IN THE PICTURE

AN ANALYSIS OF YOUR TWITTER FOLLOWERS

BRITISH MOUNTAINEERING

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, in England, regular participation in hill or mountain walking or hiking increased significantly during the pandemic as people took up activities allowable under lockdown. Data also shows that almost one quarter of people in England (24%) undertook hill walking at least once during the year to November 22. Participation among males is higher than that among females.

The challenge is to keep the momentum going in regards to participation.

In England, 1.5% did wall climbing at least once in the previous year and 1% did rock climbing. These are down around a half a percentage point each on pre-pandemic levels.

FOLLOWERS OVER TIME

The graphic shows the number of new followers on Twitter for each year since 2009.

The chart shows that there was a huge spike in new followers between 2013 and 2015 but the rate of increase has slowed down significantly year on year since then. There was a slight increase in new followers in 2020 over the previous year, as people took up hill walking during the pandemic.

The challenge for British Mountaineering is to reverse the rate of decline in new followers so that more people can be engaged in climbing, hill walking and mountaineering.

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 huge rise followed by sharp decline as seen above.

GB Climbing has traditionally been a major shared interest account among your new followers. Cycling has also been a significant shared account for followers.

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 three communities denoted by different colours.

The 1st community, in green, is predominantly walkers and climbers in Scotland and the Lake District in England.

The 2nd, in the blue colour, is predominantly rock and mountain climbers and climbing accounts.

The 3rd community, presented in purple, consists of a combination of trails, walks and trekking accounts as well as brands specialising in the outdoors.

British Mountaineering is presented in red.

We also show a split in the network by gender. Most of the accounts in your network skew to males.

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THE KEY TAKE AWAYS

There is a pronounced skew towards males in your network. Although a significant proportion of women participate in hill walking, this is not reflected in the followers of accounts that are influential to your network. It is important to encourage more female followers because this raises awareness of hill walking, climbing and mountaineering as inclusive activities.

Currently you have around 42,000 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.

It would be useful to strengthen your alignment with other sports accounts to build on a shared interest in sport with their followers, which in turn can help you grow.

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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