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In club journalism one of the best feelings is producing what we call “winning content”, this is when the club is performing well on the pitch and lots of content is pushed and produced because of it.

So in my last year of connecting and hearing from people within the industry it was interesting to hear their passion and enthusiasm for, particularly – the WINNING content.

Burnley Football Club: Alex Waters (Content Producer)

When conducting an interview with Alex I asked him what he thought is the best piece of content he has created. 

“Definitely matchday content. For example last week, when we played Wolves, we won in the 95th minute, Lyle Foster scored and the amount of content that came from that was unbelievable. 

“We got 20 million impressions across all platforms. 

“Another one of the best for me, would be the content I created for our full-back (Quilindschy Hartman). We sometimes do player focussed videos for Instagram so I started filming him who went on to get two assists.

“The Netherlands account on Instagram as well as Hartman collaborated on this post which was pretty surreal.

“So that’s definitely one of the best pieces of content I’ve created.

“It’s a massive thing to create stuff like this, for one to have on your CV, but in general to be recognised by a wider community. 

“For example, a few weeks ago one of my videos was the goal celebration of Ugochukwu (Lesley) against Leeds. The Premier League collaborated on that and just seeing your content being pushed to millions of people is an unbelievable feeling and it makes you want to continue to create that stuff.”

Middlesbrough AFC: Dan Prince

“I can’t speak good enough on what it’s like. I mean when the team is in a good run of form you feel unbelievable.

“Being part of the media team and communicating with fans creating content around the win for the rest of the day and the day after. I mean it’s just unbelievable.”

Dan went on to speak about one of the best pieces of content creation he has produced in his years as a club journalist.

“When the country went into lockdown my job was to keep the social channels active in some way over that time. So I created a virtual end of season award ceremony.”

“That got really good viewers and really good feedback, and it was just a way of trying to keep everyone engaged with the club when, really, there was nothing for them to be engaged with, so it was just trying to find those content ideas.” 

Another thing Dan touched on was the idea of being reactive and creating content around things that are popular and “viral.”

“As much as we all want to come up with the idea first, usually, you’re not gonna be the first one to come up with an idea that will go viral.”

“But it’s about identifying what is working elsewhere and what you can use to adapt to what you do.” 

“You don’t want to completely copy what another organisation has done, but if you can see that something’s working elsewhere, then you’d be silly to not try and make content around that or what is similar.” 

“Every club’s got its own kind of identity, its own voice, and if you can identify something that fits in with that, that you can adapt to your organisation it can work so well.” 

Shrewsbury Town: Joe Masi (Head of Media)

When interviewing Shrewsbury Town’s Head of Media, Joe Masi, it was clear to see the enthusiam for his job particurly when he said: “when the team is “on a good run it’s just a different world”.

“When you’re on a good run and the players are loving it; I can’t describe how fun it is to create content.

“That’s the thing I’ve learned more than anything in this job is that players love doing stuff.”

Shrewsbury Town’s Social Media Manager too spoke upon the idea of winning content and what content is actually like depending on the result.

Shrewbury Town: Jonny Drake (Social Media Manager)

“If everything else, apart from that 90 minutes was perfect. Nobody cares what you put out to be honest.”

“A steady stream of results is what you need. Like, we wouldn’t be doing anything different now in terms of content if we’d lost to Oldham in our penultimate game.

“Whereas If we lost the South Shields, FA Cup tie, it’s because of the fixture and the competition that posting certain content can be worse because you have lost – and like you say the flow of content is gone and people don’t want to see fun content or loads of it when their team has lost.

“In a fans mind, they think we have lost – let’s get back to training and that’s it.”

“That’s kind of how I view it, really. The result makes all the difference in how much you can create content wise and what type of content you can actually put out.” 

Jonny then went on to speak about Shrewsbury’s FA Cup clash with South Shields and how that specific game allowed him to create more specific content.

“With the FA Cup game we did something different which was making content around the player of the match award, because outside of cup competitions that doesn’t happen.”

“Another thing was that TNT Sports were posting all the goals we scored about 15 minutes after we scored them.”

“So we were interacting with that which was really cool, it drove more traffic and that’s great for us. Because the embargo for clubs is that you can’t post the goals until midday the next day but by that point, it’s way too late. No one cares.”

“So instead of that we just, on the spot were interacting with TNT’s posts.”

South Shields FC: Sam Jones (Media Officer)

“Recently we had some great content posted which involved goalkeeper Jasper Sheik who made an unbelievable save which was picked up by ex-Premier League goalkeeper Shay Given. 

Obvouusly that’s a really positive thing but what can I do to elevate that? To build on that was my thought process.

“So what we did was built a nice graphic around that which we ended up collaborating with the FA Cup and they took that on board which i turn ended up doing some really good numbers. 

“Mainly what you’re doing is looking for things to go viral. 

“For example, this season we’ve implemented question of the week videos which can be difficult at times because you have to think of a question every single week which over the course of the year is a lot, it also has to be relevant and catchy, not something that people will scroll past.”

“Another thing is that you can plan your seasonal content such as Halloween and Christmas however, sometimes you have to be really reactive you can’t rely on these events and timelines.

“Such as there could be a trend that pops up and you have to react within five minutes or so.

“And if you don’t be as quick and reactive as other clubs, unfortunately you miss out, and in our world it’s a numbers game. So you have to react or you miss out on those numbers.