As we stated recently when Liverpool became the first Premier League team to improve WiFi connectivity, this move will drastically help clubs Social Media presence – allowing fans to share their matchday experience with international and domestic fans who can’t make the game. Furthermore, it offers clubs a fantastic chance to market to fans online and in stadium via smartphone app purchases, iPad programmes and geo-location deals.

Celtic Chief Executive, Peter Lawwell said:

“We are delighted to be bringing true hi-density Wi-Fi to our entire ground. Celtic is committed to delivering the best matchday experience possible for our supporters and that commitment requires to stay at the forefront of technological advances.”

“The recent feedback we received from Season Ticket holders stated that Wi-Fi was a service supporters were keen to see introduced.  We are delighted to be able to give our fans something of real value to add further enjoyment to every visit to Celtic Park”.

The move comes at the same time as Celtic are midway through their innovative Video Football Social Media campaign #BeCeltic – where they are releasing video content, weekly competitions for exclusive prizes and offering Social Media fans the chance to fly with the first team to a UEFA Champions League match next season.

As both an advocate of Football Social Media and Celtic, I’m delighted with the move and it keeps in align with Digital-Football.com’s 2013 Sports Social Media predictions that more and more clubs would look to invest in improving their stadia connectivity.

CISCO, the stadium provider, told Celtic,

“With Cisco Connected Sports solutions, Celtic fans can now get real-time, relevant information at their finger-tips and share match-day thrills without worrying about mobile connection issues.”

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The four time UEFA Champions League winners demonstrated that good Social Media isn’t always necessarily always about the way you to present yourself, but often how to engage with others. In this case, FC Barcelona showed what can only be described as enormous class, friendship and grace towards Celtic FC.

Celtic FC had celebrated the anniversary of 125 unbroken years in football the day before, so it was no surprise that the club had put together some excellent content to stir up excitement and look back on their history. However, what was a surprise was how Barca were so involved and complementary to the Scottish side in celebrating their birthday with them.

In a sport where gentlemanly behavior, grace and respect are so often ignored in favour for aggressiveness, rivalry and dog-eat-dog mentalities, Barcelona’s pre and post match activity was nothing but startling.

Barcelona officials were in attendance at Celtic’s 125th year comemrative event and posted kind birthday comments on their sites pre-match. Barca Vice-President Carles Villarrubi hosted a Catalan cultural event at the University of Glasgow. And Celtic and Barcelona legend Henrik Larsson was drafted into the the official FC Barcelona website to comment about the two teams and the shared philosophy and cultural identity that both clubs share.

Post-match, the official FC Barcelona showed a huge amount of class by tweeting the following message of congratulations (have we ever seen anything like this before from an opposition team in such an important competition?):

Even the Barcelona players showed great grace and class, with the likes of Gerard Pique tweeting congratulations to Celtic and commenting on the famous Parkhead Champions League atmosphere.

So, why is this so good. It’s no secret of course which team I support and why I’d be writing this, but in honesty, I was incredibly surprised to see that some clubs still understand the way the game should be played and even in defeat remain gracious. Furthermore, it was very clear that Barcelona were keen to position their brand as very much a “family club” with good sporting values. Inevitably, they will have picked up a few more Glaswegian supporters – which might not mean too much, but when you consider that maybe a couple thousand new fans might head to the Nou Camp for the tour or the game, buy a shirt or even promote Barcelona content – this may be worth it.

FC Barcelona’s brand is one that is the epitome of everything that is right in football – the way they play, the way the club is run, the fans and even their social media. They could’ve taken a very different direction with their content, but they didn’t – and for that I applaud them for incredibly classy social media.

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Despite it being a simple and obvious idea, it’s a fantastic way to build a relationship with the fans online, as well as raise awareness for their newly updated Timeline. I spoke a couple of months ago about the importance of using fan generated content and why it is far more effective than branded content produced internally.

Celtic’s Digital Director, Tony Hamilton, told Digital-Football.com:

“We have a very artistic and creative online fan community, so it makes sense to get them more involved with our digital content strategy. Our Social Media channels should demonstrate the rich passion, culture and talent that exists within our support. As such, we believe crowd-sourcing potential Facebook cover designs reinforces the club’s ethos that football without the fans is nothing.”

The key message to Social Media staff at football clubs is this, you have passionate, talented and eager brand advocates – just waiting to be more involved with the club. Any other brand would die to have as many fanatical content creators that football clubs so often hold, so don’t waste the opportunity and use more competitions like this to make the most of your content.

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Digital-Football.com managed to speak with Tony Hamilton (who has given an interview about the clubs Digital Strategy on this site previously) around why the club has decided to adopt Twitter. Celtic are not strangers to Social Media, having launched their Facebook Page early last year and Tony (Digital Director) has been using his own personal account to act as an “unofficial club presence” on a regular basis.

Hamilton told Digital-Football.com that Celtic are,

“In this space because we believe there is a need to be there – simple as that. We want to be there because we want to be part of the conversation, we just don’t want to be the focus of the conversation.”

He also added that Twitter was specifically chosen because “the demographics are not the same”  in comparison to Facebook.

“Clearly Twitter and all Social Media gives us opportunities about how we reach people, which would not have been available to us in the past.” – Tony Hamilton

Most interestingly, the club’s reasoning behind launching their Twitter channel is “to complement but not replace the great online Celtic community, which already exists through many conventional forums and sites like KDS, CelticWiki, CQN, CelticMinded, Huddleboard, ETims and many, many more emerging on Twitter”. Celtic fan forums and communities are notoriously active online, so it’s refreshing to see a football club recognise both the importance and influence of fan-lead sites.

In conjunction with the launch, the Glasgow team have also provided a dedicated Twitter page on their official site that outlines how fans can use their Twitter account as well as begin to answer questions such as “when will the stream be active?” and “what are the different feeds for?” Additionally, the club has provided a full list of all 28 staff and players who use Twitter – which is useful for weeding out fake accounts.

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