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Local Club, Global Reach

Social Media, Engagement & Growth at Fitzroy Doncaster Cricket Club As social media technology continues to emerge with astonishing rapidity, the true benefit of the impact it can have is not yet fully understood.  Increasingly the community sport sector is communicating through this medium and has access to the tools to measure statistics providing a 'feel-good' factor but what bottom-line effect does this actually provide? As one of the more progressive governing bodies, Cricket Australia, have invested heavily in the time and effort to listen to their community and build an impressive following on Facebook with MyCricket.  The page has grown to more than 480,000 likes, placing it higher than every AFL and NRL club except the Brisbane Broncos (567K). One of the more prolific cricket clubs is Fitzroy Doncaster Cricket Club (the Lions), who have only four senior men’s teams in the Victorian Premier Cricket competition.  Since redesigning the club website using the MyCricket platform in 2013, the Lions have embarked on an exploration of social media with interesting results. The intent has been to expand the awareness of the club around player content from match day, training, club activities and links to profile player in Glenn Maxwell. Some key stats and metrics from 2014 to 2015:   A recent behaviour trend observed has been the shift in video content to Facebook instead of YouTube as recent analysis suggests that Facebook native video achieve up to four times higher interactions.  The Lions have regular evidence of this, as videos posted weekly attain views of 1000+ consistently with several more than 40,000.  One particular run-out mix-up was picked up by MyCricket and had an additional 116,000 views while also being broadcast on the Channel 9 news. The Lions have also embraced Instagram, with the number of followers advancing from 1,112 in 2015 to now be at 4,056.  In February 2016, the average number of likes per post was 145 with video posts achieving more than 500+ likes. Some key aspects that we are able to learn from the behaviour of the Lions to have an effective social media presence that continues to evolve and advance with technology are:

• Tell a story
• Thoughtful game coverage
• Invest in video
• Focus on the raw moment
• Leverage content creators

The Lions have now created a social asset of significance that drives increased sponsorship and relationship value to businesses and partners in the local community whilst also attracting fans across cricket globally. Andrew Walton Director of Sales & Marketing @ InteractSport | Director @ Vicsport | Director @ Australian Sports Technologies Network | Director @ Bowls Australia        

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