Posts by Sean

Black Friday is finally here, and as customers are getting ready to blow their November pay on Christmas goods; it’s a great opportunity to look back at creative Black Friday campaigns that have ran in the past from brands like Patagonia to Kohl’s.

Patagonia’s 2011 “Don’t Buy This Jacket” ad

In 2011, Patagonia decided to launch an advert titled “Don’t Buy This Jacket” which was actually an anti-Black Friday campaign designed to encourage consumers to reduce, recycle, and repair their clothes and items rather than buying new ones in a sale. This campaign was pushed online as well as in the New York Times. Patagonia not only managed to get a lot of positive attention with this advert, but managed to show people that they’re an ethical brand too; which leads us onto their next campaign.

Patagonia’s ethical 2016 campaign

As I was saying, in 2016 Patagonia decided to one-up their 2011 campaign by going the extra mile; through a partnership with an organization named One Percent of the Planet, the outdoor clothing brand donated 100% of their ad campaign earnings to said charity in order to raise awareness for the environment and climate change.

This campaign reached an astonishing $10 million from sales due to this campaign, with 70% of these sales being from first time customers. It’s safe to say that this campaign made a big impact.

REI’s 2015 #OpOutside campaign

Outdoor activity and clothing brand REI caused a stir amongst marketers and consumers alike when they closed their shop for Black Friday, instead encouraging their staff and the public to spend their day in the great outdoors.

They’ve continued this trend, and display user-generated content on their website now through Instagram from photos uploaded with the hashtag #OptOutdoors.

Kohl’s Twitter giveaways

American retailer Kohl’s launched a smart campaign on Twitter where they’d ask their followers to choose from 3 products they thought would end up as a ‘Top Black Friday deal’, if you tweeted the correct answer (all of them were correct) you’d be entered into a sweepstake to win a $500 gift card.

Whilst not as ethical as the campaigns and ads above, it certainly got people’s attention as the post gained a lot of traction through interaction such as replies and retweets. Seemingly, a giveaway like this is a great way to let audiences interact with you and generate new customers.

Take a look some examples from their twitter below:

As always, thank you for reading this week’s special edition Digital Roundup.

Welcome to another installment of our weekly digital roundup looking at some of the industry’s news in the last week. As ever, feel free to share, Like and retweet if you like what you read.

Facebook rebrands to ‘Meta’

The biggest news of the week of course is that Facebook have announced a rebrand for the company name to ‘Meta’. It’s important to distinguish that their flagship platform and app, will remain ‘Facebook’. Likewise, Whatsapp and Instagram will continue to exist under their original brand names.

The rebrand allows the California based giant to create some distance from the historical ‘Facebook’ name following a period of negative PR generated by a whistleblower. The step to rebrand mirrors that of another digital colossus, Google, who restructured their company and rebranded their corporate entity to ‘Alphabet’ back in 2015.

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, also announced a desire to create a ‘metaverse’ – a 3D/VR online world where ‘avatars’ could interact virtually. Virtual worlds are not exactly ground-breaking, with the likes of Second Life and Active Worlds being available as early as 1995.

Google: Site quality can affect loss of rich results

Google’s John Mueller suggested in a recent Q&A session that poor site quality could lead to a loss of rich results (like FAQ schema).

Mueller stated:

“I think there are two things that might have happened… It’s hard to say offhand. One is that we might have re-evaluated the quality of your website overall at about the same time that you made those changes. It’s probably more of a coincidence if that were the case.

But it could be that we kind of like are not that convinced about this website anymore. And if we’re not convinced about the website, then usually we don’t show any rich results. And that would include the FAQs.”

More than half of UK consumers start Christmas shopping early due to availability issues

A study of over 6,000 consumers globally has found that 52% of consumers stated they had already started their Christmas shopping. The most important factor consumers will consider when undertaking their Christmas shopping this year is cost (59%). Getting value for money came in second at 52% and ensuring that the product was in stock was third at 43%.

