Starting with this weekend’s Sky Bet Championship home match against Derby County, fans visiting Loftus Road will now see the club’s matchday hashtag embedded onto the home dugout.  It’s an interesting move to get fans more involved whilst working within the regulations of where they can promote such things.

The move is designed to increase fan engagement between R’s supporters who use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google+ on a matchday, and is the latest in a series of social media initiatives launched by the club over the past two years.

The R’s have used dedicated matchday hashtags since the start of last season and have found the move popular in engaging with the QPR fans pre, during and post-match.

Adam Hulme, QPR’s Multi-Media Officer, said:

“We are always looking for new and innovate ways to engage with our fans through social media.  We understand that communication with our fans is crucial and our social media channels allow us to experiment with new technologies to help engage with our fans. In becoming the first club to add our matchday hashtag to our home dugout we hope to show our growing fanbase how to interact with each other to hopefully add an extra dimension to their matchday experience.”

The R’s social media presence has grown significantly over the past two years with over 147,000 followers on Twitter, as well as almost 230,000 Facebook fans – 108% growth during the 2012/13 season.

Alex Trickett, Head of Sport at Twitter UK, said:

“Twitter brings people closer to the things they care about and for many in the UK, that means football.  We are excited to see QPR thinking of new ways to use our platform to connect fans with the team and players.”

Last season, QPR were the first Premier League side to stream live pre-match press conferences through the social media channel Ustream.  Rangers also used their channel to stream pre-season games in Austria, with fans able to watch a live football match within a tweet.

During the previous transfer window, the R’s have been praised for their innovative ways of announcing new signings though Twitter’s short video service, Vine, including the arrival of Loic Remy and Danny Simpson.

Rangers conducted a live Twitter Q&A with summer signing Simpson during their pre-season tour, but with a multi-platform twist – Simpson answered the questions using Vine.

Earlier this season, QPR used Vine to announce their first opponents of the 2013/14 Championship campaign – yet another innovative way of breaking news first.  They’re certainly a club that has become a fan of the short video platform, as we’ve looked at in more detail here at UKSN.

In August, the R’s were named as the most socially savvy football team in the UK outside of the Premier League and scooped the ‘Innovation in Insight-Driven Multichannel Marketing’ award for the #ForeverRs campaign.

Hopefully we’ll get the guys at the club to one of our Digital Sport London events to lift the lid more on how these ideas come about and how successful they are for both the club and their fans.