A Journey in Social MediaAndy Smith

@A_BSmith

• The Football Association

• 5 key learnings

• 5 key challenges

Today’s presentation

The Football Association

England Teams

The FA Cup Wembley Stadium Grassroots Football

Women’s Game

What are we up to?

Digital Objectives

• To reach new fans using engaging content wherever they are online

• To create channels which allow us to directly communicate to fans/players

• To provide a platform to promote a broad range of FA messages

ReachReach EngageEngage MonetiseMonetise

Social Media Landscape

EnglandThe FA CupFATVGet into FootballFA WSL

EnglandThe FA CupWembley StadiumEngland WomenEngland 21sFA WSLRespect

@thefadotcom@respectfootball@WembleyStadium@FAWSL@englandfans

facebook

• 1 million fans• Engage fans

• 215,000 fans• Build a new generation of FA Cup fans

• 67,000 fans• 89,000 Check ins•Promote event calendar

Engagement = (Likes + comments + organic comments + polls)

Number of fans

Learn from your data

World Cup 2010 Removed fansUnsubscribed fans

Mexico Match

Germany 4- 1 England

Consider multiplatform solutions

•Great assets

•Small budgets

Target relevant consumers

Superfan Competition

•Hosted on facebook

•Media partnership with Standard

•£10,000 supporting ad spend

Timely and topical increases engagement

Resource to react

Review and Optimise

Aug 2010 Oct 2011Wall post impressions England facebook page

Algorithm changes on facebook

•Latest news, stats and videos•Close collaboration with Apple

•Launched at £2.99 in May 2010• 21500 downloads

•Re-launched for FREE May 2011• 90,000 downloads so far

Monetise can inhibit reach

EngageEngageReachReach MonetiseMonetise

Consider your mobile users

Is your wall posting strategy mobile

friendly?

•Are your websites mobile ready?

350 million users currently access Facebook through their mobile 

Get the mechanic closer to the action

Social Media Commentator

Think outside the box

Hard to be topical across 12 months

•Fans engage less between England matches

Facebook Row

•New fan and engagement strategy working together

Engage external communities

Wembley’s Greatest Event campaign

Results

125,000 Uniques 22% visits from #FB57,000 votes

1966Take That

Freddie MercuryMichael JacksonMuse

What’s next

• Get the content right• Understand our consumers• Refine our execution

SummaryLearn from your data

Resource to react

Think outside the box

Engage external communities

Consider your mobile users

Get the mechanic close to the action

Monetise can inhibit reach

Review and optimise

Timely and topical increases engagement

Andrew.Smith@TheFA.com@A_BSmith

Thanks for listening