For e-commerce clients, this only reinforces the need to act now (if they haven’t already) to make sure that their Christmas promotional activity and strategy is in place. Supply chain disruption is higher than normal this year owing to Brexit, COVID and HGV driver shortage. Brands need to make sure they capitalise on this surge in Christmas shopping sooner, rather than later. This is particularly relevant when just 13% of respondents suggested they would start Christmas shopping in December.

URL length doesn’t matter in SEO according to Google

URL length has long been a topic of discussion in the SEO world. The general consensus has been that shorter, neater and concise URLs are better for user experience and better for search engines.

However, this week, Google’s John Mueller revealed that “URL length doesn’t matter”. Mueller stated that as long as they are shorter than 1,000 characters then it should be ok. However, he did state that shorter URLs were likely to be prioritised over longer ones when it came to canonicalization.

Instagram allows URLs in Stories for all users

Yes, you read that right. Instagram is finally allowing all users to share links in stories. It has long be a real thorn in the side of content creators that they couldn’t easily append links to Stories. The change is likely to see webmasters reporting a higher level of traffic from Instagram and should prove beneficial for brands and creators that rely on Instagram as a platform.

The only caveat is that newly created accounts will not be able to immediately add URLs to Stories, presumably to avoid new accounts being created for link spam. Likewise, accounts that breach Instagram community guidelines (e.g. for misinformation, hate speech, racism etc) may find that they are unable to make use of links.

Read Instagram’s announcement to find out how to create links in Instagram Stories straight away.

–

Thanks for reading and as ever, if you have any questions or need help with your digital strategy, please feel free to contact us.

Struggling for ideas for your ecommerce site in the run-up to Black Friday? Luckily, Intelligency have got you covered, in this post I will give you 8 straight forward & obvious ideas for your current strategies.

1. Showcase stock from the website on Google Shopping

This idea incorporates the Google Shopping feed into your current strategy (if you’re not already employing it!), but what it means is that the products that you’re offering will be shown on Google’s shopping page and at the top of search results for a product. This will mean that your competitive deals will be visible to new customers searching for that product on Google, if you have an easy check out page as well this could really lead to product sales. If you’re unsure about how to list a product on Google Shopping, check out this guide from Hubspot

2. Cross-selling your products

This functions very similar to something like “products you may be interested in” at the bottom of a product page, but adding it to the cart instead. You could call it something like “You may also like” and just have two or three products.

This will increase the likelihood of a customer buying another product as well as the one they were originally interested in. To implement this idea, you’ll need a Product Recommendation Engine for your ecommerce site, this article from Salesforce has got you covered if you’re unsure of them:

https://www.salesforce.com/resources/articles/what-is-product-recommendation-engine/

3. A Black Friday landing page

This idea might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many brands do not incorporate this idea into their strategy.

If you keep a Black Friday landing page or introduce it onto your website early enough, then it will help generate SEO traffic onto your website. You can host your Black Friday deals on this page so that customers can easily find all the deals in one spot.

4. Flash sales or hourly sales

This idea is that on top of your regular discounts for Black Friday/Cyber Monday, discounting additional products every hour or offering a promotion every hour. This is a good way to gather interest in your deals and lead to sales, as people may be bargain-hunters and buy things out of want rather than out of need. You can run a flash sale in the lead up to Black Friday to generate buzz and excitement around the general sale on the Friday.

5. Make use of email marketing

It’s definitely worth creating an email marketing campaign in the lead up to Black Friday, as well as on the days the sale is running. You can do a “countdown to Black Friday” email campaign showcasing the different deals that will be on or include exclusive deals and promotions in those emails as a “treat” for being a loyal customer such as free shipping or an exclusive discount code.

You can go even further by sending retargeting emails to people who have viewed a product but not bought it by emailing them showing how much they’ll save on that product during the Black Friday sale.

