The Grey Cup happened! And it was sad if you weren’t a Stampeders fan.
Let’s watch that amazing Brandon Banks almost-touchdown again.
Hang on, I need a tissue.
And with that, welcome to the final edition of the CFL social media score card!
Catch up with our previous score cards:
Grey Cup Time!
Of course, being the Grey Cup, only two teams played. The final score was Hamilton 16, Calgary 20. But who really won, when all’s said and done? Let’s find out.
Audience
The top 3 teams with the largest social media audiences for Week 22 are unchanged from last week and the week before that. They are:
1st Place: Saskatchewan Roughriders
2nd Place: Montreal Alouettes
3rd Place: BC Lions
The Lions continue to slowly pull away from the 4th place Bombers. Now the Bombers need 70,780 fans to catch up, an increase of 419 from last week.
Now let’s take a look at the audience growth for Grey Cup week:
And unlike last week, the Stamps are on top when it comes to audience growth. Way to bandwagon, Calgary! (Says the bitter Ticats fan.)
I am also seriously proud of the REDBLACKS. Even though their team didn’t do well this year, they’re building their base for next season. Well done!
Activity
The top 3 most active teams on social media for Grey Cup week:
1st Place: Calgary Stampeders
2nd Place: Toronto Argonauts
3rd Place: BC Lions
The Argos did a really fantastic job piggybacking on Grey Cup tweets. First off, their Grey Cup Twitter logo cracked me up:
Like our new Twitter look for today @calstampeders? #BeatTheTicats won't you? #GreyCup #CFL pic.twitter.com/znDAgeSG0p
— Toronto Argonauts (@TorontoArgos) November 30, 2014
Secondly, they posted consistently and well during the game, responding to fans and foes alike. Well done, Argos! Now let’s take a look at the change in activity for Grey Cup week:
This chart really illustrates what happens when a team checks out one week and then comes back strong the next. I’m also really surprised by the decrease by the Tiger-Cats account. As a follower, I anecdotally noticed that they were comparatively quiet and I wondered what was up, considering it’s Grey Cup and all. They didn’t reply to any tweets before or during the game, and their only replies lately have been answers to questions about buying swag. I’m curious if they just changed their social media strategy — it feels really stale and away from the brand voice of the Tiger-Cats.
Engagement
These are the teams who took the top spots for engagement this week:
1st Place: Calgary Stampeders
2nd Place: Hamilton Tiger-Cats
3rd Place: BC Lions
The difference between the Stampeders and Tiger-Cats is massive. The Stampeders had almost as much engagement as the main CFL account and about 5x more than the Ticats account. Again, this is where actually talking to your fans (and winning a Grey Cup, that helps too) really makes your account shine. People want to talk to an account that talks to them!
Now let’s take a look at the change in engagement for Grey Cup week:
I love how these charts really tell a story. Look at the massive change in engagement for the top 3 teams, and then the Ticats with negative engagement! This is what separates great social media from mediocrity.
Top Posts
Here’s a look at the most engaging content for Grey Cup week:
.@Ticats Sup? pic.twitter.com/z3Y1TNpXLp
— Toronto Argonauts (@TorontoArgos) December 1, 2014
I am not even a little bit surprised that this tweet came in first. This tweet also shows the virtue of planning in social media. They remembered the Ticats’ tweet, and wanted to give them back a little of their own medicine. Well, it worked!
(I am curious to see what the Argos had planned if the Ticats won. I bet they would say that they knew that the Ticats wouldn’t win but they must have had something.)
Post by the Calgary Stampeders. This makes sense to be the top post. It was the #YearOfTheHorse after all.
And it’s the Stamps Instagram again!
And as I said earlier, where were the Ticats? They were on top last week and just totally bottomed out. Yes, we lost, but where’s the engagement?
Fan Activity
Since it was a relatively busy week for more teams than just the Stamps and Ticats, we’ll include the full week’s worth of fan activity in our results, but just show the Grey Cup game on the graph below.
The top 3 teams with the most active fans are:
1st Place: Calgary Stampeders
2nd Place: Hamilton Tiger-Cats (by only 512 mentions less than the Stamps)
3rd Place: Saskatchewan Roughriders (who else)
One thing I’d like to note here – the Stamps and Ticats were just about equal in fan activity during the game, as you can see in the chart. So even though the Ticats account itself was really lacklustre, the fans were taking up the slack.
The Riders, of course, continue to be just as noisy during the off-season as they are during the on-season. It’s kind of amazing. I’m hoping to make it to a Riders game next year, when they’re playing the Ticats. It’ll be amazing to see Rider Nation at home. And yes, I will wear my Ticats jersey.
Who’s the Big Winner?
Here’s how we figured out the social media winner:
1. We pulled the data from the Audience, Activity, Fan Activity and Engagement charts, then normalized it.
2. Next, we added a weighting factor to reflect what data we felt was most important and gave it a weighting. The weightings from most important to least important are:
Fan Activity
Engagement
Activity
Audience
3. Finally, we added up the results!
Even though the Ticats phoned it home on their official accounts, the fans pulled them out to finish second. The Lions will discuss their 2015 season all off-season, while Riders Nation is basically auto-posting at this point.
Argos, I salute you and your snarky tweets. Even though I don’t like it.
Bonus: Mikhaila sums up the Grey Cup with a single tweet:
— resting witch face (@miktacular) December 1, 2014
Thank you!
And that wraps up our CFL social media scorecard series. I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as we enjoyed writing them.