A couple of weeks ago we were lucky enough to be invited along to the UCL Champions League event being run by adidas at Vistoria House, London.  It was a great event where we have the opportunity to try out the latest boots, test our shooting and running and also sit in on an interesting panel session on the future of football (see previous write up)

On the panel were some big names from digital sport and was hosted by Marcus Speller (The Football Ramble). It included Richard Welsh (Creative Director, Copa90), Tom Ramsden (Global Brand Marketing Director – Football, adidas),  Steve Nuttall (Senior Director – Sports, YouTube), Nick Chiarelli (Account Director, Future Foundation) and BT Sport’s Leigh Moore.

You can check out more from the event and the panel session itself in this video that adidas have recently made available.  Thanks to the guys at We Are Social for putting together the event and making such a top day.

Here are some great quotes from the panel that I’m sure you’ll find fascinating…

On the future of broadcasting:

Steve Nuttall (Google):

“There’s a terminology issue that we have to deal with because I’m not really sure what ‘broadcaster’ means anymore. It’s now possible for so many more people to tell stories than it used to be.”

On the second screen:

Leigh Moore (BT Sport):

“Social media, first and foremost, is about connecting people with people, and the more we can do that and the more that we are allowing people to have better conversations with each other around a sports product, the better that’s got to be for fans.”

On data in football:

Tom Ramsden (adidas):

“I think people are crying out for a new level of insight and a kind of reinvention in many ways. miCoach and the Elite Team System is a perfect example of that, where we could potentially deliver real time physiological data to people, a completely new way to experience the game. I think football demands it, consumers demand it, and the rate of progression is really starting to pick up.”

“We all like football because it’s football, not because it’s maths, and the idea behind driving innovation is to make the game better and help athletes perform better. It’s not data or innovation for innovation’s sake.”

“Data’s nothing without context and insight and if you’re not delivering both of those around it, then it’s useless.”

“We’re still at the tip of the iceberg, we’re nowhere in comparison to what we have available, but actually who’s bringing value to the new insight and new levels? That will come through things like miCoach and through, in the future, saying that, ‘he’s just controlled the ball the greatest way anybody’s controlled a ball,’ and we can statistically prove that.”

On trends and consumer demand:

Nick Chiarelli (Future Foundation):

“One of the things is a sort of fragmentation of the content piece into constituent parts that people can dip into and dip out of. So you’ve got your picture, you’ve got your official commentary, you’ve got reams and reams of unofficial commentary supporters. It’s almost piecemeal and patchwork, pulling together their own ideal, putting together this jigsaw puzzle of content which is uniquely tailored to them, and potentially takes crowd noise from a particular part of the ground that they may sit in when they go.”

“Longer term there are concepts we’ve developed for zonal TVing, where you’ve got your main piece which is the game, and then all of these discretionary areas in the screen where you’ve got your Twitter feed, you’ve got your local pizza delivery place, for example, you’ve got your fantasy football team being constantly updated with whoever just scored a goal and the impact on your team, and there’s a lot of fun you can have with that.”

On the value of storytelling:

Steve Nuttall (Google):

“I think the power is in the hands of the consumer because of the advances in technology and the fact is it is now possible for five teenagers in a bedroom in Queensland to create a 30-second video, stick a house music track on it, upload it to YouTube, and a couple of weeks later there were 14,000 videos a day being posted to YouTube that emulated the video that they created. It was something called the Harlem Shake. Anyone can tell stories.”

“Technological advances in the internet make it possible to tell stories that were never known before.”

On football-related content and the importance of context:

Tom Ramsden (adidas):
“The challenge for us as an authentic football brand, whether it’s talking about all of the exact details of Leo Messi’s boots or saying ‘Well, here’s what he did last weekend, here’s what he had for breakfast this morning,” is how do we become part of a seamless experience in serving up the right level of football content?”

