Player Voices on Twitter

Here's a quick hit post about women's soccer players using Twitter to amplify their voice. Athletes who engage with social media provide a greater connection between fan and player, which ultimately also has the added benefit to potentially engage more interest in the sport of soccer. For a club or league, integrating athletes' social media into their organization's social media strategy can be a powerful move. 

American Alex Morgan is currently the most popular Twitter page amongst female soccer players with over 1 million followers. To put this in context, Steve Nash the two-time NBA MVP and LA Laker has 1.2m followers. Landon Donovan, US National Team soccer player and LA Galaxy star, has 860k followers. Bryce Harper, the Washington Nationals MLB outfielder, has just over 96k followers today. Although the number of followers is just one way to measure an athlete's social media voice, it's all I've chosen to do for the scope of this post.


Twitter seems to be more popular with North American players (see images of American and Canadian players below). Meanwhile Twitter is catching on quickly with European and Australian players. France's Camille Abily pictured below is close to hitting 10k followers. The Matildas Sara Walsh and Kyah Simon are active with almost 8k and 3k fans each. Asian players seem to have adopted Twitter only just recently - Japanese FIFA Player of the Year Homore Sawa has just under 400 followers. South Americans like the Brazilian Marta were difficult to find.


Where some athletes have the drive to document their soccer experiences (and in some cases, off-field adventures also) via blogging - a trend we've featured already there are many more athletes who engage with fans through social media, which can also offer a special behind the scenes all-access type connection.


Keep following this site for a future post on ways clubs can use player (and coach and front office) voices through Twitter to unite fans.

* Source: Twitter.