Correct me if I am wrong but previously yourself and a few other supporters contributed to that side of things but it fell by the wayside for whatever reason.
Yes you are correct. Myself and Orion were asked to come on board to help out with that side of things. Without digging up too many skeletons, the reason i personally had to walk away was because i could no longer work underneath people who refused to relinquish control, acknowledged they didnt understand what needed to be done while at the same time not making any effort to learn, and who also showed a complete lack of respect for the hours we spent every single day trying to bring more professionalism to how the media wing operated.
Another reason i dont think too much blame should be placed on the Guardian is that while in this role, we had to constantly fight to get hold of any of the news we were supposed to in charge of releasing. To the point that we found out a lot of our own news by it being published via outside sources and individuals "in the know". I highly doubt we are making any effort to keep the local newspaper up to date if we couldnt even keep our own media team informed.
Are you suggesting that there is a great army of potential supporters that doesn't know of Banbury United FC because they can't find the club on the platforms that they use?
Yes. this is exactly what i am suggesting.
Each different social media platform tends to have a particular age group or type of person that uses it.
Facebook is generally used the most by people aged 35+
Instagram is 18-35
Snapchat and Tik Tok is 13-18
Twitter is slightly different in that doesnt seem to have an age specific user base.
At the minute the only 2 platforms we tend to use are Twitter and Facebook.
This means there is a potentially untapped market we are completely ignoring.
I set up an instagram account for the club, and it went from 0 followers to over 2000 in less than 18 months.
Many of them will be people who also followed us on other platforms, but a significant amount of them will not have been users on other platforms.
Since stepping down from the role the account now only posts match day results and has little to no activity for the rest of the time. This simply isnt good enough.
We dont even have a TikTok account. Which considering it is the fastest growing platform around, just shows the lack of understanding.
You also mention further down about the website being the first port of call for many.
I do not know the numbers on this, but i would highly doubt this to be the case anymore.
I am pretty confident in saying that far more people get their information now through apps such as Twitter and Facebook. The only time you would use the website now is if a link to an article on there is posted on one of our accounts.
I dont want to sound like im having a pop at the website because the work put in by shadders over the years has been incredible. The content on there isnt the problem, things such as historical results, match reports and team sheets were always a huge huge help to us.
The problem with the website is it is awful to navigate through.
I believe there is a new website coming which is being worked on by the guys at the terrace though.
We desperately need to grow our follower base across all our platforms.
Last year the club were on national tv, featured here, there and everywhere due to the success on the pitch. But our social media follower count barely increased at all. How is that possible?
The way to gain more followers is by creating shareable content.
I have been involved with the Townend Reds Twitter account since stepping down, recently i have made 3 videos, one montage of club footage, one farewell to chris wreh and one farewell to morgan.
together they have had a total of over 23000 views and reposted by about 80 different accounts. All from an account with less than 500 followers.
Every time a different account shares one of those videos it gets seen by that accounts followers who may not already be following us meaning they are seeing something they wouldnt see otherwise, which in turn has seen the page start to grow its follower count.
all 3 of these videos are things the club had the ability to do themselves but didnt.
I mean there still hasnt ever actually been a post confirming Chris had left, or even a thank you for his contibutions. just a lazy retweet of Southend announcing his signature.
An example of how this kind of thing worked while we were involved was the "like, share and win" competitions we used to run on the week building up to a home match.
we posted artwork and information on the upcoming fixture and asked people to like and share the post for the chance to win 1 free ticket to that game.
Lets say for example 100 people did this, and lets say that on average those people would have between 3-500 friends on facebook. that means a potential reach of up 50.000 people who may not have seen those posts if they were not already following us, and it cost us absolutely nothing to do.
It's no coincidence that while we were doing this, we saw a rise in attendances even while the team were struggling.
What is the club missing out on that a better social media presence will bring? Income? Publicity?
Yes, exactly those things.
Using social media properly can potentially increase the value of our sponsorships.
lets take reg's cafe as an example. we could film an interview with a player in reg's while eating something from the menu (probably not a burger).
not only would this be a piece of content our followers would watch and share. it also gives us a chance to promote one of our sponsors adding more value to their sponsorship package and giving us the possibility to charge more for that sponsorship in the future. Because if we grow our followers, then obviously more people will get to see and hear about the sponsor involed.
I'm aware this is quickly turning into some kind of dissertation and i also find it very hard to put this into text which is why this post may seem a bit all over the place, so i wont go on too much more.
I do want to add some positives. Recently David Goulding joined the board and he seems very keen, as does Ronnie, to take on this challenge.
Also you may have noticed the match day stuff has been a lot better recently. This is down to a young lad who has been watching Banbury for years and is actually qualified in this specific area.
I just hope these people are going to be given the freedom they need to build a good team of people around them and are given the trust that we never were, to take us in the right direction.
