FIFA<\/a> claims that supporters are the lifeblood of any professional football club and clubs need to be doing more to interact with them with social media being an ideal opportunity to do that.<\/p>\n Digital strategist Alex Clough said \u201cplatforms 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\u201d, 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?<\/p>\n Research was conducted to discover how clubs in the SPL use Twitter and whether they embrace the two-way nature of conversation.<\/p>\n Clubs that use a large amount of \u2018plain\u2019 tweets (tweets that don\u2019t electronically tag other others) and \u2018link\u2019 tweets (tweets that provide a hyperlink to another website, mostly their own official site) tend to simply be \u2018broadcasting\u2019 rather than \u2018interacting\u2019 with supporters.\u00a0 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<\/a> are using the social media platform Twitter.<\/p>\n The following table was created by compiling a condensed history of all the clubs in the SPL\u2019s Twitter activity. In order to measure engagement, it\u2019s important to note their interactivity of each club and their Twitter usage. So now for the results.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n 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\u2019t apply to every team on account of the lack of resources available to each club.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 outputs, suggesting that more clubs are interested in \u2018Interruption Marketing\u2019 rather than \u2018Permission Marketing\u2019 (rather than building fan loyalty through conversation, they are simply interrupting people\u2019s 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 \u2018Plain Tweets\u2019 and \u2018Links\u2019.<\/p>\n Jessica McLaughlin, author of the article \u2018How Often Should You Tweet?\u2019 highlights the importance of interactivity on Twitter by saying \u201cBeing 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\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n All clubs accounts were then analysed by the website peoplebrowsr.com which assesses any Twitter account\u2019s outreach levels. People Browsr<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\nResearch<\/h3>\n
Broadcast tweeting is failing<\/h3>\n
Team<\/strong><\/td>\nAverage Attendance<\/strong><\/td>\n | Outreach Levels<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Celtic<\/td>\n | 49967<\/td>\n | 4<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Rangers<\/td>\n | 46519<\/td>\n | 6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Hearts<\/td>\n | 13605<\/td>\n | 4<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Hibernian<\/td>\n | 9654<\/td>\n | 4<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Aberdeen<\/td>\n | 9449<\/td>\n | 4<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Dundee Utd<\/td>\n | 7412<\/td>\n | 5<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Kilmarnock<\/td>\n | 5845<\/td>\n | 0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Motherwell<\/td>\n | 5751<\/td>\n | 6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Dunfermline<\/td>\n | 4965<\/td>\n | 3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | St Mirren<\/td>\n | 4682<\/td>\n | 0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | Inverness CT<\/td>\n | 4091<\/td>\n | 0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | St Johnstone<\/td>\n | 3923<\/td>\n | 3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n | <\/h3>\n |