To the substance of your article, I think MVFC have had (in addition to the FFA/Sportal website) Twitter/Facebook/MySpace/SMS and ‘Online Match Day’ facilities for some time. No tweets from Ernie – but I think they have long been doing a comprehensive job in this area. Certainly a big improvement on Season 1. The next step – leverage that partnership with Optus to significantly boot the online presence of football in Australia. There are a lot of individually good elements (My Football / FFA,HAL,Club web / WC Bid, CRM with States) – but no coherent overall approach as yet. I did notice the FFA have an in-house IT/Knowledge Management team and a strategy – so I guess it is just a matter of time/money…

it really does surprise me more clubs (rather than individuals at clubs) haven’t done this. any marketing guru would tell you how important word of mouth is, and social networking sites like facebook and twitter really take word of mouth marketing to a whole new level. and given setting up facebook pages and twitter accounts are costless (except for the time required to maintain them and add new tweets etc) there is no real excuse for any HAL club (or the league itself) for not getting on board

I’ve pointed this out before but the HA-L has missed a great chance to introduce new fans to the game and teams.

We recently purchased a new Hyundai. The sales person knew nothing about the sponsorship and there was nothing at the dealership (in Blacktown) about the HA-L – no posters, no brochures – nothing.

It would be inexpensive for the HA-L to send every purchaser of a new Hyundai some free passes to HA-L games. Hyundai already write to every buyer as part of their after sales thing so all the FFA “marketing” people would have to do is organise a single sheet of paper to go out with it. Surely that would not be beyond even their feeble marketing skills.

It should also be possible for HA-L clubs to approach their local Hyundai dealer and acquire a new car to raffle off to ticket buyers during the season. That way the club would get the name and address details of even casual attenders and then they could attempt to build a relationship with them. I am sure that the average dealer would jump at the chance for their details to be put in front of thousands of locals for 6 months and provide a car at “the right price”and in any event a Getz is only about $13k

I am amazed that when you attend a HA-L match there are no programs or even roneoed team sheets made available. Even the most lowly UK 5th tier outfit manages to produce something respectable for a program with usually articles by the CEO and football staff. There are photos of the squad and details of the visiting players. The point is that a program is something for a fan to read after they have been to the game and reinforces whatever message the club is trying to put over.