How Carlton football club use Social Media to the Fans go

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Today was an exciting day for me – I was one of a small group of bloggers invited to cover a training session of the Carlton Football Club (the ‘Blues’) – the football team I support.

Marc Murphy (@marcmurphy3 on Twitter)

For those of you outside of Australia – the Carlton Football Club (CFC) is an Australian Rules Football team based in Melbourne Australia. Aussie Rules Football (or AFL or ‘footy’ as we call it) is an amazing game – the biggest professional football code in Australia. It’s difficult to describe but it is a fast paced and spectacular game that people in Melbourne and many other parts of Australia follow religiously – particularly at this time of year as we’ve just started our final series – our Grand Final (think Aussie Superbowl) is in just a few weeks time.

Learn more about AFL on the official AFL site, Wikipedia, or check out this video to get some visuals of the game being played and this one of a video of one of the most spectacular marks of the year.

Today was the last training session for the Blues before our finals appearance tomorrow so it was a big event for Blues Supporters and the club were keen to bring in a group of bloggers to cover the day. I’ve included a few pics of training in this post. Light Team Run

One of the cool things about the Carlton Football Club in the last 12-18 months is the way that they’ve been reaching out to their supporters via social media – this blogger outreach day is just one example of it.

I first noticed their increased focus upon social media 18 months ago when they started ramping up their use of Facebook, Twitter and when I was invited to a small gathering of Blues supporters who were active on Social Media. At that gathering the club listened to supporters about how they’d like to see the club engaging online. Since then there have been a variety of other such meetings as well as larger scale social media meetups for Blues supporters (last week there was one for 200 supporters).

The last year has seen a growing number of players on Twitter and having their own Facebook pages, an increased use of Video from within the club and some creative use of media to allow supporters to get a peak at the inner sanctum of the club (such as their Blue and Answer videos where fans submit questions to players for them to answer on video).

While they are by no means the only sporting club to be using social media it is exciting to see them embracing it and throwing resources and energy into the field.

Captain Chris Judd

While at training today I took the opportunity to speak with Carlton FC’s recently appointed social media coordinator Luca Gonano who answered a few of my questions about how they are using social media. I thought it might be of interest to others around the world looking at similar initiatives (whether in sporting clubs or other organisations).

The Club was keen to develop its relationship with supporters and build the membership base, so it was decided last year that social media was a vital ingredient in the communications mix. We employed the services of Deloitte Digital who worked with Carlton to develop a social media strategy, working closely with Fan Development and Communications. Part of the strategy included the creation of a new role, Social Media Co-ordinator, which I was lucky enough to be offered in April this year. The strategy has provided the plan for the development of our social media presence and in the last year Carlton’s numbers on Facebook have increased by 50,000 (currently have 91,000 fans) and Twitter by 10,000 (currently 15,000 followers). This has been achieved without advertising or match-day gimmicks, it has been built around engagement with the supporters. The Carlton Football Club’s social media numbers are now third overall in the AFL and we are growing faster than any other team.

Mitch Robinson (@MitchyRobbo)

It might sound simple, but making our supporters feel a part of the club. We’ve made a conscious effort to keep our fans informed with all the happenings at the club and I think we’ve gone a long way in bridging the gap between fans and players. It’s no secret that supporters want to feel as if they ‘know’ the players. Thankfully for us we’ve got a group of young, enthusiastic players who have been very receptive to being a part of our social media plans and have become more interactive with the Carlton supporters. We’ve set-up fan pages on Facebook for four of our more popular players and run competitions through the players and It’s worked both-ways. Players learn just how much the Navy Blue jumper means to our fans, and the supporters  find out the human side of our players. It has also reduced the number of fake player accounts on Facebook.

