Professional sports team Twitter accounts are almost always very vanilla and extremely boring. However, that doesn’t stop people from following them. And the Manchester United official account passed a big milestone in September- 1,000,000 followers. Even the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball haven’t hit that landmark yet. The Manchester United official account is now up to 1.99 million followers as of now, so they’ll hit the 2,ooo,ooo mark relatively soon.
One million followers and counting. Thanks for your support. We hope you’ve enjoyed the journey so far… #mufc pic.twitter.com/KmKMWrfY0M
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) September 19, 2013
The United account is no different from any other official team account: they follow almost nobody back, pretty much never respond to anyone, and tweet almost nothing that isn’t promotional in nature. Just about every official pro team account doesn’t do the “social” in “social media.” They’re all glorified RSS feeds sending out the team’s propaganda, and rarely, if ever, interacting with anyone.
That’s because nearly all of them are run by PR people, not marketing people.
However, people follow these accounts in droves anyway. Manchester United hitting 2 million is a big deal. No one in the NFL in America has anywhere near that many followers. Even the Dallas Cowboys are short of 700,000.
Paul M. Banks owns The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. An MBA and Fulbright scholar, he’s also a frequent analyst on news talk radio; with regular segments on ESPN,NBC, CBS and Fox. A former NBC Chicago and Washington Times writer, he’s also been featured on the History Channel. President Obama follows him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)