How The Sun Sport used data to score a hat-trick on Facebook for Euro 2020

Our content plan was clear. We wanted to pick only the very best stories for our readers to provide them with content they were unlikely to receive from our competitors. Valuable experience from the 2018 World Cup, combined with months of analytical preparation, made it clear that highlighting moments our readers may have missed was of particular interest.

Tournaments such as these allow us to promote our key pillars as a brand to our audience - a varied offering of unrivaled sports coverage to keep our audience engaged and loyal.

But a project of this scale does bring challenges, and Euro 2020 was no different. The sensitivity surrounding Christian Eriksen’s shocking cardiac arrest for example, meant our team had to ensure the news we were delivering through Facebook was accurate, fast, thoughtful and factual.

Optimizing for Facebook

Facebook as a platform allows us to provide far more detail than its competitors. From the freedom to alter headlines, unlike with Twitter’s limited card-editing capabilities, to changing imagery and adding our own carefully crafted captions, each post is a story within itself.

Our team is confident that there is no story that we can’t turn into a triumph. A column from Mourinho backing Harry Kane to score can become: ‘Mourinho delivers crushing blow to Germany’s defenders.’ The positive sentiment from our audience within Facebook comments indicates that our offering is well received. From comments such as: ‘this is the best thing I’ve read today!’ to ‘I’ll be honest, I didn’t know that - thanks folks.’

Throughout Euro 2020, we worked closely with our writers to produce social-friendly content and repackage existing content in an intriguing way to migrate our Facebook audience across to our website.

Our plan was built on months of data and analysis over the best times to post, with the team constantly scouring reporting dashboards to monitor content in real time and identifying only the very best content verticals and genres to pursue. This extended to our breaking news strategy, whereby real-time monitoring of analytical tools allowed us to be first to stories, and utilize Facebook’s ‘breaking news indicator’ to quickly communicate urgent news and build audience loyalty through our coverage.

Using optimized paid activity to re-engage infrequent readers towards the end of June was yet another demonstration of deploying our Facebook strategy in the best possible way. Facebook’s ‘in-feed recommendations’ tool allowed us to drive unique readers to our website. Months of data and analysis served us very well here. We were able to pinpoint particular star names such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Maguire that this feature picked up, meaning we could target this more specifically and generate page views directly from this function, on top of the already enormous organic numbers.

Additionally, our forward planning also accounted for any quieter points throughout the tournament. Utilizing analytical tools such as Parse.ly and Newship meant we had prepared a catalog of features and evergreen stories to help target specific stars and countries on days in which interest was high, and thus deliver our Facebook audience with ‘fresh’ content.

Targeting Different Audiences

Establishing our ‘core’ Facebook demographic and audience was yet another part of our data analysis that helped set us up to deliver throughout Euro 2020. We quickly ascertained that speaking to a younger audience was key, which meant being selective about how we spoke to them. Whilst a headline on our website might read: ‘the game quickly descended into chaos’, our group of hungry young social media managers acknowledged this isn’t how their peers would speak socially and thus adapted accordingly.

Using our suite of Facebook pages (including The Sun’s ‘main’ pages), we could engage different audiences outside of our typical male demographic. A vast proportion of our web traffic for the story about Eriksen’s cardiac arrest on the pitch came from women on the main Sun Facebook page. This highlights a strong ability to be able to adapt to different audiences.

The Results

Our plan was not to simply post links on Facebook in the hope that the headline and imagery was already attractive enough, but for us as a social team to delve deeper into our stories, pick out the best and most compelling narratives within, and provide our readers with a richer level of coverage. This as a result would leave that audience feeling informed and enlightened, thus feeling a closer connection with our brand. This allowed us to not only better only page view total from the 2018 World Cup, but smash the previous record and allow for social to be the biggest referrer for Euros content across the entire Sun.

This campaign was a winner at The Drum Awards for Social Media. To find out more, including which competitions are currently open for entry, visit The Drum Awards website.