This is the first of three posts I plan to do on the Premier League’s use of social media. I was doing some desktop research for a client the other day and I came across Man Utd’s Facebook page and I noticed it had more than 11 million likes and it got me wondering what amount of likes the other clubs could get, and whether the real table would reflect my Facebook likes table.
So I have completed a review of each of the club’s Facebook pages and sorted them by the amount of likes they have. The first thing that struck me was most of them were very professional but some were not great and given the budgets they have that is disappointing. Many of our well established clubs are missing some of the easiest best practice points and that surprised me as Facebook is perfect for football fans.
Another suprising point is these sites aren’t that well sign-posted by the clubs either. For some of them I really had to hunt around and that just doesn’t make any sense to me. Surely you want your fans to engage with you more and follow your every move don’t you?
According to my research the least liked football club on Facebook (at the time of writing) is Bolton Wanderers – this surprised me too as this year they are playing some really good football this year and many people have been saying they are a club on the rise.
The most shocking element for me was the difference between the old “top four”, as they once were, and then the gap between them and Man City and Tottenham. The gap is around 4,000,000 likes which is huge. So does this tell us that if you are in the Champion’s League you are likely to have more Facebook fans? How can that be true as Tottenham have been in it all season and playing brilliantly and they still haven’t secured more than 1,000,000 fans?
Another surprise for me was Newcastle FC, as they have a really proud following and some of the highest gate numbers in the UK, but on Facebook it only makes tenth position.
The team with the biggest difference from the league position was West Ham which is the 8th most liked club on Facebook. So it clearly has a very strong fan base and maybe this bodes well for the new stadium. If I am honest, I think that our football clubs are still missing a real trick here, if they utilised the power of Facebook to its full potential they could find they have sold out stadiums week in week out and their fans could be much better informed and not feel as detached as some complain they do these days.
What do you think our football clubs using Facebook? What would you do or change if you were them? I am looking for suggestions here – Thanks.
I will be sharing more on Premier League Clubs and their use of social media next week.
Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.
