The Giro d’ Italia has taken the charge when it has come to social media. Of course there’s a Facebook page and naturally the Italian national tour has an active Twitter feed. To be fair, so does the other major tours. Here in the States our “Grand Tours” have been active on the social media front as well – some successful, others embarrassingly awful. Purely from my perception the Giro social media person has seemed to engage their fans with more frequency (and in English) in comparison to their European counterparts. All of this has paid dividends.

RAI announced the rating for the three-week event and they recorded 800 million viewers with live broadcasts in 168 countries. For those of who don’t get the RAI channels, they also streamed events live. What caught my attention was that the Giro organizers were asking from fans, via Twitter, what the pink jersey of race leadership means to them. Using the hashtag #Magliarosa the top tweets are to be printed onto the Maglia Rosa. That’s savvy thinking by race owner RCS. The Giro’s social media department/person has recognized that they need to continue the campaign and not stop because the peloton rolled into Milan. Social media is a ever growing conversation with the fans. So true to that they haven’t stopped there.

The Italian organizers just released a Giro d’ Italia 2012 promo video – and if you don’t get psyched about next May, then you really should consider watching another sport. So hats off to the Giro for making us look forward to not only their race, but to the content they contribute to the racing conversation.