Member Article

Leeds-made social media monitoring tool is shortlisted in Football Business Awards

A social media monitoring tool developed by a Yorkshire-based online marketing agency and used by some of the biggest names in British football has been shortlisted in the Football Business Awards.

Social media monitoring dashboard Social Pundit (www.socialpundit.co.uk) has been developed by Leeds agency Blueclaw and has been shortlisted in the awards’ Best/Most Innovative use of Technology in Football category, alongside top football-related business brands including EA Sports and Opta.

The software is currently used by a number of major clubs, including Birmingham City and QPR.

It primarily allows clubs to monitor players’ tweets 24/7, sending email alerts to club officials when a player tweets something they shouldn’t, assessed against a database of over 3,000 trigger words – ranging from minor swear words to racist terms.

Sean Walsh, head of social media at Blueclaw, said: “Social Pundit is really beginning to take off and all those clubs that have adopted the platform have found it to be massively useful.

“At its simplest it allows clubs to keep abreast of what athletes and staff are doing on social media and provides valuable social media intelligence than can help measure and shape commercial opportunities.”

The Football Business Awards are now in their second year, with the winners to be announced in all 15 categories during a ceremony at Chelsea FC on November 7.

Sean added: “Just to be mentioned in the same sentence as a number of huge football and sports brands within a year of launching is a fantastic achievement, and those who have worked to develop Pundit – including the clubs who helped pilot the software – deserve a big thank you.”

Social Pundit was developed in October 2012 as an online dashboard and piloted by Birmingham City FC.

Birmingham City’s head of media and comms, Andy Walker, has been closely involved in its development and describes its benefits: “Social Pundit helps to act as a constant reminder to our playing squad that their status as role models requires them to use social media responsibly.

“In particular with Social Pundit’s Twitter tracking tool, alerts are e-mailed out to myself whenever one of our players tweets an inappropriate word and I can then act accordingly.

“It’s not a case of us not trusting our players as often an innocent tweet could be taken out of context and create a bigger PR issue.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mark Lane .