Is AFL Winning the Social Media Game?

Australian sporting teams seem to be catching up their major league counterparts overseas when it comes to social media. Only recently Essendon Football Club developed the role of Digital Media Mangager and now 14 of the 16 AFL clubs have twitter accounts. Anthony Alsop, from SportSpiel recently did a survey on a random week of the AFL season, and the way the clubs tweet about it. And from that, he wanted to answer one question…

What is Social Media Best Practice for sporting teams?

• Be consistent: Throughout your social media ‘footprint’, consistency is key. If you have uploaded a video, post the link to your Facebook, Twitter and Flickr accounts. Not all members of each platform are members of the other, so the same message needs to be relayed to all fans – this also applies to direct E-Marketing.
  
• Be yourself: Fans come to your site for transparency, for something unique that they can’t achieve through traditional outlets such as press releases or website news. They want that extra special something that makes them feel like a fly on the wall.
  
• Be active: Online users will often come to your website two or three times a day. If you are not posting news or links on a daily basis your consumers will go elsewhere. You need to stay active to keep the attention of your users even in down times. ‘Content is King’ and one must entertain his subjects.
  
• ‘Dialogue not monologue’: Create fan polls, react to comments posted on forums, articles or Tweets, become engaged in what the customer is saying. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, so allow your consumers plenty of opportunity to place feedback. If a fan has an ‘authentic interaction’ with an athlete or celebrity this is an incredible experience for them and often can strengthen the bond, between brand and consumer, club and fan.
  
• Spread the word: You have an online community or ‘e-tribe’, so use them. Encourage your users to retweet messages, use Digg as a method of spreading the gospel of your website or even give away prizes for fans that use your brand in a Twitter #hashtag or Facebook update. This will ‘activate’ other fans and they too will become part of your community.

These are the point’s I’m going to focus on, not only the quantity (anybody can tweet all day) but the quality of the communication; how did the teams’ tweets impact the end users? How involved were the teams with their fans? Were sponsors integrated into teams’ tweets? Etc.

Get ready for some graphs…

Total tweets

There are two stand-out performers here, both Essendon and St. Kilda recorded 77 tweets for the week. Essendon played West Coast on Friday resulting in 58 tweets throughout the day. St. Kilda had an intra-club practice match which resulted in 41 tweets on the day. Next was North Melbourne with a respectable 42 tweets (not including any match days) and Fremantle with 25 tweets for the week.

Brisbane was the only active account not to register any activity during the week, even though they had a match on Sunday. As covered in my last post, the Western Bulldogs are yet to enter the world of Twitter and the Brisbane Lions account is not an official one, please regard all their and Geelong’s  data as coming from unofficial accounts.

I also had a stat called ‘after hours tweet’ which basically translates to ‘who is taking their job home with them’ (or working really late)? I considered 6pm-9am an after hours tweet and in this category St. Kilda and North dominated, more than tripling both Essendon and Melbourne who came in a tie for third.

Plugging the sponsors

On the official Hawthorn Twitter page, in their background they list links to their official website, Facebook, Twitter and email address as well as getting a good plug to their major sponsor, Tasmania. Every single follower who views the Hawks page gets an imprint of the sponsors’ logo -  great work Hawks! This was easily the best layout of any Twitter page. The Kangaroos also have web and facebook links, however the next line which has details for memberships has been cut off in their background image. Sadly you can’t scroll down the image as its a static background image, that will need to be fixed.

Want to get some extra bang for your sponsors’ buck? Create a Twitter list of all your corporate partners’ Twitter accounts so your fans can get easy access. Can’t think of any players or personalities  for a #followfriday? How about all your corporate partners! Simple measures like these will allow you to subtly integrate your sponsors into your social media campaigns without it becoming too much of a pitch to your fans.

Use of multimedia

This is where St. Kilda and North break away from the pack, this high quality use of tweets is what separates the great from the good. The majority of St. Kilda images were either taken at the intra-club practice match or the official season launch; all behind-the-scenes action that allows the regular fan who cannot make either event feel that little bit closer to the team. The Kangaroos, on the other hand, posted a variety of images which included some at training, behind-the-scenes media action or players at the family day. The ability to supply fans with behind-the-scenes material comes back to the ‘fly on the wall’ mentality, which is ultimately what any die-hard fan wants to see.