Team Run

The Carlton Social was a great success. We wanted to say thank you to a few of our Facebook/Twitter followers for helping us grow as quickly as we have in 2011, so we invited them to the Club to thank them in person. The 200 who attended were taken on a tour of Visy Park by Carlton legends Syd Jackson and Geoff Southby, treated to supper and given vouchers to spend at the Carlton Shop. The only thing we asked of our guests was to fill out a brief survey to find out what they like and what they don’t like about our social media. We were able to gather some fantastic feedback and we’re already acting upon some of the suggestions. We had over 1000 apply to be part of the night, and we’re planning bringing each of them through the Club at some stage in the off-season. It was an opportunity to say thank you with the bonus of providing Carlton with important feedback to ensure we continue to develop our social media platforms for our supporters.

Blue Supporters

The Club has enjoyed its best season in 10 years and our supporters are hungry for success. Everyone at Carlton is aware that we’ve come from a very dark place over the last decade and our supporters have stuck with us through the bad times. The bloggers that we’ve organised to cover the finals for us each have their own stories about being a Carlton supporter. We’re hoping that they are able to portray the energy around the club from a fan’s perspective and that supporters all across the world,  who are following their blogging can relate to their emotions. We want everyone who supports Carlton to feel like they’re a part of the push for our 17th flag. Having bloggers from outside the club involved helps to open the club up to supporters.

Eddie Betts

We’ve got some really exciting things planned for 2012. We are currently renovating a space in the Richard Pratt Stand that will become the “Bruce Doull Social Hub”, a place where bloggers/tweeters/facebookers can get together and communicate online about the happenings around the club. We’re also working really closely with Fan Development to devise a social media outlet for those who are new to AFL. Finally, we’re looking to recruit a group of bloggers for the entire 2012 to cover club events, training sessions and matches. We’re really excited with the direction that we’re heading in.

To recap on today – we spent most of the time with Luca. We were given a tour of the club facilities, training areas, pools, locker room, board room etc. We were given access to the on field press conference with coach Brett Ratten and then allowed to watch and photograph training from the sidelines (right up close). We were also given a bit of insight into some of the clubs plans for social media in 2013 and asked for input into what we heard.

Brett Ratten Press Conference

All in all it was a fun and insightful morning – partly in being able to get up close to players and coaching staff, partly because it is an exciting time for the club with tomorrows big game and partly to see and hear about CFC’s social media strategy going forward (and to be a part of shaping that).

Go Blues!

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Great content for contemporary social Web

This guest post is by Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting.

Welcome to an increasingly social landscape on the Web.  Social media started this shift from information to conversation, and now with the search engines increasingly using social signals to determine what to show searchers it’s a trend that, as a publisher, you have to get on top of to write and promote great content.

This post will discuss the movement of Bing and Google towards social search, and how that affects the organic search landscape. Then I’ll provide some tips on how this impacts your writing and promotion of your content.

The integration of search and social media is already here.  Back in October 2010, Bing and Facebook announced plans for tighter integration. As I learned when I interviewed Bing’s Stefan Weitz, Bing is already using Facebook signals as a ranking factor:

“… if any of my friends anywhere have liked any (relevant) link across the entire world wide web, I am going to inject that link into my results page.”

Stefan refers to the notion of boosting a search result just because one of my friends Liked it.  But that is just the beginning, as we also can see that Bing is making use of the wisdom of the crowd, as per this example search on the New York Post:

Even if none of the 54 people that Liked “15 Best Dresses” are my Facebook friends, Bing thinks the article’s popularity is still noteworthy enough to show it to me.

Google does not have as close a relationship with Facebook, but is making use of other social services such as Twitter, and recently launched Google+

The bottom line is that social signals are a ranking factor in the search engines’ algorithms, and you can’t ignore this.

We don’t know exactly how the Web will continue to evolve, but we know that more major changes are coming our way.  To get a perspective on why this is, consider the three major stages of the Web’s evolution so far:

the initial failure of the Dot-Com Bubble from 1998-2000: too much focus on a land-grab mentality without understanding how to make money in the processthe combined revolutions of ecommerce (Amazon, EBay, et al) and getting instant access to all the world’s information online (Google): this second stage is still unfolding and the third stage is already underwaythe social media revolution: this is driven by instant and continuous access to your friends, and the ability to communicate and engage simply.  Texting, Facebook, Twitter are the current driving forces, but more are to come.  People love these short communications so much that email is becoming pass?, and the idea of making a phone call seems unnatural to many teenagers.

