Going Social with the Jamie Farr Toledo Classic
I once sold lemonade to Jamie Farr. Or, I tried to.
I grew up across the street from Highland Meadows Golf Course, which—if you know anything about Toledo—has long been the home of the Jamie Farr Toledo Classic. It was a tradition of my childhood that every summer for one week, LPGA players and fans took over my neighborhood to have fun and raise money for local children’s charities.
Being a social kid looking to raise some funds myself, I set up a lemonade stand at the end of my street directly across from Highland Meadows. I wouldn’t say it drew crowds, but it did ok—even if the legendary Toledoan never stopped by.
So for me, summer and the tournament go hand in hand. Which is why I was thrilled when the tournament organizers engaged Hanson to develop their social media this year.
It’s exciting to see the LPGA embrace social media. Caddies are wearing Twitter handles on their bibs, and many of the players now have thousands of Twitter followers. So the cool people at the Jamie Farr Toledo Classic recognized an opportunity to connect with younger fans and supporters. That’s where we came in.
Our social team helped create Facebook and Twitter accounts, and we’ve been having a blast updating followers with the latest news and answering their questions. We’ll be continuing to cover the event online all week. You can share your tweets, too, using the official hashtag #JamieFarr2012.
We also introduced some other fun ways to get involved at the tournament. At the gala event tonight, we’re setting up a tweet wall. At the celebrity pro-am on Wednesday, my colleague Zak Jasinski will be the first “tweeting standard-bearer,” live-tweeting the event. And we tagged every hole of the course on FourSquare. Who wants to be mayor of hole 6?
We’re big on community at Hanson, so providing social media support to the Jamie Farr Toledo Classic has been right up our alley. It’s a great sport, a great group of people and a great cause. If you’re local, come on out to the green and say hi—or tweet us!
