Crowd Convergence recently supported Sport Presentation company, Great Big Events, with social integration for the Australian leg of the World Rowing Championship held in Sydney.
We took this opportunity to do some research and confirm a sneaking suspicion about the most ‘valuable’ social network to integrate for live sporting events. While not very scientific, the results provide insights into how our clients can improve future engagement with Twitter and Instagram.

The data used for analysis was gathered over the 3 day international competition and consisted of 2600 pieces of content. Only two sources were active, Twitter and Instagram. First we wanted to determine the most used social network source in terms of volume. Where was the bulk of content coming from and why?

Instagram was the clear winner on sheer volume accounting for 71% of all submitted content; quite surprising given the large user base and prevalence of Twitter. We dug a little deeper to find out why and after speaking with competitors and members of the crowd the general consensus was that Instagram, as a visual medium, was a better way to share their experiences from the outdoor sporting event.

Next we determined the percentage of each source that was automatically filtered and then either manually approved or rejected. The goal was to find what was most displayed on screen; Instagram may provide the highest share of content but what was most valuable for the big screen?

Profanity filtering of both networks was relatively low at 7% for Twitter and only 2% for Instagram. Instagram natively tends to have less profanity because most images are #hashtagged without accompanying messages which might contain more “colourful” language.
It was during manual moderation that the operator chose to reject a massive 79% of the tweets coming into the platform but approve 73% of the Instagram images. His paraphrased responses when asked about his manual moderation choices:

• There were lots of retweets not needed
• Images looked great on the big screen so were given higher priority
• Tweets were often variations on the same theme, e.g.: “GO TEAM”, and they wanted something unique.

These results paint Instagram in a very favourable light for live sporting events but we suspect the results are much different at conferences and places of worship. We’ll keep conducting this type of analysis in the future to help our subscribers ‘dial in’ and increase engagement for their events. As a general tip for increasing the quality of Twitter content delivered to any event we would suggest running Q&A sessions or directing conversation by tweeting topic starters. Get involved in the stream and you’ll see engagement increase dramatically.

So what is the most valuable social network? You didn’t really expect a definitive answer did you…? Overall the best social integration strategy for your event depends on a number of factors such as event type, user base, screen quality, desired outcomes etc. We suggest a balanced approach leveraging multiple social sources and getting involved in the conversations around your event and branding.

If you’ve got insights for what works at your events we’d love to hear them.