Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you will have heard of the social networking sensation that is Twitter.
While it may seem pointless, there must be a purpose for it somewhere. A number of rugby league clubs have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, and are using it to enhance their communication with fans.
Basically, Twitter allows you to post updates of 140 characters, supposedly answering the question of “what are you doing?”. You can choose to follow other people’s updates, while others can follow you. Anyone from everyone is on there, from sports clubs to celebrities, politicians to corporate businesses.
But stuck in their somewhere, is a useful vehicle for promoting rugby league.
News sites such as ourselves (@lasttackle), SKY Sports and BBC all use Twitter to publish links to their latest articles. Fans who follow these sites can then be made aware of the latest news, and click through to the stories should they wish. This helps maximise hits, and is also easier for fans, as essentially they can browse a number of sources through the one website.
For clubs, it brings the fans even closer to the workings of the club and increases the community feel – something which rugby league already enjoys, particularly in comparison to other sports such as football.
Championship side Gateshead Thunder are a prominent user of Twitter (@ThunderRugby). Tweets from last week included “The Thunder players are helping St Oswalds Hospice today with 1000+ children attending the Schools Walk at Gateshead International Stadium.” and “Thunder players are doing 2 photo shoots today: Help for Heroes and Hilton Hotel. Should still be time for them to do some training!” – both short, sharp updates about what’s going on at the club, about trivial things (perhaps) that aren’t yet up on the club website.
The benefits of Twitter include updating via mobile phone, and this is something Thunder do on matchdays. They posted 11 updates during the game with Leigh, so that followers (including myself, updating the score for Last Tackle live scores) could keep up to date with the game.
Potentially, if the clubs could be gathered together by one site (watch this space!) an interactive commentary of each game could be displayed. It’s just a case of getting an official or fan from each club to spend the time “texting” Twitter updates from their mobiles.
Despite only having 45 followers at the moment, hopefully Gateshead stick with it. And hopefully other clubs will follow them.
Gateshead Chief Executive Rod Findlay explained: “I edit the Twitter updates. It doesn’t take up too much time and I can update from my iPhone very easily.
“I guess Thunder started with Twitter just to see what it was about and if we could use it – out of curiosity. I didn’t just want to replicate the more formal corporate website or just be a sign post to stories – although for the bigger stories that’s exactly what we do.
“It is supposed to be relaxed conversational information about the club that might not otherwise be publicized – for example, it’s unlikely that I would put a story on the website that the players were training on the beach.
“However, I guess where it really comes into its own is live score updates. By joining ThunderRugby on Twitter you will get live score updates for all home and away matches. This is great for the fans that can’t make the game but I’ve noticed that the media are replicating our score updates too which has a double benefit.
“Our games are high scoring so I am worried about RSI but as I’m at the match with my iPhone anyway I thought it might be a useful service which a lot of fans have really taken to.”
Dewsbury (@dewsburyrams) haven’t caught on, sadly, although there’s no confirmation that is an official account. Salford (@SalfordCityReds) boast 69 followers, and have interesting snippets on their feed – including this from June 15; No surprises really, all the journos wants to talk to Richie after his performance for England in Paris at the weekend. They don’t go to the depths of Gateshead, who have perhaps set the benchmark for clubs wanting to make an impact on Twitter – only effective of course, if you can get the fans to follow you.
In terms of volume and popularity, Hull KR (@hullkr_online) have the edge with 300 followers and regular updates. They’re obviously quite Twitter-savvy, as the use of “#hkr” in their tweets means they are easily searchable by fans. There is evidence of personal communication through their Twitter too, and their use of a background on the page adds that little extra touch. It’s no surprise, as Hull KR’s online presence is one of the best around, including their superb official website.
Wigan’s Twitter (@WiganWarriorsRL) is also superb, and equipped with a cherry and white background. With 478 followers, the Warriors have opened themselves up with fans – sometimes not a good thing! – but have at least shown a willing to respond to fans should they leave messages. Wigan’s main purpose for Twitter is directing fans to new content on their website, which includes top quality video content. Unfortunately, their Tweets have been few and far between since the beginning of April.
Warrington (@WarringtonRLFC) thought it was a good idea, but decided against it after one Tweet, but Harlequins (@HarlequinsRL) are another effective user. Their 135 followers are subject to updates relating not only to Quins, but to rugby league coverage in the capital.
It’s not only professional clubs who can make use of Twitter. Sussex Rugby League (@Sussexmerlins) have used Twitter to communicate with local businesses and it has helped them gain exposure, sponsorship and even players.
Chairman Nick Weston said: “The club was set up in late April and I made a decision to utilse Twitter and Facebook as major routes to market our club.
“The theory was two fold. Twitter I would use to engage local businesses and Facebook for players etc. This has remained fairly true, we have picked up the majority of players through Facebook and people’s connections. We even have a guy who is coming home from Australia in July for a few weeks who wants to play.
“Similarly twitter has helped us engage local and national businesses to what we are trying to achieve and we have also picked up a couple of players through this route as well.
“The beauty of Twitter is that because of its sheer size, references to it appear near the top of the Google rankings. Type sussex rl and we are number one.
“We play our first game next Saturday and had 22 players at training last night so things are definitely progressing well.”
A good Twitter to follow for fans is @SuperLeague, which is a collection of feeds with the
latest rugby league news (including Last Tackle, Sporting Life and SKY Sports).
And don’t forget, some of your favourite Last Tackle writers are on Twitter too – including myself (@jgordo1) and Mark Fullilove (@Fullyitfc).
