nail on the head

Improvement in our use of social media is a must - it's the modern world and something the Giants need to embrace before they fall even further behind.

However, the reason I think it's vital is nothing to do with attracting new fans, it's to do with retaining the current young fans that we have at our games to stop them disappearing when they hit a certain age by ensuring we continue to engage with them.

It can't do any harm in attracting new fans but I've yet to see evidence or hope that it will encourage new fans to part with their money to watch us - it needs to be part of a much wider effort but isn't going to do anything on its own.

you also have to remember that other clubs fans tend to have RL ingrained in their family's tradition so don't have to be 'found' as they are already aware and probably interested, we don't have that...HTFC maybe but not us.

And i still dont 'get' how 1,500 people seeing a tweet/status from the Giants on a website will help anymore than what it does now, maybe as an 'older' one someone can explain this ? like i said seeing and doing are 2 different things !

i see adverts for the 5 nations kick and clapathon but never in my living days will i want to attend any so how would we appeal to people who have the same thoughts about our sport ?.

Social media is more or less advertising which is probably easier to access for most people.

If I 'Like' or 'Share' a status or post on Facebook, then all of my friends will also see it. Say I had 1000 FB 'friends' (I don't!!!) and one of them also liked and they had 1000 friends etc....

Just because you have seen an advert for the 6 Nations that will never interest you didn't mean it's not a success - maybe that advert was seen by 10 other people who have never heard of it and want to check it out. Do you suggest the RFU are going stop advertising based on one person's opinions?

Ask yourself how rugby union can continue to sell out numerous internationals a year at 80,000+ as well as domestic and European competitions. They arguably have the product AND the marketing to sustain it

Daz. Think of Twitter marketing like a Blunderbuss. You fire lots of tiny 'pellets' only expecting a few of them to hit the target.

If you had a bigger gun more pellets would fit in it and therefore you are likely to hit your target easier. If every message you send out is instantly delivered to thousands of potential parties and they repeat that message forward to their followers it can instantly reach more potential targets.

Of course, for the club an instant solution for this 'lack of followers' is to ensure the players retweet selected posts. This would instantly increase the exposure with minimal effort.

Let's not forget that the club have been 'stung' after the Keith Mason incident therefore may be reticent to social media.

ok, but who exactly are the targets and why would it make more people come or become interested? thats what i'm trying to fathom and surely if people are interested in us they will already be friends or whatever you do with them?

i dont understand twitter so no idea how it works regarding people getting this sudden interest in Huddersfield Giants because of it, sorry if i'm sounding ignorant about it !



Edit : so arent the giants on twitter then ? they're on facebook arent they ?

The target audience is people who aren't currently attending Giants games and also those that are. In general, everybody

I didn't even know we had a Facebook page, and I'm 24..... The twitter feed is ok, it would be good to see them use old footage such as big hits, memorable tries etc.

For example in the first weekly round, they could use a line such as 'on this day in 2013'.... and then a link to a giants YouTube channel with Jerry's try against saints with the sky commentary.

It all creates awareness and shows what we are capable of on the field.

some good points

the players themselves have lots of followers, they could help on twitter spreading the word, which i have seen them do recently actually

crabtree has 29.9k followers.... more than huddersfield Giants themselves



the club needs to be different and use initiative and ideas such as above a good.

big hits from games and great tries could get hundreds of retweets/shares and go viral all creating interest.

sure we had a few different pages on facebook too at one point, bit confusing but think the club have merged them now and made an official one.

hope someone from the club reads these posts!!

There are quite a few Facebook pages for the Giants. In view of various comments on RLFans, would there be anything to be gained by 'merging' them all so that there is one focal point for ALL Giants fans?

I one per cent of those who saw it and that someone they knew was going to a game and decided to give it a go that would be 15 people who might come that would not otherwise.