6. Adding a countdown timer to create a sense of urgency

A countdown timer can be added to products, landing pages, and social media or emails to help create a sense of urgency for the sale.

If you show a customer how much time they have left before the sale is over, then it will help them decide immediately that they want to buy the product, rather than doing comparisons or searching for a cheaper price. This Adoric article explains the science behind Countdown Timers and how to incorporate them.

7. Inclusion of a gift promotion

You can cater this in a way that incentivizes people to spend more than they usually would. For example, you can run a “Spend £200 and get x for free” promotion on the shop. If this is visible on your landing page as well as on every product, even in the cart or banner, then customers will be more willing to spend up to this amount to get the free product.

If you have a subscription service that you offer, you could include a month free when they spend a certain amount (assuming it’s profitable to do so).

8. Extending the sale

An extension of the sale which runs 24-72 hours after Cyber Monday can help give your customers a little more time to make their purchase. This would create a further sense of urgency to buy a product, you can link this in with your sales strategy to lower prices even further with the sale extension or offering additional promotions.

This wraps up our list of ideas that you can incorporate! If you would to find out more about increasing your Black Friday sales, then please do not hesitate to get in touch with us, as we would be more than happy to help to suggest several tactics to get your business ready for Black Friday.

We’re delighted to announce that we have been listed in position 20 in this year’s Top 100 MediaTech Innovators list. The ranking celebrates the UK companies creating original tech to transform production and delivery of media.

Our top 20 position was decided by a mix of public vote and from a judging panel comprised of industry experts from the likes of Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, MediaCity UK & Department for International Trade.

Our innovative digital intelligence technology is used by brands nationwide. In the last 12 months we’ve helped major players in the healthcare industry with digital audience profiling, protected UEFA Champions League clubs from online harm & have seen record growth in turnover.

Our Intelligence Director, Liam Walsh, commented;

I’m delighted that our digital intelligence work in the media sector has been recognised by such a prestigious panel of judges and that we’re amongst some leading names in media tech.

The work we do with our client base is at the cutting edge of digital intelligence and we’re always exploring new ways to adapt and develop technology to help us provide practical solutions to complex problems.

Innovation is at the heart of everything we do at Intelligency, so it’s a real pleasure to see this recognised by the industry.

If your business is interested in finding out more about powering and protecting your brand online, please get in touch with us on info@intelligencygroup.com.

Thanks again to our wonderful clients, friends and peers who voted for us.

As 2020 draws to an end and we close our offices until next year, we just wanted to say thanks to all of our amazing clients who have supported our business in what has been a challenging year for everyone. Keeping the business running through dark and difficult times is one thing, but growing it is something else.

We’re delighted to report that 2020 was another record year of growth in terms of turnover and profit despite COVID and that we’ve been involved in some really exciting projects with clients. Some highlights include:

• Essentially being in lockdown since March we’ve been able to adapt our day-to-day operations with almost entirely home working processes in place across our team and partners.
• We’ve launched 5 e-commerce websites in 6 months with enormous success reporting over £400k of additional revenue to clients that hadn’t previously “sold online”.
• Won 5 new clients solely through client referrals whilst retaining 90% of our clients through the pandemic.
• Helped launch 3 new businesses online with support on website development, paid social and SEO.
• Designed and developed fully integrated Google Data Studio Dashboards to help unite reporting for all digital marketing channels into one dynamic outlet.
• Integrated 5 Premier League football clubs into our digital intelligence platform.
• Delivered YoY growth for organic traffic for every single one of our SEO clients despite the impact of lockdown.

2021 will hopefully see some return to normality for us all and we can’t wait to get back to reporting our results face-to-face with all our clients. In our pipeline we’re looking forward to:

• Partnering with 3 new clients in January
• Expanding our content team
• Massively upgrading our audience profiling technology & tools

Until then, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and prosperous new year.

Intelligency

Following substantial turnover growth in our last financial year and successful new client growth, we’ve taken the decision to merge our two businesses – acuity (digital marketing) and fiacuity (digital intelligence) – under one brand.

