Following on from my ‘Planking’ post yesterday, yes it was a bit random but showed how athletes can engage with fans away from their chosen sport and be perceived as being closer to them, I thought I’d continue my look at the lighter side of athletes and how digital is getting involved.

Whilst having half an eye on England taking on India in the first test match tomorrow, for work purposes obviously, I noticed on the Official England Cricket Facebook page that another new craze is hitting our cricketers.

Thanks to the ECB’s Social Media man Steven Dent they have developed a very relaxed tone in their social media posts, they sometimes veer away from the cricket matches themselves and this helps keep interest when not much cricket is taking place.

A couple of recent posts have shown the England players competitive instinct and interest in ‘Owling’.  Now if you have not come across the activity before, it takes the same principles as ‘Planking’ but instead of lying flat you find a place to perch and pretend to be an Owl!

The interest from my point of view was the coverage of it on Facebook and how it brought some fun into what could easily be quite a stat heavy page.  Content is an issue that affects every page we manage, it’s this that gives it an interest, personality and a reason for us to press ‘like’.  As well as being served useful content we also want to be entertained, it is a fine line and much of it is experimental to gage reaction (internally as much as externally).

It’ll certainly be interesting to see if it extends beyond Steve Finn and James Anderson in the coming days/weeks…. and if they will be up to anything during the Test match!  Now that would be fun to watch out for.