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.

Guest Post:  Tom Kelk is a tech/sport blogger and Account Exec at global social media agency We Are Social.  You can find him on Twitter (@TomKelk), LinkedIn and his blog.

Twitter launched their video service – Vine, in February and the assumption was that brands, and football clubs would embrace it as a useful communication tool.  Vine, in essence, should offer clubs a wonderful opportunity to engage with their audience. It’s taking what Twitter did for writing, and applying it to video. However, the question stood; Are you able to capture the necessary inside 6 seconds?

The answer in short is, absolutely. However, it depends on your creativity, time and attention to detail. The problem of course is with the platform. For the moment, clips must be recorded and uploaded at the point of capture. There is no room for editing or uploading previously developed video.

This will change as Vine develops to work for brands, but for the moment clubs must be clever and creative inside the 6 seconds of unedited footage. The excitement of a new platform enticed clubs to get involved immediately, and we saw initial ventures onto the platform in late January and early February, but where have football clubs gone from there? The truth is, not very far. Birmingham City were very quick onto the scene and are still arguably the most developed football club on Vine. They produced this simple, creative and effective Vine back in January:

Congrats to those who correctly guessed this question. It was: ‘Who did you make your senior debut against?’: ow.ly/h8dCC #BCFC

— Birmingham City FC (@BcfcDotCom) January 25, 2013

Unfortunately videos from most clubs have not developed from this and have become somewhat repetitive, dull and unprofessional. Silent videos of a mashed and fragmented series of clips or an attempt to film 6 seconds of content – looking around an empty stadium being a popular choice – under the assumption that it will have a similar effect to YouTube content. When clubs are filming around the inside of the stadium, why is it empty?

This is true of Arsenal….

Manchester City….

and now Newcastle….

and most other clubs on Vine. Film a stadium in full voice and people will watch, and share that content. Newcastle missed a real trick but not getting involved post their 90^th minute winner against Fulham. The crowd was raucous, and the players were delirious. That produces viral, and shareable content.

Clubs seem unaware that much of this provides little value to the consumer and this is a key reason behind the lack of engagement on the Vine posts. Not only this, we are seeing the new joiners repeat the same mistakes made from the early starters. Newcastle United recently ventured onto the media, and it has certainly been a journey from the fairly good to the downright awful.

I first noticed the club’s use of Vine on the Saturday morning before a game where the person with the phone had simply filmed an obscure area around the Etihad and Manchester City club shop, and uploaded it. Such was the terrible quality, and pointlessness of the video, it was subsequently deleted on the Monday. The sheer aimless nature of the video highlights much of Newcastle United’s, and many other clubs problem with Vine; they do not know how to use it, and do not appear fussed about taking the time to research how it can be best used.

This is perfectly demonstrated by Manchester City’s previous empty stadium film which blurs in and out of focus and should simply not be published. Why does this Vine content not get processed through the same rigorous standards that other social media content does?

Another problem with current Vine videos is this desire to fit as much into the six seconds as possible, and whilst this has worked in several Vine videos, clubs must be willing to shoot singular pieces of content. There seems to be an aversion to capturing six seconds of one feature, instead, clubs insist on cramming 15 scenes into each video. It risks the end-product being fragmented and less effective.

There is plenty of content in this effort from Newcastle United, but this can be halved and would be more effective:

It’s the same with this training clip from Southampton:

We’ve seen the success of well executed drills going viral with Barcelona being the central feature, so why not follow this example using Vine? This fragmented approach also nullifies the effect of sound. Whilst I like clubs embracing new media and opportunities – this cannot be done for the sake of it. If the quality of video is poor, then there is little point in publishing. Indeed, there will be nothing but negative feedback should this be the case. New clubs to the platform have had an opportunity to consider content and ideas from trail-blazers like QPR, Birmingham City and Manchester City which makes the lack of content creativity and all-round low quality even worse.

