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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The video has quickly gained views over night with traffic coming from footballing blogs, forums and Reddit – obtaining 120,728 views in less than 48 hours. Whilst this number isn’t ground breaking – it certainly is a good figure for a 2:24 video that really is just a compilation of the group stage draw, past Champions League games at the stadium and a welcome message for each of the clubs.

This isn’t a ground breaking video, nor is it a ground breaking concept – however, it works and it is now their 8th most popular video from over 150+ videos on their YouTube channel and continuing to grow. Furthermore it has obtained 227 comments – largely positive from fans all around the globe talking about the atmosphere at the Westfalenstadion stadium, how passionate the fans are and many recommending a visit.

So why does this work and why is it important?

Too many clubs seem to forget that they are part of a bigger picture, it isn’t always about your club – it’s about the experience. Football is entertainment and in the same way cinema’s launch trailers to create buzz, raise awareness and sell tickets for new releases. Football clubs need to take this kind of strategy if they want to engage with their fans and get real return on investment in the future.

Football is entertainment, so clubs must use content to create excitement, curiosity and wonder.

For the Borussia Dortmund example, the video has been a success because it has these core elements:

• – Anticipation: Released just ahead of the 1st group stage match, feeding on the eagerly awaiting football fans who had most likely been scouring the web for all of the information they could find about the team and their competitors ahead of the match.

• – Focus on Fans: Dortmund have a great team, but even better – their fans. The atmosphere on a Champions League night at the stadium is very special and the fans are the teams greatest asset. It’s no surprise that the video heavily focused on the colours, chants and sheer noise of them.

• – Create a sense of wonder: The Dortmund video has picked out some of the greatest moments for the team in recent Champions League campaigns. By pulling at the heartstrings and emotions of those nostalgic moments, they are appealing to feelings – a powerful ally when it comes to renewing/buying match tickets!

• – International reach: The video works as it feeds the whole footballing community – there welcoming of the clubs shows the friendly sentiment behind the club, but also recognises that the beautiful game is a global sport and we should be more like a family. It’s not wonder that so many of the comments come from clubs all around the world praising the club and their fans.

• – Authenticity: The video doesn’t sell tickets, merchandise, content or membership to their online TV channel – it sells the experience and entertainment. It gets Dortmund fans excited, as well as the opposition – even neutrals as it digs into the very passionate and emotive state of football fanatics. It feels more authentic and trust worthy than an ad for the new team calendar.

• – Pride: Football is a tribal sport, nothing has been ever so clear to football marketing professionals. This video celebrates the fans, the moments of skill, the history and above all most the genuine pride at being in the competition. Dortmund fans will look forward to the game a little more, chant a little louder, and ultimate spend a bit more.

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Sports Social Media site Sportwist.com has provided some valuable analysis into who is currently winning the social media game. The data shows that last season Champions League clubs amassed a total of 95 million social media users, this year this has grown to a staggering 185 million – a clear sign of how Football Social Media has grown in the last season.

• – The supporters of the 32 teams in the Champions League 2012-13 totals 185 million fans 2.0 (158 and 26.5 on Facebook on Twitter). A year ago the figure was 95 million.
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• – Barcelona dominates Champions League with 47.3 million
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• – FC Barcelona and Real Madrid have a combined total of 85.6 million, which equates to 46.39% of all clubs social media following in the Champions Leagues
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• – Every team but Manchester United (who are missing from Twitter) have a social media presence on both Facebook and Twitter

Facebook continues to dominate as the primary choice of channel for football clubs – with an astonishing 158 million of he 185 million users coming from Facebook.

Sportwist even take  a look at how UEFA have begun to user social media as a way to promote both the Champions and Europa League. UEFA’s current Facebook presence sits at 3.1 millions whilst their official Twitter presence @UEFAcom has a rather low 163,000 followers. Meanwhile, the  newly launched Twitter account for the Champions League has just 53,000 followers – with the channel being used to largely broadcast news articles rather than engage.

