QPR to first promote match day hashtag on home dugout

QPR are set to become the first club in British football to embed their matchday hashtag into the home dugout. From this weekend’s home match against Derby County, the Rangers will be showcasing their chosen hashtag in a bid to try improve matchday Social Media engagement.

The R’s have used dedicated matchday hashtags since the start of last season and have found the move popular in engaging with the QPR fans pre, during and post-match. Adam Hulme, QPR’s Multi-Media Officer, said,

“We are always looking for new and innovate ways to engage with our fans through social media. We understand that communication with our fans is crucial and our social media channels allow us to experiment with new technologies to help engage with our fans.

In becoming the first club to add our matchday hashtag to our home dugout we hope to show our growing fanbase how to interact with each other to hopefully add an extra dimension to their matchday experience.”

This is a fantastic initiative by the club and meets one of our early predictions that we should expect to see Social Media having more of an impact not just online but also offline. Back in May, Digital-Football commented that we expected to see more football clubs improve WiFi connectivity in the stadium, as well as have more awareness for Social Media channels around the concourse and pitch itself.

Alex Trickett, Head of Sport at Twitter UK, said,

“Twitter brings people closer to the things they care about and for many in the UK, that means football. “We are excited to see QPR thinking of new ways to use our platform to connect fans with the team and players.”

Last season, QPR were the first Premier League side to stream live pre-match press conferences through the social media channel Ustream.

QPR have long been at the front line of Football Social Media – offering fan engagement across Twitter, YouTube and Facebook – as well as relatively new platforms such as Ustream, Instagram and Vine. Earlier this season, QPR used Vine to announce their first opponents of the 2013/14 Championship campaign – yet another innovative way of breaking news first. In August, the R’s were named as the most socially savvy football team in the UK outside of the Premier League and scooped the ‘Innovation in Insight-Driven Multichannel Marketing’ award for the #ForeverRs campaign.

We look forward to this development and it will be interesting to follow how much of effect it has on matchday engagement for the London Championship side. Certainley, it’s positive to see a club in a lower league (although undoubtedly the recently relegated club is of Premier League calibre) be brave to test boundaries and take risks in new marketing strategies.