‘Intelligency’ sees these two brands become one and we’re delighted to now communicate our brand as a full-service digital intelligence company.

As our start-up continues to grow, we feel the need to simplify what we do and make sure that our own digital marketing strategy is clear, unified and straight-forward. Rebranding to ‘Intelligency’ means that we’re confident in our digital intelligence credentials and that we can provide something different outside the usual digital agency offering.

Our offices remain at the fantastic Piece Mill in Halifax and our offering will combine our digital intelligence services from fiacuity (such as historic social media vetting & analysis) with our acuity digital marketing team (who are regularly securing amazing results for our SEO, Digital PR and Content clients).

In the last 12 months we’ve worked with some of Europe’s largest and leading football clubs, healthcare brands, aesthetics companies, online retailers and technology companies. We’ve had our work published in the likes of the Guardian, The Independent and the Daily Mail. As our company grows, we have to make sure that our brand grows along with it.

We’re hugely excited for the future and look forward to taking our next steps in the ‘start-up journey’.

Sean & Liam (Directors)

London is one of the most popular cities in the world, attracting a wide array of people from sight seeing tourists at Buckingham Palace to international commuters heading into The City to broker deals. As a result, you’ll often find hotels inundated with bookings, and each one thinking of new and creative ways to get the edge. Therefore our analysts wanted to take a look at how the famously glamorous hotels in London are using their social media channels to fend off rivals and who is making the most of these instruments.

Which brands are the most popular on social media?

There are three key channels that hotels use to contact with visitors across social media: Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. All three provide a different function with Twitter allowing you to keep your followers updated on the events at the hotel or connect with them. Facebook offers numerous opportunities to showcase your success, with a rating function and a review section, where past and potential customers can take a look at the hotel. Finally, Instagram is a fun opportunity to showcase the brand in it’s best light, by highlighting recent events that have been taking place, notable guests or the quality of the rooms, restaurant and bar. The chart below shows the popularity of 25 five star hotels in London across Facebook, Instagram & Twitter:

Our analysts found a number of interesting stories from looking into these hotel’s social accounts. Primarily, we found that Claridge’s was the most popular brand across Twitter & Instagram, likely due to the hotel being renowned for its high class and luxury but it also serves the dual function of being a Michelin star restaurant. However on Facebook, The Ritz was the most liked page with Claridges sitting further back in fourth.

How engaged are hotels on social?

An important element of using social media should be interacting and engaging customers. Interestingly, Facebook allows messenger pop ups to encourage interactions and promote response times and yet only six hotels make use of this feature, with only Hotel Cafe Royal and Milestone Hotel informing users of their response time. 

Additionally, replies on Twitter can showcase that a hotel cares about the happiness of it’s clients, and therefore should be receptive and treated as a ‘digital front desk’. Since the start of 2019, The Ritz has been the most communicative London hotel, directly responding to questions 67 times, more than twice as much as the next highest The Dorchester (23) and Landmark (22). Hotel 41, Dukes, The Beaumont, Flemings, Trafalgar St James and The Academy all failed to reply once. Whilst heavy hitters and a favourite of the royals, The Goring only replied to its customers 3 times.

Are hotels in London, making the most of social media?

Social Media platforms have developed an awful lot since their inception, and consequently brands can now not only use the sites to influence and push content to potential buyers, but also create an entire commercial ecosystem. Additionally, Facebook also allows hotels to provide a ‘Shop’ section meaning visitors to the page can buy products, thus providing your commercial team with an alternative outreach strategy, and again, only 24% of the hotels have activated this, with The Landmark again being an early adopter in the industry.

