SOCIALMEDIA: WHICHARETHE
There are 56 National League Rugby clubs distributed between four divisions – National One, National Two (North), National Two (West) & National Two (East). Over the last decade or so, these clubs have used the emerging digital social media to promote their rugby fortunes, activities and image – locally, regionally and nationally. The principal, but by no means exclusive, media channels used are Twitter and Facebook. On Friday, 31st March we trawled all the pages of the constituent clubs to ascertain the number of followers of each. The Twitter follower numbers appear quite precise, the Facebook ones much more approximate, apparently rounded up to the nearest hundred. The following table must not be taken as gospel but does give an idea of the size of the audiences built by these clubs and served with a mix of news, scores, features and community outreach. The impact of social media can be measured in part by the ‘reach’ that each club has built. The clear leader by some margin is National One’s
Plymouth Albion with over 20k followers across the two platforms. In 2nd place
is National Two (North)’s Preston Grasshoppers. These are chased by a clutch of clubs including Darlington Mowden Park, Fylde and Birmingham Moseley. Perhaps one of the most important measures not presented in the table is the ‘engagement’ of followers – that is the % of followers who interact with the tweet or Facebook posting. This data can be mined but with difficulty. Another important metric is the number of postings made by the clubs on Twitter and Facebook. It is clear that although all 56 clubs have a presence on both platforms, some favour one more than the other. The number of tweets are shown in the table but the FB postings are harder to establish.
TOTAL
No of tweets
Followers
Followers
Followers (C+F)
Plymouth Albion
N1
10,200
22,597 24,908 23,242 34,132 20,117 11,012 17,164 13,733 11,004 11,292 12,000
10,000
20,200 15,779 12,883 12,432 12,272 11,304 10,423
Preston Grasshoppers N2N
9,179 5,683 7,832 7,372 5,504 8,823 6,266 3,450 6,697 5,836 4,364 8,583 6,353 4,455 6,255 5,696
6,600 7,200 4,600 4,900 5,800 1,600 3,300 6,100 2,800 3,300 4,700
DMP Fylde
N1
N2N
B'ham Moseley
N1
Redruth
N2W N2W
Loughborough S
Esher
N1
9,566 9,550 9,497 9,136 9,064 9,051 8,753 8,655 8,555 8,196
Luctonians Canterbury Cinderford
N2W N2E
N1 N1
Taunton
9,402
Rotherham Titans
N2N
56,564 15,588
G - 468 mem
Sale FC
N1
2,400 4,200 2,300 2,500
Stourbridge Rosslyn Park
N2W
5,049
N1 N1
16,689 30,892
Cambridge
22
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