So, what has been proven to work? We’ve seen success with behind the scenes content, this was especially true of the January transfer window where Wes Thomas and Darius Henderson were seen, and Chris Samba was announced on Vine. Training clips also appear to work well but there are many more opportunities – filming six seconds of a player returning to training post injury for example.

Vine, in essence, should offer clubs a wonderful opportunity to engage with their audience. It’s taking what Twitter did for writing, and applying it to video. However, the question stood; Are you able to capture the necessary inside 6 seconds?

Why is there a significant lack of a footballer showing off his skills? 6 seconds of various players demonstrating their best tricks – perhaps in a series where the Twitter community end up voting for their favourite – would be engaging and absorbing content. Premier League football has access to some incredible assets, why are they not being used with Vine? Here’s a nice idea from Fulham but again, it’s poorly executed

If you can capture the emotion and the feeling that each fan experiences on matchday then the video becomes consumable and shareable. This is fully dependent on sound and this is a weakness in the vast majority of Vine content. It’s not difficult but it’s an example of clubs not setting standards for their Vine content in the same way they might for Facebook or Twitter.

Clubs need to take Vine seriously, it’s not going to be a central communication channel for the moment but it works well as a partnership with Twitter. Clubs appear to forget that Vine isn’t simply a network on its own but it is an extension of Twitter, and functions as such. It should be valued at the same standards. If a club hasn’t got the time to take care over the video content, then Vine should be avoided for the time being. It cannot be used for the sake of it.

There are around 7 Premier League clubs on Vine and this will grow into next season. The close season offers a great opportunity to test features and stories on Vine, and for clubs to maximise their assets to good effect. Hopefully we will see some real creativity and value from football clubs come July because it is sorely needed.

Fans of the Australian Hyundai A league are being given the opportunity to help pick an ‘All-Star’ team to face Man Utd in a friendly in July.  The ANZ stadium has sold out it’s 77’000 allocated tickets in preparation for the match which will make up part of United’s pre season training.

Fans have already selected who the coach is to be and voted in Melbourne Victory head coach Ange Postecoglou. Along side his selection, fans will make up 50% of the vote of who makes the cut in the team through an online selector, 20% will be made from an ‘All-Star’ Committee, a further 20% from the PFA team of the year and 10% from Postecoglou himself.

The online selector allows for fans to pick from all the teams, choose a formation and also pick a captain.

Any amount from each team is allowed and from any nationality. They don’t have to be purely Australian.

Over 10’000 fans have already used the team selector and with over a month still to go to pick a squad that number is likely to continue to rise. After you’ve made you selections and submitted, users are invited to inform their friends or highlight the team they’ve picked through Facebook and Twitter.

Allowing for fans to pick who makes the squad is a fantastic bit of fan engagement. Not only does it bring the fan closer to the selection process but it also helps to unite rival teams. By allowing a fan selection percentage it will make it hard for any set of fans to cry bias and to avoid the game based on team loyalty. This way, the FFA have insured that the stadium is sold out, that TV views will be high and that (likely) kit and memorabilia on the day will be bought in the bucket loads.

Coach Postecoglou has already said that his team is “going to have a go at Manchester United” and with a fan selected set of all stars we’re hoping they win too.

Could you ever see this working in the Premier League? If so, who would make the team?

This article was written by Christian Baker from www.weplay.co

Guest Review:  Tom Kelk is a tech/sport blogger and Account Exec at global social media agency We Are Social.  You can find him on Twitter @TomKelk, LinkedIn and his blog.

The watching of sport has developed rapidly over the last few years. It is now the norm to ‘dual-screen’ when watching a game. Whether that be on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, viewers like to engage to a greater extent with a broadcast in the modern day. Whilst all the aforementioned social channels do this job, there is no market-dominating app that congregates all the conversation one a single game into one ‘second-screen’ experience. This is exactly what SportStream intends to achieve.