M Moreover, Instagram has a number of additional functions such as Reserve, Call and Email, which can be added to your profile. With a generation who is spending an increasing amount of time on social media, it is well worth having accessible buttons that allow for the user contact the hotel efficiently and may lead to an uplift in conversions. Positively over 90% of the hotels listed have the ‘call’ function on their profiles, and yet only 20% are enabled for reservations. Interestingly, only 5 of the 25 hotels allow their visitors to choose from all three options, whilst The Dorchester is the only hotel in the list which doesn’t use any of these features.

Want to know more about growth rates in hospitality?

fiacuity specialises in analysing the digital activity for a brand to assist with identifying opportunities and threats as well as advising on ROI strategies.

The position for our next Prime Minister will be decided on Monday 22nd July by Conservative party members nationwide. In recent weeks there has been substantial press coverage of the final two contenders – Boris Johnson MP and Jeremy Hunt MP. Both men have a high media profile due to past appointments and both have contrasting styles.

Whilst much has been made of their previous policies, character and in particular, views on Brexit, little has been said regarding their past comments on Social Media. With this in mind, our digital intelligence analysts have analysed both candidates full Twitter history dating from 20th May 2010 to 12th February 2019 in order to better understand – “what does our potential future Prime Minister actually tweet about?”.

Key Highlights

• Boris Johnson has mentioned the UK’s largest cities (by population – Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle, Sheffield, Sunderland and Bristol) just twice compared to his 68 mentions for London.
• Scotland is mentioned just 4 times by Jeremy Hunt and 0 by Boris Johnson. Wales is never mentioned in any of Boris Johnson’s tweets. Though in the last few weeks (since the campaigning for PM) we have seen a significant increase in discussion about Northern cities/regions and Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland.
• England accounts for 70% of all tweets regarding nations in the United Kingdom by both MPs.
• There are just 3 tweets concerning poverty, homelessness or unemployment from both candidates combined. Tweets relating to “taxes” feature 30 times for Hunt and 21 times for Johnson.
• Boris Johnson mentioned Russia, North Korea and Iran consistently, though this reflects his former position as Foreign Secretary.
• Neither candidate discusses illegal drug usage, policy or prevention.
• Boris Johnson name-checked Jeremy Corbyn 55 times – more than Theresa May and David Cameron combined.
• Boris Johnson’s most talked about topic is in reference to his constituency.
• Neither candidate has ever tweeted about MP expenses.
• Brexit was mentioned just 98 times in total.
• Johnson has never had a direct 1-2-1 conversation with anyone on Twitter and tends to broadcast content about himself. Boris Johnson talks about himself 8.8x more than other people whilst Jeremy Hunt talks about himself 4.1x more.

What we’ve been looking at

Our team decided upon a number of key talking points and issues that have proved to have be important in the last few years. Below is a table outlining the frequency of phrases or keywords related to that topic for each candidate.

The tweets are taken from the date range (20th May 2010 to 12th February 2019) before their candidacy was announced and are based on 1,420 for @BorisJohnson and 2,783 tweets for @Jeremy_Hunt – retweets have been removed from the data.

Small print: Where appropriate we have accounted for misspellings, abbreviations, initialisms and alternative ways of referring to the issue. Where there are too many alternative references these have been combined into a topic.

Analysis broken down by topic area

Cities

• Both mention London 65+ times on their social media.
• Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle, Sheffield, Sunderland & Bristol are mentioned 60 times in total, but mainly by Jeremy Hunt (who is usually referencing a medical facility as part of his job as Heath Secretary).
• Boris Johnson never mentioned Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Newcastle, Sheffield or Sunderland.

Countries

• Boris Johnson has never mentioned Scotland or Wales in 1,420 tweets.
• Hunt has mentioned England 85 times and Wales 30 times. Scotland only 4 and Northern Ireland only once.
• Countries in the union are mentioned 124 times, therefore England is mentioned 70.2%, Scotland 3.2%, Wales – 24.2% and Northern Ireland – 2.4%.
• Boris Johnson has mentioned Syria 83 times but there is only one mention of ‘Syrian refugees’.

