Social media is making celebrities, star athletes more available to the public. Through a quick Tweet or Facebook post, they can easily address millions of fans and continue to build their brands. But even celebrities have issues on how to use social media effectively and one of the best example is Hank Haney v. Tiger Woods. While we chose the two characters based solely on their past relationship for marketing value, it’s easy to see how very different they are in their use of social media and in this example, Twitter.

If you look at the below, what you will see is how active Hank Haney’s Twitter is v. how inactive Tiger Wood’s Twitter. Hank tweets a lot and tweets every day. He is also extremely conversational and will review swings people upload, offer advice on drills and clubs and basically do what he does for a living via Twitter; teach golf. Haney is one of the better users of Twitter we have seen in recent years because he uses it more as a conversation device rather than a one way megaphone. Sure, he could talk about his book or send out lesson videos and packages, but instead he uses to help all golfers get a little bit better. His brand as a teacher improves.

Hank Haney Vs Tiger Woods on Twitter

Tiger Woods on the other hand does very little tweeting and very little conversation if any. His tweets are more in line with proclamations from the mountain top. While it may be true that Tiger is a very private and focused solely on golf, we believe he loses a great deal of opportunity to expand his brand and actually cut out a lot of middle men. For someone like Tiger offering pictures from practice or using Twitter to respond to reporters or even bloggers like us. It would offer an unvarnished and unfiltered access removing the media and simply allow Tiger to be Tiger. The funny thing is, if you go to his website you will see his participation on other channels, yet no promotion of these via Twitter. This is why it’s such a lost opportunity.

The point of this blog is not to show whether Hank is better than Tiger at Twitter, but to show two high profile individuals who use Twitter and how one uses it successfully and one could do much better.