The advanced technology of social media is now allowing more communication between football fans to be possible. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I’ll let you be the judge!
How do football teams engage with fans?
Modern communications play a very big part in keeping football fans in touch with the club they support.
One way football clubs are doing this is by making branded content. This can involve making a promotional video, Facebook Lives or something like a ‘behind the scenes’ from an event. Content like this makes football fans feel like they are really part of the club they support.
Prime examples can be found on YouTube. A lot of clubs do this now but Norwich City made a really good video in the build up to the East Anglian Derby against Ipswich Town.
They then make another ’behind the scenes’ video, letting supporters to see what it’s like heated in the moment down the tunnel whilst feeling really close and almost as if they were participating.Football fans can also feel a lot more connected with their team if they’re regularly giving fans updates on social media. Although pretty much every platform is used for this, I find the best one to use is Twitter. A good use of social media would be regularly posting pictures of your team in training, match action, updates from the manager and even when when there isn’t a match there should still be lot’s of activity going on.
A football team that really engages its supporters by doing this is Chelsea FC. With millions of fans worldwide it’s a big task to engage them all, but they do it in a really evocative way.
Even when it’s not a match day the Twitter feed is constantly updating fans, handing out information about every part of the club. This includes the youth squads who should ultimately be the future of the club, so its nice for fans to be able to get familiar with these players they might not have heard of.Using graphics to capture the moment
The last key to catching a supporter’s attention on social media is the use of graphics. This is hugely important in keeping the feed looking lively, and getting across the spirit of the club.
The sort of graphics that catch fans’ attention can include team line-ups, player shots and goal graphics for when a player scores a goal which can sometimes bring humour.
The humour part is well demonstrated by Bristol City, who are good at posting amusing GIFs when a goal is scored.
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