In this context, real brands’ stories are always interesting. And we set some questions to Tom Burrow, Digital Manager, UMBRO:
Your role at UMBRO is a Digital Manager. Is UMBRO’s Digital Team big? How many people are involved in the UMBRO’s online activity? Do you outsource UMBRO social media work?
- There are now two of us working in digital, myself and a fulltime content creator (Aaron). We work as a part of the wider brand communications team and everyone tends to pitch in with ideas and content.
UMBRO makes high quality, crafted football products. Most of the staff are big football fans are really passionate about their work and ultimately enjoy what they do. Through social media we try to express the personality of the company by creating and curating football content.
Some of the most interesting stuff comes from outside the communications team so we are always encouraging other staff members to get involved. We work with agencies occasionally for consultation but 99% of the content is produced at UMBRO House.
We know that many brands are just in the beginning of their social media journeys. What was the start point for the UMBRO’s social media journey? What event/product? What platform?
We first really started looking at social media towards the end of last year. Football is the largest shared culture in the world and a lot of the conversation surrounding the sport is hosted on social media channels. As a football brand, we wanted to be part of this conversation so we started to look at how we could contribute.
Roughly around the same time we started work on the launch of the England home kit. The kits development had such a rich story and we had so much great content which worked perfectly on social media platforms.
We started by looking for ways that we could be useful to the different communities. We photographed our archive of football kits and memorabilia and put this out online through a blog and via flickr (
flickr.com/umbrofootball ). We had a lot of footage of the development of the England kit so we made this into a number of movies and established an UMBRO youtube channel (
youtube.com/umbro ).
The online communities embraced our activities so we have continued to create and evolve interesting football content in these and new spaces.
At umbro.com I saw links to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr. Is that’s all? How do you choose social media platforms to participate in? What is the principle to decide what content should go to Twitter, Flickr and so on?
We set out with a presence on lots of social media sites, however after a while we started realizing some sites were more appropriate for our content than others. So we currently have accounts on
Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and of course the UMBRO blog and tailor content appropriately.
In terms of deciding what content goes on which site, we tend to start the process thinking what will be interesting and useful to the people on each of the platforms. So anything conversational, such as ‘which song sums up your team the best?’ or ‘who has the best facial hair in football?’ tends to go on Facebook. Anything more in depth, such as articles on kit development, interviews or research pieces would then be published on the blog. We share some photographs using Flickr. However, we are always careful to respect the flickr community and never upload anything too branded.
UMBRO. Tailored by England / Created with flickrSLiDR.
We use Twitter to point to a lot of stuff on the web or even just chat about the weather outside UMBRO House or the price of a fried breakfast. Twitter is good like that!
Like a typical social media user, we are regularly testing out the latest sites and platforms. We are currently having fun in the office putting together Spotify playlists which we have then started to link to them from our sites. Check out our Manchester playlist (
sharemyplaylists.com/manchester-2) we had a lot of fun with that one.
Geographically, is UMBRO’s online activity focused on UK, US? Are any plans for other internet segments?
UMBRO is a British brand, our global head office is in Manchester so our recent content has been mainly focused around us here in the UK. However we are encouraging UMBRO offices in other countries to take the plunge in to social media. UMBRO Brazil (
blog.umbro.com.br ) and UMBRO Japan (
umbro-jp.com ) have recently started writing their own blog sites. I am really excited about UMBRO social media going global as this can only lead to more great content to share. Some of the futsal stuff that is published on the Brazillian site is amazing.
We also use umbro.com to aggregate good football related content on the web, most of which is sourced from social media. The site has a content management system and is going live in twenty new countries and languages over the next month. The content will be updated by people in each country, so for the first time in the company’s history we will have a truly global online presence and rich aggregation of global football content.
Do you monitor the UMBRO mentions that consumers post in social and traditional online media? What tools do you use?
We monitor mentions of UMBRO to an extent using Google alerts and searching twitter etc. We also all read blogs and forums and if anyone says anything interesting about UMBRO then if appropriate we may contribute to the conversation. I have tested some more sophisticated software which tracks all mentions of UMBRO, however it all felt a bit ‘Big Brother’. At the end of the day social media is made up of peer to peer communities so we have always treated this with respect and behave as individuals.
How do you translate these online conversations into the ROI language? What are key moments you pay attention to?
I am not sure if we really go as far as being so precise to track the ROI of social media. Rolling back to this time last year there were very little mentions of UMBRO on any of the blogs or forums that I was reading. Six months later we found over a hundred blog posts mentioning UMBRO on one week. We saw this as a success as by providing useful content, UMBRO was in the heart of the conversation.
Over the last year we feel we have build up respected channels in social media. We know that if we post a link from our twitter feed then it can easily be picked up by a few hundred people. So if you weighed the time it takes to write one tweet and measured the clicks against the cost of a traditional banner ad, then I guess you could count social media as a very healthy ROI.
We see theumbroshop.co.uk in England. Are any plans to create online-stores for other countries?
umbro.com is being re-launched in a number of different languages and localized to the different countries over the next month (in December). On the new site users will have a ‘where to buy’ facility mapping their location which will point them in the direction of the online store or nearest retailers.
What advice can you give brands which just decided to go to social media?
Firstly don’t be afraid. Social media is very honest and transparent so if you have nothing to hide then there is nothing to be worried about. However, I think it is wise to practice first. Find a quiet corner of the internet somewhere and get comfortable creating content and establishing your voice.
Secondly, be useful. You should always ask yourself the question ‘why is this interesting?’ before posting and aim to be adding value to the network. Just having a social media presence is not enough.
Possibly one of the most important things is being part of the conversation, read other peoples content and take the time to reply to comments. A lot of brands tend to use social media as a news channel and just broadcast what they are doing. A good, lasting relationship works two ways. I find taking the time to read and reply to comments pays off ten-fold and also is a great way to get inspiration for new content.
Lastly, have fun! That’s what it’s for at the end of the day.
written by @olgayefimova /
@brandnews
