How AS Roma became a football social media powerhouse

What PR pros can learn from about social media from Roma
By: Brelio Lozano

AS Roma is not the biggest football (soccer) team in the world, nor are they the richest, or have the most fans or even influence in the slightest. Off the field, however, they have changed the face of football with social media. While clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United may be have the most followers in the world, Roma has changed the way football clubs interact and engage with their fans. Now clubs from South Africa to Mexico are trying to replicate their success; but they still don’t it as well as Roma does. 

Here are three ways AS Roma has become a social media powerhouse in the world of football. 

Breaking the language barrier

Being a football club from Rome, Italy made it difficult for AS Roma to appeal to a wider audience. The first thing that Roma’s social media team recognized was that they needed to establish English communications on all their platforms. This allowed international fans to stay up to date with the football club. They rebuilt the website and increased the quality and quantity of content on the English platforms. Once that was established, it allowed the social media team to get creative and move forward with the account that gained them worldwide recognition, their English twitter account @ASRomaEn.

Be creative, not corporate

If you are a minnow in a sea of social media channels that all do the same thing on their channels, do it differently. Roma stepped away from the traditional approach that pretty much every football team was doing with their social media channels. Roma recognized that they didn’t need their twitter to be corporate in its content, they already had their website for that. Instead, they got creative, and sometimes even weird. From making meta jokes, bad parody videos (on purpose) and clever memes, Roma embraced what is known as “Football Twitter,” and took it to another level. After their success, football clubs all over the world followed Roma’s blueprint.

Engagement, Engagement, Engagement

Engagement, not follower count is the true metric for how well your social media channels are doing. For Roma, they recognized that the only way to build on the brand and empower their content would be by getting direct feedback from their fans. By going to the source, Roma was able to truly understand the wants, needs and interests of those who interact with their channels.

Using these three guiding principals, Roma’s social media channels rose from 5 million to 15 million social media followers in just three years. However, staying stagnant in this industry never works, and Roma is already pushing the envelope in terms of what football social media teams can do on their platforms. 

Roma is leaving strange and meme videos in the past, and has started doing campaigns and initiatives that benefit third parties. From a series called “Team of the Day,” to sharing images of missing children alongside straightforward player announcement videos to raise awareness, the effects of their social good campaigns were profound, with a number of children were found safe and returned to their loved ones.  

Click here to read more about “The Inside Story Of A Social Media Changing Football’s Face.”

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