Hi Paul,

I agree, building and enhancing those relationships is just as, if not, more important than the metrics which should be a 'given'. Business is all about the people so getting closer to the sponsors or commercial partners should make them more comfortable when it comes to renegotiation time.

An interesting interview. Its good to see a clear delineation between strategy and tactics which is something that many organisations seem to confuse.

Hi Ash,

I think athletes in individual sports such as boxing are at an advantage over team athletes. Obviously athletes contracted to a club are representativies of that organisation and so their social activity has to fall in line with the teams policies which, while understandable and needed, can be prohibitive in terms of truly giving the fans an insight into the athletes personality. Individual sports give the athletes a chance to find their own online voice and I think that can be far more powerful and valuable to the fan.

Ed

Great post and some very important social media strategy golden rules which other clubs and organisations should incorporate:-

“The strategy of the club is to go where the traffic is..."

"We distribute Real Madrid content and build the Real Madrid brand through the media that the people are using.”

“A lot of people are coming to us and making products with us who are saying no more that they want the coverage on Realmadrid.com they want to be on our Facebook and Twitter pages because they understand the reach of these platform"

"the players are free to use social media however they want. It comes down to common sense"

Yes, they are the biggest club in the world and have the resources to test new communication and commercial ideas, but these principles can apply to any team...just on a relevant scale.

Thanks for sharing!

Hi Mark - nice post. Its an interesting area that I think the broadcasters and clubs need to start experimenting in. As you say, the technology is getting better and once we are all on 100mb broadband and the devices become more condusive to view the games from anywhere (not just at home), which is happenning with better smart phones and the ipad, I think it becomes very interesting. Certainly the big clubs who have hundreds of millions of fans overseas could start to open up a major revenue stream using pay per view and micro payments. If the clubs get wiser on the value of their 'day to day content' to the fans then they could extend the proposition to other forms of engagement and not just the live games.

thanks for sharing!