Whilst a simple and fairly basic tactic, it’s one rarely seen in football stadiums are clubs struggle to properly integrate their online activity into the football stadium. We’ve long been advocates of the “Connected Stadium” model that advocates using technology to not only encourage social media engagement within the stadium, but also pulling in the external fanbase who follow the match via social media into the matchday experience.

Obviously there’s the usual challenges of ensuring the right technology is used by the club as well as making sure that content is properly moderated, but this is fantastic to see arguably a lower profile club (Albeit Southampton have been excellent in the Premier League this season) not scared to invest in the strategy.

The benefit of this is undoubtedly that it should encourage fans at the stadium to tweet the official accounts, thereby improving engagement and potentially giving the club some further data capture. Secondly, the initiative also shows the club being innovative with technology and undoubtedly fits with the clubs ambitions to position the brand as a serious top tier Premier League team. Thirdly, this again an excellent idea for engaging with fans and giving them  real reason to engage with the clubs social media presence.

Earlier in the season, Queens Park Rangers announced they would be advertising match specific hashtags on the home dugout in a bid to encourage fans to use Twitter to share their thoughts and photos about the game.

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Hoops fans have been asked to tweet in their questions to the manager on the #AskHarry hashtag and throughout today, he will respond via the @OfficialQPR Twitter account. Whilst Twitter Q&As are incredibly common among clubs, it’s good to see a club willing to integrate their manager into their activity. Managers on Twitter are incredibly rare, and to the best of our knowledge the only major football manager currently using Twitter is Celtic’s Neil Lennon.

Undoubtedly, younger and ambitious footballers are probably more motivated to be on Social Media as they look to not just make their own opinions about the game known, but also start to build a media profile for life after football. Managers meanwhile have either been “too busy” to take to Twitter or have harbored a cautious skepticism for a platform that regularly gets player sin trouble and into the back pages. For QPR however, they see the move as a refreshing way of opening up a dialogue with their fan base and capitalising on a time where there’s likely to be less criticism towards the manager.

QPR Multi-Media officer, Adam Hulme, told Digital-Football.com,

“At QPR we are always looking for new and innovative ways to engage and communicate with our fans through the club’s official Social Media channels. Many fans will only be able to hear Harry Redknapp’s thoughts and opinions by watching our live press conferences – streamed live via @OfficialQPR – or small snippets on TV, but without really having their ‘own’ questions answered.

It’s rare that football managers take time out to engage with their fans through Social Media. As Harry isn’t on Twitter, we thought we’d do the next best thing…#AskHarry!”

The move shows how Social Media is increasingly becoming a more and more influential consideration for not just marketing and engagement strategies, but also with press issues.

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Using the hashtag #bar8iscoming, the team at Birmingham City have been recruiting Social Media savvy fans to help cover the launch of the new fanzone by reviewing the new facilities over Social Media.

Head of Media & Comms at Birmingham City, Andy Walker, told Digital-Football.com exclusively,

“The idea behind the concept is to allow a selection of fans privileged access to an event at the club and encourage them to share their live thoughts via social media with the ultimate aim being that this conversation reaches a far wider and more influential audience. We’ll flag up the Twitter handles of those chosen accounts via the club’s official feed beforehand to encourage fans to join their debate thus further adding to that ‘VIP experience’.

Fans sharing thoughts with fellow fans has the potential to be far more influential than the standard club message. In simple terms, we want supporters to replicate the sort of conversation they’d have over a pint in the pub via social media.”

Birmingham City expect this to be the first of many other events where they are actively looking to incorporate their fans into the clubs comms strategy. Andy Walker added,

“As a football club, we’re always looking to trigger healthy social media conversation amongst our supporter base but we accept that this doesn’t always come off the back of our official platforms.

The ‘Social Media Socialites’ concept is one that is being introduced ahead of this week’s opening of the new Bar 8 Foster’s Fanzone here at St. Andrew’s and is an idea that we’ll be looking to use on other occasions across the course of the season.”

This is a fantastic tactic used by the Championship team and undoubtedly one that many other clubs will try to replicate in the coming months.

The simplicity and cost effectiveness of the fan outreach strategy not only means it’s a feasible strategy for football clubs to undertake, but also it shows that clubs are willing to be more transparent and open with their fan base. Birmingham City clearly understand that the messages of their fans are always going to be more credible and engaging than that of the club – so by openly leveraging their fans, they expect to amplify their marketing strategy as well as form some strong bonds with influential fans on Social Media.