They already service NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB; their next target is football – specifically the Premier League and MLS. This is not a surprising next step as the football community is already well-represented, and is continuing to grow in social media. There was a 126% increase in the Premier League’s Facebook and Twitter following in the year 2011-2012 and this trend has continued in 2013. SportStream intend to capitalise on this extended conversation and also apply it to the growing MLS following.

SportStream is effectively Twitter, Facebook messaging and Sky Sports statistics – all rolled into one. The app allows a user to flick between games and engage solely in the chat from that particular game. Whilst this is a nice feature, and may work well in NFL and NBA, chat is aided by the breaks in play and that is my concern with relation to football. Will people want to be that engaged in a deep conversation about the game during play? I’m not so sure.

To counter this concern, SportStream have tried to curate an experience for the user based on who they follow on Twitter and Facebook. This also applies to the game you’re following, gives you notifications over which game is hotting-up and also recommends influencers for you. A “sophisticated semantic engine automatically identifies and tracks influential Twitter personalities, bloggers, sports journalists, teams, players, Facebook friends and fans” which should add an extra dimension to your second screen experience.

Another area SportStream are heavily pushing is their in-app, in-depth visual statistics. They offer:

• “Graphic timeline of plays: Each match is summarized by a graphic timeline of key plays, including goals, player substitutions and cards, all marked by intuitive icons. Fans can follow each turn of events and see who made the play and when.
• Visual stats: Graphic display of the numbers for each team’s shots on target, touches, saves, passes, possession percentage, etc.
• Headline stats on a constant bite-size loop: The names of players who scored and the minute mark at which they made the play will scroll continuously under the team’s logo so fans can have the most vital stats at their fingertips.”

Whilst in-game statistics are probably an essential for this type of application, I have a concern with this focus as a USP. Do the bulk of football followers want in-depth stats? They are interesting, but the feature works far better for American sports where statistics play a far more important role in the discussion of a game. In my opinion the statistical detail is one of the least transferrable USPs for SportStream and should be included more as an added extra.

There are a couple of nice additional features include an in-app tweet composer which automatically adds the hashtags relevant to that game:

Also, the allowing of a private conversation to develop in a separate area is an interesting extra. This feature could be adopted well by users, especially as it’s designed as quite central to the app and how it functioned. I can definitely see myself becoming embroiled in a debate and this offers a great outlet.

The problem for SportStream is that I can see users log-in once or twice a week when their team is playing and that being all. Will users become addicted to using the app under that usage? Possibly not. Will users fully immerse themselves in each and every game or would they like to follow and comment on the game on Twitter whilst also considering other topics? The latter seems more likely.

The challenge for SportStream is to give users enough reason to switch from their current Twitter clients. Most users have settled into how to discuss a game on Twitter and may be unwilling to switch this routine but it should be given a chance. It is a very interesting app, has a lovely UI and gives us a different sport-viewing experience. It’s a free app (only on web and iOS at the moment) and I would certainly recommend giving it a try, see what you think.

Want to learn a bit more? Check out their slick HTML5 site: http://sportstream.com/

Guest Post:  Tom Kelk is a tech/sport blogger and Account Exec at global social media agency We Are Social.  You can find him on Twitter @TomKelk, LinkedIn and his blog.

Knowledge of Chinese social media is sketchy in the western world but UEFA football clubs are wising-up. Recently Shanghai-based agency, Mailman Group, released a review into the top 14 UEFA European football presences over three Chinese social channels; Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo and to a lesser extent, Weixin. So to follow it up we spoke to their CEO, Andrew Collins, to get some more insights…

Without the platforms familiar to most of us, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, this entirely parallel social media ecosystem has emerged. It is an ecosystem that boasts 500m+ active users and over a billion registered accounts. There has been a significant footballing investment in the Asian social market in recent times and judging on the results in Mailman Group’s report, this trend is set to continue.

