On Monday 22^nd December Arsenal announced they had reached 5 million followers, being the first Premier League club to do so. Arsenal has the third highest Twitter following for a sports club in the world. The only two teams ahead of them are Real Madrid and Barcelona, respectively.

This large following suggests this North London club’s worldwide popularity and knack of producing engaging social content for their followers. Social content that the club has produced has included Twitter Takeovers, which allows fans to directly communicate with the team by asking questions to the players. Another example is match day coverage. Both of these social content examples help bring the fans closer to the players, which is what the fans want. Today’s online-focused-world aims to make communication easier so people can contact each other from all over the world.

Arsenal has also disclosed their top three tweets by re-tweets, these were the signings of Chilean Alexis Sanchez, Danny Welbeck and German Mesut Ozil. These top tweets indicate how important it is to engage with fans, especially when the club has signed new and exciting players. Bringing in new players gets fans excited, and it can also attract new fans to the club from the signings of star players. This can be shown from the steady increase in 2014 where the amount of followers has gone from 3 million to 5 million.

Does this social media following mean anything?

Some may say having a big social media following may not mean much, especially with reference to older fans who may or may not use Twitter or Facebook, but having bad social media can affect a football club’s reputation. The amount of followers Arsenal currently have indicates the club has an understanding of what the fans want and how best to communicate the club’s news to them.

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