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United’s highly publicised listing in the NY Stock Exchange earlier this month was promoted on the back of a strong social media presence, citing the impressive 27m fans on Facebook, where they are way ahead of their English rivals and only narrowly behind Spanish giants Real and Barca. However, social media is tool to engage with fans and the fairly passive nature of a Facebook page seems a bit of a cop out for a club who claim to have 659m global fans.

So noticeably, when the official UEFA Champions League twitter page listed the 32 top European clubs, who will be drawn into groups for the competition late last month, United stood out sorely as the only team not to be linked to an account. The only credible ‘official’ MUFC account is @ManUtd_PO, which has amassed 61,000 followers yet offers very little. This account, which states through its background picture, that is it the ‘Official Account of Manchester United’ distances itself from any fan or player based engagement, following only a selection of journalists, and simply tweeting news stories from the clubs official site.

There is another account which offers more club ‘insight’ and encourages fan engagement, and this is @DHL_ManUtd. Followed by only 5,000 users, the DHL account claim to provide ‘behind-the-scenes access to the club’ including a stream of exclusive pictures (notably of players all wearing the club’s DHL branded training kit). As the clubs ‘official logistics partner’ DHL manage to promote themselves through this lucrative partnership, whilst offering United fans a somewhat small chance to engage officially. However, for a company who are a leading delivery company it is interesting that they can’t send users offsite for more engagement, with a defunct link in their Twitter bio.

The Manchester Evening News have suggested that United are now considering the launch of an official twitter accounts, pointing out in their story that as well as being a noticeable absentee amongst Europe’s elite, they are also the only PL club without a presence. In a comment which has subsequently been removed since the story was posted on Wednesday night, the MEN said they understood that United would ‘ensure commercial partners were happy before they launch an account’. Considering the current @DHL_ManUtd set up, it is not inconceivable for United to remain absent from twitter, instead allowing their vast number of new commercial partners to instead conduct their own activities on the back of the Manchester United ‘brand’. However, for fans who want to get involved in club and players Q&A’s, conducted so well by top teams such as across-town rivals Manchester City, their engagement may be limited to commercially focused activity which fails to follow the simple and effective campaigns of so many other clubs.

Manchester United, so often a leader in the past, are falling behind their rivals with their failure to act. Sir Alex Ferguson has often spoken of his own failure to understand the point of social media sites such as Twitter, but someone at the club must surely see the potential that a no-strings-attached, official page could bring to their worldwide fanbase?

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Whilst it has taken some time for UEFA to get their social media up and running, the governing body for European football has certainly been planning an appropriate strategy for social media before they “jump in”. In a recent interview with Mashable, David Farrelly (Head of UEFA.com) stated,

“If you sat in our editorial office and watched how we work now compared to four years ago, it’s not as much about writing news and adding photos with the user almost in a lean-back mode…Now it’s a different type of engagement where we’re using the power of the Internet to start the story on the social web.”

The United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and the USA account for the top 4 providers of traffic to UEFA.com, the USA’s inclusion in there is quite surprising but a recent spike in “soccer” in mainstream US sport has certainly made the sport more popular. The MLS is now the third most attended sports league in America according to sport blog Bleacher Report. Perhaps UEFA are keen to use social media as a way of communicating with a whole new marketplace and audience in order to further generate more sponsorship and merchandise sales.

UEFA also revealed that they are working closely with Twitter to ensure that they receive the best results and this partnership includes the official Twitter Sports account (@TwitterSports) featuring a UEFA reporters tweets during the Champions League matchdays.

In it’s first 3 hours online, the @ChampionsLeague account has obtained 11.5k followers, whilst the @EuropaLeague account currently sits on 3.5k.

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The stats come courtesy of ExactTarget Social Media lab who tracked and monitored the social media activity before and during the event. Some insights from their research includes:

• – Over 1.2 million tweets during the match
• – Roberto Di Matteo was the top tweeted coach with 24,983 tweets
• – Samsung declared victors as top tweet sponsor with over 90% of the sponsor tweets
• – The top re-tweeted tweet have 7015 Retweets
• – Great Britain led the countries with the most tweets at 22.83%
• – Majority of the Tweet were in English with 68%

Here is the excellent infographic they produced from their findings:

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