The 14 clubs were selected based on their popularity on the platforms. These included the expected clubs such as FC Barcelona, Manchester United, FC Bayern, AC Milan, Inter Milan and Real Madrid. Alongside this, five further British clubs made the study: Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City, Tottenham and Liverpool. The research base was completed by Juventus and somewhat surprisingly, Valencia and Malaga.

As can be seen, Spanish, Italian and British clubs are leading the way in working with social media but there is an ever widening spread of clubs showing their interest in exploiting the Asian football-following market. These European clubs have shown increasing efforts to make a name for themselves on Chinese social media and this is demonstrated by 57% of the clubs analysed having official presence on both Sina and Tencent Weibo to connect with Chinese fans online.

Just the one club included in the study had no official social channel; Manchester United. Andrew explained this as the same reason for a lack of an official Manchester United Twitter page – that Manchester United is a unique club and much more private on social media than any other team.

Whilst there are plenty of unofficial presences on Sina and Tencent, these have a far lower impact on fan growth than an official page might. For this reason, Manchester United have an ‘official following’ of just 400,000 – a tenth of their Manchester rivals.

All 14 teams’ accounts were analysed across 5 verticals: total follower numbers, official presence, engagement rate, localization and popularity. Unsurprisingly, the top four performing clubs were arguably the current best four European clubs: Barcelona, Manchester United, FC Bayern and Real Madrid.

Despite Manchester City boasting an interestingly large number of fans (over double that of Barcelona), their engagement figures are lacking. We asked about this high number and whether there had been peaks in the follower numbers after winning the Premier League in 2012, which would fit with the research on reasons for supporting a side, but there were not dramatic peaks during this period. Indeed, Manchester City have clearly invested heavily in Chinese Social Media as their following figures have continued to rise “like clockwork”.

What are some key take-outs from the study?

Mailman Group analysed the mindset of football fans on Chinese social media and discovered there are two central motivations behind choosing a club: glory supporting and superstar players. As a side note, it was found that only 1% of fans made a decision based on a club’s visit to China.

The influence of superstar players was seen as significant by 40% of the Chinese football fans when deciding upon their club. This is outlined by Lionel Messi’s following of 14m, which is over 4 times the amount of the largest-followed club – Manchester City. Mailman Group noted that clubs were far more successful when including their superstar players close to their digital strategy; currently, few clubs are doing this well.

The influence of ‘superstar players’ also applies to the presence of Chinese players at European clubs but to a lesser extent. Hidetoshi Nakata, for example, is arguably one of the most famous Asian footballers and has a following of 3 million on Sina Weibo.

Glory supporting was a key factor in 42% of Chinese fans’ club choice (combination of ranking in the league and club heritage). Indeed, many Chinese football fans support multiple teams and switch loyalties depending on achievement on the pitch.

When asked the question about whether this would negatively impact the attempt of smaller clubs to embrace Chinese social media; Andrew insisted there is a market for smaller clubs, and that the multiple-club support can indeed be an advantage.

It does seem that there are plenty of loyal fan groups for smaller clubs, and whilst these are not in the same magnitude as the 14 analysed, they are a good base for a successful social media strategy.

Mailman Group see 2013 as a crucial year for those operating on Chinese social media. Whether or not they are currently focusing on social media platforms, They believe that there needs to be more attention paid to tactical social media; for example, engaging in Mandarin is key to success in China for European football clubs.

Currently, European clubs are not taking their China content strategies seriously enough. They are not engaging well with fans on a personal level, and are focusing too heavily on follower numbers over engagement figures. This is highlighted by Manchester City’s activity which leaves them top following figures table, yet bottom of the engagement table.

Content needs to be varied, and interesting for maximum gain, but there has been notable success with merchandise-related content. However, most clubs do not offer their Chinese fans the online store to purchase from. It is also interesting to note that 69 % of posts were highly-localised (i.e 90% of posts translated into Mandarin) which does show a certain commitment to Chinese social media from the top 14 UEFA clubs analysed.

