If anyone has the fan base to guarantee social media success it is the global brand that is Manchester United. As one of the wealthiest and most widely supported football teams in the world it has an estimated 350 million fans ranging from Maasai warriors to Moss Side hoodies. There’s no doubt, therefore, that a club voted number one in the world’s most valuable sports teams (Forbes magazine’s annual ranking, 2011) is in a strong social media position. They have the all-important audience and they have the money to make it work. However with local rival Manchester City charging ahead with their social engagement and online personalisation for their fans could this attempt to roll out over the next two years end up being more old hat than Old Trafford…
Everyone’s heard of Manchester United. They’re to football what the Beatles are to music – a huge global export in an ever-increasing global village. It’s no great surprise to think some plucky member of the marketing team came up with the idea of launching a Man-U social platform where these fans could communicate, share, purchase, chat and generally wax lyrical about the devils in red. However, the age old question again comes in to play – just because you can do something, should you?
Fans of the club already communicate effectively across the popular platforms. With 20,265,988 fans currently on the Facebook fan group alone, the club has an already impressive following in the online arena. Any brand, product or celebrity who is popular enough to grow like this organically should surely be jumping in the air with glee that they don’t have to go to timely and often expensive lengths to find their followers. What, it seems to me, would make sense would be to invest instead in the strategy on how to communicate with this vast, worldwide audience, across the popular channels, rather than creating a space wholly owned and managed by the club. The reason social media has been so phenomenally successful is it allows an open and two way communication and as soon as someone owns this space and can, in essence, moderate and control its content, the point of the whole endeavour is somehow lost. In addition, in creating a new space you are asking an audience to move away from the channels they have already chosen and duplicate their profile in a new space. I am sure MUFC have the fan base that would do this but why ask them to when you already know where they are…
The other important factor is the ever-changing nature of social media. Just think of the constant development put into something like Facebook to keep it fresh and innovative. There has to be a concern that anything going into development now, as part of a two year roll out plan, is going to look slightly passé compared to its social brothers and sisters. Nevertheless, if anyone can do it, the Man United machine has a better chance than many.