With this explosion, Digital-Football.com takes a look at what Swedish football clubs are doing to engage with these early adopters?

Number of Swedish accounts on Twitter – growth:

Presence

Of the sixteen teams in Allsvenskan (the Premier League of Sweden), fifteen of these are present on Twitter with a official account. The sixteen clubs in Allsvenskan attract a total of 25,696 followers. Meaning that 8.5% of the Swedish Twitter accounts are now following a football club.

Of these fifteen teams, eight have over 1,000 followers. Eleven of these clubs post more than one (1) tweet per day.

Clubs

The largest club on Twitter (based on numbers of followers) is AIK (@aikfotboll) with a total of 6,453 followers. Second is Djurgårdens IF (@DIF_Fotboll) with 3,802 followers. AIK and Djurgårdens IF are two of the largest football clubs in Sweden based on fan engagement overall. The two clubs, both from the nations capital – Stockholm, have together 22 league trophies and 12 cup trophies on the pitch.

Activity

AIK updates there account with news, ticket info, media updates (web-tv etc.), match updates and training updates. Also, they respond to P2P tweets and retweet mentions of the club account -giving there fans a much richer and authentic experience of following the club. The average number of tweets per day however is still fairly low at 2.78.

Djurgårdens IF – updates there account with news, ticket info, media updates (web-tv etc.), match updates and training updates. Compared to AIK they tweet less frequently. The average number of tweets per day is 1.64.

However, size isn’t everything and the number of tweets per day should not be the goal. The number of followers (volume) has no value if they are not activated or getting any value back from following.

Quantity vs quality

The number of tweets (quantity) isn’t the key factor to success on Twitter – quality is. What constitutes quality is based on who’s following you. The key is to activate and engage the followers, for instance the Olivier Giroud campaign by Arsenal is a great example of engaging with the fanbase. A campaign that’s activates the fans (followers) to produce user generated content is extremely powerful for fostering community, brand advocacy and saves resource for content creation.

Unfortunately clubs in Sweden are yet to reach this level of engagement and instead are using the Twitter account as one way information channels, rather than “activity portals”. However, it’s still early days for Swedish Football Social Media and the appetite is ever growing.

Conclusion

Football clubs in Sweden have a great potential to benefit from the ongoing social media revolution that still grows. After a quick glance at number of followers related to number of tweets there are no correlated trend to be shown. The quantity doesn’t necessarily effect the number of followers but the quality does. A fan will probably not show any engagement if the club isn’t asking for it. There is a huge potential to exploit a loyal circle of followers to increase engagement as an effective source to create a new kind of revenue stream. Instead clubs are acting as a deaf one man show with broadcast marketing messages – very much how he English Premier League first started. Context is everything, Twitter isn’t just a tool to present relevant communication to a loyal target audience. Twitter is a platform to engage, build further loyalty and raise the awareness of the brand on an international level. This can only be achieved with regular, targeted and engaging content.

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The Nordic nations are most certainly early adopters of new technology and social media. For example, the Swedish population presence in social media has massively grown in the past few years. The percentage of Internet users who visit social networks has grown from 10% to 62% over five years. The main factor for the surge in growth is down to access to computers, Internet and broadband.

The breakdown for how many of the different generations who visit social networks has shown that men aged 16-45 are the largest group. While the older generation, 46-75 years now growing the faster than any other demographic. So, with this in mind it’s no wonder that football has been one of the most popular topics on social media channels.

Top Nordic clubs on Social Media

Which nation is prevailing?

Top Countries

Sweden (5), Norway (3), Denmark (2) and Finland (0).

Unsurprisingly, six of the ten clubs using social media are also based in their country’s respective capital city – AIK, Djurgården IF Hammarby IF (Stockholm), FC København, Brøndby IF (Copenhagen), Vålerenga (Oslo). Does this mean that the metropolitan clubs are better on marketing themselves in digital media? Or is it that Big City dwellers are earlier adopters of social media?

My opinion is the latter, it’s the users of the social media who’s driving up these channels. Capital clubs should be grateful to operating in major cities where citizens have a better standard of access and understanding around social media.

Facebook vs Twitter

Facebook is way larger than Twitter in the Nordic countries, 12 288 620 vs 779 000. Norway is the largest country on Twitter. Therefore, it is no wonder that Rosenborg tops this table. FC København have done a fantastic job of attracting 5332 followers of an estimated total of 70 000 users in the country.

Nordic vs EPL

Facebook:

Rosenborg BK (10) would qualify in the Top 10 list of the FB-Likes in the English Premier League. Other league placements: AIK (11), FC København (12), IFK Göteborg (13), Djurgårdens IF (14).

Twitter:

Rosenborg BK is the only club beating a club in the EPL, passing Swansea. The rest of the clubs would all end in the bottom.

Additional

Hammarby IF are the only club who do not play in the country’s highest division.

Overview

These stats are particularly remarkable in comparison to the English Premier League when you consider the smaller populations and lesser global attraction of the Nordic leagues. It goes to show that whilst Football Social Media will be dominated by the most glamorous and wealthy clubs, it doesn’t necessarily mean that smaller clubs or league can’t do social. The Nordic leagues prove that Football Social Media is growing in popularity and that traditional concerns such as budget, awareness and impact are increasingly becoming weak excuses for no activity.

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