It may feel a bit strange to see the number of Facebook followers of FC Barcelona (38M) is lower than Messi’s (40M). The same happens with Real Madrid‘s number of Facebook fans (34M) comparing with Cristiano Ronaldo (52M). Personal brands have been understood as fundamental weapons to leverage a club’s brand. This has been particularly agreed and adopted since the year 2000, when Florentino Perez won Real Madrid’s presidency for the first time with the promise of creating a team of “Galacticos”.

At a first sight, it may well look like the individual player is greater than the club but, in what comes to sports marketing and social media, it may very well be this way.

Many world-wide fans follow and support their clubs in their own national leagues, complementing it with the tendency of following one or two world-class players of their liking. One needs only look to Asia (the commercial and marketing success of Park Ji-Sung in the UK or Nakata in Italy have become classic case-studies in sports marketing Universities) and look at how European players are being keenly followed away from home – David Beckham or Robbie Keane being a good example for LA Galaxy.

In Portugal, it has been curious to observe the market’s preferences in the past decade: TV shares of Manchester United and Chelsea were incredibly high when Ronaldo and Mourinho were starring in the Premier League. Now, Real Madrid seem to be every Portuguese fan’s second club: after Benfica, FC Porto and Sporting Lisbon, Real Madrid’s matches have the biggest TV-shares. Why? Because they have Portuguese personal stars: Mourinho and Ronaldo.

Top European clubs have understood this tendency and take advantage of the online world, namely social media sites, to promote their stars and help develop their own communication channels. Indeed, these channels will lead to more awareness and engagement, both with the players and the club.

It basically means what firms and advertisers are looking forward to hear: “more audience”. More audience will eventually be reflected on the club’s direct sales – shirts, merchandise – and indirect sales such as new sponsorship agreements and TV broadcasting rights.

It’s a win-win situation that definitely proves one thing: social media is continuously changing the game.

The post The value of Football Players as Social Media brands appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.

Dídac Lee, FC Barcelona’s director of New Technologies, said,

“being recognised as the best club in the world in the management of social networks is a privilege, especially considering that the vote is in the hands of the users and they base their vote on both quantitative and qualitative data.” Lee added: “from FC Barcelona, we want to thank the millions of people that give us confidence and give us their support. We’re committed to keep on working to extend the Azulgrana feeling throughout the world through new technology and social media.”

Whilst it is no surprise to see Barcelona win the spot with its 32m Facebook fans, 9.6m Twitter followers and 1.4m Google+ fans, it is a surprise to see certain clubs/franchises missing. Barcelona are an excellent social media club and have strived in the past to be innovative and engaging with their fans – however, others in the top 10 are questionable.

US sports franchises like the NBA, NHL and even the MLS arguably do more in terms of fan engagement and innovation in comparison to Premier League teams like Manchester United or Arsenal. Undoubtedly the US is the pinnacle of good sports social media practice and initiatives like the NHLs “fan social media command centre” or the NBA’s inspiring use of YouTube are much better than broadcast tweeting!

Closer to home, the absence of the internationally praised and award-winning Manchester City Social Media team is bizarre. Whilst City may not have the same international fan base or social media followers than say Arsenal, it’s efforts in terms of engagement, content creation and reputation dwarf the Londoners “marketing heavy” feeling Twitter or Facebook page. These rankings appear to be heavily biased towards volume rather than quality of interactions.

With that being said, Barcelona deserve their award and would certainly be in my top 3 clubs for Football Social Media. They have demonstrated to the rest of the industry the value in producing high quality content and putting the fan at the centre of all activity – not your merchandise marketing strategy.

Quote & Photo Source

The post FC Barcelona win Best Sports Club on Social Media appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.

Digital-Football asked them about certain areas of their social media strategy, here’s what they revealed:

Social Media Policy for staff and players

For the longest time, Policy and Guidelines have been an issue we’ve been trying to push on this site and we’ve been desperate to learn how clubs are educating their employees about the potential pitfalls of social. For Barcelona, their Social Media Policy places an emphasis on responsibility, however, what is clear is that this doesn’t naturally mean restrictions.

“We don’t like to restrict the use of Social Media. We just try to give all the information, tools and support to all FC Barcelona employees, football players included, in order to be aware of.”

In a refreshing move, Barcelona revealed to us that they have an education strategy in place that ensures that ‘everybody understands the magnitude of every tweet or post we do’. This approach teaches staff to think about what they post, as well as actually understand the consequences of bad practice as supposed to merely being told ‘it’s bad’. Education is the way forward, not blanket bans.

Return on investment and FC Barcelona

Being the best is something integral to the Barcelona ethos, whether this is on the field, in the business or in the social world. Barcelona’s brand oozes quality and class – a follower of their football will know that they don’t do ‘ugly victories’. So, it’s no surprise that this concept is evident in their Social Media strategy. Facebook is a huge part of the clubs social success, for reasons already stated, but Barcelona recognise that it isn’t just about numbers – return on investment isn’t necessary sales:

“It’s not just a question of numbers. FC Barcelona uses Social Media as a service channel. Twitter, Facebook and Youtube are the best way to connect to a lot of people around the world. We are proud of our values and our identity and this is a good way of spreading them. So, the return of investment is not only in economic terms.”

What is clear for Barcelona is that Social Media is a service, and it should be servicing the fans above all else. Whilst many brands and football clubs visualise Social Media as a marketing channel, to Barca, it is so much more – it’s a connection to build relationships on an international scale.

Investing in long term Social Media

The social team sit naturally within the Marketing and Communications department of the club, but the primary objective for the team is  ‘to keep the best relationship with all Barça Fans’. What makes FC Barcelona rather different to most sporting brands is that the sheer size of their organisation requires separated channels for the vast amount of teams and sports that fall under the brand,

“We’ve got one Facebook page for the first team, one for the B team and La Masia, and one for every professional section: basketball, futsal, handball and hockey. And on Twitter, we follow the same standard with a plus. We run 3 official accounts (@fcbarcelona, @fcbarcelona_es and @fcbarcelona_cat), one for every language (English, Spanish and Catalan)”

Barca are proud of what they describe as ‘a singularity’, and it is interesting to see how they manage their social media for different markets – Twitter in particular. The club has been considerate to its massive international fan base by deploying an English channel, whilst at the same time, the club has stayed true to its roots and tweets in Catalan. Whilst this is an arduous task for the brand, it goes to show that they have a strategy that is looking at the bigger picture.

Looking towards the future – Mobile

As already mentioned, Barcelona are credited to being the first team in Europe to look to optimise their stadium for matchday social media. For the club this isn’t just about raising awareness of social channels, but rather it’s ensuring that fans have the best chances of utilising social within the stadium – this means mobile technology.

“Mobile phones are the future of connectivity. The challenge is to convert Camp Nou in a “mobile friendly” zone.”

With smartphone adoption rapidly increasing, it makes sense that clubs begin to look at the role of mobile in the game, whether that is mobile marketing, geolocation, mobile sharing and even mobile tickets. We are both in agreement that if you want to have a social presence that maximizes huge attendances, then you have to ensure that your environment is conducive for data sharing. There’s little point spending thousands on a Social Media campaign if you can’t even effective market to your own fans in your own house!

Authors note: I would like to thank the Social team at Barca for being willing to answer my questions and be happy to be as open and upfront as possible. It can be a real struggle to get quotes, let alone answers to every question you like, and I appreciate their kind support for the blog and hopefully I can get a chance to write more about the excellent displays of innovation currently going on at the Camp Nou.

The post FC Barcelona see the real value in Social Media appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.