IN THE PICTURE

AN ANALYSIS OF YOUR TWITTER FOLLOWERS

ENGLAND NETBALL

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 2.2% in 2017/18 to 1.3% in 2020/21 (the most recent year for which data are available). Clearly, the pandemic hit participation rates but it shows the scale of the recovery needed to get back to pre-pandemic levels.

The participation rate among children is much healthier. The 2021/22 academic year results show that 8.1% of children played in the last week. Among girls the rate was 12.7% and for boys 3.5%. Participation rates for children have returned to pre-pandemic levels.

FOLLOWERS OVER TIME

The graphic shows the number of new followers on Twitter for each year since 2010.

The chart shows that there was a huge spike in new followers as a result of winning gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games and coming third at the world championships a year later. Up until then the rate of increase in new followers had grown until 2013 but declined slowly after then.

With netball not being an Olympic sport there is no spike following a games. Instead, the Commonwealth Games in 2022 provided another spike as England just lost out in the bronze medal match.

The challenge for England Netball is to regain some of the lost momentum in attracting new followers in non Commonwealth Games or world championship years.

ASSOCIATED ACCOUNTS

This chart shows the number of new followers who also follow other sports bodies.

We can see the rise in importance of the Netball Super League over the years. It now represents a major account that new followers also follow. Sky Sports Netball is another important account.

The graph also shows the importance of individual netball stars with Tamsin Greenway and former player and head coach Tracey Neville being prominent among your followers.

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 purple, is predominantly national and international netball teams and players.

The 2nd, in the blue colour, is a combination of sporting organisations and high profile athletes.

The 3rd community, presented in the darker green colour, consists of women footballers and associated accounts including the Lionesses.

The 4th community, in the lighter green, consists of education organisations.

England Netball is presented in red.

We also show a split in the network by gender. The netball and education communities skew towards female followers with the Lionesses and high profile athletes accounts having a more male skew.

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THE KEY TAKE AWAYS

The challenge for netball is to create a buzz on social media around the sport so it is not so tied to Commonwealth Games and world championships for an uplift in followers. It is important to increase your followers because this raises awareness of the sport and acts as a gateway to participation.Currently you have over 79,000 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 England Netball.

Netball stars such as Tamsin Greenway are important ambassadors for the sport and share a high proportion of their followers with you. These strong ties should continue. In addition,there is a group of sports people from other disciplines and personalities, such as Joe Wicks, that appeal to a cross section of followers and these could be useful for growing awareness and participation in the sport.

Netball has traditionally been seen as a sport for women and girls and this is reflected in the very different participation rates. Generating interest among men and boys represents an important route to growth. The network analysis shows that there is a group of accounts that are influential in your network that skew towards males. Leveraging these could help you to extend your reach and attract more males to the sport.

RESEARCHING PARTICIPATION IN THE SPORT

AWARENESS, INTEREST, PERCEPTION

Many people are first introduced to sports at school and it is vital to undertake work with children & young people to assess the potential of your sport within schools.

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

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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