Social Media in Football: How the Needs, Size & Audience of Clubs Alter Social Media Policies

Social media has become a constant in football. Like half-time pies, hating the opposition and moaning about referees, it is here to stay.

A phenomenon still in its infancy at the turn of the decade has grown today into a necessity in the industry.

For football clubs, players, fans, and traditional and online media outlets, social media has changed their day-to-day operations and provides them with a range of benefits previously unimaginable.

“I don’t think there’s any professional sports team out there who cannot get involved in social media and not have a social media account and presence,” the Head of Social Media at a Premier League club explained to Just Outside the Box.

In the past 10 years, England’s top division has become perhaps the most marketable and universally consumed football league in the world, something which has undeniably been helped by the advent of social media and other technological advancements.

Now fans of Premier League sides can avidly follow their team from every corner of the globe, which has provided clubs with previously unavailable commercial streams.

“The targeting capabilities on social media is one of its main strengths,” JOTB’s source at a Premier League club claimed.

“If we did a deal with a tractor company in India, we can take our fanbase in India and target that message.

“Social media is most the important communication channel that the club has access to.”

“So basically, the fans are getting a message that’s relevant to them, the sponsors are getting a message out there that’s relevant to the people that they want to hit, but then it’s helping the club reinvest in its future.

“It’s more cost-effective if you take a message that’s more relevant to a certain individual and you provide it. It’s also of value to that individual rather than just bombarding them with advertisements they don’t want to see.

“We are able to reach all these different areas of the world and speak to fans on quite a personal level, but also, we’re able to speak to them in their own language.

“It’s most the important communication channel that the club has access to,” he added.

While the global profile of Premier League clubs mean they can reach supporters throughout the world, lower-league sides such as Fleetwood Town use social media as a means of enhancing their reputation.

The club’s unprecedented rise of six promotions in 10 years means that Fleetwood lack the fanbase of the more established sides in their division. Sam Duffy, the club’s Press Officer, believes social media can help increase their profile.

“The social media aspect of it is massive for us because that is how people can hear about Fleetwood really,” he said.

“We want to tap into a national interest when we’ve got high-profiled players and a very high-profiled manager.

“I remember when we announced that Joey (Barton) had got the job; we had six thousand retweets, the website clicks were like a quarter of a million and the impressions of the tweet I think were two and a half million. For a town of 26 thousand with an average attendance of three thousand, that is mad numbers really.

“When we get to a press day on a Thursday when Joey will be talking, that’s when we’ll be looking at stuff to think ‘right how can we get this into the national interest?’.”

Duffy even admitted he’s asked the Cod Army manager to retweet some club news to his 3.5 million Twitter followers.

Fleetwood’s ultimate aim for increasing their reputation is to encourage more people to attend games and purchase merchandise.

“We signed Dean Marney from Burnley last summer,” said Duffy, “and we had a lot of interaction on Twitter. I think we got another 400 followers direct from him signing, almost within 15 minutes, so it was mad really.

“That’s just the impact it can have because now everyone’s interested in him, but now they’re interested the club and when they dig a big deeper they’ll say ‘oh they’ve got Joey Barton as manager’, and all of a sudden they think ‘this could be my second team’.”

For smaller sides like Fleetwood, Twitter, in particular, is also used to promote all aspects of the club.

“The role of a communications and media team in a football club is a really busy one because you’re in the middle of seven or eight different departments,” explained Duffy.

“There’s the football team, the academy, commercial, the ticketing guys, [they] want stuff out, the retail guys want stuff out, we’ve got a restaurant downstairs, the training facility hires out pitches. So there’s loads that goes on and everybody wants a bit of it.

“There’s loads to cover really, so there’s no excuse for us to have a day where we only have one tweet out.”

Salford City are another team who have enjoyed a meteoric rise in recent years and now play in the English fifth tier.

Due to the high-profile nature of their owners (the renowned ‘Class of ’92’) and the various club documentaries which have aired on BBC, Sky Sports and Netflix, there is considerable national and global interest in the side.

According to Salford’s Media and Communications Officer, Will Moorcroft, one of the club’s social media aims is to give more information about the team to those with a passing interest in their endeavours.

