Iconosquare helps Racing 92 monitor their competition and save precious time reporting on

Have you heard of Racing 92? If you haven't, we’ll assume you’re not a rugby fan. Founded in 1882 in Paris, Racing 92 is one of the iconic European teams. With their famous light-blue-and-white striped jersey, the French club competes every year for the French and European Championships against the best team in Europe.

Despite having existed for more than 130 years, ‘Racing’ is one of the most innovative sports clubs out there. For instance, the club inaugurated its own self-owned, multi-use, domed stadium in 2017, including a 1,400 square meter big screen. This new arena allows Racing 92 to host various types of events, other than rugby, such as concerts or even eSport competitions. When you're at the top of your game, your digital communication needs to be on point. That's why Jeanne Mallet and the communication team at Racing 92 turned to Iconosquare to help them manage their social media presence. We’ve interviewed Jeanne to better understand the particularity of managing a sports club social media strategy.

Sport, on and off the field

After working for an influencer agency, Jeanne Mallet moved to the communication department at Racing 92 in 2017. Jeanne manages all aspects of the club's communication, be it internal or external. That means that she deals with various interesting topics such as creating content, managing match day communication or elaborating campaigns with partners.

Understandably, working on all these projects is challenging for Racing 92’s communication team, but for Jeanne, one of the most challenging aspects of working for a sports team is the pressure of immediacy, especially on game days.

“In order to induce engagement for a sports team, we have to offer up content that can’t be seen elsewhere. Because fans love seeing what happens in the pre-match training or in the changing rooms, the social media team and I have to produce and share the content in real time, and in different formats”

“This has to be prepared and followed-up on, which can be especially difficult given that work hours are not unlimited” says Jeanne, which brings her to another challenge: saving time.

“We realized that we were spending too much time collecting data, so that is why we started benchmarking tools and ended up choosing Iconosquare. Why Iconosquare? Because it was giving me precise stats and the platform interface is really simple so I don’t have to spend time looking for the numbers I need.”

Time-saving and accurate reporting

In terms of internal communication, every month, Jeanne reports on her efforts and achievements to the board of directors and the president of the club himself. “Even though reporting is always interesting, Jeanne says, it was very time consuming when I had to do it manually.” As a social media manager, you need to be able to present clear and error-free results when reporting to your management.

“Having a tool like Iconosquare undoubtedly makes my job easier and makes me more efficient. Iconosquare’s accuracy allows me to present strong and reliable performance reports to the board. Furthermore, with the platform, I spend 50% less time on social media reporting which means I can show more data than before in my monthly reports!”

Managing competition on social media

During this monthly meeting, Jeanne not only reports on the club’s performance but also compares it to the 13 other clubs of the French “Top 14” league. On social media and on the field alike, the directors on the board are interested in the performance in comparison with the competition.

“I am a big fan of the competitor tracking feature on Iconosquare, because I can easily pull the main data from those teams and include it in my monthly presentation”, Jeanne says.

Jeanne goes on the platform regularly, to check the evolution and performance of the accounts she manages, so she can have a quick overview of the day-to-day results. But, as mentioned above, her main use for the platform is the collection of data to create her monthly report for the club stakeholders.

“This takes me one morning per month, where I used to spend a full day on Iconosquare.” The platform also helps Jeanne by pulling data when she works on co-marketing campaigns with partners.

Working with partners

Racing 92 frequently produces content in collaboration with partners, thereby allowing other brands to gain visibility through to the rugby club's social media channels. For Jeanne, the use of Iconosquare is key for this, because the platform helps her easily provide those partners with results. In short, Iconosquare is instrumental in demonstrating to Racing 92's partners that collaborating with them is worthwhile.

“They are very happy to receive KPIs such as engagement rate or number of impressions. They can really see the great impact of working with Racing 92, and that in turn helps us to get other partners interested for future campaigns."

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