Due to working with Phil I developed a different dimension to my writing style. Since finishing my work experience I have been working on an article that takes a look at social media in sport. I contacted the media department at Parra and they gave some of their time to contribute to the article.
Sporting clubs take to social media to entice and capture their supporters’ attention.
These days, most professional sports are run like a business - as such, they rely on a number of revenue streams in order to remain financially viable. For professional sport, the main revenue stream is the fans. Without the fans there is no game.
The fans pay for the tickets, memberships and merchandise and help keep clubs afloat. After all, the wider the fan base of a club the more sponsors will want to promote their brand and lessen the financial pressure for the business side of the club.
So, how do sporting clubs try to entice and build their supporter base in today’s day and age? The use of social media is becoming an ever increasing factor.
According to data published by The Australian Government Information Management Office, 36 per cent of Australians in 2009 accessed social media at least once a month.
Also, according to data gathered by online marketing company ROI, 47 per cent of Australians contacted a ‘brand’ through social media at least once in 2011 and 57 per cent of Australians ‘liked’ brands in the same year.
This evidence stretches to sports fans too, with a recent Postano article stating that “81% [of people] prefer the internet for their sports news” and this goes during the match too, with “83% of people saying they check sports social media while the game is on, and an amazing 63% will even check updates while in the stadium”.
Nearly all professional sport teams in Australia operate a Twitter and Facebook account, with most operating both. However, it’s not enough to just have a Twitter or Facebook account - the clubs have to openly interact with their fans yet remain professional.
For instance, Spanish La Liga football giants, FC Barcelona, have over 35 million ‘likes’ on Facebook and over 12 million followers on Twitter. The communications team lets the fans know upcoming fixtures, players, statistics and results on all of its social media sites, allowing fans to access all the information in one place.
In the US, NFL team the Dallas Cowboys uses ‘hashtag marketing’ on Twitter, allowing fans to submit queries and questions to players and management via the hashtag #DCMailbag.
Only now is Australian sport catching up to their European and US counterparts.
Catching up
Western Sydney NRL team, the Parramatta Eels, operates a Twitter account with over 13,000 followers, and similarly to FC Barcelona, the Eels tweets include game commentary, media releases, fan days and updates on training sessions and injuries.
The club’s Facebook page also has a strong following, with over 145,000 people ‘liking’ the page.
The Eels media manager, Michelle Keighran, told Influencing that the club joined social media due to the “immediacy and accessibility of information - it was one of the best ways to communicate with fans”.
Social media allowed for the club “to clarify and release information to the fans immediately and in an easily accessible format”.
“A lot of misinformation is spread in the sporting world and social media provides the club with a way to clarify this information and provide fans with a better understanding of what is happening in their club,” Keighran explained.
She added that the Eels will look to further build their social media presence in 2013, including expanding their social media base on sites such as video sharing site Keek and social media aggregation platform Stackla.
She also said that club will look to develop a Twitter-based ‘fan chat’, allowing fans to ask questions of some of the current players during the season.
If you want to read the published article you can go to the link below. It's the same thing just on a website with an article picture. http://influencing.com.au/p/42618#reader-story-42618-panel
Replies
I put that down to the way I was taught to write at school. We were coached to write with a highly sophisticated number of words as they were what got you the marks. Since I've worked with Phil he showed me that less is more in the media so it was just a case of stripping it all back and keeping it simple. Now I can get my point across in a more concise way. Also, anything that is published online goes through Phil's editor so he airbrushes it and gets it to flow a lot better than I can.
Making comparisons to English soccer again, i see some things never change super, do you think you will be continuing this trend for the 2013 season lol :)
Snake, in order for it to appeal to a wider audience and use comparisons that applied to my research I had to go with other sports. Given the fact that one of the reports I used had a lot of information on the SPANISH team, Barcelona, I chose to use it as it had the stats I needed. I was demonstrating the large reach of social media and well Barcelona is massive on the web.
I was just trying to demonstrate the size of the different clubs and the reach they had. Even if heaps of people just "Like" something or "Follow" someone, that brand is reaching a wider audience and therefore has more marketing power. We're in the middle in terms of the number of followers. Melbourne have over 25,000 followers on Twitter whilst the Cowboys have 9,400. We're not the biggest but given where our club is based and the amount of problems with our club it's a fair amount.
Thanks a lot. My generation was the first generation to really see the launch of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc. We were the original social media users. Hell I remember when MySpace and Bebo were the rage. I am in Gen X technically and I've got friends who are into programming and they're amazing with what they know can be developed.
I don't think that any sports club will be able to really harness social media until they have people from my generation/age group operating their accounts. You might have some people behind the scenes who can operate the financial side of things but my generation have more or less grown into using social media. It's like we have a feel of how to use each site or forum in the way that works. For instance, I'm more likely to Tweet what I'm thinking or doing right at that moment than I am to post it on Facebook.
I think my generation will be the generation that gives it a face-lift. I won't be going into the tech world even though I have a decent understanding of it. It's just a case really of being able to communicate with your fans and using it as another marketing tool.
Don't worry D, all my information is cross-referenced and Phil's editor is helping me. I actually called the club to get some quotes from Michelle Keighran, Weidler would've made them up.
Just a note, my little cousins are the real Facebook children, a couple of them have social media and they aren't even teenagers.. Social media didn't really take off until I'd pretty much reached high school. I got Facebook after a few years of being constantly nagged by mates to get it. I got Twitter last year to see what all the fuss was about and it's pretty entertaining.
How did you go in your HSC Super?
Got the marks I needed. Plus an extra 10 bonus points from UWS. So I should be getting my acceptance letters early January.
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