It was revealed that the localised posts were receiving ten-times the engagement of posts in English. This demonstrates the importance of investing in translation for individual posts. Content strategies will also need to take into consideration the interesting trend of female followers on Chinese social media. In stark contrast to the western market, over 30% of Chinese football fans on social media are female. We are awaiting the engagement differences between men and women, which will be key to content planning for football clubs.

Here are the three key tips for football clubs looking to embrace Chinese social media in 2013, Andrew said:

1. Launch player accounts on Tencent Weibo and incorporate them into a club ‘group’ with consistent exchange of content.

2. Exploit the huge opportunities offered by Weixin in 2013. The mobile platform targets real users – each of them identified by their mobile number – in a more relaxed (ad free) online environment. Indeed, users only add their actual friends on Weixin, whereas Sina/Tencent users have a much wider/more random circle (similarly to Twitter). 

3. Partner with Chinese companies, for example run campaigns with the support of Sina/Tencent in order to maximise reach and penetration.

What the insights provided by this study have proven is that whilst European football clubs have made big strides in 2012, this is simply the tip of the ice-berg. Chinese consumers have an extremely strong interest in European football and these insights are a wake-up call to not only the 14 clubs in this study, but all other clubs in Europe’s major leagues. There is a huge opportunity for European clubs in 2013, and it is an opportunity they need to start taking seriously.

Click here for the full study, it is well worth reading.

CNN International will debut second screen technology for its new half hour weekly football debate show, ‘CNN Football Club’(www.cnn.com/footballclub), enabling online users to view and manipulate real time data and statistics on Champion’s League players and teams and share comments via social media including Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

Powered by London-based start-up, Squawka (www.squawka.com), the functionality gives users the chance to take centre stage in the Champion’s League match commentary by going head-to-head with each other in a debate style set-up that mirrors the format of the ‘CNN Football Club’ show, on air. Squawka will also power a touch screen application, enabling host Pedro Pinto and guests to use statistics to analyse football games in the studio for audiences at home

Nick Wrenn, Vice President, Digital Services, CNN International said: “At CNN, our audience helps drive the agenda; they’re ‘social citizens’ and they’re more interested in having a voice than ever before. This functionality elevates the audience to the commentary box, closing the gap between the web and TV, and building a real-time digital community through the global language of football.”

Squawka Co-Founder and CEO Sanjit Atwal said: “Sports fans have always loved the data behind their passion but there has traditionally been a “dumbing down” at media level. At Squawka we have worked hard to visualise football data in real-time and we applaud CNN for believing in the intelligence of fans globally to interact with this new format”.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of chatting with one of Everton FC’s leading lights when it comes to their digital strategy, Scott McLeod.

Scott started out at the Liverpool Echo before joining Everton in 2005.  He was brought on board to add his journalistic expertise to the club as New Media Journalist.  In those days it would have been centred around the website.

Since then he has progressed through to become Website Editor, Communications Manager before starting his current role as Digital Media Manager.  He spends his days managing all digital output from the club.  This includes; the match day concourse and stadium bowl screens and content, the four main Club web platforms, an online TV solution and the delivery of the clubs digital marketing.  Quite a broad role!

He manages a team of 6 within the Digital Media side.  This is made up of 4 journalists and 2 video editors/cameramen.  They ensure that all the content needed for the channels is kept up to date and feed the insatiable appetite of the Everton community with breaking news and interviews.

The club prides itself on being one of the top clubs in the digital area.  It may not get the press of the Man City, Liverpool and Arsenals of this country but they are certainly up there.  Twice in the last 3 years they have won awards for the website, including ‘Best in Class’ at the Interactive Media Awards in December last year.

