Matildas Coach Talks About Football In Different Places and Social Media!

This program was broadcast on 2xxfm (98.3mhz) across the Australian Community Radio Network, on Tuesday, 08 August 2011 at 7:00PM.

In this program we hear from Tom Sermani, Matildas Coach about the characteristics of the key Womens Football zones around the world. In particular, the differences associated with preparing the Matildas for games in the World Cup and Asian Cup. These differences cannot be ignored and constitute a strong influence over how the Matildas are required to prepare and play to win. It's serious business at the Matildas, you can't sit still and the team must be adjusted to meet the differing requirements of competition.

Tom Sermani gives us his thoughts on the introduciton of "Social Media" communication 'Twitter" to the conduct of the Matilda's campaign in the World Cup. It was sensational. Another first for the Matildas! Now some of our Junior and Senior Clubs are already into the use of Social Media.

Included in this program are excerpts from Ricky Tomlinson's terrific book of Football stories - "Football My Arse"! A must read or listen. Just the tonic when your team takes a nose dive over the weekend. And what does the Fire Chief say on the phone to the Club Manager after advising the distressing news that the Clubhouse is on fire? The answer it too real not to be Football! Tom;ins is the actor who played "Mike Bassett" Manager of the England team - art imitates life!

This quote is pure "Mike Bassett":

"I know what's around the corner;

I just don't know where the corner is!"

Kevin Keegan

ex England Manager

Download Podcast here:

Social Media In Football - How to write in-game Tweets like a pro

This is sourced form that excellent site, run by Amanda Vandervort (GK!) "Soccer Science" at http://www.amandavandervort.com

We continue to explore the inclusion of social media into the Football community. Clubs just have to get into this medium and Capital Football should be leading the way on this one - perhaps they can launch prior to the 2011 season. Just look at how young people, well not just young people, communicate!

What would your tweet be if you saw this at the game?? I observed this a few times this season in the PL. I recall watching a conversation between a player not unlike this fellow, to his mates in the stands (who were playing later for the same club) to a mate in the stands behind them. You could say the world has gone made - me, I say get with the change and use it!

I can only imagine this coach's Tweet if he looked over his shoulder and found his red hot sub on the " blower" talking and tweeting! "Put that bloody phone....." Ouch!

I know a couple of coaches who have their assistants / managers tweet and SMS with trusted observers in other parts of the ground. I watched last season as such person SMS'd an observation to the coach, but got his left and right mixed up. He was behind the opposition goalposts. The on field change that followed raised eyebrows and gave rise to some cursing by the person who gave the advice. The discussion around him quickly made him privately realise that he was geographically misplaced.  He blamed the small keyboard as I recall.

Get with it - its all happening right now.

Every tweet has its time and place, and I’m writing this blog specifically to address the in-game Tweet. If you work for a sports team, department or league as a PR professional, social media community manager, or “team tweeter”, here are some tips on how to write better in-game tweets to help communicate with your fan base. We’ll address:


1. Pre-Game Basics
2. In-Game Updates
3. Post-Game Follow Up

Introduction

Twitter is succinct and it’s real-time. Fans want expect that their team provide pre-game information, live updates in-game and final game scores. But all too often, here’s where sports teams go wrong. “Quantity over quality” is the current trend. Teams pump out as many tweets in-game as they can muster, often saying things like “Press 1v1″, or even “Jon. Busch.”.

If you know that Christen Press is a standout forward at Stanford University or that Jon Busch is a stellar goalkeeper at the San Jose Earthquakes, you can probably already guess that they’re making some good plays on the pitch, but that’s about it. There’s no context – What was the result of the play? What minute of the game are you in? Who are you playing?

Just because the information on Twitter passes more quickly and in fewer characters doesn’t mean it’s less important. In fact, incorrectly tweeting can be a recipe for total disaster. Every. Word. Counts.

Five places soccer fans go online

Sourced from http://www.ryanjknapp.com/blog/five-places-soccer-fans-go-online/

The title of this article says it all and I found it summed up my thoughts and observations. Hope you find this informative. Can't stop, involved in an interesrting discussion online with a few people about our A league - a couple of these people should be on the FFA Board or A League Club Boards!

Five places soccer fans go online
by Ryan Knapp on November 10, 2010

storytime: Two years ago I was (briefly) a part of a project for a website called Football Fans United, which was billed as a ‘place to unite all football (soccer) fans in the world under one roof.’ I was completely on board with this project in my naievity and soon after the project took off, the project failed. I was blown away by how a well designed website with a clear vision of soccer world domination went down so quickly.

What I´ve learned is trying to corral the world’s soccer fans into one specific website is like herding 30 kids in a U-6 soccer team. Good luck.

So, the oft asked question is ‘Where do soccer fans hang out online?’ I’ll give you my Top 5 places where they interact (and where I go) and let you fill in your favorites.

1) Message Boards - The old standby, message boards are still an absolutely huge source of interaction for soccer fans across the world. In the United States in particular, BigSoccer is by far the biggest (while many argue the quality of people on there.) It’s where Peter Wilt made his name as being one of the first CEO’s to ‘do social media’ when the term didn’t even exist. In Europe, message boards are all too commonplace, with each team having a myriad of fan driven message boards. BigSoccer.com is seen as one of the biggest active soccer message boards in the world.

