More than any other social media format, it’s also extremely celebrity-friendly: it’s far easier to translate a real-world fanbase into a dedicated online following via Twitter than any other network due to the simplicity of tweeting and the stalker-ish ability of people to hang on every word that you tweet.

Like it or not, as a sports player you are a celebrity. People watch what you do for entertainment, and depending on what level of sport you compete at they see your name or your photo in the paper, they might see your antics on the local or national news, they see your face on the website of their favourite team. They follow your sport, they follow your team, and now they want to follow you on Twitter.

However, there’s a big difference between someone following you on Twitter and someone paying attention to you. Followers boost your ego, but proving that your followers take your advice, spend money where you recommend and watch you perform is where the real value lies for you, your team and your sponsors – and if you don’t have sponsors then having an engaged Twitter following will certainly help you to raise your profile and your worth to prospective backers.

So here’s ten tips on how to make your tweets more likely to be retweeted – the most obvious form of engagement:

1.Link to things

Tweets with links in are more likely to get retweeted, especially if the page it links to is particularly entertaining. If you find something amusing, tweet it and your followers will spread it too. You’re more likely to get retweeted if you use a URL-shortener, with bit.ly outperforming nearly every alternative.

2.Beg

What? Really? Yes – statistically your tweet is more likely to get passed on if you ask people to. ‘Please’ and ‘retweet’ are the third and fourth most common words found in retweets (after ‘you’ and ‘twitter’), and the phrase ‘please retweet’ comes in at number eleven!

3.Don’t natter

Twitter asks you the question ‘What are you doing?’. Guess what: no-one cares too much, well not enough to share it anyway. Unless what you’re doing is really interesting, in a you’ll-never-guess-what-I’m-up-to way, then don’t expect anyone but your followers to notice, and too much much of that will be likely to turn them off completely too. Never tell people that you’re going to sleep, bored, or tired: they really don’t want to hear it.

4.Write smart

This one explains the Stephen Fry phenomenon. People are more likely to retweet content which uses words with more syllables and less abbreviations, apparently. If something comes across as clever, people are more likely to share it.

5.Use punctuation

Syncing well with writing smartly, adding punctuation increases the chances of being retweeted. Why? Because punctuation makes sentences easier to read, and tidies them up visually. The only exception is the semi-colon: most people seem to not know how to use or interpret it, which seems to act as a deterrent to it’s use.

6.Say something new

Tweeting something hot off the press is far more likely to garner attention and retweets than talking about something that everyone already knows. For sports players, this means you should become the engine of your own news: let your Twitter feed be the first place people learn about your moves, your injuries, your recoveries and your successes. Be sure to tweet your perspective after a game too.

NEVER tweet about a dressing room bust-up or training pitch disagreement: leaking information of a sensitive or morale-destroying nature is likely to have a detrimental effect on your relationships with your teammates and your coaches. Be sure to agree with your club just what you can tweet and what you can’t, and stick to it. Even if you’re planning to move, it would send a bad signal to future employers if you can’t tow the line.

7.Write headlines

Trying to get people to click your link? The best way is to write a headline-style tweet which will interest the reader, paying attention to what it is that will really matter to them. ‘Wayne Rooney dropped by England’ will get a better click-through rate than ‘New England team announced, and if more people click on the link and like the content, they’re more likely to send it onwards.

8.Be positive and inclusive

Avoid swearing, being negative or talking about yourself. People don’t want to be dragged down, they want to be made happier and be distracted from problems. Rather than talking about just yourself, talk in terms of ‘we’, especially when talking about team news.

9.Give them what they want

People like to be entertained, but by what? Think about your audience – what do they like?

The obvious answer is sport, so sports news and videos is a given. Outside of that, though, and they’re interested in the same things as everyone else: money, celebrities, controversy, jokes and news.

10.Tweet at 4pm on a Friday

If you want a retweet, this is the best time for it!

These tips are based on Dan Zarella’s The Science of Retweets, so if you want to see a bit more detail behind each tip then go and have a look. Otherwise, why not give it now!