Poverty

• Keywords ‘poverty’, ‘homeless’ and ‘food banks’ are rarely mentioned.
• Boris Johnson – discussed ‘poverty’ once in 1,420 tweets. 
• Jeremy Hunt has never mentioned food banks, homelessness or poverty but has mentioned unemployment twice in 2,783 tweets. 

Labour

• Boris Johnson has mentioned Labour 35 times.
• Jeremy Hunt has mentioned Labour 179 times.
• Boris Johnson has mentioned Ed “Miliband” 16 times and current Labour leader Jeremy “Corbyn” 55 times
• Jeremey Hunt mentioned Ed “Miliband” 32 times and Jeremy “Corbyn” 14 times

Prime Ministers

• Boris Johnson has used the terms ‘PM’ and ‘Prime Minister’ 38 times
• Jeremy Hunt has used these phrases 56 times.
• References to the Prime Minister (David Cameron or Theresa May) were most prevalent in 2015 and 2017 (both election years).
• Jeremy Hunt speaks about Cameron – 51 times, and May – 19 times.
• Boris Johnson mentions Cameron – 13 times and May 50.

Other Political Parties

• UKIP has 7 mentions overall across these tweets
• Lib Dems are mentioned just once.
• Labour have 214 mentions combined from both candidates with Jeremy Hunt accounting for 83.6% of these tweets.

What about Brexit?

We made a decision to not include stats about Brexit based on a few factors:

• Both candidates have stated they want Brexit to happen, so we felt it would be more interesting to look at their policies and how they would shape the country post-Brexit
• We also felt that Brexit inevitably would be the most talked-about topic. That being said… Brexit is inescapable from the media but not as mentioned by the two candidates as much as you would expect.

Hunt mentioned Brexit just 25 times whilst Johnson mentioned it 73 times during our sample range. This isn’t much of a surprise considering Johnson’s leading role in the Leave campaign.

However, it is surprising that Brexit wasn’t the most discussed topic for the tweets analysed. Instead, content was clearly more focused on criticism of Labour, London-centric and in relation to their own constituencies.

So what do they talk about?

To get a better understanding of their favourite topics outside of politics we’ve collated all of the candidates tweets and visualised them into a word cloud. The larger the word, the more prominently it features in their tweets:

Jeremy Hunt

Unsurprisingly, Hunt’s most discussed topic is regarding the NHS, an institution that he oversaw as Health Secretary for just under 6 years. Associated words such as “health”, “care”, “staff” and “patients” all feature heavily.

Much of Hunt’s tweets are positively focussed, which is expressed through usage of language like “forward”, “great”, “can”, “good”, “thanks” and “brilliant”. This positive language is often applied to his initiatives within the NHS and arguably to counter criticism faced regarding cuts to the NHS during his tenure.

Hunt directly replies or opens conversation with other users 264 times from 2,783 tweets (9% of all tweets), with most of his content being statements broadcasted to his followers. Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, is who he tweeted to the most in direct conversation.

Boris Johnson

Like Hunt, Johnson’s content is reflective of his cabinet position as Foreign Secrerary. Language such as “Syria”, “Russia”, “nato”, “Yemen” “security”, “trade” and “Brexit” are substantially more discussed than domestic issues.

Language such as “Syria”, “Russia”, “nato”, “Yemen” “security”, “trade” and “Brexit” are substantially more discussed than domestic issues.

Like Hunt, there is a common frequency for positivity in his content with “delighted”, “fantastic”, “great”, “forward” and “together” featuring heavily.

Interestingly, Johnson does not use Twitter to have direct conversations with users. 100% of his tweets analysed are broadcast tweets – meaning he never replies to users or opens up direct 1-2-1 conversation with individuals.

How easy are their tweets to read?

We also analysed the tweets to determine a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. The Flesch-Kincaid grade was famously used by the US Navy to determine the readability of language to indicate how difficult certain text in English is to understand. This also provides us with an estimated reading age required in order to understand the tweets.

