More than ever before, social media has made it incredibly easy to engage in March Madness. The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament started yesterday with the play-in games. And with that, March Madness is officially underway. I love this time of year and to recognize our friends we've rolled out a prize giveaway. Ours is just one of many ways businesses are celebrating College Basketball and the excitement of March Madness.
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Articles are being posted everywhere describing in great detail the time we spend watching games, attending parties and shirking our duties at work. ABC reports that “March Madness wastes less office time than daydreaming.” And the Detroit Free Press published “Tips for managing March Madness at work” advocating that it's okay to let “March Madness invade the workplace, as long as it doesn't disrupt productivity.” Here at The Friedman Group we're all about the tournament and I'm just hoping to get a couple hours of work in every day until the second week in April when it's all over.
College basketball fans around the world have found social media to be a way they can keep up with their favorite teams. And when they can't watch the games live, they can keep up with the action just by looking at their smartphone and checking their favorite social network. Here's some ways you can stay engaged with the tournament while remaining mobile.
No longer do we need to print and carry our bracket around with us to keep it updated. An app like Pocketbracket helps you stay up to date with all the scores and allows you to create your own bracket which is then updated after the completion of every game. The ESPN Bracket Bound 2013 app will give you behind the scenes info, news alerts and video highlights. You can even enter their bracket challenge game and complete up to 10 different brackets.
Android users have access to a variety of different apps including ESPN ScoreCenter. ScoreCenter will give you real time scores and all the stats you need. And iPhone and Android users can watch all the games from their smartphone or tablet at NCAA March Madness Live.
You're going to find Facebook pages dedicated to March Madness and Pinterest boards for the visual amongst us.
Interested in filling out a bracket or hosting your own competition? There are many options to choose from including the CapitalOne Bracket Challenge, the Coke Zero Bracket Challenge, and the CBS Bracket Challenge, just to name a few.
Twitter is going to be buzzing with March Madness info and millions will be using and following the #MarchMadness, #ESPN, #CBSsports and #NCAA hashtags to keep up with everything they can. For some of the best tournament information, I'd suggest you have a look at @MarchMadnessTV the official home of March Madness TV, TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV.
Some of my other favorite people to follow on Twitter are:
- CBS Sports.com Senior Basketball Writer and host of SirusXM's Inside College Basketball Jeff Goodman @GoodmanCBS. Maybe the best reason to follow Goodman this year is because he lost a bet and national columnist for CBS, Gary Parish, @GaryParrishCBS gets to pick his daily Twitter avatar. This could be good!
- Being a student of history and a fan of Duke basketball I follow @dukeblueplanet to keep up with everything Blue Devil.
- I can't mention Duke basketball without mentioning another one of my favorite teams, the Kansas Jayhawks. Follow Kansas Basketball at @KU_Hoops and “Rock Chalk Jayhawks!”
- Jay Bilas is an ESPN Analyst, former Duke player and President of Hair Club for Men. Follow him at @JayBilas to get his take on the tournament as well as his daily rap lyric.
- Rob Dauster @RobDauster is the Head Writer for College Basketball Talk and always has some great insight to share.
- ESPN.com Senior Writer Andy Katz @ESPNAndyKatz covers college basketball for ESPN and ESPN.com while populating his Twitter stream with the day's breaking news, trivia and his own analysis.
- Are you interested in the smaller conferences? Looking for the next upset pick in your bracket challenge? Check out The Mid-Majority @midmajority for news from “The other 24 conferences.”
- College basketball reporter/analyst/author for Sports Illustrated and CBS Sports Seth Davis @SethDavisHoops believes “Everyone is entitled to my opinion.”
- Need some serious stats on your favorite team? Check out Sports Illustrated and SI.com writer Luke Winn @lukewinn. The guy is a statistics machine!
- While we're talking about statistics gurus, check out Ken Pomeroy @kenpomeroy for team metrics and statistical analysis you're not likely to find elsewhere.
By no means is this an exhaustive list of March Madness social media sites. It's just some of my personal favorites. I'd love to hear from you in the comments below! Tell me who you follow on any of the social networks to get your March Madness fix.
