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Tag: Jeremy Galbraith

  • International Olympic Committee leads the Field on Facebook and YouTube, but FIFA Wins on Instagram and Twitter in Burson-Marsteller and TSE Consulting’s New Study

    Social Media ranking of International Sports Organisations reveals amazing findings

    By A Correspondent

     

    Burson-Marsteller and its specialised sport consultancy, TSE Consulting, have published a‘Social Media and Olympic Sport Ranking’ which gives an overview of how of international Olympic organisations are performing on social media.

     

    Over the past decade, the Olympics has dominated social media channels and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its 35 International Sports Federations, have all added Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat channels into their communications mix. The first-ever Olympic Ranking looks at how these international sports governing bodies use their social media channels, how effective their channels are and what lessons they can learn from each other.

     

    The rankings offer new insights into which sports have the largest social media fan base, as well as the sports which, while they may have a smaller fan base, nevertheless manage to create a stronger impact. The study finds that the IOC is in a league of its own, topping the rankings on both Facebook and YouTube. The Olympics Facebook page, with more than 15 million likes, is the most-liked page of any international organisation with twice as many likes as UNICEF.

     

    The International Football Association (FIFA), on the other hand, is ahead of the Olympics on both Twitter and Instagram. The FIFA Twitter account boasts 9.3 million followers, almost twice as many as all Olympic accounts combined. The Top five sports on Twitter are football (soccer), basketball, rugby, cycling and athletics.

     

    Despite having fewer followers, the IOC makes more impact with its Twitter communication, with each tweet being shared an average of 467 times compared to 108 times for the @FIFAcom account. However, @FIFAcom is among the most active sports federations on Twitter, with 23 tweets per day, 10 times as many as the @Olympics account thereby managing to gain more impressions than its Olympic rival.

     

    Jeremy Galbraith, CEO, Europe, Middle East & Africa at Burson-Marsteller said, “International sports organisations are discovering powerful new opportunities to engage directly with fans via social media. But our new study reveals that even global sports bodies with millions of followers, such as the IOC and FIFA, can still do much more to maximize the effectiveness of these new communications channels. Social media will continue to become ever more influential for sports governing bodies in years to come, both for engagement with fans and stakeholders, as well as being integral to their commercial strategies.”

     

    Lars Haue-Pedersen, Managing-Director, TSE Consulting commented, “Social media has become a critical avenue for international sports organisations, not only for communications but also as a strategic lever with the opportunity for these bodies to engage directly with the wide range of members, fans and other stakeholders worldwide. I look forward to seeing how sports governing bodies choose to incorporate and fully integrate these platforms in the way they run their core operations in the future.”

     

    The study finds that the presidents and chief executives of the 35 international sports federations appear somewhat reluctant to have personal profiles on social media. Only 12 sports leaders are active on Twitter, with Sebastian Coe, President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the most followed with 110,000 followers. In second place is Brian Cookson, UCI President, and third is Brett Gosper, CEO of World Rugby.

     

    Finally, the study also looked at who might be influencing Olympic sports federations through being followed on Twitter, the platform most likely to create connections between influencers, journalists and the media. Not surprisingly, the IOC Twitter accounts @Olympics and @IOCMedia are connected to most other sports federations.

     

    The Olympic sports news website Inside the Games is the most-followed media organization, just ahead of its rival Around the Rings, with the NBC Olympics Twitter feed in third position. The BBC’s Ollie Williams is the sports journalist most followed by Sports Federations, ahead of Ed Hula, founder of Around the Rings and sports writer Alan Abrahamson from 3 Wire News.

     

  • Annual Twitter study finds Governments becoming savvier in the use of the Social Media channel

    Twitter now the medium of choice for world leaders, notes Twiplomacy study

    By A Correspondent

     

    Over the past four years, Twitter has become the social media channel of choice for world leaders to reach large audiences with key messages and sound-bytes, according to Burson-Marsteller’s Twiplomacy study, an annual global survey of world leaders on Twitter. Twiplomacy aims to identify the extent to which world leaders use Twitter and how they connect on the social network.

     

    The study notes that Governments are putting more effort into their social media communication and are including more visuals and videos in their tweets. The study analyzed 669 government accounts in 166 countries and revealed that 86 percent of all 193 United Nations (UN) governments have a presence on Twitter. One hundred and seventy-two heads of state and government have personal Twitter accounts and only 27 countries, mainly in Africa and Asia-Pacific, do not have any Twitter presence.

     

    “The Burson-Marsteller Twiplomacy Study has become an essential gauge of the power and reach of social media,” said Donald A. Baer, Worldwide Chair and CEO, Burson-Marsteller. “This fourth annual Burson-Marsteller Twiplomacy Study provides critically valuable insights about the communications practices and needs of leaders around the world.”

     

    While @BarackObama is the most followed world leader, he is also dwarfed in terms of retweets per tweet by Pope Francis who averages almost 10,000 retweets for each tweet sent on his Spanish account, against 1,210 for each tweet sent by @BarackObama.

