Being sociable on social media

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Being sociable on social mediaA case study of Salford FC

Alex Fenton

www.alexfenton.co.uka.fenton@salford.ac.uk

@alexfenton

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“Creating the world’s first digital, ‘always on’ football club, giving fans unrivalled access to behind-the-scenes activities and up-to-the-minute information about Salford City’s ongoing development.” (Mirror, 2014)

Case study – Salford City FC

#passion4digital 3Salford FC have 102,000+ Twitter followers globally

#passion4digital 4Creating Digital Media, TV and Social Media

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“You can have as many followers as you like on social media, but if you are not talking to them or vice versa, then the value of these numbers can be questioned. We want to understand more about our audience, why are they following us, where do they live, what do they want to see from us on social media, how do we make sure that they keep following, keep coming back, keep communicating. Once we understand the people following us, that's where value can be realised for all.”

Salford FC

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Anthropologist

Sociologist

Ethnography

Netnographer

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Ethnography / Netnography

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Kozinets (2015), Atkinson (2015), Van Maanen (2011)

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Data Analysis Tools

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• Node XL – Social Network Analysis• Nvivo – Coding and organisation (Primary)• Mendeley – Literature review & analysis (Secondary

data)

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Blended Methods

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Qualitative Data Collection

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• Interviews with fans, people with a connection to Salford City FC, football & digital

• Participant observation – Twitter, Facebook and other websites

• Social Network Analysis - using social media data to identify key people,connections & boundary

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Interviews

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Social Capital

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“Despite a number of differing definitions, social capital is typically seen as a positive effect stemming from the interaction between individuals in a social network.” (Helliwell & Putnam, 2004).

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Social Capital Types

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• Bonding - “links among people who are similar in ethnicity, age, social class, etc.” (Helliwell and Putnam, 2004, p.1437)

• Bridging - “links that cut across various lines of social cleavage” (Helliwell and Putnam, 2004, p.1437) distant ties such as loose friendships and workmates (Woolcock, 2001)

• Linking - “Reaching out to unlike people in dissimilar situations” to “leverage a far wider range of resources than are available within the community” (Woolcock, 2001)

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Social Network Analysis – Node XL

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Social Network Analysis - Mentionmapp

15http://mentionmapp.com

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Types of buyer persona

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Core Current

Followers

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The 1% rule of Internet culture

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Proportion of lurkers, contributors and creators under the 90–9–1 principle

By Life of Riley [CC BY-SA 3.0 Creative Commons]

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100,000 words to under 140 characters…

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Some other outcomes…

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And much more