Department of Sport Management, Faculty of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
چکیده
Introduction: Instagram has become an increasingly popular tool for sport organizations all around the world to share visual content and communicate with fans (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2018). This study aimed to figure out how two professional sport teams in two different countries interact with their fans and use Instagram for branding purposes. In this study compared the off-season activity of two football clubs which had won their national league title in 2018-2019 season; Barcelona and Persepolis.
Methods: The study was exploratory in nature and used quantitative content analysis to address its research purpose. Content analysis was a systematic and replicable method for analyzing written and/or visual content (Riffe, 2019). This has been shown to be an appropriate method to examine social media in sport science (Anagnostopoulos et al., 2018). The study followed the official account of the teams from May 2018 to August 2019.
Results: Overall, Persepolis posted more than twice as many Instagram posts as Barcelona. Both teams used product-related attributes significantly more often than non-product-related attributes. Persepolis published 55 posts from the club's manager, while Barcelona published only one post.
Conclusion: The findings offer significant insights to sport marketers and brand managers in their effort to enhance fans engagement through social media. This research shows that Instagram is a very good platform for communication with fans and brand management. The professional behaviour of the club on Instagram affects its brand. During the periods when Persepolis blocked the comments of its posts, users had less participation on the club page. This will have a negative impact on the club brand and it is recommended to avoid these actions.