To provide an idea of scoring, it is recommended to aim for a score of 8.

Both politicians are slightly below the recommended grade level score of 8, though Boris Johnson is closer. Whilst Hunt uses longer sentences, Johnson is more concise and uses more complex language. It is worth noting that the scores are skewed on the basis that most tweets (during the time period) would have been intentionally simplified in order to keep within a 140 character limit.

Interestingly though, Johnson talked about himself 8.8 times more than others, perhaps supporting criticism that he is more self-serving than his candidate.

Both the Conservative and Labour Party have suffered a huge blow to their position in Parliament and their overall brand in the last week , as eleven Labour and Tory MPs abandoned their parties, citing issues ranging from Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of Brexit and his inability to deal with alleged rampant anti-antisemitism to the need for a second referendum on exiting the EU.

Chukka Umunna, Gavin Shuker, Luciana Berger, Mike Gapes, Chris Leslie, Angela Smith, Ann Coffey and Joan Ryan  all handed in their resignations and revealed that they were now part of the wider ‘Independent Group’, and were joint by former Conservative members Anna Sourby, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen. This is not yet a party, but there is speculation that discussions are being held across both Labour and the Conservative parties, with some considering joining these ‘centrists’ in order to force a different vision for Brexit and the country as a whole.

The emergence of a new political group is always fascinating to watch, and indeed Labour has faced these problems in the 80s with the birth of the SDP. However, in the 80s political messages were mostly reserved for the Houses or the press, however in the 21st century The Independent Group has the opportunity to explore different channels in order to appeal to the general public, and one of the most potent examples of this is social media. Therefore, the analyst team here at Acuity, have analysed just how much these rogue MP’s profiles have grown in the last week, since the press conference and indeed whether the Independent Group has attracted followers in it’s first week.

The MPs

We have taken a look at the MPs’ Twitter, Facebook & Instagram account, and the table below highlights the overall stats across these platforms:

It is worth noting that Twitter is by far the most important platform for these MPs, with some having no presence on Instagram, a curious decision considering the more youthful demographic, and significant smaller follower count on Facebook. Twitter continues to be the tool which drives discussion and policy announcement online. Moreover, to adequately see the peak in interest for these figures, you need only look at the fact that in the whole of January Umunna saw his Twitter followers increase by 6,880 and yet over the last week that’s risen by 8,117. In fact, Umunna is a key figure within the Labour Party online with only Corbyn & Miliband (leaders) as well as David Lammy having a greater presence on Twitter. A less familiar figure such as Gavin Shuker acquired only 40 new followers in January and yet his exit from the Labour Party has led to 2,886 more following him. As you can see these MPs have seen considerable growth since the announcement, with Umunna increasing his overall following by just under 2%, whilst the likes of Ann Coffey and Joan Ryan have seen a big boost in their growth rates since their exit. Indeed, Tory Heidi Allen has the second highest number of new followers and consequently the strongest growth rate over the last week.

Sceptics of the Independent Party have argued that the move is purely for PR purposes as the politicians involved want to be more recognisable publicly and this was a good way to achieve this, and if that were to be true, it;’s fair to say their growth on social media has certainly matched their early ambitions.

The Group

Additionally, it’s important to look at the group as a whole, The hashtag for the group is #ChangePoltiics and it;s fair to say there has been a demand for a new type of politics, particularly in response to the current problems with Brexit. However, has social media taken to the Independent Group and how many followers in seven days.

As of this data being analysed the account has nearly 206,000 followers across social media. Obviously, a new exciting group being formed will attract casual viewers, journalists, opponents as well as supporters but it is also worth noting that within a day the group gained more followers than Plaid Crymu and the DUP, who famously hold seats in Parliament. Moreover, Labour, Tories and Lib Dems only saw 4,680 new followers since February 18th,  suggesting, at least on social media there wasn’t a huge backlash wave of new support for the traditional parties. As previously stated, the emergence of a new group will always generate buzz in the short term and many people may already follow Labour but are intrigued by the Independent Group. That being said, the growth has been impressive and suggests that, at least on social media, the group has a base to which is can express its views.

