IN THE PICTURE
AN ANALYSIS OF YOUR TWITTER FOLLOWERS
BRITISH GYMNASTICS
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 by adults at least once in the last 12 months had fallen from a high of 2.9% in 2016/17 to 1.4% in 2021/22. Clearly, the pandemic hit participation rates but it was on the decline anyway. The picture is slightly better for those regularly doing gymnastics with participation at least twice in the previous 28 days back to its pre-pandemic level of 0.3%.
The participation rate among children is also slightly down on its pre-pandemic level. For the academic year 2021/22, 11.7% participated in the last week compared with 14.3% in 2018/19. The challenge is to make up lost ground in children's participation.
FOLLOWERS OVER TIME
The graphic shows the number of new followers on Twitter for each year since 2011.
The chart shows that there was a huge spike in new followers in 2016 coinciding with the Olympic games in Rio at which Great Britain won seven medals including two golds for Mat Whitlock and a silver for Bryony Page
The sharp fall off in new followers post 2016 and lack of meaningful bounce during the Tokyo Olympics year (2021) should be a concern as it could indicate declining interest in the sport. This is notion is supported by the drop off in casual participation.
ASSOCIATED ACCOUNTS
This chart shows the number of new followers who also follow other sports related organisations.
The graphic shows that the number of new followers with shared interests in other sports followers the same pattern of a huge spike in 2016 followed by a fall off.
Athletics, swimming, rugby and football have traditionally been sports that your followers also follow. The surge in 2016 suggests that sports fan were keen to become more engaged with British sports in general in the run up to the Olympics.
Cross pollination with other sports is important because research shows that people who are already engaged with one sport or more likely to become engaged with another, compared with those who follow no sports. Appealing to people who follow other sports is a good way to promote participation in your 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.
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 reset the view.
On the Community tab you will see four communities denoted by different colours.
The 1st community, in blue, is predominantly international gymnasts and related accounts.
The 2nd, in the purple, is predominantly Teams GB athletes and well known GB gymnasts & related accounts.
The 3rd community, presented in green, consists of Strictly Come Dancing related accounts and some non Strictly celebrities.
The fourth community, in yellow, is predominantly The Lionesses.
The British Gymnastics is presented in red.
We also show a split in the network by gender. The Strictly community skews heavily to female, with the Team GB and Lionesses communities skewing male. There is less of a male skew in the gymnast community.
THE KEY TAKE AWAYS
- Currently you have around 77,500 Twitter followers and apart from a huge peak in 2016, the trajectory in the number of new followers is downwards. This coincides with a pre-pandemic decline in adult casual participation rates in England. What seems to be happening is that fewer people are trying out the sport but the hard core participants are staying engaged with it. We recommend developing a social media strategy for increasing the number of new followers every year at a higher level than the existing trend. Engaging with a higher number of people on social media is a good way of encouraging more people to try the sport.
- The make up of your network shows differences in male and female interests which could be leveraged to generate marketing content that will appeal to both.
- It also shows that there are accounts which could be leveraged to promote engagement with both existing and new followers. For example, Strictly performers could appeal to parents and children and be used to promote engagement in gymnastics. There are marketing opportunities here.
- It would be useful to strengthen your alignment with other sports to build on a shared interest in sport with their followers, which in turn can help you grow.