id argue considering our performances, our insta, facebook and twitter numbers are very good
clearly we have more of an older supporter base though just by looking at our tik tok numbers
if youre over the age of 25 and have tik tok, you need to re-evaluate your life choices
Social media is important. Followers is one thing engagement is another.
Each of those platforms have a different group of users (different age, sex, etc).
Given our performance and membership numbers, I’d say our social media figures based on that chart are doing incredibly well.
Our membership base would be in the 40s to 60s somewhere. The kind of people who are more likely to respond to emails and text messages than respond to social media posts. And looking at some of the responses to social media posts, I wouldn’t call them engagement. More just annoyed people acting a particular way that they wouldn’t face-to-face. Likes are a good measure but the shares are the best measure to go by.
We do need to be better with social media though. We need more content to begin with. And we need to be allowed to have some fun with it. GWS do well, but their fan base is very different. If we were to mimic their posts, we’d have many irate supporters responding ‘stop talking rubbish and get a hard ball get’. Or some kind of rubbish like that.
To me, fan engagement is social media. But the more valuable fan engagement is when someone gets up from what they are usually doing and goes somewhere just for the experience. I’m not talking about games. They sort themselves out.
I’m talking about training sessions. Club events. Your home base. We struggle terribly with that part of it.
And I get Tullamarine isn’t inviting, but I don’t think that is the driving factor. I think it’s more the players engagement back to its fans. And it doesn’t help when it’s unclear when pre-season training sessions are held, or that there’s not enough car spaces for Family Day, or it’s too tough to get to Windy Hill early for the shuttle bus to Tullamarine, etc.
There is a function room at Tullamarine that looks straight over the training field. How often is it used? Does anyone know how to book it or when it’s available?
Why not open it up for use during training sessions to reward those die hard fans who still want come to watch their players train?
There is a lot of work to do.
In a way, that work began this year (since 2020, each year has been screwed by covid isolation). But it’s still well below where it can be. Hopefully we just continue to get better year on year and try and bridge the gap.
But to begin with, we need the content. And it needs to be shared more often than currently shared (club outwards).
Is there a problem with that? 
There was no chance I was ever going to let my kids choose!!
Tiktok is absolute garbage and needs to be banned.
I cancelled two memberships at the end of last year. Got the notification to say they were reinstating them for free towards the end of this season. Membership renewal received yesterday - yep, an extra $300 for these two memberships included 
EDIT - I already thought it was sneaky and underhand that the club artificially increased the membership figures by the whole reinstating cancelled members thing. But for them to then just slip them into renewals again - it really ■■■■■■ me off. It’s sleazy and embarrassing and not the way the club I’ve loved for so long should operate.
They have also added away game access at a charge that you have no option of removing.
The line they are running with is that the increases are “aligning with other clubs and enabling to invest in the football program”
Pay for my somewhat seperate EFC membership through an additional add-on when paying annual MCC fees…
Said all year I wasn’t going to tick the box and pay the additional EFC 2024 part as very underwhelmed of club direction (and really just in general!).
Seduced by the Crows game and paid for both a couple of days later. It was all downhill from that game and now I’m really regretting it.
I have put this in writing on this thread and ‘Saving’ this post to remember this feeling around July/August next year when it’s time to do it again. I won’t be.
Jeez, if you’re EFC and have managed to annoy even That Koala Bloke sufficiently that the swear filter is getting triggered, you know you’ve done stuffed up…
only so much can a koala bear…
That is illegal and I’d be calling the club immediately and threatening to take it further
Not sure if it’s just me but the cost of the membership in the email was quite different to the invoice amount when you click through the link.
Based of 2023 my membership increased 11% but the invoice amount was an increase of 24%. I’ve emailed the club and asking for clarity on the actual cost.
What the actual???
Social media ‘following’ is driven by two factors: On field success (1) and the quality of the content (2).
On field success is obviously not something that can be directly changed immediately. However, the quality and quantity of the content can be. Our content is uninspiring, lacks creativity, doesn’t connect directly with the fan base as successfully as it could / should.
You only have to spend some time looking at what North Melbourne, Richmond and Collingwood (examples of great socials output) produce to see how lacking our is.
Issue with respect to this specifically is, I doubt our new CEO is innately passionate or across the social marketing / fan engagement industry so likely at this stage trusts his team to do its thing, not necessarily aware how good / poor the team is or it’s content. So, it likely doesn’t get the focus or attention it needs to improve. As a result, fan engagement is below industry best practice and the latest social engagement statistics confirm this.
Those Facebook, Twitter numbers are historically high and have been leading in these channels for a decade. Put that down to the best social marketing and commercial team in the AFL who built those numbers between 2000-2020. Justin Rodski (Storm CEO), Nick Truelson (Melb United CEO) among key marketing execs the last 15 years responsible for what was widely believed to be the best social / fan engagement team in Australian sport for over a decade.
Instagram and Tik Tok are the latest Chanel’s. The stats indicate Essendon haven’t connected with fans the last 3-4 years anywhere nearly successful relative to what we should have.
Because as the years have gone on we’re angry and we’ve been ■■■■. They probably don’t want their staff getting abused. It’s not that hard to understand. Can’t compare our engagement to over 10 years ago when we weren’t as bad for such a long period of time as we are now.
Auto-renewal following a significant price increase can GAGF.
Making me have to actively engage in admin. I’ll probably still get a membership next year but this inconvenience alone is making me question it.
Meanwhile my membership has only gone up by $7. This is only 5%.
Geez that’s disgusting the auto-renewal for what was a free giveaway that Bessie and Koala have shared.
Terrific post. There’s slot in there.
We agree the content quality and quantity is poor. Essendon used to be the benchmark in the AFL. All its great executives were poached by the sporting industry as a nod to its success.
The Giants do a great job. However, the content needs to appeal to all demographics so that’s the point of a good socials team. Presently, the young followers get little content, uninspiring stuff. The older members don’t really hear from the Chairman or CEO.
When compared to the industry, Essendon largely has shut up shop and stopped engaging with its fans. It may not be intentional but that’s what it has done.
Agree it’s multilayered. Your post nailed it well. There’s lots of work to do to address fan engagement. And why is this important? If you’re not connecting with fans, they won’t attend games, engage with the club, buy memberships etc…
And winning games is separate to this.
My international digital membership isn’t so expensive in the scheme of memberships, but good lord it’s getting jacked up by 20%!