IN THE PICTURE
AN ANALYSIS OF YOUR TWITTER FOLLOWERS
BOCCIA UK
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 awareness of the sport.
FOLLOWERS OVER TIME
The graphic shows the number of new followers on Twitter for each year since 2009 when the account was set up.
The graphic clearly shows the spike in followers in the year of a Paralympic games - 2012 in London, 2016 in Rio and 2021 (delayed from 2020) in Tokyo. Spikes in Olympic years are common across most sports as there is an upsurge in interest in the run up to the games.
There are two take outs from the chart. The first is that each successive peak is shorter than the one before. This could be indicative of a lower awareness of the sport and the national team over time. Second, there is a dramatic fall off in new joiners following the Olympic games peak. The challenge here is to even out the peaks and troughs in new follower numbers.
The more people who are aware of boccia and support the national team, the better for the development of the sport but also the commercial opportunities open to you through an extended reach.
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 Olympics across all sport related accounts in the chart. This, as discussed above, is the post Olympics fall off. For accounts that are Olympics focussed such as C4 Paralympics, Paralympics GB and Paralympic Games the fall off in shared followers is to be expected.
There is a question mark though about whether more can be done to cross pollinate followers with Team GB, to enable boccia to more closely aligned with British athletes across a range of 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 and go on to represent their country.
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. Use the 🔄 button to rest the network to the default view.
On the Community tab you will see four communities denoted by different colours.The 1st, in the darker shade of green, is predominantly GB Olympic sports governing bodies and Paralympic organisations.
The 2nd, in purple, represents people, charities and organisations in the field of wellbeing, mental health, and disability.
The 3rd community, presented in blue, consists primarily of organisations that exist to promote participation in sport in relation to both the general population and specialist community groups.
The 4th community, in the lighter shade of green, consists predominantly of personalities from sport, entertainment and public life. Some but not all have links to disability groups.
Boccia UK is presented in red.
We also show a split in the network by gender. There are significant differences here. The charities community skews heavily towards female followers and the sports organisations towards male followers. The participation promotion and personality communities are more balanced in their gender mix.
THE KEY TAKE AWAYS
- The challenge is to increase awareness of Boccia Uk so that the increase in new followers is not so closely tied to Olympic years. Putting more emphasis on the promotion of national and international competitions (outside of the Paralympics) will help to generate greater all round support for boccia players representing the UK.
- 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 in the UK.
- There is a group of personalities from sport and entertainment that appeal to your followers. Asking someone from this group to act as an ambassador to promote Boccia UK could drive up awareness with, and involvement in, the sport.
- Currently you have around 4,000 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 UK.