UK Digital Agency Freestyle Interactive reported that the #ArsenalLive hashtag had received 4334 individual mentions on Twitter on the day alone (at 12:55pm).

This is a very simple, quick and cost-effective tactic to generate some fan content, strengthen the relationship between fan and club and create a bit of easy PR. We’ve consistently talked on Digital-Football.com about thinking of football Social Media as a relationship, and not a marketing channel. Clubs need to do more initiatives like this to create a sense of affinity and allow fans to have a “behind-the-scenes” access to their heroes.

Football Social Media doesn’t need to be expensive nor does it need to be complicated – it just needs to be smart and ALWAYS involve the primary audience – the fans.

– This story was first covered and recognised by the UK Sports Network here.

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In an article for Brand Republic, City announced that,

“The football club is inviting the 47,000 fans who attended its match against Spurs on 22 January to tag themselves in a 360-degree image on the club’s site and share it on Facebook and Twitter.

Avatars of Mario Balotelli, Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko and Samir Nasri have also been rendered into the image.

Fans who spot them will be entered into a competition to win a signed shirt and personalised video message from the player.”

I think this is a fantastic idea that has all the ingredients of a successful Social campaign – an engaging piece of content (the 360 photo), audience participation (finding both yourself and the fan favourites in the crowd) and a motive (in this case the chance to have a personalised video message – something City have done before).

The campaign isn’t overly elaborate, it’s interesting and most importantly, it’s something that hasn’t been done before. The similarity to “Where’s Wally” will undoubtedly pull at the heartstrings of nostalgic light-blues fans.

I know that I have a tendency to constantly report on Manchester City – but I do so because they seem to be the only club in the Premiership that actively puts a lot of effort into coming up with genuine and original creative ideas. It would’ve been too easy for them to have a traditional hashtag competition (which many clubs still don’t do) – they deserve to be applauded for demonstrating to their fans that they take engagement seriously. It’s no wonder that their Twitter and Facebook channels saw a staggering growth of 20% and 11% in January respectively!

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