Over the past several decades, Canadians have been
able to come behind individual athletes to watch them achieve greatness. Though
unable to compete themselves, the loyalty and devotion shown to them as fans
has been a driving force in the success known as “Team Canada”. Team Canada’s
social media is an avid portrayal of their willingness to make sport accessible
and to demonstrate that anyone is capable of achieving greatness if they only
believe. From inspiring graphics that feature athletes young and old alike, to
articles that showcase Canada’s triumphs on the playing field, Team Canada is
able to perfectly capture what it means to be Canadian.
Due to the fact that Team Canada is nearly a cult
phenomenon, they have a fairly large social media presence and therefore are
able to gain a lot of traction with their posts and content sharing. The Team
Canada Facebook page has 756,992 page likes, with post likes ranging from 24 to
50,000 depending on the content relevance. Twitter comes in with a close second
at having 561 thousand followers, and Instagram with 84.5 thousand followers.
Though not reaching over a million likes/followers on either page, Team Canada
also maintains several other forums, such as the Paralympic pages, the Canadian
Olympic Team Foundation, and individual sport pages (Cycling or Hockey to name
a few). Surprisingly however, they are able to interact with their followers on
nearly every platform; whether it’s by adding to the conversation, addressing
concerns or simply stating another point. They seem to keep their commentary
relatable and often times add inspiring messages to satisfy their fans. By
using the “Join the Olympic Club” slogan, they are able to make the Olympic
team exclusive yet also widely attainable for anyone who wishes to participate.
By highlighting the word ‘Club’, Team Canada has ensured that their fan base
will feel included and apart of the selection process for every Olympic Games.
In some ways, they encourage you to pretend to be an Olympian without actually
having to be one.
Though the message that they are sharing online is
relevant to their content, the one noticeable issue with their three social
media platforms is that the same content is shared across the board. Their
Instagram and Twitter are fairly similar with an image and a link being shown
for both; the same image and link is later shared in full on the Facebook page.
By having the same content across three platforms poses the risk of losing a
follower base for each one. If viewers see that the same content is being
shared on all three platforms and they follow all three, they will most likely
unfollow one or the other due to repetitive content – no one wants to see the
same thing twice (or three times in this case). The upside to this however is
that the content itself will get more views and more traction because it is
being shared on multiple platforms; everyone has their chosen media source and
therefore will prefer one over another. Instagram leverages graphics and
images, such as one of their most recent campaigns, the 100 day countdown to
Rio 2016. Everyday Team Canada showcases a moment in Olympic history achieved
by a Canadian Athlete; they highlight up and coming Olympic athletes and give
them an opportunity to say hello!
The use of these images on
Instagram are clean and easy to understand, and basically begging to be shared
and screenshotted for use on followers accounts. By having athletes as the
mainstage of nearly all their posts, fans and young athletes alike can print
out the images of their favourite athletes for inspiration. In some ways, this
brings back a devoted follower base who rely on real time images of their
favourite athletes to watch; the Team Canada page gets more hits and
interaction if you have people returning for content based images and ideas.
Take the #iceinourveins campaign for example; the use of new and veteran athletes
has people returning to the site time after time to re-watch the magic of what
enfolded in the Arctic. In fact, this video now has over 75,000 views on
YouTube and thousands more across the platforms on which it has been shared.
The #iceinourveins campaign was an idea to demonstrate
that Canadians no matter where we go, will take a piece of our northern pride
with us. Even though we are travelling to Brazil, we will take the snow and ice
with us to win Gold this summer. The video is a great portrayal of who we are
as Canadians; individuals who can brave the cold to achieve their dreams
however, it would have been interesting to see this version of what they did,
shot down in Brazil. It could have been foreshadowing showing Team Canada arriving
in a gust of cold air and swirling snow (embracing the stereotype) and emerging
as victors in the hot summer sun. Instead of using the #iceinourveins by
itself, you could introduce a second hashtag, #heatinourhearts – Team Canada is
fired up for Gold!
Overall, Team Canada’s social media can be considered
to be greatly successful. They help athletes find sponsors, motivation and help
them realize their fan base. They do an excellent job of reaching out to their
fan base and encouraging them to donate, connect and envision themselves as a
part of the team; after all, the slogan “Join the Club” is used throughout
every platform. Though the content that they share could be divided more
equally between platforms, the message itself is for the fans and those fans
seem to enjoy exactly what Team Canada is serving up.
