Is social media “poisoning” football clubs?

After being relinquished of his role as manager of Queens Park Rangers last week, was Neil Warnock right to fire a parting shot at the social media platform Twitter?

While the club’s owners might point to a dip in form that saw the London club slip to 17^th in the Premier League table as the reason for the managerial change, Warnock cited Twitter as an influential factor.

It’s true that Twitter, along with other social media channels, has had a huge impact on football and the way that fans are able to communicate with their club. Fans’ opinions are no longer defined by the press. Instead they are given their own public voice, which, in the opinion of Neil Warnock, wasn’t always favourable.

For fear of fans and players “poisoning” the club, as Warnock puts it, should clubs now shun social media? There is no doubt that these tools are powerful. But it’s down to the clubs to make sure they take ownership of their social media presence.

Social media training

For many clubs, social media has revolutionised the way that they are able to communicate with fans and this has provided them with a host of opportunities.

Football is no longer just a sport. It is a world of celebrity, where newspapers report as much about what happens off the pitch as they do the 90 minutes on it. Twitter gives players a voice with which they are able to present themselves away from the media. Clubs therefore need to acknowledge that social media training is vital for all of their players and treat these accounts as a partnership where players have control with guidance and support from the club.

Management don’t let players talk to journalists without training and guidance so why would they allow them to talk to the thousands of people who follow them (including many journalists) without any guidance from the club.

An excellent example of a club doing this well is Manchester City. They recently held a web chat with Mario Ballotelli on their official Twitter account. His answers were filmed, providing video content (and advertising opportunities) for their website.

The striker addressed questions about his activities on the pitch as well as quashing a few rumours about his lifestyle as reported in the media. Giving fans a chance to directly address the player meant that the media no longer held the upper hand and Manchester City could once again take control over the image of their player and of the club.

Two-way relationships

Creating a two-way relationship between fans and a football club is a massive opportunity. Fans are the lifeblood of any club. They provide the atmosphere and passion in the stadium, as well as financially supporting the club through ticket purchases and merchandise.

Facebook and Twitter give fans a direct link to the club in between match days. They allow clubs the chance to reward fans for their loyalty with exclusive offers and competitions as well as news and updates direct from the stadium and training ground. Subsequently, engaged fans will pass on information and offers, visit the club website more often and contribute even further to the club financially.

Listening to fans

But it’s not all about what the fans can do for the club. A survey conducted by the Newcastle United Supporters Trust (NUST) found that only 3% of the fans surveyed felt that the club listened to them. Social media provides an ear at the end of the computer. It provides fans with someone at the club to listen to them and also allows clubs to learn from the opinions of their fans.

It is important that this is built into the clubs business plan so that they can improve the experience of paying match day attendees. For example, Manchester City have listened to their fans on Facebook and made real changes based on their fans needs, such as increasing the healthy options at their kiosks and lowering counters so that kids can feel more involved. These changes would not only reveal a commitment to meeting the needs of the fans, they would also lead to increased revenue for the club.

International fans

Twitter and Facebook also allow clubs to engage with fans who aren’t able to attend games or who may otherwise find it difficult to keep in touch with the club, such as international supporters. The high number of overseas fans interacting on both the Liverpool and Manchester United Facebook pages shows that this platform can help feed the global hunger for news about Premier League sides as well as the opportunity to purchase merchandise to show their support for their team.

Where clubs can fall down is when they haven’t built a long term strategy of what they want to achieve with their fanbase using social media. Clubs need to develop the infrastructure and the skill sets to deal with the management of social media activity both in terms of day-to-day posting on the accounts and to integrate the new level of fan communication into their long term business plans.

Negative reaction

Two-way communication can achieve a lot of positive results, but if the team isn’t playing well, clubs should be prepared for the negative reaction from the fans. As ‘unliking’ your club when the opposition scores becomes the modern day equivalent of kicking the cat, the key challenge for clubs is keeping fans engaged during difficult periods.

Everton are an excellent example of this. During a recent bout of poor results the club were receiving a number of negative posts on both Twitter and Facebook. Social media cannot change these results, but what Everton have done well is to provide an ear for the fans. They have concentrated on keeping up morale and passion from the fans by focusing on the club’s history and its marketed role as the ‘people’s club’. The club has used ‘Follow Friday’ (aka #FF) to keep tweets focused on the fans and to acknowledge that they are key voices to the club.

It is clear that when harnessed correctly, rather than “poisoning” a situation, social media platforms such as Twitter can become invaluable tools – during both good and bad times for a club.

Nicola Peate, social media manager, Rippleffect