Birmingham City are well known already for Social Media innovation having revealed how they use Social Media to educate players in mock press conferences and as the first adopter of Football Social Media monitoring platform Social Pundit in the UK.

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AS Roma’s 3-1 victory over the MLS All-Star side was refereed by Hilario Grajeda who can be seen in the supporting video wearing a headset to record the game and provide fans with amazing content. Whilst it might not be “behind-the-scenes” it certainly gives football fans another view of how fast paced a football match can be, as well as an insight into just how moany footballers are on the pitch.

Ref Cam isn’t new to the US, with the Women’s NBA already having trialled the concept to great success. Unfortunately for us, FIFA doesn’t allow this type of technology in any official football match so we will have to be content with this perhaps being used in solely friendlies in the future.

Undoubtedly, it’s a fantastic idea for generating content and could one day be used by referee’s to justify why they made certain decisions based on what view of the ball they had.

The post MLS create Ref Cam for 2013 All-Star game using GoPro appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.

What is the Connected Stadium?

The Connected Stadium is a concept where sporting arenas are improved technically and digitally to ensure that the audience within,

• a) Is encouraged to interact online from within the stadium
• b) Can interact with the online web whether via tablet or mobile devices.

With the rise of the smartphone in the last 5 years mobile devices and Social Media have become more and more entwined. As such, football fans are heading to stadiums armed with their phone – ready to tweet, share, Like and snap photos. Connected Stadium’s often involve having to improve 3G/4G connectivity or offering fans WiFi (either free of charge or monetised) so that they can connect and engage from the stadium without slow/non-existent connections.

Why is important to have a Connected Stadium?

Stadiums have previously been incredibly poor for phone signal/online connectivity. If you can imagine the sheer consumption and overload caused by 60,000 people trying to check in on their Facebook app, you might be sympathetic to the providers who have to deal with sudden surges in activity pre, mid and post-match. Connected Stadiums are important to football clubs in particular as they have their customers (the fans) captivated and all in one area where they can influence the thought process.

Furthermore, a Connected Stadium is conducive to Social Media, especially when you consider that in sports, the stadium is often the heart of all life, history and activity. With this being the case, it is absolutely crucial that fans can share, engage, monitor and create Social Media engagement in the right places at the right times.

In a Connected Stadium, fans can tweet their opinions, Instagram and share their photos, Like official club status updates, check in to the stadium – and ultimately but perhaps further down the line, purchase goods. Connected Stadiums should allow clubs to maximise on matchdays and improve their engagement levels. Furthermore, it should help improve other aspects of the club – international brand, merchandise, marketing, PR and even customer services.

Is it just giving fans WiFi?

No. Improving connectivity isn’t the only ingredient of a Connected Stadium – it’s a huge part of it but not the only element. Clubs need to ensure that fans have visibility first off – which means signage, programme materials, stickers on back of seats informing them how to properly access the WiFi and what the Social Media channels actually are! Secondly, they need to incentivise fans into actually using the system – this means offering discounts/prizes for geo-location check-ins, running matchday competitions, offering hashtags and even perhaps – as Manchester City have done so – moderate and promote selected tweets onto screens in the stadium to encourage further tweeting.

Club Social Media campaigns need to be integrated into the stadium itself with offline call to actions, clever use of geo-locations tools and services and a strategy that facilitates match day content and spreads this to fans who can’t be in the stadium.

If it’s so good, why are there so few doing it?

The key problem that nearly all football clubs face is the sheer amount of investment that is required to physically buy, install and maintain an enterprise level WiFi system. The logistics behind undertaking this task only grows as the stadium capacity increase, so when you consider Wembley has 90,000 seats, trying to potentially cater for 90,000 individual mobile devices uploading an image of perhaps 3MB during a halftime period of 15 minutes – is quite demanding.

–

What would you like to see in stadiums to help improve fan engagement? Are Connected Stadiums worth the investment?

The post The Connected Football Stadium: WiFi, Twitter screens & mobile appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.

Social Media influencers can be the difference in a small complaint going viral and truly damaging the brand’s reputation. Likewise, positive sentiment from a fan influencer can vastly improve the reach and overall success of a campaign on Social Media. With so much at stake, it’s surprising to see (particularly in football where there is a plethora of influencers) so few teams willing to publicly engage and leverage their influencers.