They’re aim is always to stay “one step ahead by keeping our finger on the pulse”.  They have certainly managed it by launching a series of firsts;

• 1^st Club Android App
• 1^st Club Podcast
• 1^st Club iPad App

They were also one of the first to launch an iPhone app.  So the club is certainly not afraid to take a chance and invest in the future through digital.  They’re aim has always been to make best use of the budget they have but, importantly, also spend it wisely.

18 months ago they removed the subscription requirement for the club video channel.  Something most others have yet to see the light and do.  They realised that it was more important to increase the value proposition to Everton fans than just make some money out of a few (video subs have never been big money makers).

In a time when fans have found increasingly diverse ways to get their fix of what they want in terms of news and action.  If the club doesn’t supply it then they will go elsewhere.  The Everton team realised this and made the move first.

Fans are also expecting higher production levels than ever before.  So recently they joined the likes of the Top 4 with their own TV studio at Goodison Park.  This will ensure they can produce more content, easier and keep those fans engaged in more innovative ways.  Its an investment many more short-term focused clubs (and sports) would not sanction.

Blue Crimbo

One of the main reasons I wanted to speak to Scott was to ask him about their fantastic #BlueCrimbo campaign.  It caught my eye in the lead up to Christmas and I hoped to find out more on how it came about and how it went.

At the start, the aim was to involve fans from the start.  Making it as interactive as possible.  It was decided that the conversation would be driven by content and this would help keep it alive over a period of time.  Not just the one-off peaks we tend to see in more traditional campaigns.

It turns out that Blue Crimbo was an evolution of previous campaigns rather than a completely new one.  It also took into account the growth in their social media presence.

After previous plans that had included ‘viral’ attempts didn’t quite make it ‘big’ and various departments running their own attempts at tapping into the business that is Christmas.

2012 saw them knock down the walls between these siloes and work together on one overall campaign that included e-commerce, ticketing and social media and brought them into one place.  And it worked very well. (If you’d like to read about the campaign in detail then click here).

So, stats wise how did it perform?  Scott was kind enough to disclose some of the figures

• 7,500 #BlueCrimbo tweets
• 2000 new signups – added to club CRM database
• 152% Increase in ½ season ticket sales
• 25% year-on-year increase in retail traffic from Evertonfc.com

Overall I think we can safely say it was a success.  The bringing together of different elements of the business into a single, simple campaign with fans at the heart of it makes sense to everyone.  Fans responded by getting involved and news of it spread over the 5-week period.

So what does the future hold for Scott and Everton?

Their aims over the next 12-18 months sound equally exciting.  He sees opportunities around ‘connected tv’, placing content in layers for fans to engage with.  Also the possibility of developing ‘premium content’ that could then be subscription or sponsor lead is one they see potential for.  Though the aim is to keep as much content free to fans as possible.

Apps for PTV and Social are continuing to be developed.  With the help of Rippleffect, their digital partner since 2003 who develop the website, and Mobile Roadie who worked on their iPhone app development, things are moving on at a rapid rate (much like the industry as a whole).

They recognise that you have to continue to innovate to stay relevant.  Sitting still isn’t an option!

Thanks to Scott for taking to time out to chat and good luck to Everton for the rest of the season.

Over the last couple of seasons we have seen a fundamental shift in the way that football news is being reported.  This is not only from the media, all of whom have reporters on Twitter now and break news first on the platform.

Football clubs have been equally adept at finding new ways in which to reach out to the press and fans.  All the Premier League clubs (and most Football League) have a social media presence now and people dedicated to servicing the needs to provide content on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.

Twitter is the go-to place if you want to keep up with who is signing who and want to know first so you can let your mates know (football fans love having those ‘first fast’ facts).  The Football League for example has been working with all their clubs to standardise the hashtag for this transfer window.

It’s a great idea and you can keep up with all the signings by following the #FLTransfer hashtag.  Keeping all this info in one place and creating your own column on Tweetdeck or Hootsuite will provide all your transfer needs for the lower divisions.

