#twHEATup's Success Should be Wake-Up Call

Shortly after I wrote my April 21 blog about the first-ever Miami HEAT #twHEATup, I was excited to see the social media voice of the HEAT thought it was informative enough to retweet it herself under the @MiamiHEAT Twitter account.

I also became doubly excited when I saw that of the 311 accounts the team follows, they started following me, which has led to greater interaction between myself and their staff.

Now that a week has passed since South Florida's first-ever team-sponsored tweetup, I reached out to the team to see if they would provide me with details related to the event's success.

With special thanks to Stephanie Hoyos, Internet Services Coordinator for the team, she was able to shed some light on the subject.

For starters, she said the overall response on their social networks has been great and they sold out their inventory of approximately 50 tickets for the $50.00 event, which included a seat in Section 307, a halftime meet-and-greet with the Miami HEAT dancers, and a postgame meet-and-greet with HEAT legend Tim Hardaway.  "We're very happy with the response and we're definitely planning on hosting more #twHEATup events," said Hoyos, which was music to my ears!

Hoyos was kind enough to also provide a photo of an added-value bonus that was included on the front of each envelope the #twHEATup attendees received when they arrived on Friday, April 23:

Inside the 5x7 black envelopes were passes for both meet-and-greet sessions and a Miami HEAT keychain, which was a special gift.  According to Hoyos, the teams' Twitter experts personally handed out the envelopes at the end of the first quarter, which was just in time for the halftime meet-and-greet with the HEAT dancers (and the location and time were printed on the passes).

Then at the end of the game, the #twHEATup attendees had the chance to meet Hardaway, who signed autographs and took pictures, some of which were posted by the team at their Miami Heat Facebook page.  The following picture is from that page:

The only downer, if there was one, is that this meet-and-greet took place shortly after Paul Pierce won Game 3 at the buzzer.  Despite that, it appears the people in this photo and all off the attendees absolutely had fun at the game.

Now that the HEAT have proven a fan tweetup to be a success in the South Florida sports scene and have already indicated they will absolutely do more in the future, the question hopefully isn't IF the Dolphins, Panthers and Marlins will do one, it's WHEN.