IN THE PICTURE
AN ANALYSIS OF YOUR TWITTER FOLLOWERS
BRITISH WEIGHT LIFTING
ANALYSIS OF TWITTER FOLLOWERS
Analysing existing data - your own internal data, ratings and review sites or social media - can give powerful insight into the performance of an organisation.
In this presentation we have analysed your Twitter followers to understand your performance in attracting followers over time and trends in the number of followers you share with other sports related bodies. We have also plotted the network of accounts that are important and influential to your followers.
This information will help your marketing and social media teams to build engagement and will be of interest to all in your organisation who are keen to grow the sport.
The data in this presentation is a light touch review. It provides solid business insights in summary form. We would be pleased to put together something more detailed and bespoke for you.
PARTICIPATION RATES
Before analysing your Twitter followers it is important to look at the trends in participation rates as this will place greater context onto the analysis that follows.
Data from Sport England's Active Lives Survey shows that participation in weightlifting or powerlifting at least once in the last 12 months had fallen from 7.6% in 2018/19 to 5.5% in 2020/21 (the most recent year for which data are available).
The chart shows that the participation rate for men is down nearly 3 percentage points since 2018/19. For women it is down 1.4 percentage points. Clearly, the pandemic hit participation rates but it shows the scale of the recovery needed to get back to pre pandemic levels.
FOLLOWERS OVER TIME
The graphic shows the number of new followers on Twitter for each year since 2012.
The chart shows that there was a steady decline post 2012 Olympics in the number of new followers of British Weight Lifting. You have gone from a high of almost 2,000 new followers in 2013 to just under 700 in 2022.
There was a spike in followers in 2021. In this year you attracted almost 1,000 new followers. We have seen this spike with many sports during the pandemic as lockdowns meant that people had more opportunity and desire to use social media.
The challenge for British Weight Lifting is to regain some of the lost momentum in attracting new followers.
ASSOCIATED ACCOUNTS
This chart shows the number of new followers who also follow other sports bodies.
We can see the steep decline in shared new followers post London Olympics across all sports. We think there are two things going on here. The first, as discussed above, is the post London Olympics fall off. If the number of new followers is down so too will be the number shared with other sports. Second, looking at football and rugby, it seems that people are less interested in following a range of sports anyway. For football and rugby there is a fall not just in the overall number of shared followers but also the proportion of new followers who also follow these sports.
This lack of cross pollination of sports is important because it makes it harder to attract new followers who in turn could take up the sport.
NETWORK ANALYSIS
We' ve mapped who your Twitter followers also follow to produce a network analysis. A network analysis is a graphical representation of the relationships between nodes (in this case Twitter accounts) and the lines that connect them (in this case shared followers) known as edges.
Network analysis is used to understand the relationships between organisations. By graphing the connections between them we can see which accounts are the most important to people in the network. The size of the node reflects how many connections the account has. The bigger the node the more connections. The width of the edge represents the number of that account's followers that are shared with the account it connects to. The thicker the line the greater the number of shared Twitter followers. The network also identifies clusters of accounts that have things in common.
From this we can assess which types of accounts are the most influential over the network. The analysis is important because information tends to flow through the most influential accounts.
The network analysis in this presentation is a partial snapshot of your network. Some but not all nodes that you're connected to are included - we have only included those accounts that are directly related to the sports sector. If you'd like a more detailed analysis please get in contact.
ANALYISNG THE NETWORK
Hover over an individual account to view its connections. Zoom in to show specific parts of the network. Zoom out to show the overall network.
The graph next to the network shows the number of shared followers between you and the connected account. The network can be viewed by community and gender.
On the Community tab you will see five communities denoted by different colours.The 1st, in the darker shade of green, is predominantly cross fit and related accounts. The 2nd, in the lighter shade of green, is bodybuilding and related accounts. The 3rd community, presented in purple, consists of other sports and related people and organisations. The 4th community consists of strength, conditioning and performance accounts. This is presented in blue. Finally, the smallest community presented in yellow, consists primarily of strongman and powerlifting related accounts.
British Weight Lifting is presented in red.
We also show a split in the network by gender. Your network is male dominated with only Joe Wicks, England Netball and Mind having a more balanced gender split in relation to shared followers.
THE KEY TAKE AWAYS
- Recent followers of British Weight Lifting tend not to have as much read across to other sports as in the past. This is important because it makes it more difficult to attract people who participate in other strength sports (such as gymnastics, swimming, rugby, rowing, cycling,track & field) into weightlifting. Messaging around shared attributes (strength, conditioning, fitness) will help engage followers of other sports that could potentially become followers of weightlifting.
- More needs to be done to address the gender gap in both participation and on the appeal of weightlifting and related accounts to women. Having a more diverse appeal will help the sport grow.
- Currently you have around 14,000 Twitter followers. We recommend developing a social media strategy for increasing the number of new followers every year at a higher level than the existing trend. Your network can be used as a starting point to identify the range of Twitter accounts whose followers would be ideal followers of British Weight Lifting.