Sportsbook social media marketing - How sports affiliates are killing it on Twitter

@livefootball Twitter Data Analysis
21st Aug, 2018
Sportsbook and online betting are competitive niches for operators and affiliates alike. In this post let's look at strategies and tactics which are being used by operators and superaffiliates to win-big with Twitter marketing for sports.
Twitter is the go-to search-engine for many sports fans because search-results are served in real-time, making the platform invaluable for time-sensitive information relating to sports such as real-time goals, odds, offers & news. Sports fans are also on Twitter because their sports idols, favorite teams, favorite sports journalists are present there too. Goals and key performance indicators of sportsbook marketers may vary but might include:
  • Monthly account growth
  • Monthly tweet impressions
  • Clicks to merchant
  • Socially referred site visitors
  • Social conversions
  • Leads
  • Mentions
  • Interactions
Let's look at twitter data for some of the big sportsbook merchants and affiliates to see what they are doing, and why, as well as trying to gauge how effective their tactics are:

@footballresults [375k followers] - Huge volumes of clicks to Merchant

These guys are killing it in terms of clicks to merchant - and they have a huge followerbase to drive those clicks. Here's a visualization of an analysis of 10 days of @footballresults tweet data (tweets, retweets, comments, mentions) harvested from the Twitter API. The image below is a "social network graph" for interactions on the account. Each line represents a relationship or interaction (tweet, mention, retweet). Each box (or 'node') represents an individual Twitter account. (click to enlarge). This account has a LOT of interaction going on - and the account does all the activities a sports site should focus on to gain targeted traction, followers and customers:
  • They tweet live scores,
  • Content marketing creation + leverage: driving traffic to website + showing expertise via bespoke match previews,
  • Media Tweets - eg funny vines, goal clips
  • Shareable images
  • Shareable infographics
  • Shareable + realtime statistics,
  • Tweet Optimisation
and more.. Account follower growth in last 30 days = ~ +2500 Followers livefootbal follower growth It appears that @livefootball is engaged in some aggressive follow churn - (e.g. they un-followed 10,000 users in a few days, then after a hiatus they followed +10k different users). churn Churn is a tad risky, and is against Twitter Terms of service (yet it's an effective tactic for account growth). Having an idea as to how many clicks affiliate links will get via promotion on a targeted Twitter account with specific audience size is valuable for marketers. What is most interesting about the @footballresults is the follower count (375k) & the click numbers we can extract from those bit.ly links used in both tweets and in the account bio stats How many clicks has that Bet365 link had for example? only 45,000 clicks! bitly clicks pro tip: Add a plus sign to any bit.ly link you see to view click data and other statistics. so the link we refer to above above becomes bit.ly/Bet365com+ Strategy: Build a large engaged audience, hit them over the head with offers via bio and in-tweet links (using the bit.ly URL shortener for tracking and analytics).

@unibet [31K followers]- Tactical branded tweets + great optimization

Unibet is one of the biggest sportsbook operators in Europe. I analysed 3 days of @unibet Tweets (Fri/Sat/Sun) unibet tweets (click to enlarge) It looks like they are growing at a rate of ~ +4k followers/month according to TwitterCounter.

Strategy

Unibet is winning with is creation and dissemination of tweets of sports stats with branded images and suitable hashtags - some of the tweets embody the epitome of shareable content, and are optimised for visiblity via Twitter image search as well as hashtag search results. Sample Tweets: https://twitter.com/unibet/status/649192228800360448 (stats, odds-call to action, branding, hashtag optimisation) https://twitter.com/unibet/status/647814684435988481 (stats, branding, hashtag optimisation) https://twitter.com/unibet/status/643860103272267778 (stats, branding, hashtag optimisation)

@soccerscoresnet

The twitter account associated with LiveSoccerScores.net is a triumph of and testament to the power of social media automation. This fast-growing account has only begun to become active in the last month or two. Twitter analytics for the account shows huge tweet impression volume despite just a small # of followers.

Account Stats (28 days)

lss-stats - Imagine the visibility which will be achieved when the account reaches 3k, 30k or 300k followers!

Strategy

  • Gain impressions + clicks by Delivering real-time scores data + statistics 24/7.
  • Make tweets more visible / shareable by using dynamic image creation to improve reach.

Tactics

Scale by Automating (almost) everything. Sample Tweets: https://twitter.com/soccerscoresnet/status/648601596088164352 Bespoke Tools: Livesoccerscores created a tool to allow them to selectively dynamically create suitable images to enrich live scores tweets + to foster increased visibility and for use in specific promotions. These images are useful as website post preview images (via opengraph) for Facebook + other social networks too. dynamic image-creation

Sportsbook Marketing on Twitter - Summary & Observations

Power affiliates and big sports merchants post a LOT of tweets every day: Twitter users may post up to 1k tweets a day on Twitter. This is fine and possibly optimal strategy as the likelihood of tweet getting seen > 20 mins after it is posted is very small, so posting every 5 or 10 minutes helps "fill the void". Power affiliates have live data and statistics: Live score data, live odds, match statistics and other real-time data is highly leveraged by the big players in sports marketing on Twitter. Various types of useful data acquired via licencing, scraping or merchant data-feeds. Power Affiliates are using the Twitter API Scalability is achieved / assisted on high volume accounts via a combination of dynamic data and posting automatically using the Twitter API. Beautiful and branded tweets perform better - it is pretty much essential to have an image bank of team logos and competitions logos at your disposal for themed tweets. Many merchants are increasing their brand exposure by adding their own brand to tweet images. Tools Having bespoke custom tools (eg to create dynamic custom images) can save lots of time and human effort and add a lot of value. Smart Affiliates should spend some time/money/resources on social network analysis on popular / competitors accounts to identify strategies and measure effectiveness of tactics which are being executed to inform and enhance their own strategy. Remember- marketing should be data driven - Always! Measure everything! Hopefully this will give some food for thought to affiliates thinking of harnessing the power of Twitter to drive conversions and traffic. If you need help with your social media marketing strategy, tactics or execution get in touch for a chat!
Author: Niall Ó Gribin @nogribin. About The Author: Niall is an online marketing consultant and data junkie at Digital Destiny Marketing specializing in social media strategy & marketing and drinking jugs of coffee.
21st Aug, 2018