Formula 1 chief Bernie Ecclestone isn’t happy about it, worrying about meddling from parties who knew what they were signing up for in advance. Whilst an organisation as professionally run as Formula 1 may have less need of the strategic demands and insights from some of the world’s most rich and important companies, is the same true for your sports club?

Your sponsors may have answers to the problems you face. Individually, they may have gone through similar issues, know someone else who has or be able to solve it themselves. They might have a really bright idea about how to market your club, they might be able to retrofit your clubhouse or they might be able to give financial or legal advice.

But collectively they can help troubleshoot problems that you didn’t even know existed. If they get together and feel that the value of one of your hospitality packages isn’t up to scratch and give you advise on changing it, then you’ve got happier customers and a more marketable package.

The best bit of all is that it’s in the sponsor’s interest to do so. By lending their expertise they can generate a bit more PR both through you and the local press, and by making the club more successful they can raise the return of their own sponsorship.

Sports clubs are beginning to realise the value in seeking the opinions and engagement of their fans through social media and other activities, but is your club pursuing a parallel strategy with your sponsors?

Start with surveys and email newsletters. Continue with sponsors’ meetings. Don’t just rely on the ‘Sponsor’s Club’ special bar which was set up to generate yet more income from the same dedicated businesses – make it a no-strings attached engagement.

Make sure the comments from the sponsorship lobby reach the right ears: not just your sponsorship team, but the executive board. These are voices that you really want to listen too.

Don’t pursue this if you’re not listening to your fans, though. The last thing you want to do is give the normal fanbase the impression that your sports club is being run just for the benefit of the sponsors. Give everyone a stake in your team, and reap the rewards of that engagement.

Image by FirstStop @ Flickr

So if you’re looking for a bit of inspiration of how to use Twitter to market your sports club, then take some of these ideas for a test drive…

Why?

Knowing your reasons to promote your sports club on YouTube is the most important thing to understand before starting your marketing efforts. The goals you set out for yourself should guide every part of the process if your want to deliver the best possible results. This post will help you to answer those questions, formulating your sports marketing strategy more clearly.

Why Videos?

There are an endless list of goals that could be used to justify the use of video in your sports marketing mix, but make sure that video reflects the best return on investment (in time and/or money) that your goals can be achieved with. Always bear in mind that the underlying drive behind all your efforts should be to make your sports club more money – you are not doing this just to give the fans something to watch! Examples of goals include:

• Increasing fanbase – create videos which appeal to demographics outside of your core support. Examples would include highlights and showreels.
• Increasing attendance – drive gate income by making attendance more attractive.
• Increasing merchandise sales – boost sales in the club shop
• Increase sponsorship sales – make existing and new packages more attractive through increased media exposure.
• Increase youth support – the young of today are tomorrow’s star players, supporters and sponsors. Hook them early with specifically crafted content.
• Increasing search visibility – if you’re looking for your club site to become more visible to non-fans, then attracting more links to videos will help drive you up the rankings.

Why YouTube?

Chances are that you’re reading this post because you had already decided to use YouTube for your sports marketing campaigns. Why choose YouTube over other video sharing sites (Vimeo, Facebook, etc) and how does that decision align with your sports marketing goals?

1. 

   YouTube videos in Google rankings for 'Man Utd'

   YouTube belongs to Google. Why does this matter? Because Google likes YouTube, and the world loves Google. By choosing YouTube you automatically make your videos more likely to appear in search results in the world’s number one search engine, which means more views. If your goals require the ability to reach beyond your core support to a wider local or sports audience then this aspect is a no-brainer.

2. YouTube is the most popular video sharing site. This means that you’re more likely to get greater numbers of people finding your video through both the YouTube site and the ‘Related Videos’ links in embedded players than on other alternative video sharing sites. Viewing figures are one of the most obvious metrics by which you (or your sponsors) will judge the success of your videos, especially for reaching out to new supporters.
3. YouTube only allows a maximum video length of 10 minutes. Wait… that’s a negative, right? Not at all. Unless your aim is to create something saleable in its own right like a Spinal Tap-esque sport-u-mentary or provide full match footage, then keeping your audience engaged for more than 10 minutes will be nigh on impossible. Keep it short, sharp and snappy and you can’t go far wrong. As a rule of thumb, take what you think your intended demographic’s attention span is, then divide that by 5. Don’t get carried away and think that your interviewing technique makes you the next Michael Parkinson or Jay Leno.
4. 