While they may not have shown it this week, Collingwood has historically been great with behind-the-scenes tweets such as images from the office, training or at social functions. There are so many opportunities for images to be taken within a football club, such as in the office or membership department, at training, team meetings, at matches and social functions such as family days or season launches.

Opening up the conversation

‘Dialogue, not monologue’ is what I believe leads to a successful social media campaign; there must be interaction between the club and its fans. Essendon is the winner in this case with 39 of its 77 posts being directed to or re-tweets of fans.  The Adelaide Crows, who actually have the most followers of all 16 AFL teams, did not record a single ‘@’ to their fans during this seven day period (which included their first match of the season).

Opening yourself up to feedback

Essendon has a ‘your comments’ section on each of its news articles which allows fans an extra level of involvement by joining their own social network ‘the hangar‘. However there can be problems when fans begin to argue with each other or even yet bag the club. Club’s need to be aware that if you open yourself up to comments, you’re effectively creating a mini-forum which must be then regulated, as not all comments are family-friendly. Be prepared for a bit more work once the comments come flying in.

Converting offline fans to online followers

When comparing the membership database from 2009 to current social media figures, (combining the largest Facebook group/page with total fans of a Twitter account) Essendon has the best conversion rate of members to social media fans with a rate of 0.97 social media fans to every one member. From there Adelaide comes in second, Sydney third and Collingwood fourth. Admittedly some fans may double up or be fans from other clubs, but it does give an interesting perspective on the ability to convert fans in general to their social media accounts.

Using the gifts you’re given

‘Spreading the word’ takes on new forms on Twitter as any popular topic can become ‘trending’ which means it appears on the right-side of the Twitter homepage to every single user of Twitter. The only team ever to achieve this? Essendon Football Club after their one-point win over the Saints. Previously Essendon has run with a hashtag and that is what trended.

Now St. Kilda has picked up the virtual ball (hashtag) and ran with it since. Accompanying over 85% of their tweets was a hashtag, typically ‘#gosaints’. This tag develops a consistent theme to their digital media strategy and allows fans to get involved by adding the hashtag to their own tweets. Fans can then search via the ”#gosaints’ tag and see other users that have recently tweeted out the same message. The Kangaroos are currently the second most prolific user of a hashtag with theirs being ‘#nmfc’, allowing fans to join in the chorus conversation. The AFL, too, is promoting game hashtags as they recently have started asking for any users who are tweeting about or from an AFL game to end with ‘#aflteam1team2′.How can you turn your loyal fan base into a paying fan base online through the building of applications for smart phones, or member-only based services?

Turning friends and followers into dollars

This is one of the biggest issue facing sporting clubs marketing departments as we move forward into the next decade. Social media may never replace the tangible mail-out and the feeling people have from holding something in their hand, but it  can go almost as far.

I can only assume after not reading my post and becoming inspired, @Essendon_FC took to their twitter account to tease a little bit of exciting news that was to come the following day, what could it hold in store?

Discounted stuff , woo hoo!

Essendon ran a sale, only notifying fans through its facebook and twitter accounts. For two hours that day, they would receive a 20% discount at the club’s web store on all merchandise using the appropriate ‘facebook’ or ‘twitter’ code. Even though the sale itself only lasted 2 hours, Essendon_FC sent out 12 tweets over an eight hour time period and two facebook status changes giving various updates on the sale. One such tweet involved spreading the word of a happy shopper.

So, what can we learn from this?

• Timing: The immediacy social media offers means you can tease a sale 15 hours in advance, announce the details of the sale four hours in advance and still get a good virtual turn out.
• Pricing: Marketing budget equals to $0, and with 10,000 followers on facebook, 3790 followers on twitter  and re-tweets following that’s a rough exposure to let’s say 20,000 fans…  budget well spent.
• Branding: The sale builds loyalty, if there were Essendon fans out there who didnt follow Essendon before or even have Twitter before, this will make them sign up and want to get involved. Of course from there they can follow my AFL players list and follow all their favourite AFL players on twitter.

For more on the Australian sporting landscape and its focus on social media, please visit www.sportspiel.com.au