With the foundations of Football Social Media already set, what does 2013 mean for the 1,551 football clubs currently using Twitter and even more on Facebook?

1. Blogger Outreach

As the power of influence continues to shift towards the blogger-sphere from the traditional press (And note, I’m not saying bloggers have more influencer, just more than they used to!) – clubs must start to take notice of the opportunity that influential fan bloggers hold. Football clubs will begin to develop deeper relationships with bloggers as a way of changing fan perceptions, improving fan engagements and help generate Social Media noise. This will come in the form of blogger match invites, bloggers at press conferences and providing bloggers with behind the scenes content. Fans will always trust their fellow fans over club communications (Which are often perceived to have a commercial agenda).

2. Curated Tweets for media publications

Fan tweets are increasingly becoming the go-to device for measuring fan opinions. Very slowly, we’ve seen fan and player tweets appear in sports TV shows and print media as a way of representing the thoughts of a fanbase on a particular issue or incident. If clubs are savvy enough, they will look to promote their own Social Media and brand by encouraging fans to tweet more often. Clubs can do this by curating the best and most influential tweets from fans and players into their offline and online media. Whether this via projecting tweets throughout stadium concourses as Manchester City have done or including them in website match reports – it’s a great way of involving fans with content production.

3. More use of “Datatainment” in club media

No longer a new concept, the aptly named “Datatainment” ideology is the process of using big data as a way to entertain and engage with fans. A fantastic example of this has been Arsenal’s Stats Zone content on their website before playing opposition.

The London giants use performance data such as pass completion, goals scored, clean sheets, team form etc. as a way to predict the outcome of the match and help entertain fans by giving them some insight before the game. This has to be adopted by more clubs as data – or stats – fits the psyche of a football fan perfectly. Datatainment content is a great way for clubs to build excitement around football matches, help bust myths about player performances and generate substantial levels of Social Media noise with engaging and visual content.

4. Bigger fines, harsher punishments for player Twitter mischief

In 2012 we finally saw footballing bodies like the FA and the Premier League issue Social Media guidelines for football players in the UK. We’ve also learnt that many clubs are internally training and educating players around good and bad practice as players have become more active on Social Media channels like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Still in it’s early stages, we can expect clubs to develop these pieces of governance and regulation further – so expect to see tougher and harsher punishments for football players making mistakes on Twitter in the future. Club Brand and PR can take huge hits in the mainstream press from negative tweets – so ensuring players don’t portray the club in a bad light will be a priority for every Social Media manager at football clubs this year.

5. Monetization of Social Media channels

Last but certainly not least, finding a way to make money from Social Media will be perhaps the most important issues football clubs face in 2013. If 2012, was the year clubs got to grip using Social Media and showing how influential it is, 2013 will be the year clubs will have to prove it’s worth the investment to their board of directors. Expect football clubs to be inventive in ways of trying to monetize their Social Media – this might be through making more content to sell match day tickets, more tie-ins with partner sponsors and better use of Social Media to help aid merchandise sales.

So there you have it – our official predictions for 2013. After getting a decent number of our Football Social Media predictions right for 2012, hopefully we can continue our good track record and continue to bring you the most exclusive and very latest news about how football clubs are using Social Media.

The post 5 Predictions for Football Clubs on Social Media in 2013 appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.

Digital strategist Alex Clough said “platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have allowed a new generation of fans to connect with their football idols and teams in ways that they haven’t been able to within the modern game and clubs need to embrace this”, however, how many clubs are using social media to interact with fans and bridge the gap and how many are simply shouting from the stands?

Research was conducted to discover how clubs in the SPL use Twitter and whether they embrace the two-way nature of conversation.

Clubs that use a large amount of ‘plain’ tweets (tweets that don’t electronically tag other others) and ‘link’ tweets (tweets that provide a hyperlink to another website, mostly their own official site) tend to simply be ‘broadcasting’ rather than ‘interacting’ with supporters.  However, clubs that have high percentages of replies, mentions, retweets and pictures are using Twitter in a more interactive manner and trying to bridge the gap between supporters and fans. The aim of the following research was to provide statistical data which demonstrates how football clubs in the Scottish Premier League are using the social media platform Twitter.

Research

The following table was created by compiling a condensed history of all the clubs in the SPL’s Twitter activity. In order to measure engagement, it’s important to note their interactivity of each club and their Twitter usage. So now for the results.

What is clear as a result of the statistical analysis is that all clubs are different. There are no clubs that use social media in the same way. Only generalisations about their uses of social media can be made, but even then they won’t apply to every team on account of the lack of resources available to each club.

What is clear however is that the most interactive capabilities of Twitter (Retweets, Replies and Mentions) are most commonly the lowest percentage of all the teams’ outputs, suggesting that more clubs are interested in ‘Interruption Marketing’ rather than ‘Permission Marketing’ (rather than building fan loyalty through conversation, they are simply interrupting people’s online conversations rather to broadcast information rather than joining the conversation). This is backed up by the fact the greatest percentage of every single team active on Twitter is ‘Plain Tweets’ and ‘Links’.

