sábado, 10 de julio de 2021

Instagram and sports: the strenght of interactivity and broadband

Social media are a key factor in the cloud journalism environment of Broadband Society. One of the most recognized and popular social networks is Instagram, and we will analyze it in collaboration with Marc Fontanet Aguilera.



Instagram (commonly abbreviated to IG or Insta) is an American photo and video sharing social networking service created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Nowadays Instagram belongs to Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, who bought the project for approximately 1 billion dollars in cash and stock. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with pre-approved followers. Also, users can like photos and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed.

Instagram has become the image of many people, which let themselves be seen and known. And the amount of user that they have, is impressive. At present, Instagram has 1 billion users connected to the platform every month and more than 500 million using it daily. So, it’s not a surprise that companies have joined this social media. Also, football, soccer or basketball clubs with more or less money are part of this. Today we will talk about Bàsquet Manresa and the use of Instagram as a marketing tool.

Bàsquet Manresa, also known as Baxi Manresa for sponsorship reasons, is a Spanish basketball club located in Manresa, city near Barcelona. It was created in 1931 and they play in the most recognized Spanish league called ACB or now known as Liga Endesa.



In this article we will analyze the Instagram of Bàsquet Manresa and the use that they give it related to marketing techniques. Also, we will compare Manresa with FCB basket Instagram account, and we will see the difference between two teams that are in the same league but with different recognition and capital.

Before we start analyzing the two basketball Instagram pages, it’s necessary to say that FC Barcelona have accounts for every single sections of the club; soccer first team(the most followed), basketball, women’s soccer, soccer second team, indoor football, handball, hockey, even barça academy, barça foundation, barça legends, barça eSports and barça americas have an account. This is normal considering that we are talking about one of the most famous and followed clubs in the world. Manresa, on the other hand, only have one Instagram account besides that they have an academy. Again, a normal fact considering that they are a team from a little city and can’t be compared with Barça.

Now, if we start to analyze both accounts, the first thing that we can see is the account verification. This is the process of verifying that a new or existing account is owned and operated by a specified real individual or organization. Often the verification is distinguished by check mark icons or badges located next to the name of the user.

This accreditation is a benefit for a lot of accounts and have a positive impact on their objectives; it can enhance quality of online services and also moderate things like fake news, misinformation, spam or bandalism.

To get your account verification, you need to achieve some requirements such as an authentic account, be unique, promote relevant information, have an impact or have your account set as a public. If you want to get the verify, you need to ask for it in Instagram.

The most important thing and the first we all look at is the number of followers that they have. Manresa has reached an amount of 18.8k followers, a great number for a little club where the majority of supporters are from the city of Manresa, which have 76.000 habitants. Although, the FCB Basketball page has more than 711k on Instagram. This is related on the number of fans in this case, and also, the number of posts that they have. For example, Manresa already have 2,584 posts, and FCB basketball doubles this number.



If we scroll a little bit, we will see the biography. Both teams use it to share all the trophies that they have won. At the same time, they linked the address of their website, which is a positive think because it can benefits you in different ways; it increase the traffic to your website, it rise the engagement, helps you to get know and to arrive and expand your audience. Also, it helps to promote your products and facilities the access to the official web page of the team.

If you are searching this account with your mobile phone, you will see a thing that Manresa have and Barça don’t. The red and white club have three links that reflex a good marketing and publicity strategy. Also, it helps to promote the closeness between the public and the company; you can find a direct access to the official shop of the team and the official contacts of the club in case you needed. This option provides more visitors in the website and the store. At the same time, it can help to open the possibilities of having a new sales channel, generate new costumers and greater brand recognition, among other advantages. In case of Barça, they only have this in their main page, which is the soccer one. This is a little bit disappointing for all the basketball team followers and also for the club, because they are losing great opportunities that they might rather have.

Now, if we focus on Instagram highlights, stories that can live permanently on your profile, we can see a simple, tidy and understanding ones in Basquet Manresa Instagram page, helping the visitor to gain interest and also showing him all the promotions that they have in shop. Barça don’t have anyone related with the shop. Although, they have a highlight call Barça Rookie, with shows the result of a fantasy game that they promote. This game contributes on gain fans, viewers, visitors and followers. It also helps to increase the interaction with the fan. 

