Match of the Day hits 3 million Facebook fans

Match of the Day may be one of the BBC's oldest and best-loved television programmes, celebrating its 50th birthday last year, but it has also been one of the best at embracing social media. This is particularly important when audience behaviour, particularly among younger viewers, is dramatically changing in an evolving media landscape.

While the @bbcmotd account on Twitter has in excess of 1.5 million followers, last week the Match of the Day Facebook page reached the milestone of three million fans.

Although there are pages across the BBC with a larger fan-base, including BBC Sport's Facebook page with 7.8 million fans, the Match of the Day page has become one of the most successful at driving referrals, as well as encouraging people to watch the programme.

'Knowledgeable', 'Cheeky' and 'Irreverent' 

In terms of Facebook, we are really proud that Match of the Day has 1.64 million fans in the UK alone, with only Manchester United in the Premier League boasting more in the UK.

And while reach is extremely important, after the FIFA World Cup in 2014 we wanted to improve engagement.

Research showed us that our target audience wanted the tone of the Match of the Day social accounts to be slightly less serious and focus instead on being 'knowledgeable', 'cheeky' and 'irreverent.' This is hardly surprising given that 53% of the page's Facebook fans are aged 24 or under.

They also wanted the tone to mirror more closely that of the show's presenters and pundits when they tweet or post from their own accounts on social media.

From 35,000 a week to 3.7 million

During the past year we've therefore evolved our content strategy. This has been strongly influenced by analytics, looking at the frequency and timing of our posts, the style and tone in which we create content and experimenting with targeted posts aimed at reaching fans of specific teams.

The impact of this has been dramatic in driving social referrals i.e. where fans click on posts on the Match of the Day Facebook page, and come through to the BBC website.

Such has been the success of this change of strategy that, comparing the first week of September 2014 with September 2015, referrals from page posts have increased organically, using similar staffing levels, from 35,000 a week to 3.7 million in the same time period.

Importantly, our referrals strategy has not been focused on simply posting content about the most popular teams in the Premier League.

Instead, it has showcased our distinctive and diverse range of football content on the BBC from a local, national and global perspective, promoted people to play the game through Get Inspired and the FA People's Cup and driven interest in the women's game, particularly around the Women's World Cup last summer.

We don't just try to broadcast to fans on social media, but engage with them as well.

This includes regularly replying to our users, using pundits in live Q and A sessions and offering a sneak preview of the running order each weekend.

We also provide behind-the-scenes videos with the likes of Gary Lineker to promote the show, allowing fans to vote on Goal of the Month, and curating the best of social media to reflect back in broadcast (particularly Match of the Day 2 Extra) and the BBC Sport website.

Such has been the popularity of this engagement that this season we have launched Match of the Day Social, a digital companion on the BBC Sport website to Saturday's show, where additional tactical analysis and the best fan comments on our social media channels are reflected in our live page. Although we are only in the early stages of the season, during transmission this page is commonly the most visited page on the BBC website at that time.

Chris Hurst is Digital Development Editor, BBC Sport