QPR have been very active on social media since the arrival of Tony Fernandes, himself a massive advocate of using the channels to get closer to the fans.  Something he initially instigated with his F1 team.  Since then the club have been livestreaming their press conferences so any fan can see and hear Harry Redknapp the day before games.

This week they have used one of their other main platforms, YouTube, to announce the signing of new striker, Loic Remy.  They show him signing a couple of shirts and then writing a welcome note on the official QPR Twitter account.  A nice way to make things official and very visual.  It’s already gathered over 28k views and will have given the channel some added exposure for future activations.

With a couple of weeks left until Transfer Deadline Day (when SkySports spend all day camped outside of Premier League football grounds), there may be some more breaking news on clubs social media pages.  What will be done on deadline day itself?  Let the fun commence!

This weeks (always good) #CommsChat featured Adam Hulme (QPR Multi-Media Officer) and Joe Ferrari (Norwich City’s Head of Media). Some great topics covered and insights given.

For more info and how to join in with the weekly Monday night chats, you can head to http://www.commschat.com or follow on Twitter at @commschat.  Adam and Joe were great and received plenty of opinions and questions from many within the industry (and a few fans).

You can read below how the conversation went in full.  There are almost 400 tweets so you can see how much went into the one hour debate.  Be great to get your thoughts on the topics discussed.  We’ll pick up some of these at the UKSN event with Richard Ayers next week here in London.

This weeks (always good) #CommsChat featured Adam Hulme (QPR Multi-Media Officer) and Joe Ferrari (Norwich City’s Head of Media). Some great topics covered and insights given.

For more info and how to join in with the weekly Monday night chats, you can head to http://www.commschat.com

This weeks (always good) #CommsChat featured Adam Hulme (QPR Multi-Media Officer) and Joe Ferrari (Norwich City’s Head of Media). Some great topics covered and insights given.

For more info and how to join in with the weekly Monday night chats, you can head to http://www.commschat.com

Guest Post: Steven Woodgate MA, 25, has just graduated with distinction in Public Relations in his postgraduate study at Southampton Solent University. His love for sport stemmed from his undergraduate degree in sports journalism and following Reading FC. You can follow him on @StevenWoodgate

The introduction of Social Media has been a common problem. A major problem. Reoccurring themes of battles between the individual and the organisation has proved hostile and ineffective. Sport is an industry where corporate communications is underdeveloped, and with so many instances being reported with sportsmen’s use of twitter, it needs better regulation in place. 

This research looked into sportsmen’s use of Twitter and how they influence their community, and from there, what is the impact on the organization they represent.

In all, eleven sportsmen were used as the sample:  from football, Rio Ferdinand, Michael Owen,Wayne Rooney and Joey Barton; from Formula One racing, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button; from cricket, Kevin Pietersen, Graeme Swann and Stuart Broad; and from rugby, Brian O’Driscoll and James Haskell.

To take further understanding from the implication of these tweets, a formula was devised to see the potential impact and influence of each individual Tweet. Each of the mentioned case studies were reviewed by their social media output between July 1st and August 7th.

To determine the impact of each individual tweet and to work out whether a tweet is “positive” or “negative” for corporate reputation, deep content analysis and a formula were devised. Current social media measuring platforms like Klout and Kred measure overall ‘influence’ and ‘interaction’, this formula wanted to target each individual to see how impactful it was on its followers and then each tweet was put into one of three categories: positive, neutral and negative (Tweeters, Twits & Twats).

Applying this formula to each tweet determined the impact on its followers and whether that post was influential and circulated – the higher the percentage, higher the impact. This formula was created as it can target all sports personalities and the important thing to notice is that it is targeting influence and not popularity.

To build business objectives, a sense of measurement needs to be established. By using this formula of followers divided by the number of re-tweets and favourited each individual posts gets, the corporate communicator can immediately identify whether the post has been influential in the sportperson’s community therefore ranking the sportsperson highly in their social media guidelines.

