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…)
I was recently interviewed by a journalist for an article in the Independent on “The Powerhouse of the North – Connecting students to business is just one of the ways management schools are improving the area’s prospects“. It’s a topic close to my heart, so I wanted to reflect more on this including:
Class of 92 purchase Salford City FC, Guardian article
This article is about my PhD research study in progress, which is about Football, Digital Media and Salford FC. I am a lecturer in Digital Business at the University of Salford where I am part of the Centre for Digital Business in the Business School.
In March 2014, The Class of ‘92 purchased Salford City Football Club (SCFC) (Guardian 2014). This group are composed of ex-Manchester United players Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt, Gary Neville and Phil Neville. Billionaire Peter Lim bought a 50% stake in the club in September 2014 (Conn 2014). (more…)
Alex Fenton and Aleksej Heinze at the European Search Awards
Back in blighty, my head is spinning from everything that just happened in the last 24 hours. It all started when my colleague at Salford Uni, Dr.Aleksej Heinze asked me if I wanted to get involved as tech lead for a project Salford Business School were working on called Passport to Trade 2.0. It sounded like a really cool project, researching business and social media culture in Europe and producing a website for businessculture.org with text, images, animations and videos with the results aimed at helping people to do business in different countries. (more…)
As the course leader for a Search and Social Media Marketing CPD course at the University of Salford, MediaCityUK, I sometimes get asked for contributions to publications. I wanted to share these tips with you – I hope you enjoy them and please feel free to contribute!
1. The right people – If you do not have expertise within your organisation, seek advice and training from reputable sources. Search and Social Media Marketing is not rocket science, but you will save a lot of time and money if you work with experienced people with a successful track record.
Seek out recommendations from customers, employers or colleagues and speak to the people that they have worked with previously to gauge how effective they have been with previous projects. (more…)