Social media has become part of our everyday culture. People spend more hours glancing through Facebook timelines and tweets from friends and other followers. YouTube has also become a major social media site where people share and watch videos of their choice.
Football they say is the passion of the nation and has become an avenue to enhance the peace within the country. Since the introduction of social media, football clubs across the world have taken advantage of it to reach out to their teaming and fragmented fans around the globe.
According to the BBC, since the year 2013, football clubs are no more content to sit back and take their fans granted in the global and digital age that allows teams in other countries to become both sporting and commercial rivals. The table below gives an indication on how football clubs around the globe were followed around the world on Facebook and Twitter in 2014.
Ghana is a footballing nation and people are passionate when it comes to matters relating to football. Social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become part of the youth. The cooperate world has also seen the benefits of reaching out to their social media prospects and as such companies and organisations have joined the trend by creating accounts on these platforms.
Football clubs in Ghana, like Kumasi Asante Kotoko and Accra Hearts Of Oaks boost of having millions of supporters domestically, but the question that runs through my mind is that, what have they been doing to reach out to these supporters in order to mobilise them on a particular platform to interact with them like what other clubs around the world have been doing.
Out of the 16 clubs who took part in the just ended Ghana Premier league, 8 of them, namely, Asante Kotoko, Hearts Of Oak, league champions AshantiGold, Bechem United, WAFA, Inter Allies, Hearts Of Lionsand New Edubiase have an official Twitter account whiles Secondi Hasaacas have an unofficial Twitter account.
On Facebook, none of these clubs have an official account that is operated by the football club. However, there are a lot of pages and groups created by individuals with the club name attached to them. Interestingly, the number of likes and group members on such platforms can fill our various stadia in Ghana.
How can our football clubs in Ghana benefit from their presence on social media?
In recent times the media landscapes are filled with arguments on how people are no more patronising our local league and how best we can solve such problems and build the interest of the people. The social media can be used in the following ways:
Mobilisation of supporters
The social media is one way clubs in Ghana in their own ways can mobilise supporters to the various stadia.
For example, social media is an interactive platform and as such give way to a two way communication. This affords supporters who are followers of the clubs the opportunity to get official updates from the clubs and also get the chance to interact directly with the club through comments and feedbacks on the various pages of the clubs.
The more supporters have that sense of belonging and value from the club, the more theyfeel part of the club and as such harnesses the sense of responsibility to support the clubs. Clubs can put their ticket prices on the page, training schedules, interviews and match day interviews from coaches and players, promotions by the clubs, where they can get club replica jerseys, headlines from the club’s newspaper and any other information that can generate the interest of club followers.
Commercial value
Social media platforms can help football clubs in Ghana to give the needed exposure to club sponsors. This gives clubs the leverage to negotiate with club sponsors to get the right financial benefits from these companies.
How?
Football clubs like Asante Kotoko or Hearts Of Oak can synchronise their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts with that of their sponsors. This gives the sponsors the opportunity to disseminate information on products and services directly to club supporters.
Also clubs can direct traffic to their websites and that of the sponsors. They can also have a joint account to reach out to the club supporters. This can generate a lot of mentions for the sponsor on social media, thereby increasing the brand presence of club sponsors on social media.
For example, in August 2014, Crystal Palace’s club sponsor NETELLER were allowed by the club to use their official Twitter Account to announce the appointment of Neil Warnock as the new manager of the club.
Below is an info graph that shows a study by Brandwatch in 2015. This was to discover how football sponsors were getting their Return On Investment. It calculated the number of online mentions for club sponsors. The aim was to see if there was a correlation between the amount these sponsors paid their clubs and the amount they were mentioned online.
Shirt sponsors and their value for money on social media
The info graph shows that Crystal Palace and their sponsor NETELLER generated more mentions than anyone else in last season’s English premier league.
The research showed that NETELLER used their own social media account to promote their sponsorship with Crystal Palace in a number of ways, including:
- Offering fans free tickets to Crystal Palace games
- Giving fans the chance to win a signed shirt
- Launching competitions to win lunch with their coach.
Football clubs in Ghana and their sponsors can also learn from these examples and maximise profit. With millions of conversations happening online every day, sponsors and clubs can also start and analyse how they are being spoken about online and how they compare to others.
By: Rainbow Sackey