Let’s Go Clubbing – a do-it-yourself guide to setting up an online fan club
There is nothing better than talking about your team with other fans. Whether it’s picking over the last game, talking about players, trash talking the opposition or any other aspect of being a fan, doing it with likeminded people is desirable. This article will offer my experiences with the British Penguins Fan Club, which I co-founded, as a model for other fans to do the same. I offer it not as a definitive, exhaustive or perfect plan but purely as a cautionary tale and source of motivation. In five months, the club has nearly 2,900 followers on Twitter and over 600 ‘likes’ on our Facebook page. In addition we have taken part in radio interviews in the US and had a newspaper article written about us too. Our club is not unique in its success. Clubs like ‘Eurolanche’, a fanatical group following NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, have been around far longer than us with more exposure. However, it has to start somewhere and here is how we have done it:
Share the Workload
One of the key factors to the club’s success has been an ability to constantly interact via social media. The only way to do this is by sharing the workload so we have a core group who can cover games live, usually late at night, but still be able to discuss the game the following morning with people who couldn’t watch the game live. You simply can’t do this as a one man, or woman, band. We have devised rotas around the schedule to try and give people the opportunity to watch the game without having to tweet about it or, more importantly, get some sleep. It was important to get a female ‘voice’ as we noticed that a good percentage of our fans were women. Not a surprise, because women love hockey as much as men, but it was important to address the inequality of a male orientated group. This also means that you have different approaches to game coverage. For example, I am very much a “one liner” kind of person whereas others are more technical or statistical in their approach. Variety is the spice of life as they say.
For me, twitter is the cornerstone to growing your ‘fan’ base. I won’t go over the in-depth reasons to this, as they are well and better documented elsewhere, but it is an enabler to meet other fans. It’s a great tool to cover games with and the use of hashtags is vital to growth and measuring your reach. We devised #latenightpens at the start and this helped with our ‘brand’ identity (I’ll touch on this again later). Recently, someone came up with #Brinzers which is an amalgamation of “British” and “Yinzer”, which is a term for a native of Pittsburgh. I think it also demonstrates acceptance and integration of the club. Building up followers early on can be difficult: a too aggressive approach can lead to suspension of your twitter account. Another pitfall is ‘twitter jail’ – this occurs when you tweet too many times over a period and are barred from tweeting again until the period has lapsed. Other members of our group have fallen foul of this during games but I won’t mention them. They know who they are….
In the absence of a website, a Facebook page is essential. Even with a website, it’s still important to catch those Facebookers who don’t tweet. It is slightly less interactive, in my opinion, than twitter but important to get your message over. You don’t need to be a great programmer to construct a Facebook page. It just requires a little time plus some images to bring the page alive. There are many good websites that will give advice on Facebook pages so just try it!
This one certainly isn’t a necessity but it’s a very good way to increase your output. We have done several podcasts now and have interviewed some journalists as well as interacted with some fans. Again, you don’t need a career in the music industry to produce one. It can be done fairly cheaply via Skype and this has allowed us to reside in different parts of the UK plus conduct interviews with people in the United States. The biggest factor with podcasts is time: planning, recording, editing.
Identity
I add the concept of ‘identity’ into this article fully expecting it to be contentious one. I think it is important for the club to be identifiable from the team it supports. We had a logo created to keep the aspects that are applicable to us (Union flag, penguin) but to not use the official Penguins logo. Firstly, it means you don’t fall foul of any copyright infringements / intellectual property (IP) issues but also means you are identifiable in your own right. I understand completely why clubs, especially in the early days, use the official logo with some tweaks. We did that ourselves. Long term, I think it’s important to get your own identity.
Engagement with the Media
For the British Penguins Fan Club, this has been a pleasant surprise and also a fantastic opportunity to get our message to people outside of social media. The two biggest events have been two interviews on KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh plus an article about us in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Both of these were initiated by the media organization not us. We have also had several ‘media’ guests on our podcast. It’s this availability of people via twitter that has made unreachable people reachable. I would recommend contacting journalists that cover your team because you never know who will say ‘yes’!
Other Developments
What else can we do, that we haven’t already done, to grow? Well, we plan to increase our web presence with a website. Also, we have explored selling merchandise hence the IP issue could be a problem. Finally, there is the possibility to go to Pittsburgh as a group. Again, this isn’t a new thing as Eurolanche embarked on their 7th trip to Denver earlier this year.
I’m sure that you can think of many creative ways to get your message across.
I hope that this has been useful advice if you are thinking of forming a fan club. It’s an easy thing to start, it can be hard work at times but most of all it is fun!