   The YouTube Hotspots data helps you to see just what your audience likes (in this case, a period of scoring) and what they don't (opponents scoring!)

   YouTube Insights. Everyone in the digital age of marketing likes data, and YouTube now provides it in the form of YouTube Insights. You can see the demographic information about your audience, how people have found your video, what keywords were used and what country your audience lives in. More popular videos also show your video’s Hot Spots – how popular different parts of your video are across time, telling you when people get bored or which bits they watch again and again!

5. YouTube is free. You don’t have to worry about bandwidth, servers, streaming or subscriptions: YouTube represents a zero-cost, high-impact solution. True, you can’t charge people to view your content, but unless you’re creating saleable content then why would this matter?
6. YouTube is a social media network. YouTube is not just about hosting videos, but about user interaction, commenting and forming networks of peers and fans. Show people your content and encourage them to react to it!
7. YouTube is embeddable. If you want the maximum number of people viewing your contehis could be counter-productive if your intermediate goal is to drive people to interact with the YouTube channel you set up, but that interactivity is not a core goal in itself – remember the aim is always to maximise income.

Planning Your YouTube Sports Strategy

So now you know where you’re going to host your club videos (YouTube!) and what you’re trying to achieve by doing so, it’s finally time to consider what kind of videos you’re going to create… and what resources you’re going to need to execute your ideas.

In the next week’s post in this series we’ll be considering the best types of sports videos which you should consider pursuing.

Wayne Rooney: Twitter-less. Image by gordonflood.com

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?

Does your fledgling sports team keep winning, and you want to tell the world?

Are you playing a team which beat you two years ago, but you can’t remember who scored all their points?

The Sport Buoy ScoreReport match archive system enables you to store your results for posterity, and serve them direct to your website in a multitude of ways. Season league tables, player stats, head-to-head analysis and much more is not just a click away for you, but also all of your website’s visitors.

Impress your fans and sponsors with integrated stats on your site without any of the cost or bother of in-house customised solutions. ScoreReport is easily included into your web pages, and it’s absolutely free!

ScoreReport is also the beating heart of much of the Sport Buoy system. Entering scores in other services such as the Score Text Message Service automatically updates the ScoreReport system, and the fixture lists used by matchday packages in the Sponsorship Administration Suite is also linked to the ScoreReport database.

Whilst the core of ScoreReport is fully functional, the website integration functions are still in development and are not expected to be released until towards the middle of 2010.

Clubs: Want to maximise the sponsorship and marketing potential of your team? Want to find new routes to your fanbase?

A guide to ways for sports clubs and players alike to maximise the power of the Internet to their advantage. From social media and conventional marketing to sports statistics and financial management, Sport Buoy founder Ross Tucknott will be sharing all the latest tips and secrets in his weekly blog.

• An intuitive, accessible layout for easy reading and browsing by your website users.
• Simple integration with your site – just include a couple of lines of code!
• Visual customisation using our Style Generator, with instructions for your webmaster on how to further customise in your own code.
• Easy to use administration from within the Sport Buoy content management system.
• Link directly to specific vacancies using the ‘#’ operator – if the vacancy is removed there’s no broken links!

Sport Buoy’s philosophy is simple – we want to support sports clubs of all sizes and all sports. As a result, the vast majority of our services are free right now and forever more. The only services we will ever charge for are ones which sports clubs can earn direct profits from by selling services to fans and sponsors. The core system is there to be enjoyed and exploited by all sports clubs around the world.

Sport Buoy takes a huge amount of effort to develop, however, so we won’t say no to any donations! If Sport Buoy is an asset to your sporting endeavours, please consider visiting our donations page.

• User interface designed for quick and easy message sending.
• Customisable message templates – messages can be pre-filled so that only scores need to be entered.
• Subscriber lists easily administered from the Sport Buoy content management system.
• Subscribers can be opted out from certain message sets – half-time, full-time, updates, adverts and marketing.
• Top up message credit at any time.
• Messages can be sent internationally to over 200 countries