By Tom Parsons
March 28 – A study by Accepted Socially has seen Manchester City finish top of the Social Media standings, a feat fans will hope they can emulate on the pitch when the Premier League title is decided over the next six weeks.
The study took place during an 8-day period in January and February which included the end of the transfer window. Each club also played home and away during the allotted time frame.
Usually social media ranking tables are based on followers and engagement. The Accepted Socially rankings differ in that they assess each club on four key social media performance areas – relevance, engagement, commercialisation and creativity – across all of their main Social Media platforms. The study gives a value to each of the criteria with the combined totals creating the ranking table.
Manchester City took first place with Stoke finishing rock bottom of the list.
Everton were seen to engage with fans on Twitter most regularly, while Tottenham, Southampton and West Ham have all apparently used the recently launched Vine app to good effect (Vine is an app that enables short 7-second videos to be created and shared on social media platforms).
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly player Q&As were found to be less effective than one might have imagined. The report suggests that this is down to the way in which such initiatives are often ‘hijacked’ by rival fans.
Another interesting trend to emerge from the report was for clubs to seemingly shy away from advertising on their pages. It is suggested that they look to work more closely with sponsors in the future to increase exposure through Social Media.
