IN THE PICTURE
AN ANALYSIS OF YOUR TWITTER FOLLOWERS
SPORTS BODY
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, the accounts that are important to the growth of your followers, the linkages they have with other sports and where they are located.
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 in weightlifting or powerlifting at least once in the last 12 months has fallen from 7.6% in 2018/19 to 5.5% in 2020/21 (the most recent year for which data are available).
The chart shows that the participation rate for men is down nearly 3 percentage points since 2018/19. For women it is down 1.4 percentage points. Clearly, the pandemic hit participation rates but it shows the scale of the recovery needed to get back to pre pandemic levels.
FOLLOWERS OVER TIME
The graphic shows the number of new followers on Twitter for each year since the account was set up in 2009.
The chart shows that between 2012 and 2019, you added between 1,200 and 1,700 new followers per year. The exception to this was in 2018 when the number of new followers fell below 1,000.
The best year for new followers was 2020 during the pandemic. In this year you attracted over 3,000 new followers. We think that there are two things hapening here. First, more people used Twitter generally as lockdown meant they had more opportunity and desire to use social media. Second, followers in that year tended to be followers of volleyball wherever it's played and have a more global view of the game.
ASSOCIATED ACCOUNTS
This chart shows the number of shared followers between Volleyball England and a selection of important associated accounts.
We can see that in the run up to the 2012 London Olympics the number of shared followers between you and Team GB, Sport England and UK Sport increased and then declined over the next few years.
There was a slight uplift during the spike of 2020 but this was over shadowed by the huge rise in the number of shared followers from accounts with a more global focus.
During 2020,Volleyball World,Team USA and European Volleyball (the confederation of 56 national federations) shot up in importance.
Does this mean that your most recent followers tend to be more internationally based?
WHERE ARE YOUR FOLLOWERS FROM?
Many Twitter users opt into giving their location so it's possible to see where people come from. Many don't though so this is information is indicative rather than precise.
The red line in the first chart shows that the number of new followers located in the UK (who opted in to give location data) has declined. If we assume that the people who did not give location data follow the same pattern as those who did (shown by the green line), the suggestion is that the bulk of new followers are not from the UK.
This can be further examined by looking at the accounts followed by people for whom we have location data. Here we see that your followers who also follow Team GB, Sport England and UK Sport are mainly from the UK.
Conversely, your followers who also follow Volleyball World, USA Volleyball and European Volleyball (the accounts that boomed in 2000) are mainly from outside the UK.
This supports the suggestion that your followers are becoming more internationally based.
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.
The network analysis in this presentation is a partial snapshot of your network. Some but not all nodes that you're connected to are included - we have only included those accounts that are directly related to the sports sector. If you'd like a more detailed analysis please get in contact.
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.
The graph next to the network shows the number of shared followers between you and the connected account. The network can be viewed by community and gender.
On the Community tab you will see that your network divides into two communities.The largest and most influential are worldwide volleyball and related accounts, presented in purple. The second community is British based sports accounts lead by Team GB presented in blue.
Volleyball England is presented in red.
THE KEY TAKE AWAYS
- Recent followers of Volleyball England follow the sport around the world. They have a hunger for it which means they follow it wherever it's played. The fact that so many follow US based accounts suggests that a lot of the hardcore support for volleyball is not UK based.
- Having a more global following is not necessarily a bad thing. It reinforces the view that volleyball in England is part of a larger global sport. This is important for a sport where participation ranks lower than more traditional ones played in this country. That said, we recommend a focus on getting home based followers to be more engaged with the sport. This will help volleyball to grow in England.
- Currently you have just under 18,000 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. Research to identify the range of Twitter accounts followed by people who would be ideal followers of Volleyball England should be undertaken and a programme put in place to encourage them to follow you.