Manchester City Football Club has expanded its global social media presence by launching ten new international Twitter accounts.
In addition to its existing English and Arabic Twitter accounts, which are followed by in excess of 1.5m fans, the Club now offers Twitter content in Traditional Chinese, French, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.
The launch follows the successful roll-out of the Club’s ten international websites in the same languages earlier this summer, which saw City extend its reach up to 80-per-cent of the world’s internet connected population.
Created to cater for the Club’s growing fan base abroad, the international Twitter accounts will ensure that City supporters from more than 160 countries will now be able to access Manchester City Twitter content in their own language.
Diego Gigliani, Director of Marketing, Media and Fan Development for Manchester City Football Club, said: “As the Club continues to attract fans from across the world and our global community grows, it’s important to find new ways to connect and engage with them in order to build deeper relationships. Translating our website into 13 languages was one step on this journey – creating another ten Twitter accounts is another.
“It’s incredible to think that fans from countries as far away from Manchester as Argentina, Indonesia, Russia or Korea will now receive tweets with Club news, videos, competitions, match-updates in real time, in their own language and typically in the palm of their hands.
“Twitter has played an integral part in the Club’s online growth in recent years, providing the Club and its players with a unique channel through which to interact with fans in creative and innovative ways. We will continue to explore the wealth of opportunities that social networks like Twitter offer.”
This sentiment was shared by Lewis Wilshire, former Head of Sport and now Media Partnerships Director for Twitter (UK), who added: “Following your favourite club on Twitter is a great way to get closer to the action. It is fantastic to see Manchester City innovating by launching Twitter accounts in ten new international languages. It will allow fans from all over the globe to join in conversations about their club and share in the roar of the crowd.
“Over the last few years Manchester City has used Twitter in several interesting and original ways. They were the first team to put their hashtag #Together on their team bus when they won the Premier League trophy in the 2011/12 season, while Vincent Kompany’s #FollowTheCaptain initiative allowed fans to Tweet inspirational messages to the captain, which were then displayed in the team’s dressing room ahead of the derby.
“The club also consistently tweets in-game coverage – enlisting the help of then injured player Micah Richards, who took over the @MCFC account to live-tweet from a game. It is great to see them extending this to new audiences around the world with these new accounts.”
The new Twitter accounts bring the Club’s total multilingual digital offering to 12 Twitter accounts and 13 websites, in addition to its Mandarin Chinese social media presence in Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo.