Guest Post By Richie Jones
I've always supported Liverpool. And I'm like many modern fans - I watch the game on TV, I follow it online, and I've blogged about it on and off for a few years.
However, after a particularly ignominious defeat my girlfriend jokily suggested that I should offer my services as a fan to other teams. Never jokily suggest things like that to me, because I'm stubborn, and an attention seeker. So I did it. What happened next taught me a lot about the reach of social media, and the meaning of being a football fan.
Deciding that I couldn't possibly follow another football team, I compiled a list of teams in other sports, and in many cases, in other countries. These included:
• UK basketball, ice hockey, rugby and cricket
• US basketball, NFL, ice hockey and baseball
• Aussie Rules
After sourcing email addresses for various different teams, I sent them the following message:
Greetings,
My name is Richie, and I humbly offer my services as your newest diehard fan.
Allow me to explain. I have been a fan of Liverpool Football Club since I was old enough to know what football was. I have loved the team and the club every day since. Until now. I have been concerned for some time about the takeover of the club by Tom Hicks and George Gillett, and the declining performances of the team under manager Rafael Benitez. This week, in the wake of an abusive email to a fellow supporter by Tom Hicks Jr, a member of the board, and the extra time capitulation to Reading in the FA Cup, I've finally given up on Liverpool FC, and am hereby tendering my resignation as a fan. While some part of me will always love LFC, I resent being seen as a cash cow by the club, who have loaded LFC with debt, to the detriment of the team.
Therefore, being done with both LFC and football, I am on the lookout for another team to love - and you could be it. I have many good qualities:
• I'm loyal (provided you don't sell out to a bunch of cowboys and consistently trample on my dreams with scorn and impunity).
• I'm articulate - I prefer to rebuff opposition fans through wit, and therefore defuse trouble, rather than cause it, and act as a sophisticated representative of the team.
• I'm keen - I bring much enthusiasm to my role as fan.
• I buy lots of merchandise, no matter how gaudy (I have both the ecru and canary yellow LFC away strips - that's loyalty).
• I'm on the rebound.
So what do you say? I'm casting my net wide, so why should I be your new biggest fan? Think about it - you won't regret having a fan like me.
All the best
Richie
I started getting replies - Worcester Wolves basketball first, then Buffalo Bills and Houston Texans in the NFL, then loads of other teams all wanting me to be their fan. So I replied to some and also decided to start a blog called "Your New Diehard Fan", with a sense of irony that got a little lost in the social media ether. I thought it would be clear that I was partly joking about quitting Liverpool, but apparently not. I just hadn't considered the power of the internet and using social media for anything football related....
After blogging my responses for a while, I decided to boost traffic by emailing the Guardian's Fiver - a daily satirical football mailout that gets sent out at 5pm every day. And, surprisingly, they decided to print my letter and a link to my blog.
At 16.59 that day, my blog had received 15 hits. By 17.30, it had reached 1,500 hits. My traffic for that day would end up being near 3,000 unique users. This continued for days, with word-of-mouth spreading like crazy.
I was contacted by an online ad agency that wanted to advertise on my blog. Comments were pouring in from around the world, recommending teams and sports. It was fun.
But while the Guardian was the main source of traffic to my blog, there was another site that was sending nearly as much traffic my way - an influential Liverpool FC fansite. And it was not complimentary. There was some serious verbal abuse - I was pilloried for abandoning my team and vilified for blogging about it. Even when I posted a reply laying out the jokey nature of the endeavour, I continued to be attacked.
The whole episode taught me something about football, social media and the internet. All human life is there on the internet, and social media has enabled one bored idiot to both engage and enrage thousands of people.
There were so many lovely comments from the teams themselves, and from people commenting on the blog, many of whom would leave their email address and twitters - in short, they connected their comments to themselves in a more concrete way via social media. It was heartwarming. But it also showed me how many people hide behind the anonymity of the internet to say things and espouse opinions that they would not dare to say in person. Maybe that anonymity is liberating, but I couldn't help but think that the reaction of some of the fans was excessive. What it does show is that if you want to succeed in the social media sphere, you need to know your stuff.
Sometimes it seems that the internet is full of people who talk a lot, with nothing to say, and that messages can get lost and ignored. It was interesting to see how something which started out on a whim could get noticed with so little effort. But I might keep my head down for a while...
Guest post by Richie Jones from FreshMinds Research
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