Source: Watblog.com
Guest Post By Sahil Shah (Cross Posted from Socialtrakr)
The Indian Premiere League right from its existence since 2008 has managed to attract eye balls. From cricket to entertainment the hoopla has been all over the country. Every new edition of the IPL is bigger and better than the former. Needless to say, recently two new teams (Pune and Kochi) were added to the bandwagon for IPL’s season 4 at a combined rate of $703 million. Year on year IPL has been growing by leaps and bounds with a newer and a better version coming up every time.
One year ago mashable posted a story on The IPL Fan Club which is now a passé if you think IPL is just about the fan club. There is so much to add to what IPL was doing then and what is being done now, even on Social Media. Back then the fan club clearly didn’t achieve the expected numbers due to filters and now with the onset of Social Media the numbers here are pretty impressive.
IPL Social Media Pie
With Social Media considered as one of the important propositions to address to the Target Audience online, the IPL’s brand value which is doubled since 2009 is being leveraged by it. Here is a take on the main networks IPL is present and performing on:
Viewers became Users on Youtube:
Viewers on TV now have the power to be users (who can express their views via comments) on Youtube. The big news was that first time a league was going LIVE Streaming on Youtube. Considering the amount of influence youtube as a Social Media Platform holds, the future looks promising. About 2 months since the official announcement and 10 days in the tournament, the youtube channel has already got more than 16 million channel views with a whopping list of 54,900 subscribers and 21772 comments (this is why I say users and not only viewers). This clearly states the importance social media holds in today’s lives. I don’t see any surprise if more and more LIVE stream deals happen with youtube in the future too.
One Big Fish captures another:
Facebook has got its own share of the Social Media pie as the most influential Social Network in the world with more than 400 million users. Over here I leave it up to you to decide which one is which Big Fish. The official presence on facebook combing all IPL pages is 4,62,647 fans which is remarkable without any sort of promotion online or offline.
Interestingly there is an anti-IPL page on facebook which has more than 25,000 fans. The most surprising thing about it is that the page was made recently before 2 months. So imagine the amount of Reputation Management IPL needs which is an interesting deal considering the future as the audience (at least some) are already bored of it.
The twitter bird is here to stay
Besides IPL’s official account that has some 9000+ dedicated followers, there are a lot of influencers on twitter that are turning it around for the League. From Shahrukh Khan to Preity Zinta, Cricketing Figures like Shane Warne and Lalit Modi, and obviously the teams on twitter are doing their bit promoting the IPL. The aggregated numbers in terms of followers IPL has over twitter is 4,79,236 (almost half of it is SRK’s fan base). Considering the amount of people getting on to twitter, this platform is the next big thing for live updates
Don’t be surprised
The Social Network that is far bigger than facebook in terms of the reach it has in India, has outdone the latter in the number of people in the communities. With regards to conversations, there is a dire need of fans to interact on Orkut. The now fading platform with too many users switching to facebook, is just for the numbers game (if anyone is interested). Interestingly the numbers are more than facebook and twitter but the conversations are not even half of them.
Google Buzz, Linkedin, Digg and all that jazz
Your browser may not support display of this image. The just-in social network of Google is growing on its own with 1714 followers already. Besides what Buzz has to offer, a lot of opportunities are lying open for the league on this platform. Above and beyond Lalit Modi’s Profile on linkedin, I suppose there is nothing more IPL can do on linkedin. Digg, delicious and other social bookmarking networks have played their part with the expected number of link sharing over the web.
To Sum it up, Youtube as a video sharing platform has been explored completely. They actually took it to the next level via LIVE airing which wasn’t thought of by anyone before and now will become a trend in the future. However Facebook and Twitter – by far the best influential networks on Social Media in India (Orkut losing its sheen) haven’t been explored to core. A fan Page on Facebook can be made more interesting with endless possibilities to explore. Twitter with its LIVE updates via Tweets can garner a loyal audience (full of influencers) and leverage from them as well. Mind you, both these networks can become great resources for a healthy two way communication which is evidently impossible anywhere else. I hope they understand the importance these two networks hold and explore it like they have for Youtube. Maybe we could expect some Social Media Fireworks in the next season of the Indian Premiere League.
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