Over the last few months, a couple of initiatives to improve fan experience and fan engagement via social media have been launched in the sports world. It’s time to do a recap and highlight the best digital fan engagement strategies from sports organisations and social platforms themselves.
Take a look at three recent examples of how sports have used social media to generate fan engagement below.
Snapchat: Let fans produce social content
It’s now clear for all to see that Snapchat is becoming a giant in fan engagement on social media. Since the partnership with the NFL in September, the social platform is making progress in developing interaction between fans and sports via its story feature.
Create live stories available for all users thanks to fan content. Let fans write the story for other fans. That’s the Snapchat idea!
https://twitter.com/Harris0nBerg/status/670065232627277825
American football is not the only one surfing on the yellow wave. Major events like Wimbledon, El Clasico in Spain or more recently the Major League Soccer Cup got their own Snapchat story with more and more original content shared by fans.
What a day, y'all. Relive it through our #MLSCup live story on @Snapchat. pic.twitter.com/jmriFWc2LL
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) December 7, 2015
This development should find its way into fans’ social lives thanks to Snapchat’s new feature “Story Explorer”. Through this, Snapchat users will be able to watch a couple of snaps from other users about the same topic with different points of view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is5MVYepFBE
Instagram: Photo competition hub
Why create a special website to source photos for a contest when you have a social platform which specialises in photo sharing with more than 400 million users?
One of the great recent fan engagement ideas comes from the FA with the launch of their photo competition on Instagram to find the image that will grace the Emirates Cup final tickets.
To enter the competition, all fans have to do is share a photo taken at an FA Cup game using the official hashtag of the tournament: #EmiratesFACup.
Social users love to share content, and if their creativity can be highlighted, they will share more!
Your #EmiratesFACup @instagram photos could grace this season's Final tickets https://t.co/YnVZ6P0oiu pic.twitter.com/YPEhrEoLH9
— England Football (@EnglandFootball) November 7, 2015
Facebook: Wear your sports team colors
Want to show your passion for your club? The social media giant allows you to do that easily via its profile picture filter.
This feature, which came to prominence when it allowed people to overlay the French national flag as a filter on their profile pictures, is making it possible for sports fans to decorate their Facebook identity with their favourite team colours.
Filters are not yet available for all sports teams. However, with 11 Premier League clubs, several NBA franchises, US university basketball teams and a couple of famous football teams across the world, they have already rolled out a great selection.
This feature has proved popular before big fixtures like El Clasico in Spain, when both clubs encouraged fans to decorate their profile picture to show off their engagement.
