Social Media Strategy of IPL Teams – Kings XI Punjab

This review is a part of our ‘Social Media Strategy Review’ series where we do a 360 degree analysis of a brand’s entire social media activity. You can read the reviews of more brands here,

By the time you will read this, Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) would have weathered GayleStorm and registered a fabulous win over RCB, but that would not do much to improve the team chances to cement its place in the next stage.

Despite having some big names, KXIP has not performed up to its fans or owners’ expectations in much of the IPL seasons. But the team has a set of loyal fans that keep busy thinking about the team, boosting its morale, standing by it through thick and thin, and making as big a noise as fans of any IPL teams on social media, or do they?

This is what we are set to analyze in this article. Let’s dive in and begin our journey with analyzing KXIP’s Facebook activities.

Kings XI Punjab on Facebook:

After seeing tens of lakhs of fans for different IPL teams, it was time to look for a team which has a comparatively modest numbers of fans, though fairly active on the page, and the engagement is not passive (liking and sharing), but it is very active. No other page has seen as many comments on its posts on Facebook wall as did posts on the wall of KIXP, particularly for a team that has merely 334,495 fans, of which 38,455 are actively engaged with the page.

And the fans join forces to shout at the top of their voice, which echoes in the following Facebook posts in the form of likes, shares, and comments, and engagements therein.

At the time of writing, KXIP had 334,495 fans of which 38,455 were not just talking about the team but were gaga over the recent success of the team in the match against RCB. KXIP fans drooled over David Miller who knocked a cracking century in the match. Examples of which can be seen in the second and third image below this paragraph.

Content Strategy

Social media team of KXIP has kept the team’s Facebook wall colored with posts related to match, which received as many comments as did other posts on the wall, as you can see in the screenshots below.

And along with match –related updates, KXIP has posted some occasional quizzes, fun facts, and images around the IPL team’s identity (for example, the KXIP cake, as posted below). At times, the team has also posted images made of tweets talking about team’s success. The image in question presents tweets around Miller’s knock.

Engagement

Fans of KXIP are passionate about the team and its players, typical to the region represented by the team, which is known for buoyance and strong attachment to things dwellers like. This can be seen not only in the numbers of Facebook posts made by KXIP fans, but in actual posts, as evident from the shouts to get Gilly (Adam Gilchrist) back as well as the ones shared elsewhere in the article.

In total there had been 2176 posts done in the studied period, of which only 547 were done by the admins and rest 1629 came from KXIP fans.

As far as the timing is concerned, KXIP fans are active on the wall on almost everyday. Among the teams reviewed so far, KXIP fans are more engaged on daily basis, to which the team responds with matching frequency of posts, except on Saturdays.

Sentiment in the posts

Although 51.2% of posts on KXIP wall had a neutral tone, the rest was colored with emotion. If 45.5% were favourable to the team, 3.3% were negative, which is a little higher than other teams reviewed so far, but not something to lose sleep over.

Kings XI Punjab on Twitter:

With a total follower-base of 108,232 people (of which around 69,000 fans were gained during the studied period), twitter page of KXIP did not match the numbers churned out by other teams on twitter, but in terms of engagement, KXIP fared well. Unlike tweets on other pages, tweets on KXIP’s twitter stream happen to be more engaging. Like KXIP Facebook Wall, twitter stream has also witnessed pretty active engagement –followers do not only retweet and favorite a tweet, but actively participate in the conversation, as you can see from the second and the third images posted below.

KXIP’s Twitter stream is full of tweets and retweets about David Miller’s memorable knock, and like other posts by the team (both on Facebook and Twitter), they attracted many comments.

The twitter stream also covered a fair deal of posts with hashtag #TeachMeGilly which attracted comments from twitter-verse.

Twitter activities

Of 3175 tweets that the team broadcasted in the studied period (from January 01, 2013 till date), 53% were proactive in nature, whereas 25% were retweets and 22% were replies. It is nearly perfect mix of proactive, retweets, and replies in the twitter stream.

And the team has also employed all twitter elements with some degree of weighted uniformity with hashtags (#KXIPL, #KXIP, and others) finding their way into a tweet more than other elements. But in replies, KXIP’s tweets appear to favor “request to view link” more than other elements.

