Social Media Strategy of IPL Teams – Pune Warriors India

Birth of Pune Warriors India (PWI) was shrouded in controversy. The team almost lost its place in IPL like Kochi Tuskers Kerala. In the three seasons that the team has participated in, it has disappointed its fans. PWI made the bottom of the point table in 2 seasons and stood at the second rung from below in one. The dismal performance of the team has disappointed its fans, and in this article we will see how well it fared on social media and how engaged its fans were with the team.

Pune Warriors India on Facebook

For a page which has 217,532 fans, 7,943 actively engaged fans is not a number impressive enough to quote. This is the lowest number of actively engaged fans I have seen for any team we reviewed so far. Of 217,532 fans, 51,753 fans were acquired since the beginning of the warm-up period, January 01, 2013; it includes 14,741 fans which the team gained during the warm-up period (see second image).

Total Fans

Source: Unmetric – A Social Media Analytics Tool

Fan gained during Warm-up period

Source: Unmetric - A Social Media Analytics Tool

Content Strategy

Although PWI fans did most of the posts on the page, engagement level and penetration of the page is pretty low. Even the most shared posts does not have as many likes and shares as we have grown accustomed to see for IPL teams in the series. In fact, even the combined total likes, shares, and comments on top three most famous posts on PWI wall is less than any famous post on walls of Chennai Super Kings, Kings XI Punjab, Royal Challengers Bangalore, and Mumbai Indians (see the images below).

Source: Unmetric - A Social Media Analytics Tool

One of the reasons for poor engagement is the poor quality of posts. The posts are not only poorly written but some of them even contain glaring mistakes. There is no coherence in the language used, which looks very banal. I have posted texts from five random posts on the wall.

The page also has spam problem. Users seem to post things quite unrelated to the page, which at times turns into a blatant promotion, as it is shown in the following two screenshots from the wall.

As far as the variation in posts is concerned, there is very little. There were occasional quizzes, but it was so occasional that to find one, I had to scroll really deep into the timeline.

And the sentiment expressed in each posts are either positive or neutral. There is no negative vibe flowing on the wall.

Source: Unmetric - A Social Media Analytics Tool

Timing

Timing of posts on PWI wall is mostly out of sync with the engagement score. PWI fans tend to be more active on Friday, Wednesday, and Saturday, but the posting frequency is high on Tuesday and Thursday.

Source: Unmetric - A Social Media Analytics Tool

Pune Warriors India on Twitter

With 95,809 total fans, PWI is by far the weakest IPL team on twitter, and in the studied period, the team has gained 64,753 new followers of which 7,473 followers were gained during the warm-up period.

Total Followers

Source: Unmetric - A Social Media Analytics Tool

Follower Gained during Warm-up Period

Source: Unmetric - A Social Media Analytics Tool

Twitter Activities

On twitter as well, PWI has continued its stream of poor copy. The language used in tweets is clichéd and has nothing in them to motivate the audience to take the desired action. Although there had been some brief discussion in a tweet-thread, copy is something the team needs to work on (see the second screenshot for an example of a typical conversation).

Tweets even lacked variations. Mostly they were match related. The team also failed to make use of 140 characters that twitter gives to communicate, and it has also not made the most of hashtags as well, not even of the team’s hash tags (#pwi).

In the replies PWI sent to its followers, the team failed to include any link or any strong call to action other than a request to Direct Message, which is not all that powerful.

Source: Unmetric - A Social Media Analytics Tool

But in proactive tweets, the situation was a little better, but still it left space for improvement. The use of links and mentions were a lot low, and the following screenshot suggests that plain text, which works to influence people, is almost missing from tweets.

Source: Unmetric - A Social Media Analytics Tool

It is important to note here that 13% of total tweets were replies, and 70% of them were proactive tweets, which means PWI has missed out a lot of opportunity to connect and engage with its fans.

Source: A Social Media Analytics Tool

Even the distribution of tweets on time scale was not uniform. The activity started at 9am, but it peaked between 3pm and 6pm, and then it gradually went down to come to a complete halt at around 3am.

Source: A Social Media Analytics Tool

Sentiments

As far as sentiments expressed in tweets are concerned, the team modeled itself around other IPL teams. A good deal of tweets was neutral (60%), whereas, 40% of them carried positive vibe.

Pune Warriors India on YouTube

Although PWI has received 37 new subscribers to take its subscriber base to 95 and 760 new video views, the team didn’t upload even a single video in the studied period, which means there is nothing to analyze on this front.

Source: Unmetric - A Social Media Analytics Tool

Pune Warriors India on Google+

On Google+, the team has 23,664 followers, some of which are moderately engaged with the page, as evident from the screenshot posted below. The team has done a little better job than some of the teams I have reviewed so far.

In the comments that was posted on PWI’s Google+ page, I suspected some lack of authentic comments, as almost all of them were 3-4 words long and also because a couple of names keep flashing in the comment section (see the images below).

We need to be cautious when dealing with such comments. What looked good to me was the special care social media team of PWI paid to IPL hashtags on Google+. It would have been far better, if the team had used its own hashtag as well.

Conclusion: Pune Warriors India on Social Media

On the content front, social media team of PWI was far from the mark. Pune Warriors India needs to seriously think about its content strategy and other ways to drive engagement, which is the thinnest among the teams I have reviewed so far.

The team went missing on Pinterest, there was no action on YouTube, on Facebook and Twitter, the effort could be at best be said half-hearted, and on Google+ the effort was as significant as of any other team, except one, which I have reviewed so far. In its social media efforts, Pune Warriors India has mimicked its performance on the field. I hope in the next season, it will work a lot harder on both fronts.