What are the themes and formats that brought a strong commitment to Portuguese clubs on Twitter?

This week, The Metrics Factory looked at how Portuguese clubs have been speaking on social networks over the past few months in order to find out what formats and themes have brought a strong commitment to Portuguese clubs on Twitter.

To do this, we extracted all the tweets* from the 18 Portuguese clubs** in the first division to see what themes and formats aroused the most enthusiasm among users of this social network.

After the extraction, we looked at the 3 tweets that generated the most engagements for each of them.

Major victories, achievements, retirements and the transfer window

Unsurprisingly, the tweets that generated the most commitments for the Lisbon clubs Benfica and Sporting correspond to their respective victories in the league and the Portuguese Cup. Famalicão's unexpected victory against Sporting also allowed the club, which was still in control of La Liga last weekend, to achieve one of its best results in terms of likes and RT.

https://twitter.com/SLBenfica/status/1131960549632118784

https://twitter.com/Sporting_CP/status/1132287348614369281

https://twitter.com/FCF1931_Oficial/status/1176254553517436934

The return of Paços de Ferreira to the first division and the format chosen also contributed to this tweet achieving one of the best results in the club's history on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/fcpf/status/1119573198251667457

The transfer market and the arrival of players with a certain international visibility have also allowed some clubs that are less in the spotlight or that do not play in the top positions to record higher-than-normal scores, such as CD Aves or even Marítimo Madeira, with the arrivals of Enzo Zidane and Daizen Maeda.

https://twitter.com/cdaves1930/status/1150784887076642823

https://twitter.com/MaritimoMadeira/status/1153655229923188736

In addition, we note a great success for the tweet evoking the return of Fábio Coentrão to Rio Ave.

https://twitter.com/RioAve_FC/status/1035563640970260487

When we look at the top-3 of SL Benfica and FC Porto for example, two of the three tweets with the most commitments correspond to the retirement of Jonas and the departure of João Félix for Atlético Madrid, while the 3 tweets from FC Porto concern the arrivals of Marchesin, Luis Diaz and Nakajima.

https://twitter.com/FCPorto/status/1147228703044308993

https://twitter.com/SLBenfica/status/1148654186470531078

One of the other tweets that worked quite well for CD Aves refers to the retirement of the former goalkeeper of the Portuguese selection Quim.

https://twitter.com/cdaves1930/status/1012409327951532032

Fourth Portuguese club with the largest number of fans on Twitter, SC Braga achieved one of their best scores by relaying a statement criticizing the refereeing during the match against Benfica.

https://twitter.com/scbragaoficial/status/1122593150676213760?lang=fr

Daring themes, different formats, messages of support and fair play

To obtain good results, some clubs do not hesitate to use great resources by addressing daring themes or different formats. This is for example the case of Vitória SC, which in two tweets initiated a discussion with the ex-actress of pornographic films Mia Khalifa,”Fan of all the clubs that play Arsenal“, and therefore a fan of Guimarães who just faced them in the Europa League, or even SC Braga who announced the arrival of the new reinforcement Diogo Viana using the codes of the reality TV show Secret Story.

https://twitter.com/miakhalifa/status/1173480454244093952

https://twitter.com/miakhalifa/status/1173891915596668928

https://twitter.com/SCBragaOficial/status/1143578119397367808

Numerous messages of support are also displayed by the Portuguese teams, often the “smallest” ones, sent to the teams qualified for the European Cup. This is the case, for example, with clubs from Tondela, Santa Clara, Moreirense or Vitória FC.

In the 3 most engaging tweets from Sporting, we also note a message of congratulations sent to the last winner of the Champions League, Liverpool.

Messages of sympathy following the death of a player or of support when a player announces that he is suffering from a serious illness contribute greatly to strengthening the commitment of the clubs concerned, but also of other clubs that know how to show solidarity at these times.

Support was indeed numerous after the death of Edu from Boavista FC and the announcement of the cancer of Nuno Pinto from Vitória FC.

https://twitter.com/boavistaoficial/status/944922378517254145

https://twitter.com/GilVicente_fc/status/1074722729276923906

Another example of fair play was signed by Tondela who thanked the Feirense club for saving his fans the stands in the rain... a tweet that was later even published in the columns of the famous sports media A Bola.

https://twitter.com/CDTondela1933/status/1185605649335541762

To conclude with a great story, a tweet published by Boavista FC which was also very successful on social networks: a papi fan of the club was able to realize his dream and see a match of his favorite club at the stadium... from his hospital bed.

https://twitter.com/boavistaoficial/status/1048993198536835076

Two types of tweets are therefore very popular depending on the status of the club and the themes addressed:

• those that mainly refer to major victories (championships, cups, achievements) as well as recruitments or departures during the transfer window.

• those that address different themes and adopt original formats (Guimarães, SC Braga).

*Analysis carried out until October 25, 2019.

**For Benfica, Porto and Sporting, we limited ourselves to tweets from the last 6 months.