With this in mind, here are 5 ways that sports teams can utilise their Social Media influencers to help support their Social Media strategy:

1. Fan meet-up days

Fan days are increasingly popular in US sports (who have long been leaders in fan engagement via Social Media) and there’s no reason they can’t take off here. The premise behind the day is to invite a number of influencers to a club location, usually the stadium, and simply give them a forum to ask questions, raise issues, find out more about the club as well as talk to other influencers that they probably have only communicated with via Twitter.

Fan days help portray the club as being transparent in their dealings and  also being seen to be actively engaging with the fanbase – which is an issue many fans cite never seems to happen.

2. Access all areas

We’ve talked about the value of behind-the-scenes content before, and really this is just a natural development of this concept. Fans want to consume content that they view as valuable, so if you’re struggling to get views or shares on official club content, then perhaps think about what you’re actually offering. A simple invite to 3 or 4 influential fans to access an area of the club not usually accessible, and letting them record the visit – will go a long way. For example, you might invite influencers to take a tour of the training ground, meet the physio team or find out some basic training techniques from the coaches. If a club wanted to be really ambitious, that might even let an influencer shadow the team on a game day…

3. Fan content

Website content such as match reports are often written by journalists at the club, and as such tend to be similar to mainstream media and traditional content. Whilst it’s obviously important to have a high standard of writing, it can sometimes get a bit too over familar and go stale. Many of your influencers are likely to be proficient bloggers and as such can write to a good standard, so add a bit of variety to official club content and ask them to contribute every so often. You may find that the content is more reflective and resonates with the fans better, and it is equally more likely to receive more Social Media engagement if the influencers aggresively promotes his involvement with the club with pride.

4. Match-day coverage

Something we have discussed before is integrating your influencers into matchday coverage on your Social Media channels. Whilst US sports have managed to allow influential fans to take over the Twitter and Facebook channels, this might be too scary for UK based sports teams who are not quite there yet in terms of passing on the responsibility.

With this in mind, you could still invite influencers to live blog the match, be involved in the commentary or at the very least retweet/share influencers thoughts at halftime. This is a really easy and effective way of leverage your influencers and getting them more involved.

5. Supporting campaigns

Last but not least, simply putting some time and effort to build a relationship with influencers with a tweet here and there can prove to be a wise investment in the future. Sometimes, a Social Media campaign can be flagging or not really taking off. A quiet word via email or direct message asking for a bit of support or just a retweet can be the kickstarter your campaign needs. This is the simplest of solutions and nothing but old fashion PR translated onto Social Media. Of course, you can’t just do this without any work or previous effort – influencers need to feel like that you’ve bothered to actually care about their involvement. Simply mass tweeting influencers to retweet will not go down well and will more than likely stir up negative sentiment.

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This is the first time a football club has directly tried to monetise their Social Media platforms in order to generate matchday ticket sales. The move is clearly innovative by the Red Bulls and will very likely be copied by other clubs in the next few months.

Whilst traditionally, Facebook hasn’t been the preferred point of sale for other brands, this does appeal to fans looking for convienence and should allow the American side to market their ticketsales (the lifeblood of a football club) more aggressively but also more easily. Not to mention, this tactic will earn the MLS side decent PR exposure – yet again, demonstrating that being an early adopter is a great position for clubs to strive for.

It will be interesting to see if and how many tickets the New York side manage to sell through the app and whether this is something that might be a better alternative to the traditionally difficult online ticket sales e-commerce platforms that many clubs are still using.

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Vine has presented clubs with an excellent opportunity to capture the highlights of a football club – whether that is the day to day routine of a football club, a matchday experience or the signing of a new player.

Birmingham City have already been very creative with the app and have used it in the video below to get their players to very rapidly answer questions posed by their Twitter followers.

Congrats to those who correctly guessed this question. It was: ‘Who did you make your senior debut against?’: ow.ly/h8dCC #BCFC

— Birmingham City FC (@BcfcDotCom) January 25, 2013

Head of Media & Communications at Birmingham City, Andy Walker, told Digital-Football.com,

“Here at Birmingham City, we realise that social media is always evolving and as a result we’re always on the lookout for further tools to enhance our current output. Vine is an app that we were quick to embrace and one that we feel will benefit our supporters moving forward.”

For Birmingham City, Vine has presented a perfect opportunity to create very engaging content that is quick but also easy to digest. “Pictures say a lot but videos say even more!” said Walker. “So the opportunity to plug official club media content in a short and snappy way is naturally very appealing to us”.

