Richard Ayers is the digital innovator and CEO of one of Europe’s leading digital media companies, he started with sports marketing after a call for consulting in Manchester City. The rest is history.
After his great success in Manchester City, Richard continued his work in sports with UEFA, UFC, Arsenal, PSG, Celtic, Valencia etc.
I will bring you the most interesting things that Richard says.
Burnley FC is an example of bad online communication with fans. After their first win of the season, they made a huge mistake! Their first post on their Facebook and Twitter account was a pizza deal: ‘Any 3 large pizzas for only 16.99 £’.
The New England Patriots also made a huge mistake which you can see on the next picture…
Engagement is important, people are there because of engagement. Richard works with UFC and they have conversations with their fans on Twitter, they have 1.039 replies on Twitter and because of that their number of followers on Twitter is growing constantly. On the other side, other Twitter profiles have low fan engagement, they use Twitter only for writing posts or putting pictures online.
Premier league – 8 replies
NBA – 16 replies
NFL – 310 replies
Champions League – 31 replies
UFC – 1.039 replies
After the presentation I started following the UFC Twitter account and they sent me this message:
Great stuff! It was not only advice from the presentation, they really work on the pattern Richard advised us to work on. You must interact with people, that is why we have social media, not only for one-way communication.
We have also learned something new, Native Facebook video increased views, and they are now better than Youtube and web TV platforms together. Richard tested that on Valencia, and showed us the stats, it’s impressive.
It is also interesting that people who work on social media work until 8 or 9 pm, and as you can see on the picture above, people usually start conversations around 9 pm. Clubs have to do something about that and make sure they have people that communicate with the fans at anytime, not only during working hours!
Richard Ayers advised us: “After you make a strategy, set up values to communicate, etc., don’t theorize too much. Try something. If that doesn’t work try something else. Life is too short to spend it on blabla”.
One of the best points on the Conference was this comparison: dog and social media. Social media is like a thankful dog for Christmas, it’s free and cute, but if you don’t train him well, he could screw it all up!
