We identify ten of the most active and influential individuals operating in social media in the sporting and sponsorship area, and find out a little of what excites them in terms of what they do. Today we sit down with Roisin Glynn of AIB …
Who is Roisin Glynn and what do you do that has secured your place as a Social media Maven for 2016?
I am the Head of Social Media at AIB and I’m hugely passionate about all Social Media and the exciting work we are doing in AIB.
On reflection 2016 was a great year for our team as we have become more embedded to our business and have picked up Social Media awards at the Sockies, Sports Industry Awards and nomination for the upcoming European Sponsorship Awards for Best Use of Social Media.
We’ve had huge success in particular on our GAA channel but also across our Agri content, customer service channel and Student Campaigns. Topline, we have generated over 12 million video views, 2 million customer engagements and social is helping to drive positive conversations with our customers.
What is your personal favourite Social Media Channel?
My personal favourite is Twitter, I’m a huge sports fan and enjoy the commentary and conversations during live matches and events and it’s real time nature.
Snapchat would be a close second and I’m really excited about the offerings they plan to launch for business channels in the coming month.
From a business point of view, there is no doubt that Facebook is my favourite for a few simple reasons, it gives us the most reach, the cost to serve is lower and they offer exciting formats.
What do you think is the best thing about being able to communicate directly to fans or customers?
We can listen to our audience and customers in real time and adapt our approach so we are constantly creating content that we know they will engage with.
On our GAA channels it allows us to positively engage with GAA fans, clubs and communities on a daily basis whereas on our customer service social channels we also have a massively exciting opportunity every day to resolve queries for customers and listen to feedback which helps improve our customers experience.
The really exciting thing for me is the ability to measure ROI from social so we can actively show the impact it has on our brand and analyse the audience data that we have insight to.
How much a part of your overall approach to marketing is geared towards social?
In three years we have come on a huge journey where ‘Social’ is now at the heart of everything we do across our wider team.
Digital Media Spend is growing year on year across the industry and we know that we need to be at the top of our game to keep up with our competitors and the latest platforms and trends.
We have a team of Content and Community managers who work with our brand team and agency teams daily to build innovative content across our GAA, consumer and business channels that allows us to be at the heart of our customers conversations.
We constantly challenge ourselves to generate new ideas and build on results which we have proven through our work on GAA over the past two years.
Broadcasting or engagement, if you had to pick one which is the most important?
Up to now I would have always said engagement is key in every instance. You can create videos regularly and generate views with the right media support but if your audience isn’t engaging with your broadcast content then what is the point?
Direct engagements, likes, comments, shares, mentions are of higher value as that person is taking a direct action upon seeing some of your content.
Looking at video, we measure the success of our broadcast content on views, audience retention and engagements. I can see a massive shift in the coming 6 month on how important broadcast will become.
Facebook live and the introduction of audio live give brands the opportunity to challenge mainstream media over the next year and I think as brands will have to adapt to how our audiences behaviour to consuming broadcast media will change.
What are three social media accounts that you enjoy following?
I love Adidas Football in particular the approach the have taken with their sponsorship of ManUtd and the Pogba unveiling. They utilised social media massively to build fan anticipation and for a brand to announce a world record signing the way they did really sets the bar for Sports Sponsors around the world. The collaboration with UK Grime artist Stormzy was risky, yet current and generated massive awareness for the brand.
Next Account that I have become a huge fan of over the past few months is BBC’s Planet Earth 2. For the past 6 weeks Planet Earth has trended above The XFactor every Sunday and I think the approach they have to social is key to driving a huge success them with younger viewers in 2016. The tone of voice and GIFs has seen over 1 million mentions over the past month and they’ve taught us all that people just love animals.
Finally to mention an Irish company I think JOE have really set the bar high over the past year since they launched their UK business and how they’ve differentiated themselves to their competitors. Their live football TV shows, quirky bobble head videos and John Lewis Parody have generated millions of views and engagements and I think they’ll continue to push on into 2017.
Finally give us a social media post that you were really pleased with the response to
One of the posts that I was most pleased with had no media support behind it but generated over 50k impressions, hundreds of engagements and was picked up by various media channels and became a talking point after Kerry’s All Ireland SF loss.
What the @officialgaa is all about! @starryboy14 shares a moment with his little girl on the pitch #TheToughest ❤️ pic.twitter.com/95UN1cASAM
— AIB_GAA (@AIB_GAA) August 28, 2016
What I loved about this is it epitomizes the simplicity of social media, capturing the right moment and reacting to it immediately.
By chance we captured an emotional moment of Kieran Donaghy and his little girl on the pitch which immediately triggered retirement stories. It didn’t cost anything and put our brand at the heart of the story. This is how we try to work on our team, sometimes the very simple things can generate far more engagement than big content pieces so it’s all about balancing between the two and staying true to our audience.
