Sport Buoy

Manchester United don’t seem to think so, but different club circumstances require different responses. Ignore social media in sports at your own risk…

Social media dominates 21st century internet use. Facebook is the second-most used website after Google (and with a user engagement which far surpasses the search super-giant), Twitter is expanding at an incredible rate across the whole demographic range, and ‘grown-up’ services such as LinkedIn are breaking the barriers between social media and the workplace.

Of course, marketers cottoned on to the power of social media long before mainstream business, see the power of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace et al to increase brand exposure, strengthen reputation and laser-target specific groups of young users who had become disengaged with conventional media and advertising. From bands like the Arctic Monkeys exploding from MySpace to bakeries using Twitter to inform local businesses when their sandwiches and doughnuts are fresh out of the oven, social media has driven financial success stories across every sector at every level.

Which brings us to sport players. Twitter, Facebook and blogging could have been invented for sports stars, who have a head start on normal mere mortals in that they can start their social media efforts with a pre-engaged audience of club supporters. Sports players are pre-made celebrities, with equal interest potential in both their on-field and off-field antics.

So given the immense marketing potential for clubs by letting their players engage with fans on Twitter, Facebook and personal blogs, why would Manchester United football club, the second-highest earning sports club in the world, ban their players from social media sites?

The official line from Manchester United was that they were concerned by the high numbers of people impersonating it’s high profile football stars like Wayne Rooney, Michael Owen, Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville. This certainly does cause reputation management issues – people start following fake celebrity profiles on Twitter in particular, which can be used for misinformation, bogus marketing exercises or just harmless fun.

Club Solution: Have a clear public list of players’ official Twitter pages, Facebook profiles and other social media presences. This stops a majority of people being mislead into following the wrong people, and would encourage yet more people to follow their favourite players.

Player Solution: Ask your club to host a list of official accounts and publicise it periodically. Cross-promote your profiles to increase validity.

However, the primary driver behind the move is suspected to be the prevention of sensitive information being leaked from the changing room and training field. Tactics, contract negotiations or dressing room tiffs can be broadcast instantly onto Twitter or a blog from a mobile phone, leading to all sorts of consequences for key games and season trophies, not to mention the resulting PR migraines.

Perhaps the club feels that it’s global super-brand power renders the marketing gains available through sports player social media profiles too paltry to bother with, but to take that attitude would be to ignore the powers which helped propel Manchester United to the very top of the world sports clubs. Success on the pitch can drive the appeal of a sports club only so far: it was the personal brand power of individuals such as Eric Cantona, David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo and Rooney which helped the appeal of the club to spill outside of football into the wider collective awareness. Indeed, it could be argued that the club’s strongest personal brand is Sir Alex Ferguson himself, a man universally admired for his work ethic, commitment and strength of conviction.

People love to buy into individuals, especially sports players and coaches (just look at the popularity of sports autobiographies if you need convincing), and Twitter, Facebook and the rest are another frontier for engaging public affection. Doing so enables a widening of exposure to people not currently part of a sports club’s core audience: some people might not understand all the rules of a game, but will support a player or players if they feel an affinity or aspiration for their lifestyle, background or achievements.

This applies equally at all levels of sport: you don’t need global television exposure to grow your gate takings, just be smart with the way that you engage with your audiences. Investing a bit of time in establishing personalities in a playing squad will see a return at the turnstiles, the club shop and the clubhouse.

Club Solution: Your club is never too big to benefit financially from the power of social media. Help your stars to build their profiles’ followers, and use that to help grow awareness and affinity to your club.

Player Solution: Be loyal to your club – much of your value to them is as an effective spokesperson for the club and being effective at increasing a fanbase puts you in a powerful bargaining position. Mouthing off about a coach if you’re not selected won’t just damage your relationships at your current club, since other prospective employers might see a loose Twitter cannon as a liability. It’s not just the club’s reputation which is at stake, but your own too.

Therein lies another problem which Manchester United would have been seeking to deal with. Star players attract the wandering fans to the gate and to the online shop, but when a player leaves some of his or her fanbase can leave with them, augmenting the coffers of another club. It is no accident that the transfer of David Beckham to Real Madrid saw the Spanish football club usurp Manchester United at the top of the sports earning table, and the phenomenon was repeated with the defection of Ronaldo. A club will want shift allegiance to players into allegiance to the club, rather than the reverse, so banning social media profiles would, on face value, seem a sensible way of curbing the loss of fans to rival clubs when transferring players.

However, there’s nothing a club can really do about this. By reaching out for a broader fan base than a die-hard core of club supporters, sports clubs must convert less stalwart fans. Over time the aim should be to convert them into the core support base, but at any given time there will be a proportion whose reasoning for supporting the club will be weaker than the sort of passion which demands club tattoos, club weddings and the club crest engraved on a tombstone. Success on the pitch is a major contributor of ‘fair-weather’ fans, but so too are player fans. To cut off Twitter, Facebook and the rest is to limit the ability of a club to draw in more of these supporters – while they’re around they buy the replica shirts and season tickets just like everybody else, so why stop them from engaging?

This is especially true for young fans: even kids in core supporter households latch on to favourite players, and following them on Twitter is another way of feeding their support. Making players more anonymous risks kids becoming less engaged, which in a world of a myriad of alternative entertainments and distractions is to risk losing them forever.

Club Solution: Understand that player followers can be converted into club fans over time, and work with players to help bind their followers’ affections to the club.

Player Solution: A large following can be an asset to current and future clubs, as well as being a potential source of extra personal income. Help your club to realise the value of your social media profiles and it will reflect well on your own reputation in the sport and outside of it. Always be honest.

I’ll be writing more about the specific benefits to sports players and clubs of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Bebo, MySpace, Digg, Flickr, LinkedIn and a range of other social media sites on this blog in the future, but be under no illusion: the future prosperity of you and you club is dependant upon effective 21st century marketing, of which social media is a central part. Players and clubs with effective strategies of how to use social media will have the edge, and there’s no better way to learn than to dive in and start now.

What are you waiting for?