Welcome to our Irish Sport Social Media Report for July 2018. In this report for Sport for Business, Sportego looks at how active the Irish Sporting organisations were in the past month, the social platforms used and the engagement achieved.
The total social following for our 25 sporting bodies across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest now stands at 4.63m, a slight overall increase of 24k on June’s total. That is a modest growth, down from almost 4% growth between May and June. That is primarily driven by very slight declines in followings for the FAI and IRFU and only a slight increase for Cricket Ireland (+0.15%).
The honour of being Ireland’s fastest growing sports organisation this month goes to Hockey Ireland, whose World Cup exploits drove a 6.13% increase in followers during July. Well done to the Irish ladies who captivated the attention of the nation on their incredible journey to a World Cup final.
Of the larger organisations, the GAA (1.83%) had the biggest growth, up by approximately 13k (1.83%) in July.
Last month it was Basketball Ireland top of the pile for the volume of content produced with over 1,300 posts. In July it was the GAA who take their place as the most prolific producers. The distribution across the networks was 60% Twitter, 38% Facebook and 2% Instagram.
In second place were the folks from Ladies Gaelic, with 1,225 posts in the month. Almost 78% of their posts were on Twitter, with 15% on Facebook and 7% on Insta.
Rowing Ireland had the biggest increase in output last month, with a 600% boom in July.
Summertime in Irish sport is typically the preserve of our Gaelic games and so it is no surprise to see the GAA at the top of the pile for Engagement totals in July.
Totaling all engagement actions across all social networks, they had almost 237,000 reactions in the past month. Facebook contributed 68,000 of those, Instagram almost 120,000 and Twitter almost 49,000. As always it is intriguing to note that while only 2% of GAA posts were on Instagram, it provided 50% of the engagement.
Engagement totals are reliant on both prolificacy and the relative size of each organisation’s social followings, so as always it is the engagement rate per post which we must analyse in order to properly assess the relative social performance of our organisations.
As usual, we borrow a boxing parlance, engagement rate per post is the measuring tape we use to assess the best pound-for-pound social team in Ireland for July.
For the third consecutive month, Gymnastics Ireland scoop that award, with a rate of 0.84% per post. That is down from a phenomenal 1.9% engagement in June but still great work. They are followed by Tennis Ireland with 0.77% and then Badminton Ireland with a very credible 0.51%.
The successful Hockey Ireland team received more than double their previous engagement rate in July, as usual winning is the best ingredient for engaging content.
On the following chart, you will see the Amplification for our organisations in July. These figures show the Facebook/Google+ shares, Twitter retweets and Pinterest saves for our organisations content in July.
Essentially, it is how often their followers shared their content organically among their own followings. As we see, the GAA is top of the table in this regard, with 24,627 such shares in July with Facebook contributing 57% and Twitter the remaining 43%.
In second place, Athletics Ireland had their content shared 8,119 times in July, a massive 756% increase from June. Notable mention again to Hockey Ireland, whose 3,814 shares from 517 posts constituted a 267% increase in Amplification.
Below you will see our organisations production divided by platform, represented on a scatter graph.
In July, twelve of our organisations achieved more than the million potential eyeballs on their Twitter content, up from nine accounts in June.
Cricket Ireland had the greatest reach on Twitter in the month, beating out the GAA and IRFU who have much more followers. A potential 32.7m Twitter users saw @Irelandcricket appearing on their timelines last month.
Camogie Ireland makes it up to #4 in the listing, with 9.66m potential viewings of their account. Basketball Ireland, Horsesport Ireland and Paralympics Ireland round out our dozen despite only having followings of 10-16k.
Last month it was Niall Horan, the former member of One Direction who was the unusual name to see on our list of mentioners for Irish Sport. This month it is the turn of the Kensington Palace 1.6m strong Twitter account. During the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Ireland, they visited Croke Park and met with various GAA stars. The official royal account documented their visit and tagged the @OfficialGAA account.
This report was produced for Sport for Business by Sportego. The Irish company work with sporting organisations to gain insights from their social media presence and also to optimise and benefit from their data. Check them out at Sportego.ie or get in touch @WeAreSportego on Twitter.
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