Footballers tend to have more followers than other sportspeople but that is not saying that because of a smaller following, their impact on corporate reputation would not be as significant. The image below shows that a formula was needed to provide critical exploration that detailed content analysis did not provide. The formula gives extra depth that was needed to discover which of the sportspeople analysed were influential. The percentages in Figure 1 show what percentages of Tweets were positive or negative for corporate reputation and by using the formula, this dissertation could actually explore the impact.

Figure 1: The chart shows the percentage of tweets splitting into negative, neutral and positive impacts on corporate reputation

Figure 2 below shows clear indication which sportspeople have a considerable impact on corporate reputation. From the sportspeople analysed, cricketer Graeme Swann and racing driver Lewis Hamilton appear to have a larger influence percentage affecting corporate reputation.

The overall average of the sportspeople mentioned shows a greater impact on their audience. A closer examination of certain tweets reaching bigger percentages showed that Lewis Hamilton was talking about ‘contract break downs’ with his employer, McLaren and Graeme Swann’s impact is similar to that of ‘neutral’ state. He purely uses Twitter for ‘banter‘ purposes, even though, sometimes, it is at the expense of his teammates.

Banter is a concept that is common in sport, and especially sport teams. It helps build team spirit and creates a good atmosphere, however those who are outside of the ‘banter’ can see it as insensitive and careless and as social media is public, these posts can be easily taken out of context. Corporate communicators need to target this to guarantee social media is being used appropriately and to fulfill its potential.

Figure 2: Using the ‘Influence’ Formula, the chart shows the influence from each individual from a corporate reputation point of view

Regardless of the ‘banter’ tweets, it proves that Hamilton and Swann are highly influential when it comes to using social media. Hamilton’s negative influence came from only two tweets, showing that the public and media examine every post carefully. Therefore, it is essential that a social media policy is put into place to stop tweets like this – even though they can be rare in number, their impact can be disproportionately negative because they reach such a large audience that is only amplified through re-tweets.

The most overriding conclusion extracted from the findings is the response each of the sports gets. Football, as expected, attracts large volumes of followers and that is reflected in re-tweets and replies they get from each tweet. Every post is analysed and used to either make a story or to engage supporters and football fans. The comments are not always positive, and some of them are simply abuse. However, there is some clear indication that certain posts received more abuse than others. This is why corporate communicators need to manage this process and provide guidelines to ensure the best possible messages are given out.

The content analysis provides greater understanding of how sportspeople use social media networks like Twitter. James Haskell, for instance, uses it more to ‘banter’ other rugby players, whereas Rio Ferdinand uses it to endorse his external business ventures. The use is wide spreading, but what is clear from this content analysis, all of them are using it personally and not through agencies. This leaves each individual open to abuse and possible news stories.

Referring back to the three typologies – Tweeters, Twits and Twats – the use of content analysis can categorise these players. The ‘Tweeters’, taken from the content analysis are Jenson Button, Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen who score highly on positive effects on corporate reputation.

The ‘Twits’ are James Haskell, Stuart Broad, Kevin Pietersen, Joey Barton and Rio Ferdinand who have considerable influence but are not using it to its full potential.

They use twitter to ‘banter’ and that can have a bad impact on corporate reputation. The inclusion of controversial tweeters such as Rio Ferdinand and Kevin Pietersen in the twit category shows just how difficult it is to maintain neutrality. Both could be seen to have fallen into bad habits, it is important to show that some of the social media posts can easily fall into the ‘twat’ category, but these sportspeople use Twitter for positive means as well.

The ‘Twats’ are Graeme Swann and Lewis Hamilton, as it appears they have a lot of influence and as soon as they post something negative against corporate reputation, it becomes extremely popular with their followers. Nullifying these types of tweets would actually put both sportspersons into the ‘Tweeter’ category because they do have considerable impact on their community.

Conclusion