     

    “This study illustrates that governments are becoming savvier and more professional in the use of social media,” said Jeremy Galbraith, CEO of Burson-Marsteller Europe, Middle East and Africa and Global Chief Strategy Officer. “It is interesting to see how foreign ministries have honed their social strategies and built substantial dedicated teams to manage their online channels. We believe corporations can learn a lot from governments and their leaders on Twitter.”

     

    More than 4,100 embassies and ambassadors are now active on Twitter. In New York, Washington, London and Brussels, most diplomatic missions use Twitter to have a voice at the digital table. Canada, the EU, France, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, the UK and the U.S. have put most of their embassies and missions on Twitter. The UK Foreign Office in London also encourages personal engagement by its ambassadors, and it is virtually impossible to become a Foreign Office diplomat without using digital tools.

     

  • However, whilst the social network offers direct interaction between users, almost half of world leaders don’t follow any of their peers

    BM study finds almost two-thirds of world leaders are on Twitter

    By A Correspondent

     

    Burson-Marsteller, the global public relations and communications firm, released “Twiplomacy” – the first-ever global study of world leaders on Twitter. The study shows that almost two-thirds of world leaders have a Twitter account. However, whilst the social network offers direct interaction between users, almost half of world leaders don’t follow any of their peers.

     

    “Twiplomacy” is the first research of its kind, aimed at identifying to what extent world leaders use Twitter. Burson-Marsteller analyzed 264 government accounts in 125 countries.

     

    Data used was taken in July 2012 from the accounts of 264 heads of state and government and their institutions in 125 countries world-wide looking at over 30 variables using Twitonomy. Burson-Marsteller used Doesfollow to analyze Twitter relations between world leaders and MyFirstTweet to identify the first tweet of each world leader.

     

    The findings indicate that over a quarter (76) of all world leaders and governments are following Barack Obama. However @BarackObama mutually follows only Norway’s Jens Stoltenberg and Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev but hasn’t established mutual Twitter relations with other world leaders. European Union president Herman van Rompuy (@euHvR) is the best connected world leader, mutually following 11 other peers. Australian prime minister @JuliaGillard is the second best connected leader.

     

    Russian President Putin, Rwandan President Kagame, Singapore Prime Minister Lee, Dutch Prime Minister Rutte and 35 other accounts do not follow any other Twitter user; effectively cutting themselves out of the conversation.

     

    On the other hand Ugandan Prime Minister Mbabazi and Rwandan President Kagame are the most conversational world leaders on Twitter with 96 per cent and 93 per cent of their tweets being @replies.

     

    “This study illustrates how Twitter is closing the communication gap between us and our world leaders. On the one hand, it allows heads of state and government to broadcast their daily activities and government news to an ever growing audience. On the other hand it allows citizens direct access to their leaders. Consequently, it is now, more than ever, critical for these leaders to get it right on the social network”, said Jeremy Galbraith, CEO of Burson-Marsteller Europe, Middle East and Africa.

     

    The study found that politicians often discover Twitter during election campaigns but once elected, these accounts tend to go silent, such as the accounts of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff @DilmaBR and French president Francois Hollande @FHollande who have abandoned their followers since taking office. There are 120 personal accounts, however only 30 world leaders tweet personally and then only occasionally.

     

    “16 of the G20 leaders have are actively using Twitter for public diplomacy, but it is sad to see that the heads of state and government in China, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Italy still do not have joined the Twitterverse”, said Matthias Lufkens, Burson-Marsteller’s Digital Practice Leader in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

     

    Twitter is also used by small nations to put them on the world map and tweet eye-to-eye with their peers. The president of the Dominican Republic unilaterally follows 71 other world leaders. The president of Portugaland the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobagoboth unilaterally follow over 50 other peers in the hope that they will return the favour and the young Republic of South Sudan hopes to gain international Twitter recognition by following 16 peers.

     

    Twitter is most popular in North and South America with 80 per cent of governments active. Barack Obama is the most followed world leader with 17,115,077 followers, globally in 5th place just behind Britney Spears. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is in second place with 3,152,608 followers, followed by the White House, Queen Rania of Jordan and10 Downing Street, all having over two million followers.

     

    Other key findings include

    • Out of the 264 accounts of heads of state and government, 90 have never ever sent a retweet and 99 have never sent @reply
    • US President Barack Obama was the first world leader to sign up to Twitter on March 5, 2007 followed the same month by @EPN, the account now used by Mexico’s president-elect Enrique Pena Nieto.
    • Most popular tweet: “Same-sex couples should be able to get married.” – President Obama”, retweeted 62,047 times on May 9, 2012
    • World leaders tweet in 43 different languages. English is used by 34 per cent followed by Spanish (15 per cent). However Spanish and Latin American leaders tweet three times as much as their English counterparts