How do you while away the hours on Twitter when you run the social media accounts for Premier League football clubs?

You get involved with the gimmicks of the day, of course!

The 6th October is National Poetry Day, and West Ham United decided to get involved.

It's #NationalPoetryDay, so tweet us your @WestHamUtd efforts and we'll RT ???? our favourites…

— West Ham United (@WestHamUtd) October 6, 2016

All harmless enough: engage with your fans on social media, get them to proclaim their love for the club in the form of a few harmless couplets, and get a little bit of a feel-good factor around the club’s social output.

Yes, because it was always going to play out exactly like that wasn’t it?

The trouble is, when your club has just moved into a new stadium that the fans don’t like, when you’ve been knocked out of the Europa League by a Romanian team known to a British audience only because they knocked your club out last year as well, and when you sit third from bottom of the Premier League with only one win from seven games, then things are a little bit different.

@WestHamUtd
Roses are red
Violets make sense
This rhyme is rubbish
And so's our goal difference #NationalPoetryDay

— Swissss (@Swissss) October 6, 2016

@WestHamUtd Roses are red,
Payet's exciting.
In London's new stadium,
West Ham fans are fighting.#NationalPoetryDay

— Fergal O'Shea (@FergOShea) October 6, 2016

@WestHamUtd
Near the bottom of the prem and out of the cup

Munching on popcorn ???? and can't stand up ????

— ⚒andy cross⚒ (@andycross1966) October 6, 2016

The lesson is – as a football club, but it also goes for other sporting social accounts, as well as sponsors – that if your team isn’t doing well, then don’t poke the bear that is your fanbase, unless it’s uncontroversial!

It’s likely that West Ham’s tweet would have received some sort of abuse anyway – that’s just what happens on Twitter. But the volume of fans replying to poke fun of the club (and in ways that can’t be published here!) is surely so high given the start to the season the club has had.

The social media accounts of football clubs don’t exist in a vacuum, and their form on the pitch directly relates to the mood of the fans. So when you’re suffering some bad form, perhaps the best thing is to lie low for a little while!