As the Super Bowl approaches, we take a look into which NFL teams are winning with their native Facebook content, and which posts are their MVPs.
Super Bowl Sunday is less than a month away. Last post, we looked at which teams had the biggest total Facebook engagement in December. Let’s get into the best native content posts from NFL teams. As Facebook keeps pushing out instant articles and autoplaying videos, more and more content is keeping users on the platform. Let’s see how the winners achieve their social media success.
At first glance, we can see that like we’ve noted before, only a handful of teams make up the top posts. The six teams that dominate the top ten are the Patriots (5), Panthers (4), Packers (4), Steelers (3), Cowboys (3), and Redskins (1). The majority of these teams also made it to the season divisional round: the Patriots, Panthers, Packers, and Steelers. With the Patriots and Panthers still in the running, we can expect their Facebook content to keep scoring as the season comes to a pinnacle.
Let’s see what insights we can glean from their top posts.
Victories Drive Massive Engagement
14 of the top 20 most-engaging posts on Facebook were celebrating a team’s victory. Fans enhance their sports-viewing experiences with social media and are most active during game time. Liking and sharing a post that celebrates a win lets fans feel like they are part of that victory.
Many of these posts utilized shareable graphics that contain a photo from the game, the team’s logo, and final score. The Dallas Cowboys had the most-engaging post, from their win against the Redskins. The post had 214 likes, 68,000 shares, and 6,200 comments.
Graphics are more eye-catching than a simple text post. They engage users by keeping the game alive, and memorializing the team’s win. Visual media tends to be more shareable than static text posts, as fans will want to show off the pictures and videos that capture the legendary moments of their team. We see this work well across all platforms; in Spike, we can see victory graphics generating engagement across Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram.
[bctt tweet=”.@NFL fans love a good victory! Wins were the most-liked posts on FB in December”]
Team Heroes
Two of the top Cowboys posts were about Jason Witten. The Patriots had a post about team favorite Tom Brady, and the Panthers about Cam Newton.
The Panthers video of quarterback Cam Newton had 6.3 million views. The video, which compared a stunning throw by Newton to The Matrix’s Neo, received over 80,000 likes, 7,300 comments, and 80,000 shares.
Star athletes put a face to the team that viewers can connect with. They drive their own fan base that propels the team’s social engagement whenever they’re mentioned. They add personality to the team, and give fans a person to feel like they know on a more personal level.
Beyond the Game
Three of the Patriots’ five spots on the list didn’t have to do with game action or scores. There is a value for teams to demonstrate what they’re like outside the game. Rather than just being an entity, content outside of game action personifies the team into a community fans feel proud of.
[fb_pe url=”https://www.facebook.com/newenglandpatriots/posts/10153828793687372:0″ bottom=”30″]
Their best non-game related post was during a game against the Houston Texans. Vince Wilfork, now playing for the Texans, was with the Patriots for 11 years. The photo, captioned, “Football is family”, showed Wilfork about to handshake his former team owner, Robert Kraft.
Nearly 150,000 people liked the post, and there were 10,000 shares and 3,100 comments. The comments were abundant with team pride and love for the former Patriots player, dubbing him “Patriots forever”.
Their other posts were sentimental pieces that tugged at fans’ heartstrings. Emotion is a powerful engagement driver on social media.
[fb_pe url=”https://www.facebook.com/newenglandpatriots/videos/10153848289102372/” bottom=”30″]
One was of Tom Brady meeting an 8-year-old cancer patient to grant her Christmas wish. The other was of Staff Sergeant Shawn Hogan returning from the military and surprising his family at the Patriots game on December 21st.
Both of these were emotional articles that were posted around the holidays, an already sentimental time. This kind of content builds goodwill and makes fans associate the emotions from the posts to the team.
What Spurs Comments
It’s important to look at individual metrics as well, to find the trends that propel different types of engagement. If we pivot and look at the most commented NFL team posts, we can see some variation.
Ten teams comprise the 20 most commented posts: Patriots (4), Panthers (4), Packers (3), Steelers (2), Eagles (2), and Cowboys, Raiders, Lions, Broncos, and Redskins each with one post.
Victory posts still claim a high portion of the rankings. The most commented post was also the Packers highest-engaging post, another victory post. Half of the list’s spots were related to team wins.
Controversial content drives comments. The Steelers’ most commented post was about a game they lost to the Ravens. Fans were outraged and debated the game’s outcome in 6,500 comments.
Other content that drove comments were team updates like the Eagles letter about releasing their head coach and personal updates like a congratulations to Cam Newton on the birth of his son. Fans like both commenting on important changes to their teams, and the more personal news in their favorite players’ lives.
[bctt tweet=”.@NFL team heroes can drive social media wins by showing off their lives outside the game”]
Takeaways
That wraps up our analysis of the NFL teams for December. It stands to reason that some of this engagement may be driven by the sheer size of these teams’ fan bases. As we observed, the Patriots have the second biggest Facebook following, and the Packers have the fourth biggest.
The social media around the Panthers may be due to their fantastic season and 14-game undefeated winning streak that lasted into late December.
Celebrating team achievements captured big engagement last month, along with quality content that highlighted team heroes and humanized the team beyond the game. We’ll see if these trends hold up in January, and for the other sports leagues as we dive into more rankings.
What’s Next:
1) Want to create the best content for your sports team? Take a free trial of Spike to find what’s going viral
2)
