The countdown’s on to the start of the Aviva Premiership rugby season on September 1st. The hard work is being put in on the training pitch by the players. And in some ways, the hard yards are also being put in by the social media team at each and every Premiership club.
New signings. Pre-season friendlies. Match highlights. Supporter campaigns. Not to mention practice sessions on a diving board in Bermuda, obviously!
We can’t predict who will be the Champions come next May but we do know who is already winning the race to be the winners on social media.
Saracens are currently top of the pile. Their social channels mix up rich content and don’t just stick to the norm. Demonstrated perfectly on their pre-season tour to Bermuda. If you haven’t seen it, here’s a link. Training drills can be boring so to engage fans the social team set the first team a passing challenge. Five completed passes were achieved whilst jumping off differing diving board heights. Resulting in over 3,000 retweets and nearly 7,000 likes. Compare that to the previous tweet’s six retweets and 55 likes and you’ll see the brilliance of the activity.
The Sarries social team has kept their league winning form up since then with more engaging content.
The Sarries social team has kept their league winning form up since then with more engaging content. Drones to showcase training. A really innovative alternative to standard action shots and static videos that other clubs are using. Use of Instagram stories for behind the scenes glimpses, clear image themes throughout and use of emojis to simplify tweets and appeal to millennials has helped them top the social table, for now.
It isn’t just Saracens that have stepped up their social tailored content though. Here’s a look at the best of the rest.
Harlequins are ahead of the trend with the use of live streaming. Following pre-season games they’ve live streamed post-match interviews with club staff. Simple but extremely engaging at the perfect time when fans want to talk about the game they’ve just seen.
Exeter Chiefs have broken the norm of covering the action during games on Twitter by introducing the equivalent on Instagram. It still needs a little work to become as slick as their Twitter offering but with the growth of Instagram happening at nearly 10 million users a month, the appetite for Instagram coverage of matches will get there.
The final club who are featuring at the top of our social media league table is Leicester Tigers with their #TigersFamily. Super simple. But super engaging. Encouraging followers to share their match day experiences. Which the club respond to or repurpose. A big social win because of its consistency.
It’ll be interesting to see how other social trends are embraced throughout the season. But for now the standard off the pitch is definitely matching what is to come on it.
To see more examples of Mercieca’s social media and rugby case studies contact [email protected].