IN THE PICTURE

AN ANALYSIS OF YOUR TWITTER FOLLOWERS

BOCCIA ENGLAND

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.

FOLLOWERS OVER TIME

The graphic shows the number of new followers on Twitter for each year since 2010 when the account was set up.

The graphic clearly shows that the number of new followers increased substantially each year up until 2016. After this year the number of new followers still increased but did so at a lower rate than before. There was a small spike in 2021 coinciding with the Tokyo games but generally the rate of increase in new members has fallen over the last few years.

The slowing rate of increase in followers is important because the more people and organisations who are aware of boccia and engage through Twitter the better for the popularity of the sport and the greater the participation.

ASSOCIATED ACCOUNTS

This chart shows the number of new followers who also follow other sports organisations. This helps to indicate shared interests and the sort of accounts that Boccia England could align with to increase awareness of the sport.

Sport England has historically been an important shared account along with Paralympics UK and Activity Alliance.

One of the issues for boccia is that there is not an equivalent sport at the Olympic games. This means that there is a more limited opportunity to draw in followers from people who follow Olympic sports in general and Team GB in particular.

This lack of cross pollination is important because it makes it harder to attract new followers who in turn could take up boccia or encourage family or friends to do so or get involved in coaching or delivery of the sport locally.

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.

To be included in the network, the number of shared followers must represent a reasonable proportion of both yours and their total followers. This means that accounts such as Barack Obama and Gary Lineker, who have millions of followers, are not included in the network because although a lot of your followers also follow them, the number of followers you share with them is a very small proportion of their total followers. The accounts that we include in the network are, therefore, defined as the most relevant to you.

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.

On the Community tab you will see four communities denoted by different colours.The 1st, coloured in blue, is predominantly GB Olympic and Paralympic sports bodies and organisations as well as big names from different sports.

The 2nd, in purple, represents people, charities and organisations in the field of wellbeing, mental health, and disability.

The 3rd community, presented in the darker green colour, consists primarily of organisations that exist to promote participation in sport in relation to both the general population, specialist community groups and schools.

The 4th community, in the lighter shade of green, consists predominantly of educational organisations.

Boccia England is presented in red.

We also show a split in the network by gender. There are significant differences here. The charities and education communities skew towards female followers and the sports organisations towards male followers.

When exploring the network you should ask yourself whether you are connected with the right organisations, are there any missing that should be important for your network and help deep are the connections?

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THE KEY TAKE AWAYS

The challenge is to increase awareness of boccia so that more people start to follow you on social media. This in turn will give your messages about the sport greater reach and encourage participation.

You have a nicely balanced network that embraces organisations working in education & children services, sport and wellbeing and disability. This gives a great opportunity to leverage the power of your network to promote boccia, thereby extending your reach.

It would be useful to strengthen alignment with other sports and national governing bodies to build on shared interests in sport and to get more people involved in the playing, coaching and running of boccia.

There is a group of personalities from sport and entertainment that appeal to your followers, for example, Ellie Simmons, AdeAdepitan, Alex Brooker and Dr Amir Khan. Asking someone from this group to act as an ambassador to promote boccia could drive up awareness with, and involvement in, the sport.

Currently you have around 5,000 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 Boccia England.

RESEARCHING PARTICIPATION IN THE SPORT

AWARENESS, INTEREST, PERCEPTION

The starting point is to survey potential participants on your sport. This can be used to highlight how top of mind your sport is, how it compares with others, what people think of it, what is good and what is not so good, what are the barriers to entry and whether they are interested in trying it or going back to if they previously played.

From this we identify priority groups for targeting and what promotional hooks will get people involved be it for fitness, to have fun, for social reasons or simply because they want to try something different.

We give you the evidence to develop a short, medium and long term strategy to grow your sport.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SCHOOLS

Many people are first introduced to sports at school and it is vital to include work with schools and children in the research.

We are able to assess the opinions of children and young people aged 6-16 towards the sport. The survey looks at awareness, what sports they play, perceptions and interest in playing.

We also undertake research with schools to see what PE and sports leads think of it, how it fits in with the need for a broad and diverse sports curriculum, what the barriers are to delivering the sport in school, the equipment and skills needed and how sports governing bodies can support schools.

A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

It is vital for any sport to know the extent to which is it truly inclusive of a diverse range of people and their needs.

Interviews with stakeholders on how the sport can appeal to the widest possible range of people, particularly in relation to ethnicity, gender, disability, faith, body image, and cultural sensitivities, will identify actions needed to maximise inclusivity.

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