“We want to give those people information,” he said. “Why are they coming to us? Because they want to know more about the club.”

“The first and foremost is just information about the club – what people want to know [about Salford]. I’d say second to that comes the commercialisation.

“You always want more social media growth. The more people on there, the more chance they’re going to see your posts, which potentially means more sponsors are going to be interested.”

While every football club is looking to capitalise on the commercial benefits social media offers, Aston Villa have used it as a platform to rebrand themselves in recent years.

“For us, we’re quite lucky in terms of the size of Villa,” said James Jeavons, Social Media Executive at the Midlands club.

“Comparing to Leagues One and Two, we don’t have as much commercial pressure, but our strategy is built around brand awareness and we’re just trying to grow the audiences on each channel.

“A lot of our strategy, especially on Facebook, is about reaching non-Villa fans – that’s people who don’t like our page but get our content, so other people can see it.

“That doesn’t mean we want to convert people into Aston Villa fans but maybe become a fan of our content, which again generates conversation and gets that brand awareness out there,” he added.

While the needs, size and audience of a club dictate its social media policies, regardless of division there appears to be one commonality with all sides; fan engagement. All four teams interviewed in this study outlined that interaction with their supporters was the club’s main objective in using social media.

“As a club, we’re nothing without the fans. We have the opportunity to talk about fans’ experiences and how they interact with the club,” said the Premier League source.

“I think the idea of being able to connect clubs to fans and fans to fans is huge in social media – that’s what makes it so powerful.

“Fans have always been important to the club, but specifically on social media – that’s where they’re going to give their opinions and that’s where they feel they can have a voice. So we really need to be listening and have that one-to-one interaction.”

All four clubs use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Snapchat, while Aston Villa and the Premier League side are active on various Asian social media platforms such as Weibo and Youku.

Due to its interactive capabilities, all the clubs claimed Twitter is viewed as the best platform along with Instagram, and are therefore prioritised ahead of other social media avenues. The introduction of Instagram Stories has reduced the importance given to Snapchat, while Facebook’s algorithm changes mean it has also become a less-valued resource.

Football clubs in general use different content for each social media platform. Twitter is seen as a great mechanism to engage with fans (Aston Villa, for example, have an account devoted purely to dealing with the needs and demands of supporters). Due to its instantaneous nature, Twitter is also a great platform to break news and provide live match updates.

The interviewees also agreed that Facebook’s algorithm changes in the last 12 months mean it prioritises video content, and only important news stories. Due to Instagram’s popularity it is seen as necessity for clubs now, and is an important way to interact with younger generations and their players, the latter of which use Instagram more than other form of social media.The platform’s ‘Stories’ aspect can give followers live video updates, and this feature is more popular than the same service on Facebook or Snapchat.

YouTube is often used by clubs to provide longer videos, such as in-depth interviews, press conferences and match highlights. Finally, LinkedIn is currently not viewed as a hugely important platform by the four clubs, somewhat not surprising given that it caters to business and the employment-oriented market. However, they were in agreement that LinkedIn can provide some benefits such as advertising corporate events.

As football clubs have become more accustomed to social media, their behaviour on the various platforms has evolved.

Accounts such as AS Roma’s English Twitter profile have become famous in recent times for their tongue-and-cheek manner of tweeting, and most clubs have developed from their rigid, PR-style of early social media to a more playful and witty tone.

Aston Villa are one such club who have shown a more humorous side on social media. One of the most famous tweets in the footballing world in 2018, came from the Villans, when they announced a summer signing by adapting a clip from ITV’s Love Island.

“Social media is not do or die,” Jeavons said. “That one in particular made sense. You had Love Island, the most talked about thing all summer. They’re living in a villa and I would have kicked myself if we didn’t do anything around it.

“It went down really well and again it’s a talking point for fans and the players, because I’m sure they all had a good laugh about it.

“In terms of was it successful, I always look not just at hard core numbers, but who else is talking about it – people in the industry talking about it, getting it on the front page of BBC Sport – so clearly it’s working,” he added.

Football clubs have now fully embraced social media and the numerous benefits it provides, as have their players, who have grown to recognise how influential having a public-facing voice can be.

This is the first in a five-part series exploring social media’s use in football.