Richard Welsh (Copa90):
“Google Glass is an amazing piece of technology but ultimately it will be validated by what it gets used for. Imagine Lionel Messi has a pair and you could see him in training or on the pitch and it’s that intimacy…I think everyone would want to see what it’s like to be Lionel Messi scoring that goal in that match. It’s how these amazing industries will knit together to create new stories and new experiences.”

“We’re working with stuff at the moment where content is triggered from the TV series through audio triggers and sound waves, so it’s not something that’s interrupting the experience, it’s just making content fluid across different platforms.”

Guest Post:  James Hunt is Client Services Director at GMR Marketing, an innovative sponsorship and brand experience specialist.

As sports leagues expand into growing markets, fantasy sports go with them. In the past few years, global fantasy sports participation has skyrocketed, including 10% of the US and UK populations as of 2010, and emerging markets growing strong.

Enthusiasm for fantasy sports helps leagues augment existing fan loyalty and prime the pump in new markets. And because fantasy leagues are changing the way people watch and consume sports, brands have a big opportunity to tap into this new form of fan engagement.

The Changing Fan Experience

Almost 85% of NFL supporters we surveyed would rather watch a game at home than in a stadium, with 37% admitting to regularly checking the progress of their fantasy team on a second screen while watching on TV (Source: GMR proprietary research).

This trend has led many fantasy players to lose some interest in their favourite teams, instead focusing on the individual athletes on their fantasy team. And it’s not just a distraction: the emotion runs deep. A recent survey from Turnkey Sports found that 28% of participants “feel worse when their fantasy team loses than when their favourite NFL team loses.”

“I cannot watch football the way it was meant to be watched,” wrote fantasy football advocate C.D. Carter for the New York Times’ football blog, The Fifth Down. Since first starting a fantasy team in 2006, Carter wrote, “I watch for stats. I fret about fantasy points, not game outcomes. The game, in short, is meaningless.”

Is Fantasy Helping Drive the Game?

It’s not just individual fans: fantasy’s impact on the game is replicated on a larger scale. Typically, the popularity of a fantasy game within a particular market has depended on that market’s underlying interest in the sport: the real world leads, and fantasy follows. But the rise of fantasy platforms (and digital obsession in general) is helping these sports introduce themselves and their stars to new fan bases all around the world: it’s becoming a reciprocal relationship.

For example, Fantasy League, a market leader of English Premier League fantasy football, now boasts users from more than 99 countries. And as more players from around the globe are signed by British clubs to play in the Premier League, those home markets then become potential new markets for the league’s fantasy game.

“The Premier League now sees developing countries as a major growth market — and that will benefit fantasy games,” said the company’s commercial director Richard King, singling out sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia as important areas for growth.

Brands: This Is an Opportunity

As consumers continue to adopt fantasy sports – and the live sports that inspire them – brands have a big opportunity to integrate themselves into the evolving fan experience. But surprisingly, they’ve been slow to tap into it.

One exception is Microsoft, who’s begun a strategic partnership with the NFL to tie fans’ TV experience to their fantasy league teams. Xbox One users can watch live games on one side of the screen and access their fantasy league data on the other.

This is a great example of a brand getting in on the ground floor. And as entities like the Premier League use fantasy to expand into growing markets, we expect to see many more strategic successes. The fan experience is not static – neither should be brands’ and sports marketers’ approach to reaching those fans.

Guest post: Duane Roft is the founder of teamtrackr, who make fan engagement apps for sports teams, organisations and sponsors.

On Wednesday the 8^th May the football world rocked at news of the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson – one of it’s longest-standing and most recognizable and successful characters.

On the same day the blue half of Manchester released their own news that could have an even greater impact on the game; that they were installing high density Wi-Fi at the Etihad, effectively turning it into the “Premier League’s most technologically fan-friendly stadium.”

While other clubs (most notably Liverpool) have begun trialing solutions of their own connected stadia, Man City are unleashing the big guns with Cisco’s Connected Stadium Wifi and StadiumVision Mobile.  Capable of delivering live video and other event information direct to mobiles, Man City are promising one of the most “immersive, video rich experiences in sports” and will effectively turn fans’ mobiles into a second screen for live games.