What does this mean?

Arguably The Independent Group is yet another sign that traditional politics is being consumed by Brexit and in-fighting. In the last two years we have seen various internal fighting within major parties, whether it be Brexiteers demanding the resignation of Theresa May and holding vote of no confidence, or Blairites issuing challenges for Jeremy Corbyn. The issue of leaving the EU has clearly exasperated the situation for these Conservative and Labour MPs, as well the abuse that Jewish MP Luciana Berger passionately expressed during their initial press conference. The big question now, is whether these MPs will stand in a by-election and how powerful they could be in deciding the future of the country. One thing is for sure, across social media they have set up a strong foundation and in Chuka Umunna they also have a politician who is very prominent in the space, and rising daily.

The release of the Deloitte top 20 richest clubs always provokes debates, with conversations ranging from ‘well my club has more money and is therefore much bigger!’, to ‘well this proves money just buys you glory supporters’. This year the hot topic in the UK has revolved around why Newcastle currently fighting of relegation from England’s Top 20 and spending little money, are also sitting in Europe’s Top 20 wealthiest clubs?

However, the question the team at fiacuity were most interested to ask was, ‘Is there a correlation between wealth and support online?’ and therefore we have pulled together the social data for these wealthy teams and compared them across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Social Media vs. Revenue Rankings

The table below shows the followings of each club in relation to their revenue:

Moreover, the global size of West Ham and Newcastle also marries up with their position on Deloitte’s table which should come as no surprise. That being said, there are more than a few anomalies in the data which are worth exploring:There are some clear insights we can see quite obviously such as Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United backing up their riches comfortably, with the most followers worldwide. Whilst Real and Barcelona have been winning trophies consistently in the last 5 years, it appears that the global brand of Manchester United is powerful enough to survive and grow in spite of the on-pitch performances.

Juventus

Juventus provide us with the most fascinating problem. The club sits 11th in the Richest Ranking, however, they come 7th on Twitter, 8th on Facebook and 4th on Instagram. It can be deduced from this that Juventus’s current form, as well as the monumental signing of Cristiano Ronaldo, has likely skyrocketed their global brand to make them one of the most popular clubs worldwide. 

Man City

Manchester City undoubtedly has one of the most talented teams and managers in world football, and their position of 5th on Deloitte is a testament to their spending power. However, across social media they still have ground to make up on the chasing pack coming 10th on Instagram, the fastest growing global social media platform being the biggest red flag. In fairness, this shouldn’t be a huge worry as Man City have only recently become a major club in the last decade, and as a result by 2020 we would have expected them to continue to grow across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Chelsea

Arguably Chelsea have been the club that has most benefited from the timing of their success and the birth of social media and this is reflected in their ranking as:

Chelsea began winning the Premier League in 2005, which coincided with the rise of Facebook, whilst their sustained success over the last 10 years has allowed them to also take advantage of Twitter & Facebook. Consequently, we can see that they are faring better in the social media game than their Deloitte position.

What does this mean?

Whilst data can’t tell the whole story, and none of this dictates who has the ‘best fans’ or even the most innovative social media (@ASRoma would take some beating), it does show us global support across a medium that has become startlingly important in the last decade. We use social media as a way to make the world smaller as well as give our opinions on everything from food to politics. In terms of football, the table above shows that, unsurprisingly, wealth does equate to global profile. For many of these clubs, if not all, social media is not just a brand marketing platform, but a lucrative channel for sponsorship activation, crisis management and additional revenue generation.

The most successful clubs have already been looking at how they can best utilise their wealth of data to improve fan engagement, drive ticket sales and leverage technologies such as display retargeting. The role of retargeting pixels, CRM systems and data APIs are only likely to become more valuable in the coming years.