What has come with this third wave is a new way of communicating and a whole new emphasis on relationships.  People are beginning to associate online familiarity with your personality and who you are, and with trust. And trust sells, trust engages, trust makes people come back.

The implications of this on how you approach your writing are profound.  And, chances are that the importance of this social approach to writing will only become more important.

Social networks like a personal approach.  They want to see your personality.  They want you to share. They want you to evoke emotions.  These elements are key to creating engagement not just with your content, but with you.  Social networks make you more accessible to your potential readers and can play a significant role in growing your reach.

I remember when I first began publishing sites on the Web, the approach I used was dry and academic.  This was the strategy I used to communicate authority and trust.  I am beginning to think that this is no longer the right approach.  Do you trust the advice of a university professor that you have never spoken to?  Or does the combined opinions of your friends count for more?

The wisdom of the crowd is very much upon us and it is only going to get stronger.  As a writer, you need to accept the notion that trust comes from familiarity with you, and your ability to be approachable will enable you to communicate your message.

The other big factor that emerges from the ability to get all the world’s information online is that there is too much information. We are more impatient than ever.  If I am going to spend the time reading your article, whether or not I trust you, tell me why I should read this article in the first paragraph.  Get to the point.

Lastly, don’t waste your time writing “me too” content.  To see what I mean, consider this screen shot:

Making French toast is really, really easy.  I have not made it in 20 years, but I can still tell you how in two minutes.  We don’t need 2.54 million web pages on the topic!

For the search engines, showing multiple results with little distinction from one another is a waste of time.  For your average web surfer, reading more than one such article is a complete waste of time.  So even if I trust you, and even if you tell me what the article is about in the first paragraph, don’t waste my time with a useless review of something that tons of other people have already covered. Give me something new!

Mastering these concepts is essential for today’s bloggers.  Those who get there the fastest will be tomorrow’s authorities.

This may be the most straightforward part of this post.  You do need to integrate basic social elements into your posts.  This includes elements such as the Facebook Like, Send, and Share buttons, a Tweet This button, and perhaps a Google +1 button.  While the +1 button does not have the same usage level as the other elements yet, one can expect a meaningful integration into Google+ in the near future.

Going a little deeper, consider using Facebook Comments instead of the built-in comments capability of your blog platform. The content from the comments does not show up as search engine-visible text on your web page, but given that you are writing original posts, this is probably not critical.

But what it does do is function like a Facebook Share.  It shows up in the News Feed of the commenter, and the News Feeds of all their friends.  This is a great way to spread the visibility of your posts. It also provides some inherent spam protection, as no one will leave a spammy comment behind unless they have taken the trouble to setup a throwaway Facebook account.

Also, think of ways to entice your reader to engage more with your blog.   Ask a leading question at the end of your post to invite comments.  Install functionality that suggests other related posts they can read next.

The most subtle part of promotion is the way you use the social networks themselves as a direct extension of your blog.  Daily activity on Twitter and Facebook may prove to be a great way to build the personality and trust that people are looking for.  They both offer great platforms for viral spread of ideas you want to communicate.

Use these platforms to communicate the same types of messages as you do on your blog, but in smaller doses of course.  Use them to establish your personality and build the trust.

Is your content social-web-friendly?

Fully embracing the social revolution is key to the blogger’s long term success.  Based on the pace of the evolution of the Web over the past decade, it is reasonable to expect that the next major shift in web behavior is around the corner.

Three years from now, those of us who are centered on Facebook, Twitter, and texting, but have not yet adopted the next new thing that comes after them will be seen as being behind the times.  There will be many more paradigm shifts in our lifetime, and it will be important to stay as current as you can. Use the media that your audiences use to communicate with your audience.  It sounds simple, and yet it is critically important.