The potential for this type of technology is huge, and it’s clearly a direction that a lot of clubs are heading in and many more will head in.  With ticket prices continuing to rise, the pressure is always on to improve the fan experience and open up opportunities to drive further revenue, and mobile presents huge opportunities in both of these areas.

But mobile also changes our behavior, which could potentially lead to a negative impact on the atmosphere at games.  When was the last time you sat through a TV programme without checking your phone 57 times to see what film that actor was in or if anything was happening on Twitter, just because you could?

It’s no different socially either, with measures like “phone stacking” having to be employed so that we can actually focus on real-life communication rather than the mystery and potential of a new email, Tweet or text.

Live Events

Using technology at live events could be great, but there is a fine line between engagement and distraction and complimenting the matchday experience and fragmenting it.  The Brooklyn Nets basketball team (cited in the press release as currently utilizing this technology) play a sport known for its stop/start nature; there are regular time-outs and breaks in play that a fan could take advantage of to maximize the impact of the technology.

One of the great things about football is that there’s a collective of people with their attention on the game, willing their team to victory.  It’s like being part of an organic mass that reacts to the action, encouraging and motivating the players; feeling like their support makes a difference.

By providing opportunities that distract from being part of this collective, is there a danger of creating a fragmented fanbase, leading to a loss of atmosphere for all in attendance?  If people are Tweeting during the game or looking for other fans to chat to does that mean they are fully invested in the match day experience and want to share it or does it mean that they are looking for a distraction?

It’s a concern that Mark Bradley of the Fan Experience Company also has.  “It’s a sign of the changing times.  The nature of fans is changing – especially younger generations who have a bigger need to interact – and there’s a danger that if we go too far down the line it could finish off the traditional atmosphere of a game.”

Bradley believes that Barcelona illustrate the perfect example of a club who’ve gone from a hardcore “tribe” of fans to everyone holding up their smartphones during games.  “Our research always pinpoints ‘atmosphere’ as a big driver of fan engagement, so clubs would need to get the balance right. Otherwise we may damage one of the core elements of the UK football experience.”

It’s unclear exactly what Man City will do with the technology, but as a club who have such a strong and authentic relationship online with their fans you can bet that they’ll be looking to be as interactive as possible.  Even a cynic like me can see the value of goal replays from multiple angles in the dead time after someone scores, but a “live” video stream of alternative angles during the game feels like a step too far.

Datatainment

The biggest opportunities to engage will be through the “dynamic data channel”, with “stats, trivia contests and multi-player games” cited as potential possibilities.  Stats – or “datatainment” as termed by City’s digital savant Richard Ayers – is already something that the club have been focusing on, opening up player stats data publicly at the start of last season, so it seems reasonable to assume that there will be an emphasis on that.

Personally, I’m a huge fan of stats, but this raises an interesting point about their relevance in real-time at live events.  At what point are we expected to stop watching the game to check them?

The key to success is through simplified processes and genuine engagement, and it’s exciting to see what other features will emerge.  The opportunities to add to the pre-game experience both in the stadium and at City Square, the club’s fanzone area, and at half-time are huge, without infringing on the distraction debate.

Giving the fans more of a voice by allowing them to rate player performances or vote for their man of the match in real time will be an exciting evolution to the experience, as will curating user-generated content for use on the web and beyond, potentially creating a virtual stadium for fans not at the game and the huge international audience.

Commercially, the US currently leads the way in at-event opportunities, with apps allowing seat upgrades and the ability to order food from your seat widely available already.  Keeping all of this functionality in one place and providing a seamless customer experience is key, but it still feels like a fragmented landscape that nobody has really cracked yet.

Whatever City come up with one thing is for sure; the engagement/distraction line will move significantly in the next few years as technology improves and the cost to implement it reduces.  The key, Bradley notes, is to listen to what your fans want.  “If you can understand what motivates different fan groups you can find ways to satisfy them all.”

City are a club that get digital and if anyone will come out with an offering with the genuine intent of improving their fans’ experience then it is them.  But even they can’t predict what impact this technology will have on the overall matchday atmosphere, and it will be interesting to see on which side of the line this lands and how it evolves.

On Saturday, UKSN (and a group of UKSN competition winners) took a trip to the adidas lab in Bloomsbury, London. The pop-up studio was created to compliment the Champions League Final festivities around London and aimed to highlight the adidas football products of the future and a glimpse into how football kit, match balls and a dugout could look like in 2015.

Alongside having the opportunity to try on the three new adidas boots: Nitrocharge, Predator Lethal Zones and f50; we could also see the potential of miCoach and adidas smartball. We were also shown the 99g concept boot and the rest of the 2015 concept kit that will weight just 630g, head-to-toe!

adidas had also set-up several interactive stages to demonstrate their technology:

• ‘The Track’: A shuttle-run, with ball-control added, to be completed in one pair of the new boots as quick as possible. This positioned you on a leaderboard with your key stats, suggested the boot for you and uploaded your efforts to YouTube.

• The Dugout: Whilst watching a video of FC Bayern training, we were able to flick through slides that demonstrated the data collected how this contributed to the potential of miCoach.
• Shooting: Wearing the Lethal Zone boots, and using the smartball, adidas could track the speed of the ball, as well as the bend, flight path and where the ball was struck.

The whole event was superbly integrated with social media whereby those in the lab were able to connect RFID wristbands with a chosen social network, and throughout the session this data was tweeted/posted instantly to your feeds. With ‘The Track’, a 30 second video was uploaded immediately to YouTube, and posted on your feed. Below is an example of Dan demonstrating great footwork and the pace and agility of Eden Hazard:

In the evening, during the Champions League Final build-up, adidas put on a panel session hosted by Marcus Speller (The Football Ramble). The panel included Richard Welsh (Creative Director, Copa90), Tom Ramsden (Global Brand Marketing Director – Football, adidas),  Steve Nuttall (Senior Director – Sports, YouTube), Nick Chiarelli (Account Director, Future Foundation) and BT Sport’s Leigh Moore.

The discussion focused upon the future of football, and sports broadcasting. Key topics included the differences BT Sport could bring to the market, the importance of user-generated content and second-screen viewing. Of course, there was also significant discussion about the adidas products on show and how they will contribute to the future of football, and of broadcasting. Much of this conversation centred upon data, and how this could be used for football in the future.

With a drink in hand and several projectors set-up, we then enjoyed the Champions League Final amongst many, apparently Dortmund, fans!

A neat touch was the inclusion of a stats board that tied with Opta and Twitter. This live-board constantly updated to show top Champions League trends, top #UCLFinal tweets, a minute-by-minute comparison between #BVB and #FCB and in-depth match stats such as possession and passes completed. It was a great addition to the match viewing.

A big thank you to adidas and the others that helped to organise the event. It was a roaring success and showed adidas at their innovative best.

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED!

This weekend is going to be a special one here in London.  With the UEFA Champions League Final being hosted in our capital for the second time in three years it going to be party time once again.  Now we don’t run competitions very often on here but for this we thought we’d make an exception.

We’ve teamed up with adidas to offer something very special indeed for anyone in London this weekend.  adidas will be showcasing and looking ahead at the ‘Future of Football’ with their adidas lab (#adidaslab).  The lab will give a sneaky look at adidas products of the past, present & future.  It will give consumers a glimpse into how football might look in the next  six months, year and beyond.  You’ll be able to test unseen products first-hand in a series of high-tech football experiences featuring real-time data visualisation – all at this behind-closed-doors event in London this weekend.

We’ve got 12 pairs of tickets for the adidas Labs on Saturday 25th May between 11.30am and 1.00pm and we want you guys to come along.  To enter, post a comment at the bottom of this post to say why you want to go and you’ll be in with a chance of winning this money-can’t-buy prize.  We’ll be in touch to let you know if you are going!

You have to be 18 or over and resident here in the UK and must be able to make it to the event on Saturday.  There is no travel as part of the prize, only entry to the event.

So what are you waiting for??  Get writing now….

Squawka is a second-screen web app that provides real time data visualizations of football matches across Europe and runs this alongside social media accounts. The depth of data provided is unique amongst consumer applications and the format encourages use of this data in discussions on social media.

Squawka launched in June last year, and have experienced a meteoric take-up from consumers in 192 countries who are spending, on average, an astounding 39 minutes dwelling on the web application during Premier League matches. The founders realised the opportunities that second-screening offered brands and have provided never-before-seen real time and personalized sponsorship campaigns. This is one of the unique selling points for Squawka, whose work with Dominos Pizza and Ladbrokes in particular, has been seen as ground-breaking. These results have seen Squawka Highly Commended at the recent Performance Marketing Awards and also a shortlisted at the upcoming Revolution awards.

With the continuing upsurge of ‘dual-screening’, Squawka is well positioned to exploit a number of opportunities that will arise. After their astronomic growth in the last year, founders Sanjit Atwal and Leo Harrison have announced that Squawka has attracted a funding round from some of the top names in the UK Performance Marketing and Advertising industries. Included on the list of investors are Forward Internet Group (with founder Neil Hutchinson appointed to the board), FusePump CEO Rob Durkin and BBH founder Sir John Hegarty. Further to these, Lastminute.com investor Thomas Teichman, Spark Ventures director Kiko Duffy and Entrepreneurs Eric Lumley and Jay Taylor have all invested in the potential of Squawka.

Neil Hutchinson from Forward commented:

“The early data we have seen around user engagement and viral growth since we first invested has been impressive and we look forward to the next part of the journey!”

Rob Durkin added:

“The potential of Squawka to capitalise on the second screen phenomenon with quality relevant advertising made investing in it a no-brainer for me.”

Information on where the funding is to be used has yet to be released but it’s safe to assume a portion of this will be allocated to a mobile application that is scheduled for the end of the year. Whether or not Squawka intends to branch into other sports is also an unknown.

If you haven’t used Squawka before, now is a great time to get involved: http://www.squawka.com/

Yesterday’s game at Wembley was full of late drama and emotion.  It was David Vs Goliath.  It was the return to the place that had ended Wigan chairman Dave Whelan’s footballing career back in 1960.  It was the FA Cup Final.

We have spoken on how recently about how Vine should be used and how it is currently.  We have seen many a view of an empty stadium or some other uneventful posts.  But how good would it be to capture something different and of-the-moment.

Usually we only look at the business accounts of clubs, NGB’s and brands but today I wanted to put an individual on here.  I had been to see the FA only last week, though we didn’t talk about Vine, and it was great to see it being used on the day.

Mark Gilbert, who heads up editorial content at the FA, has been experimenting with the app and managed to time it perfectly yesterday.  Sat behind the dugouts of the teams he caught the celebrations as Wigan’s Ben Watson steered in a great last-minute header.  By capturing the manager, coaches and subs going crazy it gave a snapshot that we didn’t see much of on TV and also gave us some emotion.

People love to share things that they feel something towards.  Seeing people celebrating a monumental moment in a clubs history is one of those special times.  Mark’s quick video has already been shared over 400 times.  Imagine is it had been through the main FA account?  It was retweeted by the @FA and also Twitter UK’s Lewis Wiltshire plugged it after seeing his use of Vine in his timeline.  It’s well worth a look.

Here is the main Vine that caught so much attention.  For other events, clubs, NGB’s it worth noting and looking to build into your plans.  It doesn’t step on broadcasters toes as there is no match footage and gives something that fans love to see and share.

The news that I (and many other United fans) had dreaded finally arrived this morning.  Twitter had been awash with rumours of his immanent departure since last night when The Telegraph went with an exclusive article.

The news was posted on Twitter and quickly stirred much debate.  Initially there was a dismissive feel to it but when more facts became clear it sent the Twitterverse into overdrive.  No comment was made by the club which only added to the rumours, though this was of no surprise due to the stock listing in NYC that meant that any change would have to be disclosed to them first.

Then it happened.  At around 9.17am the only Manchester United presence on Twitter (there is no official team account, only the Press Office) tweeted a simple short message that left no doubt.

The move by the club shows how the platform has become the number 1 place to break news.  It is where all the press have a presence and where clubs have been able to enable some kind of control over their ‘brand’.  Players use it to have a voice whilst clubs will always use it for marketing and PR (not so much engagement goes on still).

As soon as the new broke it sent Twitter into meltdown.  People like myself posting messages of disbelief and thanks to a manager who is without doubt the most successful manager ihn the history of the game in England.  I’ve been a fan for over 25 years and have only ever known one manager.  It’s a day we’ve feared will one day inevitably arrived but we didn’t want to happen yet (if ever).

A little after this post was first published I was sent a neat infographic from the guys at Simplyzesty.  It shows the reaction over a longer period of time and some more details of Facebook as well.  Make sure you have a read of their full article on the announcement here.

Taking a quick look at the stats (via Topsy) you can see when the story first broke late last night and then when the official announcement was made.  A total of over 300k mentions in half an hour shows how people from around the world were talking about it.

The use of the hashtag by the club was nicely done and lead it becoming the number 1 trending topic in the world.  At one point 8 out of the 10 trends were related to it and in there was the name David Moyes.  Once the initial shock receded then the next obvious step was to start speculating over who will take over.

The bookies favourite is Moyes, the Everton manager who has managed to over deliver almost every year for the last 11 years.  Will he succeed and be up to the task?  Will it be Jose Mourinho, someone who has shown no secret as to his desire to manage at Old Trafford when Sir Alex calls it a day?  Or an outsider such as the successful Jurgen Klopp from Champions League finalists Borussia Dortmund?

It is rumoured that his successor will be announced within the next 48 hours so we will wait and see.  It’s going to be a nervous time to firstly see who gets it and then if they can carry on from where Sir Alex left off.  Taking another snapshot from Twitter most of the conversation is around Jose but Moyes is close behind.  Can this be a judge on who will actually get it?

Once again Twitter has shown that it is the place to be for breaking news such as this.  It would be interesting to see how many people have used Facebook as well to let friends and family know.  It is still a platform to take into account and United used that as well to break the news.  It also added a great banner to the top of their page, which I and many others have taken and used on our profiles.

Not only that but the club have reacted quickly by starting a new Facebook tab allowing fans to send in their messages to SAF.  A selection of these thank you messages will be published in an exclusive #ThankYouSirAlex book and a lucky few will win a signed copy of the book.  Nice touch by the club and very reactive.  The club have improved immeasurably in their use of Facebook (and now Twitter), so a well done from me.

Thank you Sir Alex.  It’s been a great journey!

European Football Clubs have shown increasing efforts to enter Chinese Social Media and connect with Chinese fans online. This week, Mailman Group released findings to show which teams and footballers have made the most effort to impact their Chinese fans online. The study was conducted over a 7 days period ending on May 1^st and across the top 25 footballers on Sina Weibo, China’s no.1 social network by usage.

Andrew Collins, CEO of Mailman Group, said;

“These results demonstrate that individual footballers’ pages are much more effective than the team pages themselves.  We believe this to be a key area of growth for football clubs, the advantages of launching your top players on Weibo as well as having an official club presence, are overwhelming.”

It’s interesting to see about-to-be-retired Michael Owen being one of the top players in China.  This could be due to his use of social media, which has been very good (if uncontroversial), or equally through his former clubs Liverpool, Real Madrid and Manchester United.  All massive clubs with fans based in every corner of the world.

