October proved to be another fantastic month of social interaction and sporting achievement.
The FAI oversaw the capture of a world cup play-off place, Rowing Ireland’s Sanita Puspure came 4th in the 2017 World Championship, NBA hopeful Aidan Harris spread the Basketball Ireland message on the Late Late show and Mona McSharry got Swim Ireland social airwave time as she completed a hat-trick of wins at the Swim Cup in Amsterdam.
The top 22 Irish Sporting bodies grew their total followers by 1.3% in October, taking their total to an impressive 4.178M social followers across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Given their success against Wales in Cardiff, the FAI were the key contributors to that growth as they added 31.4k new followers (57% of the overall tally).
The growth was all the more impressive considering they created just 514 social posts, 67 less than Basketball Ireland; however, they had over 6 times more cross-channel engagement than their nearest rival, Irish Rugby.
Twitter is the go-to channel of choice with the average number of posts per day 3.97, generating an average engagement of 0.067%.
Instagram, on the other hand, is used less than once a day, at 0.35% but delivers 4.09% engagement.
Carousel has emerged as a real engagement driver in recent months on Instagram; delivering 3.93% engagement on average when used, well above event, video and photo postings.
The FAI were the kings of Twitter mentions with an impressive potential of 116 Million eyeballs on their social accounts.
Cricket Ireland also scored well, reaching 16 Million while Go Racing made it 5 National Governing Bodies breaking the 2 million eyeball mark.
David Meyler, an emerging social media influencer, and YouTuber in addition to being a hero in Wales was the most engaged mentioner in Irish sport.
His 4 mentions of the FAI led to 24.5k engagements, with the official FIFA World Cup account and Celtic delivering 5.89k and 2.31k respectively.
Preston North End has emerged as a home away from home in recent years and their 16 mentions of the FAI led to 2.6k engagements while Shane Lowry showed his national pride as he tweeted about the national team to his 136k followers.
The International Cricket Council, Bangladesh Cricket and Test Match Special were key influencers for Cricket Ireland while Inpho Photography delivered 659 engagements and 1.06 Million potential reach with multiple mentions of Irish sporting bodies to their 30k plus audience.
This report and insight was produced exclusively for Sport for Business by Sportego. Want to gain more insights into your social and your data, get in touch.
