How many of you know the Boomers? Probably I wouldn´t be the only one to say, I don´t know much. Island of Pag is known as a big party island with its small town Novalja that atracts thousands of young party lovers. It’s often called the Croatian Ibiza.
Everybody is used to reading about famous DJ´s coming to the island and celebreties going there to enjoy themselves, but today one other thing caught my attention. I came across an article in the newspaper announcing the arrival of the Boomers to the island. For the ones who didn’t know, like myself, the Boomers are the Australian basketball national team which arrived to Croatia, more precisely Novalja, for their European tour. My first thought was, what a great privilage for my country, since I learned that the Boomers are ranked as one of the top 3 national teams in the world.
They are here on their international, European tour, from July 22 until August 8. During this period they will also play friendly matches with Lithuania and Slovenia. They chose Croatia to be their main destination, and Novalja to be their European „home town“.
This was a good enough reason for me to check out the team, learn more about Australian basketball and see where they stand when it comes to digital.
WEB PAGE (www. basketball.net.au)
As every curious fan would do at the beginning, I searched for their web page to learn more about the team and to read the actual news on there. Their web page is very good with up to date information. Although, I was a bit surprised that I did not find information about the Boomers stay in Novalja or Croatia at all on their web. There was an article about the European tour and the schedule of their friendly matches but no actual information about their arrival to Novalja. Maybe I cannot be too objective, since it is my home country we are talking about, but it was weird not to find this information on their site. Actually my first thought was, maybe this was a joke and maybe people thought it would be cool to make up this information and use it for their promotion.
The web page is simple and easy to use, providing information about all their national team selections. The cool thing are the names of their national squads which I find very useful. Apart from its uniqueness, they make things easier for their fans, especially since their main social media accounts are joint. So the Australian basketball national teams have unique names such as Boomers, Opals, Rollers, Gilders, Gems, Emus, Boomerangs and Pearls. Every national team has its own name which is very catchy and recognizable in the whole world, especially the world of basketball. How cool is that?!
SOCIAL MEDIA
They are very active on all social media acounts – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Linkedin but I decided to analyze only the three main ones: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. As mentioned, they have one joint official account for the all Aussie national teams, posting and writing about men, women, youth and wheelchair basketball teams. They are very up to date, giving detailed information to their followers and using every opportunity they get to reach new fans. While I was reading the article about their European tour I found it very helpful that the article was linked to their three main social media accounts. I didn´t have to search for them myself and bump into fake accounts on the way. I got all the information I needed from just one article, not to mention that I also acknowledged their official hashtag that will be used for this tour #homecoming. It sure makes things easier for their fans with less digital experience. Great job!
The official Facebook account of Basketball Australia has 50k followers. It gives a lot of information to their fans in form of reviews, announcements and videos. I noticed many photographs and graphics. One thing I didn´t find „at the top“ is fan engagement. Fans like, watch and comment but they don´t actually get involved. I didn´t find any posts or tasks that could spice up their communication a bit. To me it looks more like one-way communication. I think that the content can be more than just informative. Even though the content is very useful and they offer the same amount of news and publicity for all their national teams from seniors to youth.
https://www.facebook.com/aussieboomers/videos/vb.142218009170644/10151039290050050/?type=2&theater
Searching the Facebook I found a few official accounts from their players. Their most popular player is Andrew Bogut with 219k fans, followed by Mathew Dellavedova 162k, Aron Baynes 17k and Adam Gibson 1495 fans.
Just read about Mexican drug lord “el chapo” and his escape! Crazy. Ping #hollywood
Posted by Andrew Bogut on Thursday, July 16, 2015
The official Twitter account of Basketball Australia has 15.5k followers. They are very active and tend to post fresh information regarding Australian basketball. Their content follows the content posted on Facebook.
I was a bit confused when I found an official Australian Boomers account on Twitter, but could not find it on their official page. It has 11.6k followers but the account is not very active. Their last tweet was in October 2014. Therefore I focused more on the official account which is linked with their web page and is the joint account for all national team squads.
PREVIEW | @SEABL Rd15 – Geelong v Dandenong is game of the week + a look at every match: http://t.co/VwLluymfsJ pic.twitter.com/8ULH6WIKoW
— Basketball Australia (@BasketballAus) July 23, 2015
HYPE TOURS | Packages still remain for an exclusive #Boomers ‘behind the scenes’ experience: http://t.co/nTOhUAnelf pic.twitter.com/p9xWt20mL5 — Basketball Australia (@BasketballAus) July 22, 2015
On the contrary to Facebook, the players are more active on Twitter, which is not a big surprise for me since in many parts of the world people use Twitter as their main networking platform. Among players, I found more official Twitter accounts than Facebook accounts. Some of the players are equally popular on both networks but some tend to be more popular on Twitter and do not have official Facebook accounts, such as Nathan Jawai with 19.2 followers.
Their official Instagram account has 11.4k followers. I like their communication on Instagram very much. They post interesting stuff. It is a confirmation that the saying – „A picture is worth a thousand words“ is so very true.
A photo posted by Basketball Australia (@basketballaus) on
They accomplished to say it all with just one photo. The photographs they post are well designed and each one of them sends a clear message.
They also tend to use a lot of infographics on their Instagram which are, by the way, fabolous. Too bad they don´t post them on other social media accounts because I think that it could bring more interaction with their fans and help to get new ones.
It has been a while since I have seen something as good as this. Definitely it’s one of my favourite Instagram accounts!
A video posted by Basketball Australia (@basketballaus) on
So to conclude my little research, I am glad that I got the opportunity to meet the Boomers and to learn more about Australian basketball. I must admit I did not know a lot before today, but now I am a bit smarter. Their social media accounts prove that they have a good digital strategy and that they tend to follow the trend of the present days. Their easy to read and understand content is the key of their digital success which can be spiced up with a bit of fan engagement in the future. Other than that they sure can be a good example to all.
PHOTO: Flickr
