a man on the moon in relation to VT athletics. Feel free to connect the dots for me.
7. He's really happy with the momentum that our athletics are heading in, and I don't blame him. He was constantly preaching how well everyone is doing.
So many classic #Moris nuggets here.
Man. What a gift. This class sounds awesome.
I'm only 6 years removed from graduation but honestly I can remember maybe 3-4 professors. You'll remember this class forever.
Absolutely this. I'd love to take Bill Roth's class. At least I was able to be a part of Dr. Robertson's final Civil War and Reconstruction class before he retired.
Pete Moris not being thrilled with the way Buzz runs his account... Pot, have a seat, I'd like you to meet Kettle. (And Buzz isn't nearly as obnoxious.)
As far as NASA/VT athletics, I don't have all the dots, but the first flight director for NASA and creator of Mission Control, Chris Kraft, is a Virginia Tech graduate. I'm reading his autobiography, Flight: My Lift in Mission Control, right now.
Good call about Chris Kraft. We've also got Homer Hickam, who was an aerospace engineer at NASA for a long time. I just recently found out that Homer's brother, Jim, was an offensive lineman for Tech during the early 1960s.
John Grotzinger, who is the chief scientist and in charge of the Mars Curiosity Rover mission, is also a Virginia Tech graduate. We definitely have a lot of alumni who have held major positions within NASA.
Link: https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2014/05/050914-development-gaaaward2014.html
man on the moon...possible metaphor for the mountain VT sports has had to climb
To boldly go where no Hokie has gone before... Team National Championships.
Wait, wrong reference.
Wait, are we talking about NASA or Starfleet?
- macraw83, 2 hours 14 min ago