Within any football club at all levels of the pyramid, the concept of social media management in football plays a very important part. This role is key to promoting clubs to their local communities and also those further afield. It’s a big responsibility to be in charge of a football club’s social media accounts, but also a fantastic opportunity to showcase your own take on things.

As a social media manager at a grassroots football club, I’ve experienced a lot of things. I must admit that it wasn’t my original intention to take up this sort of position when I first got involved with non-league football. At that point, I was more focused on pursuing my passion for writing and building up vital experience within that particular field. The main goal was to attempt to forge a career as a sports journalist.

This is what I initially did during the 2017/18 season at Hall Road Rangers. Towards the end of that campaign, I gained the chance to manage the club’s match day Twitter feed on a couple of occasions. It was a brilliant way to test myself and try out something new to broaden my understanding. There were a bit of nerves and trepidation about doing so, but I gained confidence due to the fact that those around me felt confident to allow me to take control.

My Personal Experience With Social Media Management In Football

After the departure of the previous incumbent, I officially became the club’s Social Media Manager ahead of the 2018/19 season. At that time, I was aged 19 and it feels remarkable looking back at that fact. I was entrusted with the club’s social media accounts and it was down to me to try and promote the club in as a professional and engaging way as I could from that point onwards.

I combined this with my duties in writing up all of the match previews/reports. You’d usually see a handful of people in a club’s media department. I’ve come across that within many other clubs and it’s rare to see a one person media department at any football club. I was pretty much a one man media team during my entire time at Hall Road.

The main positive of this was that I had complete freedom to do what I wanted, but I never let myself get carried away. It took a little while for me to build and establish my own voice in social media management in football through the club’s social media channels. I was always wary of putting both myself and the club into a difficult position by posting something completely wrong. There was always a sense that I was nervous about it which meant I initially didn’t attempt to try things out.

Having eventually gained the confidence to do so, I was then able to put my own strategy in place. This saw me become more and more confident and comfortable with social media management in football and allowed me to show the club in the perfect way. Through this, I had quite a bit of positive feedback from my fellow volunteers and people at other clubs. This showed that I was onto something good and only reinforced my growing belief that I liked social media management. Being a social media management helped me to learn new things and also the importance of social medial media for any organisation including a football club. It helped me to understand the power and harness the potential of social media. The visibility which social media management gives an organisation is unmatched.

To all those looking to be involved with doing the social media management in football for a football club, I strongly encourage you to throw yourself into it. You can learn as you go and it’s definitely okay to make mistakes as long as you take lessons from them and develop your skills. I never had any concrete knowledge or experience of it before I stumbled upon my first social media management role. I’ve basically taught myself how to effectively carry out my duties and that was definitely something I really enjoyed doing.