The first step though, is to adapt to the changes that have already taken place.  I could call this a requirement for survival, but I always use a positive mindset—I consider it an opportunity to excel.

Eric Enge is the President of Stone Temple Consulting, a 20 person SEO and PPC consulting firm with offices in Boston and Northern California. Eric is a crusty old veteran with 30 years working experience in technology and the Internet. STC provides Internet Marketing Optimization services to companies ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies.

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Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article: Second Edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

Students and researchers all write under pressure, and those pressures—most lamentably, the desire to impress your audience rather than to communicate with them—often lead to pretentious prose, academic posturing, and, not infrequently, writer’s block.  

Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written the classic book on how to conquer these pressures and simply write. First published nearly twenty years ago, Writing for Social Scientists has become a lifesaver for writers in all fields, from beginning students to published authors. Becker’s message is clear: in order to learn how to write, take a deep breath and then begin writing. Revise. Repeat.

It is not always an easy process, as Becker wryly relates. Decades of teaching, researching, and writing have given him plenty of material, and Becker neatly exposes the foibles of academia and its “publish or perish” atmosphere. Wordiness, the passive voice, inserting a “the way in which” when a simple “how” will do—all these mechanisms are a part of the social structure of academic writing. By shrugging off such impediments—or at the very least, putting them aside for a few hours—we can reform our work habits and start writing lucidly without worrying about grades, peer approval, or the “literature.”

In this new edition, Becker takes account of major changes in the computer tools available to writers today, and also substantially expands his analysis of how academic institutions create problems for them. As competition in academia grows increasingly heated, Writing for Social Scientists will provide solace to a new generation of frazzled, would-be writers.

Price: $12.00

Click here to buy from Amazon

Keep with your closest friends who uses the social dashboard Geeje

If you're like me, there may be a small group of online friends who you can connect with each social network and you have you become a little like an online family. If Yes, that applies to you, then the Geeje is the ideal tool to help you keep up with the closest online friends.

The concept is quite simple. First, you can create a profile of your friend and then add feeds that apply to them. Do not think that the word "Feeds" like blog feeds if, also applies to social networking profiles. Best of all, you don't need an actual RSS feed to follow. You can simply enter the URL of your blog or social network profile that you want to keep up with and Geeje will do the rest.

Geeje keeps you know, is a noticeboard for close friends and people you follow is to stay connected with people that interest you.

The first is to create a profile for each one of your friends. This is done, I guess, by clicking "add to profile" from the top of your dashboard. You must enter here is a name (real name or nickname will do).

Then, you will need to add URLs to your friends ' profiles by clicking the "Add feed" at the top of the dashboard. As mentioned above, here is the URL of your blog or your friend's profiles (although an RSS feed will work too). You will have to add each one separately, so depending on how many URLs you have for each friend that could take awhile.

The last step is to add to your profile dashboard (where you can keep all your friends at once). This is done by clicking on the "D" which will appear on the right of the names of your friends when you scroll up in the sidebar of the Tableau.

Once you add all the desired profile to your dashboard, you will see that each friend will have their own widgets and widget displays all your feeds together (instead of separately, as in the profile).

This step should be for interaction, but this is not possible within Geeje (not yet anyway). You cannot make any interaction, but you can click on links or icons to go to the original source and interacting there.

Another way to set up your dashboard may be to create a profile on a social network that you want to keep up with, rather than for individual friends.

For example, you could have one profile named Twitter, another called Facebook and another called Google. Then in Twitter could add any URL to your friends so that all Twitter updates will appear within the same widget on your dashboard.

This method allows you to see all the updates from a single source with its own widget, rather than the gross of all.

Finally, let's not forget about the search feature. At the moment seems to allow you to search for profiles or services that you might have added. It would be nice if you could actually search for keywords within your friends updates, but perhaps that is coming soon ….

Personally, I like Geeje because it makes it really easy for me to my circle of friends with thick online. I wish there were slightly more features – primarily a way to interact without leaving the site. However, it is now functional enough to do the work that needs to be done.

What are your thoughts?

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