For the past few months Bills cornerback Drayton Florence has been making the most of the explosion of social networking with his twitter account DraytonFlorence. Eager to interact with fans in a positive way, Florence has invited followers to ask him questions about the Bills and provided his inside perspective on the team. Now he has plans to pay his fans back with a token of appreciation.
"My new foundation advisor thought it would be a good way to kind of interact with the fans and then show a little appreciation to the ones that have been following since day one," said Florence. "Those that are Bills fans can kind of get involved and start following and we'll see how far we can spread this thing out."
Following Saturday afternoon's minicamp practice, which is open for Bills fans to attend, Florence has plans to meet with his most ardent followers to present each of them with a "surprise."
"Just a little appreciation," said Florence of what he has planned following practice. "I've played in three different cities and Buffalo has the most loyal fans by far, win or lose, bad weather, good weather, the stadium is going to be packed every week. So this is a little appreciation and me giving back to the fans that were here before I got here and those that continue to follow."
Those who follow Florence on twitter have been instructed to meet him at the scoreboard end of the stadium where he will spend some time with the fans.
"They're going to meet me at the scoreboard end after practice and I'll give each one of them a surprise," said Florence. "I'm expecting around 100 people."
Florence plans to talk directly to the fans for a while, sign some autographs and take photos. He's hoping to put a group photo on his website www.draytonflorence29.com, where he intends to announce future plans to further invite fans to positively interact directly with him.
Though his grassroots twitter effort is just getting off the ground, Florence shared some of his bigger plans with Bills training camp right around the corner.
"We want to take this all the way to the playoffs," he said. "Each time I announce one of these like in training camp with the dates that I request, each fan that comes in with my jersey is going to get a free ticket to a game. We're just going to be doing different things at different times of the year and rewarding those fans that come out."
And those that follow.