The inclusion of Nakata shows the Asian influence within the superstar list of those involved in European football.  Much as we in the UK follow the exploits of our players when they head to foreign clubs, and the same can be said about GB athletes in the NBA and NFL.  Chinese fans are going to be interested in the voice of a ‘local’ (Nakata being Japanese of course) who is plying his trade far from home.

It’s fair to say that there is a long way to go for European clubs in this market, an untapped market.  Liverpool have been one of the pioneers from a club perspective with Man City, Real Madrid, Barcelona and the other powerhouses not far behind.  It will be interesting to see if Manchester United step up their efforts in this region (I’m sure there are plans afoot).

From a player perspective, those who take their ‘brand’ seriously will exploit their popularity from tours and the club they play for.  For others, getting to grips with Facebook and Twitter is proving challenge enough!

Key insights of this study include:

-       The top 3 players on Sina Weibo play for Spain’s La Liga and have alltogether 29M+ total followers.

-       LaLiga players dominate Sina Weibo, with 8 times more followers than the English Premier League players

-       Player-celeb Gareth Bale’s fan numbers and engagement skyrocketed after he won English Premier League’s Player of the Year and the Young Player Awards.

It has been a little while since our last digisport interview on UKSN.  We’re delighted to welcome Jim Lucas, Communications Officer at Premier League outfit Southampton.  The club is settling well into the top flight of football here in England after a break of a 7 years, a time that saw them go as low as the League 1 before two successive promotions saw them back with the best last summer.  Jim’s answers give a great insight into how football clubs use social media and what they see as the future of the industry.

Hi Jim. Thanks for taking the time out to answer a few questions. Be great to start with a quick overview of your role at the Saints, who works with you and and what it involves?

I’m part of a small media and communications department, which consists of two communications officers – of which I am one – plus two audio-visual officers, all working under the club’s head of media. We are responsible for all content output and media management/PR. I personally have taken on responsibility for the club’s social media presence, and as such have dedicated quite a lot of my first year at the club to improving and developing our work on those platforms.

All five members of the media department contribute to our social media platforms, but I have taken the lead on that front over the past year – particularly since our promotion to the Premier League. We don’t have a dedicated social media manager, but we haven’t let that stop us innovating and searching for ways to strengthen our social presence. We’ve sensed huge value in engaging with our supporters that way, so we’re determined to keep working on making our social presence even better. We’re now active on Twitter, Facebook, Vine, YouTube, Instagram and Google+. We’re also looking into using Foursquare.

What does a typical day entail for you at the Saints?

As anyone working in football will tell you, no single day is the same as another – I can be writing reaction or preview pieces for our official website, interviewing a player on camera, working on our next matchday programme, liaising with the external media or dealing with anything else thrown at a football club press officer. The one constant, I suppose, is that I am always keeping a close eye on updating Twitter and Facebook. I try to ensure we’re as responsive and informative to our fans as possible, and that we give our content the best possible platform to be seen by the people who matter most to us – our supporters.

How would you describe Southampton’s approach to social media and digital in general?

We’re extremely keen to innovate and be the first to do things. For example, we were the first Premier League club to use Vine. Throughout the club there is a mantra of never happy to stand still, so we’re always looking for ways to be the best we can possibly be. That attitude very much applies to our social and digital strategies.

And do you have specific set objectives for what you do?

We don’t particularly set any numerical targets or anything like that. We simply want our content to inform and engage our supporters as well as possible, and we will always look for more – and better – ways of doing that.

The club have been on Twitter since 2009, that’s almost 4 years now, and gained close to 100k fans. What have you found works best on the platform when it comes to engaging with fans?

Without a doubt, it’s the exclusive, behind-the-scenes content that particularly gets our fans going. Something seemingly so trivial like tweeting an iPhone photograph showing a couple of the players at the training ground can be stunningly well received. We are always looking for opportunities to demonstrate our players in their natural surroundings and at their most human.

As you said before, the club has a presence on different platforms, Facebook, and YouTube especially.  How does your approach differ depending on the platform?