Jessica McLaughlin, author of the article ‘How Often Should You Tweet?’ highlights the importance of interactivity on Twitter by saying “Being a part of the conversation is one of the most important aspects of being on Twitter. If tweets consist mostly of broadcasting messages and less on interaction, a user may be tweeting about them self too much”.

Broadcast tweeting is failing

When talking to football fans it became clear that supporters follow their teams on Twitter for a number of reasons including information and broadcast tweets, however, most fans would like to see their clubs try harder to interact with fans.

All clubs accounts were then analysed by the website peoplebrowsr.com which assesses any Twitter account’s outreach levels. People Browsr measures influence and outreach in online communities connected by interests and analyses billions of social media posts from the last 1,000 days to calculate outreach (peoplebrowsr.com). This will offer an indicator into how engaged they are with their supporters and how concerned they are from hearing what fans have to say.

After viewing these results, it could be argued there is a correlation between the size of the club and their interactivity via Twitter which was explored further.

This table shows clearly that clubs with greater attendances (and consequently greater resources, financially and in terms of manpower) tend to score higher with interactivity.

Conclusion

The conclusion drawn from the research states that whilst some clubs (particularly clubs with greater resources) are interactive in their uses of social media, many clubs are simply not trying hard enough to narrow the gap between supporter and club.

Considering the cost of following a team, it could be argued attempting to engage fans with the club via social media is the least clubs could do to repay fans for their support. This should apply to all clubs, not just ones with the great resources to do so. Finally, an argument may be made which states that if not used to connect with fans, social media may increase the chasm between supporters and their clubs which could be extremely detrimental to the future of any football club.

This research and study comes courtesy of our newest contributor Andrew Jenkin who used this data for his dissertation on Football Social Media. Follow him on Twitter.

The post Study reveals Social Media successes & failures of SPL clubs appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.

Mexican Primera Division side Jaguares have replaced the traditional name on the back of the jersey with players and club Twitter handles in order to try boost numbers – as well as adding the official Twitter bird logo. This is a rather inventive way of boosting a social media following and a fantastic way to generate some free global publicity.

As we are constantly saying, clubs need to do more to promote their online channels in the offline environment. Twitter is still a relatively young platform and not everyone uses it, so this kind of awareness gets people talking about the channel.

The post Mexican club add Twitter accounts to back of players shirts appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.

1. Marketing the Experience, not the Brand!

Teams in the NBA, NHL and NFL differ from European Sports teams in that they have already evolved the way they engage with Sports fans. Social Media is used to not market the brand – tickets, products, merchandise or adverts. Instead, teams use Social Media to focus in on the “game day experience” – the highlights, the atmosphere, the music playlist, the pre match rituals, views from seats and funny anecdotes from the game. Here in the UK we are far too focussed on telling what the fans want, rather, marketers should be sitting in the fan seats and absorbing the emotions and stories during a game. Sports fans want a shared experience, not a broadcast competition about a free subscription to the club magazine!

2. Social Media Command Centre

I’ve spoken about this brilliant invention before hand but it’s still incredibly relevant and untried on this side of the Atlantic. Social Media Command Centre’s – or Hubs if you don’t want to be too dramatic – are allocated areas within the stadium on a gameday where pre-selected fans can take control of the clubs Social Media presence. These fans are usually selected for being Social Media savvy and tend to be quite influential in the space. Not only do they create content, but they curate content from their fellow fans. They are the perfect Community Managers – they know what the fans want, they know the fan chants, know the fan groups, they know what the expectations are. But most importantly, they focus on the experience – not the endless stream of sales spam so many clubs force onto their fans.

3. Fan Nights

If there’s one thing the American know how to do – it’s reward their fans. US Sports recognise how powerful and influential their Social fans can be, one way of rewarding them is the increasingly popular “Fan Night” in which fans are invited to come to the stadium to meet their fellow Tweeters and put faces to Twitter handles. It’s a simple enough idea and a nice gesture to bring your most influential followers closer to the club. Clubs might put on some food, give a stadium tour, or even meet a player/legend. It just shows that the club genuinely cares about their fans and appreciates their efforts in the Social Media space.

4. Fan Content

Again, this is a topic I’ve already written about at length and although clubs like Manchester City and Norwich City are starting to integrate fans into their official content – there’s still a long way to go. Content has dramatically changed in recent years, no longer should it be aimed at audiences, but it has to involve them as well. Clubs can tap into their fans’ talent and encourage them to be content creators for official media. Whether that is crowdsourcing questions for an upcoming YouTube interview with a player, a match report in the programme, or even getting fans to create biographies about their favourite players (past and present). Fan Content is more engaging, authentic and usually a whole lot more interesting.

5. Pinterest

For those not currently up to speed with the very latest Social Media crazes, Pinterest is a rapidly growing Social Network in which users “pin” their favourite content – essentially curating content. In the U.S., they haven’t missed a trick and teams are already using the popular Social platform to promote their online stores. However,  it can be used for so much more. Clubs could use Pinterest’s collaborative features to host an “Iconic Photography” board in which selected fans can pin photos of their favourite moments, players and jerseys – thereby letting fans curate the clubs history. Pinterest is a fantastic tool for this kind of collaborative sharing and undoubtedly could be used for competitions, video libraries or even fan-photography.

The post 5 Trends for Sports Social Media that can be used in Football appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.