Blow the highlights, we find the post. The principal component of Instagram which is the most important fact to be seen in this social network. At present, the "save" function in IG has become a determining metric after the last update. Now, the intelligent algorithm of Instagram identifies the number of publications saved as an indicator that the content offers value and high quality. Although a simple like is a way for a user to let a brand know that they have seen and enjoyed their post, saving the post shows that the content is valuable to the user and that they want to return to this content at a later date. As a result, the chances that your content will be promoted within the IG explore page increases significantly. The more comments, "I like" and now the action of saving a publication, the better for the visibility of your brand.

The fact that we don’t know how many times one post has been saved (only the owners of the page can), force us to analyze the likes and commentaries of every posts and compare it between the two clubs.

If we go to Basquet Manresa IG and we check the last 12 posts, we will see an average of 704.4 likes and 12 commentaries. However, if we look at Barcelona page, we will see, from the las 12 posts, they average 10.540 likes and 98,4 comments. We can see that FCB have better numbers. Although, if we relate this numbers and compared with the number of followers, we can conclude that Basquet Manresa have a better engagement.

Instagram reels is an option that is a recent creation and it allows you to create and share videos with music that are only 15 seconds long in order to attract a younger audience to use the application. Likewise, it helps to increase the traffic, increase the engagement, gain new audience and to have a better and effective connection with the public. This and other benefices do this tool look as a great option to Instagram users and owners.

In this case, Barcelona is the only one who is using it, and the number of views that they receive are astonishing. They only have 14 reels posted, but the average revels an incredible 39.268 views. And, one of them have reached and get over the 100.000 views. However, the average of likes is 905.7.

IGTV is a standalone video application by Instagram for Android and iOS smartphones. It allows for longer videos compared to Instagram feeds and reels. While IGTV is available as a stand-alone app, basic functionality is also available within the Instagram app and website. This part let the owners posts more dedicated videos and let the audience enjoy a longer video.

We can see that Basquet Manresaa use it frequently. They use to have between 1.000 and 2.000 views per video and 380 likes. On the other side, Barça have more lees 14.494 median views and 3.475,8 likes. These revels that IG Barça reels receive more views than IGTV. Nevertheless, IGTV have a better average of likes than reels.

As we said, Instagram is an important social network with millions of users and which helps to increase the visibility of our business, generate engagement with our clients and multiple other positives points that we mention have mention throughout the article. Without question, IG is a funny, creative and free way to connect with our clients and promote the image and products that the organization have.

In this article, we have seen how a club from a small town like Manresa can get new followers, visitors and consumers using this social network. As we saw, they have a very organized and programmed Instagram page where the engagement that they obtain are increasing and very high if we keep in mind that we are talking about a small club with few economic resources. If we focus on FC Barcelona, and as we did with basket Manresa, from the last 12 Instagram posts we can see that they achieved 1.49 points of engagement. Manresa, on the other hand, has reached 3.81 points of engagement.

Although Bàsquet Manresa has had more engagement in recent weeks,  we can see in this study that investigates the engagement of the Barcelona Football Club Basketball during the months of December 2019 and January 2020 on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, that the publications of greatest interest for the fans of the Basketball FC Barcelona team were the content social with 7,212.49 engagement points, and external content with 78,347.78 points. In this way, the hypothesis is confirmed; news and activities of a social nature in which players and their own players are involved, and the events of worldwide reach in basketball, are the ones that generate the most engagement through from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

We analyze sports and Internet and broadband evolution in this blog, in Research Group about Digital Journalism and Marketing and Broadband and in Research Group on Innovative Monetization Systems of Digital Journalism, Marketing and Tourism (SIMPED), from CECABLE,  Escola Universitària Mediterrani of UdGUPF and Blanquerna-URL, in Twitter (@CECABLEresearch), Google+, in the group of LinkedIn, in the page of LinkedIn, in the group of Facebook, in Instagram (CECABLE), in Pinterest and in this blog. We will go in deep in the XXVI Cable and Broadband Catalonia Congress, inside a big event.

12 comentarios:

  1. Bonic article sobre esports i xarxes socials. El bàsquet és molt dinamitzador en aquest àmbit. Felicitats!

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  2. Basketball is a very dynamic sport using social media. Interactivity and multimedia are obtaining engagement with supporters and sports fans in general. It is a nice analysis.

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  3. Interessant post, Joan. Salutacions

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  4. My group (Judith Arroniz, Nuria Vicente and Blanca Cantó)
    We think that instagram has very potential and it's a very good way to let people know more about you. If you use correctly the differents tools it provides you, you can improve your follower's number. And talking about new profiles with minor followers, they have a lot of ways to let them know.

    VERY GOOD ARTICLE!!!
    (I forgot to mention my group on the second article about AMAZON)

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