2) Blogs (and not your official one) - In 2007 I started this career in soccer by writing a blog called Center Holds It along with Jeff Bull and Breton Bonnette. There wern’t many of us at the time, but there are absolutely loads of soccer bloggers now. Inherent in the American soccer landcape is the blog mentality. For years, mainstream journalism did not care less for the sport, so we as fans simply took their place. While leagues and teams are catching on, some of the most popluar blogs such as The Offside, still reign in over 1.5 million page views a month. Teams are starting to come around and use blogs for their own websites, but for me independent blogs still maintain a feel that has yet to be matched by official team blogs.

3) Facebook - I’m truly amazed at the openness of soccer players to connect with their fans on Facebook. The diference is many American soccer fans interact with you via their personal Facebook page and not a larger fan page. The soccer community is extremely small, but 90% of professonal MLS players have no qualms about friending you on Facebook and make it a point to connect as if you were a long lost friend.
While this may seem like a great opportunity for fans to break down the walls and players to grown their own personal fan base, teams no longer have the control over producing content about a specific player, but rather the fans simply can go, interact and ask the player themselves. While this is a large part in MLS, I can say this doesn’t happen in every country, where players fan pages number into the millions.

4) Twitter - Where would the soccer community be without Twitter in 2010. Soccer fans/bloggers/staff have jumped on the twitter bandwagon at an alarming rate. As mentioned with the blogs, this is due to the overwhemling nature of most soccer fans searching out more fans to talk shop. Twitter has exploded with fans of the beautiful game, talking about USMNT, USWNT, MLS and loads more. With the adoption of twitter as a mainstream form of communication, the soccer community will grow and flourish even more as new fans convert to the game and old fans connect across the United States.

5) Illegal streams (untapped) - let’s face it, the soccer world is full of fans watching games in unknown languages where you hope you don’t get a virus. This is a completely untapped market in my opinion. However, the shear fact the thousands of illegal streams out there are..well..illegal, means the opportunity to truly monatize and utilize those streams to connect with fans is extremely difficult. During the World Cup, fans flocked to these streams and were interacting with one another, even if the language barrier was evident.

What you do not see on here are stand alone soccer platforms. I’ve seen stand alone platforms come and go. I receive at least one or two invitations to try out different platforms and websites with the goal of uniting the entire world under one website which has poor functionality and no real uniting factor.

Success on the field and a strong digital push off the field is a winning combination for clubs

Sourced from http://www.ryanjknapp.com/blog/fc-barcelona-case-study-wins-prestigious-award/

We can learn from the big players in Football. I thought this little piece might interest you. It certainly made me sit up and take notice.

Just about every Football Club in the ACT region has a website. Many are not well designed or maintained - after all, its all done by volunteers. Nevertheless, a general audit of lots of Club sites will reveal a range of attempts to exploit a "website".But this is changing and changing quickly as our communities are becoming ever more involved and relaint on web based / digital commincations, not to mention that not so sleeping giant - social media platforms (facebook, twitter, increasong interaction with live Television, radio broadcasts and online commerical shopping etc). There are Web based products out there now that enable teams to be managed using email and SMS, together with "chat room" type functionality, the set up costs are free, no onging costs but you pay the SMS charges you generate, and your site supports advertising imposed on you by the organisation that runs it. If you can live with the latter, its a good way to start at team level. The FFA has pursued the introduction of MyFootball Club and S2S for Club Football operational matters (though the take up on the latter seems a bit slow). Now there is talk of "Sporting Pulse" beng a provider to Football Clubs. The convergence of technologies makes everything possible and some Clubs out there are getting their act together to leverage off this technology. But it requires some careful planning and good advice.

This is a big subject, so just for now, read this short story and consider how you might move your Club forward.

FC Barcelona case study wins prestigious award

by Ryan Knapp on November 12, 2010
We all know FC Barcelona have experienced incredible success during recent years. Not only have they been a dominate force on the field led by Leo Messi and company, but they have seen their value as a brand rise tremendously because of their success and also a strongly focused marketing effort, especially in the United States and in Asia.

At the end of October, the North American Case Research Association (NACRA) awarded the Gold Award to a research study produced at ESADE Law and Business School case entitled “FC Barcelona, more than a club” The ESADE is part of the Institut Ramon Llull located in Catalunya in Spain.


The study was written by professors Josep Franch y Jordi Montaña and a student in Marketing Management, Andreu Turró, according to Managing Sport.


The article (note, I’ve written to see if I can get a hold of a copy to read) goes back in time when Barcelona were the 13th largest club in the world in terms of revenue. With a strong focus on building the brand and also building the club and it’s players into a powerhouse, Barcelona was able to skyrocket up the charts and position itself as one of the most popular clubs in the world.
They have done a great job, especially in working with new media. Their newsletters are extremely informative and well designed, not to mention they come in an array of different languages. They also have at the moment over 6,000,000 fans on facebook and each simple post from their facebook page garners between 2,000 – 15,000 comments. Absolutely mindblowing.

Success on the field and a strong digital push off the field is a winning combination for clubs. While you can have a strong digital center to carry your team through those bad seasons, when they both combine, you can have a great case study like FC Barcelona.