Every year for franchises look at their match day ‘experience’ and sponsor ‘activations’ at games, on the understanding that fans engage with teams (and their sponsors/ ‘corporate partners’) at home games. But social media means that fan engagement can now happen anywhere in the world and at any time. Failure to engage with fans in a two-way conversation means that you can miss out on a LOT of free (!) cross-promotion, and ignore fans who may support your team but live too far away to get to games. Also, you don’t have to fit followers into a stadium.
To put it into terms franchise head offices will jump at: matches are expensive to host, the crowd numbers (and therefore revenue) will vary wildly, and sponsor activations will usually only attract a fraction of the crowd. Social media is essentially free*, your net follower numbers only grow, and people will look at what you post if it’s interesting no matter where they are in the world. Social media can be a virtual currency to attract sponsorship.
* You need a good staff member to run it and, done well, it’s a full-time job in itself.
Kicking off our look at the social media use and online fan engagement strategies of the Australian Super Rugby sides is 2013’s conference champions, and Super Rugby runners-up, the Brumbies.
The Official Accounts
Facebook: facebook.com/BrumbiesFanPage
Instagram: brumbiesrugby
Twitter: @BrumbiesRugby
Strengths:
- They post a lot of interesting stuff to Facebook
Weaknesses:
- They don’t really engage with fans: no replies on Twitter or Instagram. This is especially frustrating because they often ask for people’s opinions (corrected: see Force post).
- If you don’t use Facebook there really isn’t much value here for you; they post one or two photos a week to Instagram and they have long periods of time where nothing is posted (at the time of writing this there were posts from 49 weeks ago followed immediately by 28 weeks ago, then 16 weeks ago. In real terms this means they went 21 weeks, and then 12 weeks between posting content). Any pics they have on Twitter are simply retweeted from the Super Rugby official account or from players.
Mike, Carol and the kids (photo tweeted by Alistair Hogg)
The Brumbies have more than 19 000 followers on Twitter, more than 21 000 ‘likes’ on Facebook, and 2724 followers on Instagram. To put this into perspective, their biggest home crowd for 2013 was 21 655 for the British and Irish Lions game. The next highest was the game against the Crusaders – 16 544. Their social media presence is clearly bigger than the crowds they attract to games.
Without ignoring the glaringly obvious (location, cost of going to the game, ease of pressing follow compared to ease of rugging up like an Eskimo etc) there is clear potential to engage a wider fan base; it won’t really cost anything and it could translate to bums on seats in the stadium.
The players
While, in my own opinion, the Brumbies official social media channels could use some loving, the players are actually pretty good. I just wish more used their social media publicly. There is an argument that the players are a team’s biggest marketing investment and as such, the players should drive the engagement with fans. And this is true. Players are a franchise’s most visible ads, the punter wants to hear from them, and if you can coordinate a message with some of them every so often it can be really effective.
Complete reliance on players can also be risky on a couple of levels though: players move to other franchises, and it’s hard to control and/or supervise the social media activity of players who may be in a different timezone to you (see Vuna, 2013).
The number of Brumbies players active on social media made this list fairly easy to compose – unfortunately most players are sporadic posters and there aren’t a lot of memorable, or shareable, pics. And replying to fans appears to be the domain of only a couple. Hopefully as the season gets underway there will be more to talk about.
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Ruan Smith
(@Ruan_Twin)
Afrikaans is such a sensual language. The Germanic staccato… the combination of vowels followed by…more vowels….. it’s so evocative… romantic.
Many of you don’t know this, but I speak a little Afrikaans. Loosely translated, Ruan’s tweet (pictured) says “You are a most beautiful lady; your square jaw is made for chewing biltong”.
Ruan_Twin is one half of the JP and Ruan identical twin set. Weirdly enough, this is the second pair of identical twins signed to the Brumbies (the Fainga’a Twins were first). Ruan is a good value tweeter – he replies to people and he posts up some pretty cool photos of life away from Brumby-land.
Clyde Rathbone
(@ClydeRathbone)
You may not agree with everything Clyde Rathbone posts, but his content will always challenge you and make you think. Just a tip – don’t tell him he’s wrong without being able to argue your point.
Of course, I also follow him on the off-chance he might give in and post a shirtless photo from one of his modelling shoots* a la Digby Ioane. Or a selfie of Cockbone (that is the Brangelina term for he and David Pocock for new readers) in some sort of steamy hot-tub scenario**.
* I don’t think he’s done a modelling shoot, but I live in hope
**Just one of many scenarios I have come up with.
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David Pocock
(@PocockDavid on Twitter; davidpocock on Instagram)
Mmmm David…. Such a dreamboat.
If you follow David Pocock you will learn about women’s sport, music, social issues, chooks, gardening, books to read… and almost two years ago he posted a photo of himself stand-up paddle boarding while wearing only Speedos. It’s moments like those that keep the hope in my heart alive.
He also takes (and filters) really pretty photos.
Stephen Moore
(@stevemoore83 on Twitter)
Bless you Stephen Moore. I was just about to post this article when he tweeted for Brumbies fans to ask him any questions about the off-season. And then he REPLIED! Aside from being a regular podcast guest for this site, he has also replied to some vitriolic criticism of his team on Twitter in the past to defend his team’s effort and work ethic against keyboard warriors after Test matches in 2011 and 2012.
He doesn’t duck questions and he understands that at least part of his job is to be accessible, even when things aren’t going well.
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Some Social Pages follows:
The Super Rugby Accounts: @SuperRugbyAus and @SuperRugby on twitter; superrugby on Instagram
Rugby Union Players Association: @RUPANews on Twitter; rupanews on Instagram
Alistair Hogg: @AlistairSANZAR – Alistair has painstakingly created lists of Super Rugby players and coaches, teams and other relevant links and done a hell of a job. Check them out here
