A Blaze of Glory

Phoenix Suns

Number of Tweets: 53.9 K
Number of Followers: 484 K

The Suns experienced periodic success throughout the first 30 years of their history, but more recently, they are known for their rise to prominence in the mid-to-late 2000s with Steve Nash as their star. What makes this franchise so intriguing is their unique fan culture, starting with their mascot. The Suns Gorilla is revered as one of the best, if not the best, mascots in all of sports. Coupled with the quirky yet devoted fan base, and a franchise that is always kind of "around," they are presented with an interesting situation for use of social media.

When I checked the page a few days ago, their cover photo was a striking picture of their iconic mascot, and I thought, "Perfect!" Now, it features some cheerleaders, loosing some uniqueness. An immediate element of praise is their actual account name, which features the hashtag "#WeArePHX." By looking at the amount of tweets for the account, it is apparent that they are extremely active on this platform. Scrolling through the feed, you will find a variety of creative and interesting content, as well as occasional direct retweets of fan accounts. Overall, the team uses their Twitter a lot and effectively, and represents the franchise well.

Average Score: 4.5
Aesthetics: 4.5
The account is full of the team's vibrant colors, featuring a very nice profile picture promoting the #WeArePHX campaign. Although the cover picture of the cheerleaders is a great one, half a point lost because I'd love to see the Gorilla back and featured.
Useful/Informative Content: 4.5
The feed is full of tons of different content, including vines, coverage of outreach events like their #FutureSmart field trip, pictures, articles, tons of retweets, and score updates. There are also video highlights, player updates, and pictures of fans supporting the team. Half a point lost for, if nothing else, too much content.
Creativity: 5
There are a litany of vines and even some memes in the feed, as well as very creative emoji use to replace words such as "video," "sun," and "statistics." There are also gifs and appealing visual aids to posts.
Engagement: 4
The account retweets a lot of organizations, and occasionally retweets fans. Also, featuring a hashtag campaign in the account name and profile is about as far as you can commit a page to promote engagement. It does not appear that the account ever responds directly to fan tweets, so a point is lost there.