There have been a number of research pieces over the last few months that have looked at the ways in which top level football teams have been engaging on social media platforms.  Towards the end of 2013 Umpf put together a study over a one month period, taking in 148 sports teams with Spurs coming out on top.

There are others from eConsultancy (using Radium One) and Simply Zesty which have concentrated on the Premier League, and a recent one from Chinese agency Mailman Group that took in the top European clubs using Chinese social media platforms.  Not to mention the real-time tables produced by my friends at We Play and NineteenEightyFour (for FC Business).

So where does the latest one from marketing research and insights consultancy Accepted Socially fit in? Well they have identified a small period of time, between Jan 27th and Feb 3rd this year, and taken a more in-depth look at how clubs preformed in that time.  For me it was actually less about the final results table, though this helps in comparison quite nicely, but about the lessons that can be learnt by the clubs from the analysis given.

During the week chosen each time played the same amount of games (2) and each had one home and one away. The transfer window also closed during this period so it took a look at how engagement and conversation differed with those who were more and those who were less active – which was actually most of them as it wasn’t the most exciting of last days.  Below is how they made their decisions on the scores;

From theses metrics and areas the company then went into more detail about what each club had been up to during that period. Using clear images that had been posted by the teams, giving opinions into what content was being posted and why it was good, bad or indifferent. And also explaining some of the reasons why they had been particularly active or not.

Unsurprisingly Manchester City came out on top. Their production of lots of news given to fans across all channels, including women’s and youth sides, ensured they scored highly. As well as not being overly commercial and, as you would expect, being very creative in what they do and how they do it.  Something the club has been long renowned for doing when it comes to digital.

At the other end of the scale was Stoke City, scoring lowly in every category. The assessment was that despite the signings of Peter Odemwingie being well covered, the general lack of updates made engagement hard.  There are no behind-the-scenes or training ground pictures and content is generally major club news and match day coverage, with a push towards the Stoke TV player.

Newcastle United, who came next to bottom, have recently acknowledged there was work to be done when it comes to social media. Their focus had been around commercialising the platforms with very little actually engagement. It finally looks like they’ve accepted that this approach was badly thought out and have made moves to change this – which is great to hear.

You can take a look at how your team performed by clicking on the link here where you can see a sample report or request the full one. All 20 teams have a nice section with all the info on.