Put simply, the way fans connect with their sport and club has changed hugely in the past 5 years. On one hand, clubs must protect the integrity and reputation of their commercial brand. That means, ensuring athletes understand the social media landscape and it also entails that clubs prepare for the worst. On the other hand, clubs must learn to interact and talk to their fans in a more personable and engaging manner. Social Media offers better relationships, better fan engagement, alternate revenue streams and increased brand awareness.<\/p>\n

To not get involved is sheer stupidity.<\/p>\n

Next steps<\/h3>\n

Now, that you understand social media and its importance, you must decide to what end you want to use it. There is no point adopting it for the sake of it. Good social media always requires a true purpose. In my next article, I will try break down potential ways to use social media (for both small clubs with no cash to leading multi-million pound teams).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To start off my\u00a0free social media strategy for sports\u00a0series, I thought what better way to introduce social media than to ask why would any club think it is important? There can be no doubt...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n