Vine is certainly the perfect combination for football club’s social media accounts and allows them to convey information to their fans quickly, as well as do something quite creative.

Along with Birmingham,  Liverpool, Southampton and Nottingham Forest have also been quick to use Vine as a way of engaging with fans.

Football Clubs using Vine

• Birmingham City
• Liverpool
• Southampton
• Nottingham Forest

What other clubs are using Vine – if you’ve seen any, please let us know by leaving us a comment below.

The post Football clubs using Twitter’s new video app – Vine appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.

Barcelona, for example has today over 39M fans on Facebook, over than 10% more than their archrivals and the self claimed “biggest club in the world” – Real Madrid.

In the UK, rather than on the number of fans, Manchester City’s main success has been in terms of brand – though City has a respectful 4.5M fans on Facebook, they can’t yet be compared with their Manchester rivals United who currently have over 35M fans on that social network. Other clubs such as PSG or Chelsea who were bought by foreign investors and, by that, lost some of the admiration and respect of “traditional” football fans, City have been successful in globally projecting a positive image of the club and pioneering in many online engagement-generating initiatives with their fans.

The two main pay-offs of this strategy have been:

1. improving the satisfaction levels of old citizens – those supporters and members who have followed the club for whole their lives; and
2. a steady growth of the club’s fanbase: new citizens from abroad – projecting Manchester City’s brand and gaining  international market share.

In other parts of the world, however, clubs choose other marketing and communication strategies. For example, last Wednesday, Portuguese champions FC Porto released what can be called a “motivational video” for their fans, about last weekend’s “Clássico dos Clássicos”, otherwise known as the Benfica-FC Porto derby. The current leader of the Portuguese league Benfica and the holding champions FC Porto drew 2-2 and Benfica kept their 3 points advantage to FC Porto who, in turn, have one game less to play.

Following three days of mutual public accusations in the press (coaches, players and presidents of both clubs gave extensive interviews and press-conferences), the “battle” came to new media when FC Porto released on their Facebook page a 4min video titled “Fair-play is bullshit” (yes, true). The video repeatedly shows images of violent fouls of Benfica players and supposed mistakes of the referee against FC Porto. In between, you can actually see the 2 goals FC Porto scored. Professional video editing and “epic” Portuguese music back the video as a soundtrack.

Benfica’s fight back came on the next day, publishing a video in which one can listen FC Porto’s coach and president complaining about the referee on post-match press conference while simultaneously are presented images of flagrant fouls of FC Porto players and supposed mistakes of the referee against Benfica. The ironic style adopted made it an instantaneous success in a country and soon went viral in Portugal.

Combined, the two videos had over 4000 shares on Facebook less than 12 hours after Benfica posted their reply. Since being uploaded the videos have quickly surpassed the 150,000 views mark in a short timeframe. As a consequence, the engagement rates of both club’s post were higher than their average.

But should success in football clubs social media be measured only in terms of figures and engagement rates? How should social media strategies success be evaluated for football clubs?

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The latest step they’ve taken is to harness LinkedIn as a way of targeting fans who perhaps have more business/professional orientated careers. Earlier this week, AS Roma announced on their official club website that they would be launching a new AS Roma Company Page on LinkedIn and had developed a specific strategy for the channel.

Last year, we urged football clubs to adopt LinkedIn as an official Social Media channel – at the time we stated:

“By using a shared interest in football, it creates a casual and comfortable first point of contact in which relationships are already created. We all know that businesses exploit this bond between fans, if in doubt, just look at the number of corporate hospitality tickets on sale every season. The fans do use the channels, and they clearly want to connect with other supporters, despite the more formal nature of LinkedIn”

It certainly looks like AS Roma have thought similar and are perhaps using LinkedIn as a way to market their more corporate products – for instance, premium seats, corporate hospitality packages and even attracting new sponsors.

LinkedIn is the 4th most popular social network in Italy with nearly 4 million active users – so it’s a good fit for the Rome side to try network with potential sponsors. A quick look through their new official channel shows that Roma have very cleverly already began to target businesses and fans – with most of their content being around new sponsorship ventures, executive season ticket offers and which major brands they already work with.

As football clubs look set to monetize Social Media in 2013, don’t be surprised if more clubs follow in a bid to try market their corporate hospitality and sponsorship packages to a more affluent audience.

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