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ON the field and off it, the Wanderers’ journey has been one of the most extraordinary stories in Australian sport.
Two A-League grand final appearances in their first two seasons of existence got people talking, but when the Western Sydney club won the Asian Champions League against Al Hilal, at the first attempt, their brand exploded globally.
And Twitter has the stats to prove it.
In the six weeks since the A-League season kicked off the Wanderers have received an extraordinary 10 million Tweet impressions. That’s higher than any other club in any sport across Australia this entire year, including both the AFL and NRL grand finalists.
What’s more, the club achieved an engagement rate - that includes mentions, favourites, retweets and clicking on a link or photo - of 8.5 per cent over the same period.
To put that figure into context, the Wanderers’ engagement rate was higher than Real Madrid, Manchester United and the San Francisco Giants, who won World Series in the same time period.
Wanderers head of marketing and communications, Mark Jensen, says the club has three main priorities - to engage, to inform and share.
“During the ACL campaign we used a lot of graphics and images that captured the emotion of the tournament from the players and fans perspective, as well as behind-the-scenes content that allowed fans to become closer to the team, especially when we are playing internationally,” he said.
“Communication with our fans and members is hugely important to us, Twitter compliments our digital delivery of information very well but it is also for a bit of fun.
“On game day we try and take the voice of the fan by being in the moment, informative and provocative. Sometimes it is fun to poke the proverbial bear with a stick, you have to know your audience but also know how far you want to take it on. We want a positive experience when engaging with our followers – it follows our club culture – to be for and with the people of Western Sydney.”
Next month the Wanderers will travel to Morocco to take part in the Club World Cup, which will extend their brand to even more corners of the globe.
“When we had a large Saudi following for the ACL final we engaged with them which clocked us some huge numbers as a result,” Jensen said.
“We will do this again for the FIFA Club World Cup against Cruz Azul and Real Madrid, who are monsters on Twitter.”
Interesting the contrast with a club making the effort to sell themselves well to everyone as opposed to our club whose only goal appears to be to sell their fans short