uefa social media strategy
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THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Josh Hershman, UEFA.com
Introduction
Josh HershmanSocial Media Editor UEFA.com
Email: [email protected]: @UEFAcomJoshH
• Day-to-day running of UEFA’s social media including Facebook, Twitter, Google+
• Lead a team of two in London with support from Nyon for graphics, development and strategy
• Cover at least 12 hours a day with scheduled posts going up at other times
UEFA.com overview• Provide accurate, reliable, exhaustive and comprehensive coverage of European football’s governing
body, its competitions and member associations in seven European languages and three Asian ones according to the following principles:
– Editorial standards: Accurate, reliable, non-defamatory and impartial – non-opinionated– Editorial coverage: Trustworthy, eyewitness-based and in depth – but also newsworthy, innovative
and pan-European in format– Editorial delivery: Content shall be provided live, but quality (accuracy) always defeats speed– Editorial reference: Comprehensive and exhaustive coverage built on historical background
• Traditional text, photographic and video coverage augmented by a commitment to social media which offers a more direct communication opportunity with users and tackles the perception of UEFA being distant from fans
• Objective is to provide additional behind-the-scenes, eyewitness accounts of the events taking place
• Aim to capitalise on our extended reach by converting new audiences to regular UEFA.com users
• Social media success based on the quality of content created for the website and because we regularly have large events (matches, draws etc.) where traditional and social media reporting merge seamlessly
How UEFA’s social media presence has evolved
Conception and initiation• Project started from January 2011 onwards
Strategy and editorial guidelines• Desire to attract social media users to UEFA.com via our channels• Editorial guidelines based on social media best practice but also 10 years of UEFA.com
experience and knowledge of what works and what does not for UEFA
Recognition• UEFA runs a ‘Fan Engagement’ workshop at the KISS event in Vienna in Nov ’12• UEFA viewed as one of leaders in terms of football & social media, passing 10 million
users (across all channels) in Dec ’12• Twitter, Google, Facebook and YouTube all keen to develop relationships further
Platforms – Facebook
Number of fans across 9 pages:
9.7m approx. 6.4m
(launched January 2011)
1.7m (January 2011)
353k (December 2010)
45k
(September 2011)
53k (May 2011)
8k(January 2012)
8k (January 2012)
1.2m (January 2011)
Platforms – Twitter
• @ChampionsLeague: 260k followers (since August 2012)• @EuropaLeague: 60k followers (since August 2012)
– All competition news, engaging users, live draws– S&E promotion for sponsors (Fantasy, Predictor)– Team of the Year promotion: great coverage from clubs, players and Twitter which all drive traffic back to UEFA.com
• @UEFAcom: 196k followers (all other news)• @UEFAcomReporters: Bringing competitions and events to life• @UEFAcomML: 11 language accounts with automatic feeds
(some soon to be run manually)
Benefits and impact on strategy
• Social integration on the site has a greater importance– Users can sign up for UEFA.com using their Facebook credentials– Facebook ‘like’ and Twitter ‘share’ buttons on homepages & within articles and blogs– Tweets integrated into the live UEFA Champions League matchday blog
Benefits and impact on strategy
• A place for fans to engage with competitions
• Clicks back to UEFA.com– Average of 120k in a match week
• Sponsors– Special requests– Logo visible– Part of profile pic– S&E promotion
• Popularity of some pages to promote others (Women’s & Futsal)• Target specific audiences – easy data available via Facebook insights• Target various time zones
#TeamOfTheYear – A Twitter first
• Allowed to vote on Twitter by giving a RT to the player you want to vote for• 50k votes on Twitter• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVBWv0W9xy0&feature=youtu.be
UEFA XI: Lahm and Özil chosen by fans
A match night on social media
• Match previews – all channels
• Link to live MatchCentre – all channels
• Tweet the team news as it drops mentioning official club and player handles where possible
• Live automatic tweets for kick-off, goals, red cards, HT, FT supplemented with editorial tweets adding colour/stats/pictures
• Twitpics seven times more likely to get interaction
• HT/FT scores on Facebook/Google+ with links to official club pages
A match night on social media
• Tweets quotes as soon as they drop (from the TV/correspondents)
• Match reports – all channels
• Reaction pieces – all channels
• How did your Fantasy Football team get on?
• Match night gallery – Facebook/Google+
• Link to video highlights – all channels
• Schedule overnight for different markets
Benchmark insights between November 2012 and January 2013
• The UEFA Champions League page:– Largest number of fans on Facebook of any football league page – Increased by 2.1m fans – more than any other football league page on Facebook– Fan increase since November 2012 is 284,000 more than the combined growth of the Premier
League, Spanish Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and MLS
Total fan number growth 1. UEFA Champions League - 2.1 million (56.8%)2. Premier League - 699k (21.7%)3. Liga - 488k (37.8%)4. UEFA Europa League - 588k (58.3%) 5. Serie A - 497k (64.2%)6. Bundesliga - 188k (35.0%)7. MLS - 9k (1.9%)8. UEFA.com - 132k (58.1%)
All major football leagues
Google+• Fastest growing sports page in the
world– 2.7m fans – 6th most popular
page worldwide
• Hangouts at Champions Festival in Munich– Integration on UEFA.com– Variety
• Google search benefits - algorithm
• Google+ buttons in progress
• Contact– Richard Keelty (
[email protected])– Henry Eccles ([email protected])
Looking ahead to 2013• Numbers and interaction on all platforms continues to grow
– Valuable asset– Develop and improve multilingual aspect– Become the authoritative voice on Twitter with @ChampionsLeague and @EuropaLeague– Live Twitter Q&As/competitions for the knockout stages
• Big push for Champions Festival and UEFA Champions League & UEFA Europa League finals– Integrate social media into strategy around finals, events, summer competitions
• Other platforms?– Instagram? Pinterest? Tumblr?
• UEFA EURO 2016– Facebook page, specific Twitter account. General social media coverage
• Improvements coming soon with greater visibility of all social buttons
• Social media now considered at the planning stage rather than as an after thought
• We will continue to explore ways of bringing the fans and UEFA even closer – for the first time we have a direct relationship with the fans and we know what they are thinking/talking about
Questions?