This week I had the pleasure of having drinks in London with some of the leading figures we have in social media covering sport and television. One of those was Andy Smith who heads up the social media efforts at The FA.
One of the recent campaigns he has been integral to has been the Facebook competition you can currently see on the England Football Team page. One thing I have been pleased to see with the page is that they avoided the common mistake made by NGB’s when it comes to social media.
Many times you will see an NGB (National Governing Body) create a page in their own name. To me this brings with it the thought…why would I follow a governing body?! To be honest if I wasn’t a hardcore fan or player of the sport then I wouldn’t. The FA have the right approach in pushing the England Team, their most valuable and marketable asset and one that the everyday fan is going to have an allegiance with, as their following is so much bigger than the governing body would ever have.
If other bodies took this approach they would see a much bigger audience being opened up to them, more engagement and greater numbers joining. When you search for a sport would you type in the name of the national team or the NGB? My point proved I think.
Back to The FA….. the most recent campaign Andy has been part of is the ‘Win A Seat in Facebook Row’. This in itself sounds exciting (and yes I have already entered the competition) so what does it entail?
For the upcoming England v Holland match they are offering 50 pairs of tickets to be won “to help our Facebook fans get closer to the action, winners will have their photos uploaded to the advertising boards at the match and will receive two tickets to ‘Facebook row’, pitchside at Wembley”.
It will be interesting to see how many entries the competition gets and how this affects the number of fans that ‘like’ the page. One can assume the key metric on this is data collection with the next being growth of the page. I’ll try to get an insight into this is the coming weeks.
Well done to the Fa and to Andy…keep up the good work and hopefully see you at Wembley!
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Thanks Alana. I think your appraoch and that of the FA is spot on. Fans are not interesting in the Governing Body but with their sport and their team. the audience for the two is very different and so is the content.
The FA made the right decision.
When I set up social media for Football Federation Australia, last year I created separate social media accounts for FFA and the national teams. (I actually migrated the Bid account to an FFA account)
I did this because, as a sporting nation, fans may be interested in the Socceroos, but don't care about the politics and governance of the sport.
Also, there is a big difference in sentiment between what fans think of the governing body and the national teams, so it was important to separate the brands from the body.
@aussiegoldy
Hi Ben, good shout, it is always important to remain on the right side of the facebook guidelines. We have worked closely with our contacts at facebook and they are very much aware of the competition. thanks Andy @A_BSmith
One interesting point to note is that the FA are using "Facebook" (the phrase) as a part of the promotional copy. According to the FB promotional terms, this is actually a big no-no (with the rationale being that it supports the suggestion that the promoter and the website are in some way associated). Either the FA got specific permission from FB for the copy to contravene their own express regulations, or this is actually a non-compliant promotion on the platform, however well conceived. This doesn't (I hope) subvert the point of the article insofar as it relates to creativity and consumer engagement.