Hours between 9am and 12:00hrs (midnight) kept social media team of KXIP busy, with a particular focus on hours between 3pm and 12:00hrs (midnight). In fact, starting at 9am, the tweeter activities started getting momentum with every passing hour peaking at 9pm after which the activities slowed, and came to a complete halt around 3am in the morning.

Sentiments

In its tweets and replies, KXIP maintained a neutral disposition, which can be seen in the following screenshot displaying the overall sentiment displayed on the platform. 69% of them were neutral whereas, 26% and 3% displayed respectively positive and negative sentiments. 3% is a bit too high for the negative sentiment, but then the team that has followers so passionate displaying negativity may not hurt, at times.

Kings XI Punjab on YouTube

On YouTube, KXIP has done a better job than Kolkata Knight Riders, Delhi Daredevils, Mumbai Indians, and Chennai Super Kings but it falls short on the benchmark set by Royal Challengers Bangalore. In the period between the warm-up period (starting from January 01, 2013) and May 8, 2013, KXIP has uploaded 30 new videos to its YouTube channel and gained 815 new subscribers while causing 72,058 new views (see the images below).

Content Strategy

Unlike many other IPL teams and like Royal Challengers Bangalore, KXIP has taken YouTube seriously. It has developed some good quality content pieces for the platform, which included a video of Preity Zinta, the co-owner of the team, and which happens to be the most-viewed video during the studied period (see the image below the video for rest of the top 5 videos). Miss Zinta’s video also became one of the top 5 “all time” most-viewed videos, in fact, 2 among the top 5 “all time” most-viewed videos were uploaded during this IPL (see the second image).

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It was a welcome relief to see that the videos uploaded on KXIP’s YouTube Channel were casual in nature and not merely match footages. They gave an insider peek into players’ personal domain. There were a couple of videos of match practices and players’ interaction sort as well. Average length of videos posted by the team was 1-2 minutes, which is around ideal length. Overall, KXIP has done a decent job on YouTube.

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Kings XI Punjab on Google+:

KIXP has dodged Pinterest, but it has earned a prominent position on Google+, unlike any other IPL team reviewed so far in the series. In total, 64,645 people have circled KXIP on Google+, which is way more than the number of followers of any other team on the platform. The team has also witnessed a good level of interaction on this platform, which has eluded other teams. Social media team of KXIP has also employed some key hashtags to improve the visibility of its posts (see the images below).

Conclusion: Kings XI Punjab on Social Media

Kings XI Punjab has used all kinds of content on its Facebook page, and it has been well patronized by its fans, but the fan-base is not very vast, which the team needs to work on. Along with that, the team also needs to develop a proper content plan for Facebook. In the absence of which, it has missed out on providing variety in the posts. Although it has provided occasional variety in terms of quizzes, fun facts, etc., but their percentage is a little low.

KXIP faced the same limitation on twitter which it faced on Facebook—the follower-base isn’t big enough, but the good news is it has been growing since the beginning of the warm-up period. Along with this, the team also needs to focus on using its main hashtags (#KXIP, #KXIPL) more often. The social media team of KXIP should also focus on uploading images and videos.

In comparison, KXIP has done a commendable job on YouTube. It has missed out on a couple of things; for example, the team should have uploaded the highlights of Miller’s innings which the team’s fans have been drooling over on Facebook and Twitter and then shared the links on both the abovementioned social media websites, but overall the job was done well. But by not using YouTube video on Facebook, Kings XI Punjab fell short of getting more traffic to its videos. The team should have shared its videos on Facebook at least to get more eyeballs.

On Google+, KXIP has done a far better job than any other teams I reviewed so fars, and even fans have shown a lot of affection for the team on this platform, which is unheard of for any other IPL team. It has also displayed social media pragmatism in including hashtags in its G+ posts, which was not there on any team’s G+ posts. But to make the most of hashtags, the social media team of Kings XI Punjab should have included team’s hashtags that it uses on twitter. And the team should also think of making a profile on Pinterest.