We know we have different types of supporter on each. We tend to be more conversational on Twitter, but Facebook’s introduction of the ability to reply to individual comments has prompted something of a rethink. Overall, though, we believe that our content is valued by our fanbase across the major social platforms, so it’s about how best to promote that and how to generate the best-possible level of engagement.

Players have been both praised and vilified for how they use Twitter. Do you as a club either support or help train your players in its use?

We don’t have a social media training programme, although it’s something we have discussed. We don’t have many first-team players on Twitter, but we’d like to encourage more to join in the future so we’re looking at ways of offering them support in doing so. It’s fair to say, then, that some sort of training and support network is something we’d love to implement as we move forward.

What would you say has been the clubs most successful digital campaign?

I can only really comment on the past 12 months, which is how long I’ve been with the club. Our recent #saintsfc100k campaign was a relatively simple one, but it generated fantastic engagement levels. Shortly before breaking the 100,000-follower mark, we generated a list of our most engaged and loyal followers. We then printed each of those onto an individual sheet of paper, with their picture and username on one side and their actual name on the other. We then asked a selection of first-team players to say thank you to those fans on camera, and produced a short YouTube video compilation of those messages.

Among the selected followers, we included a couple of celebrity supporters in singer Craig David and athlete Iwan Thomas, who both commented on the video. Overall it was incredibly well received by our fans, and it was picked up upon by certain digital media websites and at Twitter HQ. We’re really happy with the level of engagement we got from what was an incredibly simple and cost-free campaign. We’ve also run a good April Fools’ campaign involving Rickie Lambert, behind-the-scenes YouTube features from home matchdays and player Q&As, all of which have been massively successful.

Which clubs/sports do you think do a great job in social media?  Who do you look to follow?

We try not to ‘follow’ anyone in terms of how we do things because we’re determined to carve out our own reputation. However, when it comes to being the kings of social media, it’s hard to look beyond Manchester City. They just ‘get’ it – their content is thoroughly compelling and engaging, and I think that’s what any football club is looking for when it comes to this sort of thing. Chelsea are also pretty good, as are a few overseas clubs like Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan and Barcelona. Outside of football, the NBA is doing some pretty impressive stuff. There’s a lot of inspiration to be taken from the way teams and leagues are doing things in the States, I think.

We’re going to be running our next UKSN event around the use of video – how do you see using YouTube can benefit the club and what opportunities do you see for the platform?

Video is huge. Few clubs of our size have dedicated video editors, but we’ve always known that visual content is such a huge winner with our supporters. As part of the FLi network, we have a subscription-based video service but this season we have really stepped up our YouTube presence as well. We love how easy it is to share our videos via Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and it’s great how quickly they can generate a buzz. Vine is great, too – we get a lot of engagement there. Going forward, we’d love to be able to stream press conferences, events and even non-rights-managed matches via YouTube’s live functionality. Clubs are going to be using YouTube more and more over the next few years, and I’m really glad that we’re ahead of the bunch on that front.

With all this content creation and use of platforms.  How do you measure its success and what tools do you use to do so?

We use the standard insights and analytics provided by the social networks themselves but, as we grow, we would like to look at ways of peering even closer into our statistics. It’s something we’re working on.

Finally, what are your plans (that you can divulge) over the next 12 months in terms of use of digital?  and where do you see opportunities for football clubs?

We’re keeping a particularly close eye on how to implement a multi-lingual social presence. We already have a Japanese-language Twitter feed with over 4,000 followers, and we’re planning to start a Spanish feed in the near future. We’ve also identified our Indonesian and Malaysian fan-bases as ones we should look to cater for. I think there’s a real opportunity for clubs to bring their global supporters closer together with well-run multi-lingual Twitter and Facebook accounts. Speaking more generally, I think making the most of the level of access you have within your own club will continue to drive how we operate. We’re in a privileged position to be as close to the action as we are, so why not make the most of it by generating insightful and engaging content?

Thanks for taking the time out to speak to us Jim.  Best of luck for the rest of the season and look forward to speaking to you again soon.