Social Media Audit - Pittsburgh Pirates
Findings
On what would be considered two of the more-popular platforms for sports organizations - Instagram and Twitter - the team operates three accounts: Pittsburgh Pirates, Piratas de Pittsburgh (the Spanish equivalent of the Pittsburgh Pirates), and Young Bucs (a hub for the team’s prospects and minor league affiliates). Much of the popular content comes from these three accounts on these two platforms:
While the Twitter accounts are more geared toward disseminating news, the Instagram account is more focused on images. Take a look at this picture, posted on the team’s Instagram, when Andrew McCutchen returned to the team on January 13:
This post, which has no other caption other than a yellow heart, tells its story in an emotional manner through the photo. The same post never made its way on to Twitter, as the team’s main Twitter is geared toward a more news-based approach.
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Piratas de Pittsburgh also has a presence on Facebook. Otherwise, the team’s channels on other platforms (LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube) are limited to just the traditional Pirates’ account, implying that there isn’t enough of a demand for the secondary accounts (Piratas de Pittsburgh, Young Bucs) on these platforms just yet.
It was surprising to see, but much of the content that makes its way onto the team’s Snapchat and/or Facebook is content that originated on Twitter and/or Instagram and makes its way onto Snapchat and/or hours or days after the original post. What was also surprising to see was that, on Facebook, Piratas was not producing its own content - it would merely just take the exact same posts from its English equivalent and translate them (and the lack of traction/audience is apparent, making it a possibility that limited originality is generating limited viewership). An example of this, which originally appeared on the team’s English Facebook, is below:
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It was also surprising to see that the team did have a Pinterest account, although it hadn’t been active since 2014. The team’s YouTube also had its phases of dormancy from 2014 to 2018 and 2020 to 2021, but they came back with a large presence in 2022 and are now posting content on a much more-regular basis. The team’s LinkedIn, as one would expect, is predominantly used to post employment opportunities.
Recommendations/Social Care
The Pirates and its secondary accounts do a very solid job when it comes to content production. Where they lack sometimes, however, is in their social care.
The team is widely regarded in a negative way due to their lack of success over the past 30 years. With this in mind, it’d be assumed that the team would do everything it can to win over fans.
On social media posts, reactions that garner a positive response will very frequently generate a response from the Pirates’ social accounts:
However, when things are going poorly, they either choose not to respond to address fan’s issues or produce snarky responses. In the example below, they dish off the would-be blame/responsibility to someone else and seemingly gloss over the user’s legitimate question (the spelling error also doesn’t help credibility):
The best way to show social care on social channels is by showing a connection with the user, good and bad. The team rarely does that in bad times (this is a rather innocuous example, but the point remains), and if an organization can’t answer to calls in bad times, then they very well might lose a lot of trust.
A legitimate course of action - from a general perspective - would be to make sure the content they produce is unique to the channel they post it on. They’ve done a good job with LinkedIn (job-related), TikTok (trend-related) and Twitter (news-related), but there’s a lot of overlap and similarity among the other channels.
From a social care perspective, the team needs to be more willing to respond to legitimate concerns. If someone is frustrated and needs to vent, let them and respond in a kind manner (or suggest addressing the concerns in a direct message). Instead, the team all too often just ignores comments or adds fuel to the fire, and that’s not a strong strategy for a team lacking in positive public perception.