I was recently asked for my views on sports brands and social media. This crosses over into my PhD on this subject, so I thought it would be worth wrapping these thoughts into a blog post about social media and brands and what might lie in store for the future. Read more…
As part of the University of Salford’s 50th Anniversary celebrations, staff and students are being asked to capture their thoughts and activities from a particular day in their life at Salford Uni. My day was 03 Feb 2017, so here are a few thoughts about what happened on that day. Read more…
A couple of years ago, I was asked to put a talk together on ‘Websites for International Audiences’. The slides on Slideshare (below) have had over 5000 views so I thought it may be time to pick this up again. Since then, I’ve been conducting some research into what engages Read more…
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the fortune to be able to present some of my Netnography PhD work at a number of great conferences and events. I started off with a talk at the Football Collective Conference at FC United’s ground on 30/11/16. The talk was entitled: Building Read more…
As part of my research into football and digital culture, through articles,blogs, comments online and interviews, these various phrases arose to describe lesser connected football fans: bandwagon jumpers, plastic fans, armchair supporters, glory hunters, not a real fan, fair weather fans, flaneurs, part-timers, light attenders, casuals, followers and many others that I am Read more…
In 2018, I completed a PhD in digital marketing at Salford Business School, University of Salford. This page outlines my journey and how you could also do a DBA or PhD in digital marketing online or face to face. Read on to find out how. I have been interested in Read more…
This article explores social media analysis tools using the wealth of social media data of people’s interactions online for both academic and market researchers. This post comes from my PhD research on Netnography and Salford City FC and forms part of a recent contribution to our new book Digital Marketing: A Read more…
This research focuses on a new era for Salford City Football Club (SCFC). In the 2014/15 season, when SCFC were in the 8th tier of English football, they were taken over by ex-Manchester United players the Class of 92. The new era heralds an unusual case of a non-league football team having such high profile owners with reported ambitions to turn SCFC into a ‘digital football club’ (Conn, 2014). (more…)
The digital fitness sector is growing. The market for apps is expected to grow 10 times from $2.4 billion in 2013 to £26 billion by 2017 and this is just the start. All the major manufacturers of hardware and software such as Intel and Apple and some of the major social media platforms like Facebook are furiously working away to get ahead in rise of the business of digital fitness or ‘mHealth’.
But why is this business so lucrative and what does the future hold? With the massive explosion of smartphones and apps, people are not only becoming more connected, but also, more conscious about their own health and well-being. This is coupled with the growth of people using social media to connect with each other locally and globally. (more…)
I’ve been reading a number of papers about football brands, digital and social capital recently. A great study I hadn’t previously seen is called Football Supporters and Football Team Brands: A study in consumer brand loyalty (Richardson and O’Dwyer, 2003). This focuses on Irish football fan support for English football clubs. It’s a topic that I’m particularly interested in and in particular the role that digital media plays in maintaining relationships with fans who may be local, or in this case, further afield. (more…)