Martin Snedden confesses to his lack of technological knowledge but can't deny the impact social media is having on RWC 2011...
My kids fell over themselves laughing when I told them the column I'm writing this month is about social media. "Dad, you'd never even looked at Facebook until late last year and even now you wouldn't know a tweet if you saw one!" Of course, they have a valid point. I certainly wasn't hired by RNZ 2011 for my IT skills. It took me about six years to pluck up the courage to send an email without intensive supervision.
But the truth is that it is blindingly obvious to anyone who thinks about it that social media is now an exploding communication phenomena which no self-respecting outward-facing organization such as ours can afford to ignore.
Think about this for a minute. We (RWCL, as event owner, and RNZ 2011, as RWC 2011 Tournament Organizer) launched our RWC Facebook page in early August 2009. After only six months we have more than 200,000 fans and, by the end of January or early February this year, will have the highest fan base of any Facebook page in New Zealand. We are currently growing at an average rate of 2,000 fans per day. I might be dreaming, but I am seriously starting to wonder whether we might be able to get this fan base up to close to one million by Tournament time in September 2011.
Ok, we know it's a bit of fun and relatively inexpensive, but is it really going to be of value to us and our event? In my view, the answer is a resounding Yes!
Whilst RWC 2011 has a huge media profile in New Zealand, it is still relatively small on the radar in some countries. However, our Facebook fan base is 85% outside our country. The biggest numbers are currently the French and Argentineans with growing bases in the UK, Italy, South Africa, Australia and the USA. Through Facebook we can provide fans throughout the Rugby world with a steady diet of stories and information about our RWC 2011 preparations and issues (during 2010, we will gradually develop a language translation capability).
33% of our fan base is female. 40% is aged between 18 and 24, 28% between 25 and 34. So, in addition to having unlimited geographical reach, we are getting direct access to groups that are less likely to be finding out about RWC through newspapers and other traditional media outlets.
Best of all, we can interact and have undiluted "no holds barred" conversations with our fans. We can tell them what we are doing and they can tell us right back whether they like it or not. It's a fantastic market research tool.
In addition to Facebook, we are now also increasingly using YouTube and Twitter.
In lots of ways, we are just novices in this area and are still finding our way. We look at how other organisations are using social media to see what we can learn and we brainstorm a lot about how we can keep our social media programme as exciting, attractive and useful as possible. Luckily, by virtue of the nature and profile of the RWC event, we have plenty of raw material to work with on an ongoing basis.
Once RWC 2011 is done and dusted, RWCL will maintain the various social media sites and gradually transition them into key communication tools for RWC 2015 and other RWC and IRB events.
My kids might still be smiling indulgently at their father but I'm guessing that even they will be amazed, come RWC 2011, by how much social media has become part and parcel of the overall presentation and delivery of RWC. It will be a nice legacy to leave for future RWC events.
Visit RWC 2011 at the following sites:
www.facebook.com/rugbyworldcup
www.youtube.com/rugbyworldcup
www.twitter.com/rugbyworldcup
