Social Media Mavens 2020 - Lisa Hayden

In the third of our series looking behind the scenes with those in charge of key areas of Irish sport on social media, Sport for Business sat down with Lisa Hayden, Digital Content Manager for the GAA, and lover of memes.

SfB: What is the social media reach of your organisation and which media are you active on?

Our main GAA channels are hitting over the 900k mark – but that’s not including the following of our Provincial, County and Club accounts, which are all very much part of the GAA’s digital footprint.

What are the best performing social media channels for you?

Naturally, channels work differently for us, and we rely on them for different purposes – so ‘best’ is a difficult one to pin down without a wider context.

That said, I guess I would have to say Twitter. It’s where we have our biggest following but also where we can really get into that real-time chatter during games.

We’ve also seen a positive shift in terms of how the platform responds to our GAA NOW in-game clips too.

What do you see as the optimum balance between social media as information on one hand and promotion on the other?

It’s as much about the how something is said as the what is being communicated.

We have a channel guide as our backbone of content planning. This allows us to match a message with the audience on a specific channel and so that balance is actually quite a natural part of how we operate now.

You could often see the same message communicated and illustrated in different ways on our different channels.

What has been your favourite piece of Social Media content that you have produced over the past 12 months?

I could brag and say the GAA NOW clip of THAT James Carr goal that probably got a combined 20 million view across all of the channels it appeared – but I won’t!

I loved the Sounds of Summer video we created. It really got under the skin of what summertime in the GAA is to our “Insta generation”; it’s as much about having the craic at the Club when you’re off school as it is about the big days in Croke Park.

The video has no CTA – it’s not trying to promote anything other than creating memories.

And your favourite use or campaign by someone else either in Ireland or on an international basis?

I think the work the English FA started during the 2018 World Cup has been really great.
They’ve pretty much opened up their house and everyone’s welcome; what it’s done for fan and media engagement is just so good.
And the social content that’s come as a result has been pure gold. There’s so much to be learned from it.

How much of your time would you estimate is devoted to updating social media?

We are lucky to have a Social Media Coordinator who looks after the day-to-day posting as the core part of her role, which leaves me with more time to do bigger picture planning of content, coordinating support and more.

I don’t like not getting my hands dirty though so do a lot of our InstaStories content.

What is your personal favourite channel?

This is a judgement-free forum, right? (of course – ed)
Instagram – purely because of how it feeds my love of things to eat and things to wear!

Tell us something that made you think that you came across on social media?

Breakfast, lunch or dinner focused?
No – there’s a consistent theme of sustainability across a lot of different accounts at the moment and it’s definitely made me start to change how I buy and consume from food through to clothes and more.
Considering social is where most of us millennials spend our time and get our news, it makes absolute sense to push this agenda here.

And something that made you laugh?

Who isn’t loving the Baby Yoda memes at the moment?!