Major League Soccer leads the way in social media for football

Ahem. Ignoring the hefty gap between posts, I'm going to jump straight back in with a bit of football.

As part of an article I'm writing for someone else, I've been hunting around for good examples of football clubs using social media. Properly. Apart from General Krulak engaging directly with Aston Villa fans, Everton's Facebook group and Liverpool's Twittering, successes have been few and far between.

So I was chuffed yesterday when Ginge tweeted about a new site from Major League Soccer's FC Dallas. MyFCDallas.com is the "Official FC Dallas Fan Network", a social networking site built on the Ning platform, and was launched this week.

Why I like MyFCDallas

MyFCDallas is a great approach to fan engagement. It recognises the need to be in touch with supporters. In fact, it's especially important for FCD, because their match attendance last weekend was embarrassingly low.

The site possesses all the usual functionality of a social networking website, but it allows the fans to get up close and personal with (presumably briefed) players. With English clubs preferring to punt out half-arsed "player" blogs, this is a bold approach - though I accept the environment is different in MLS.

But what I really like about this site is that it's integrated properly into the rest of the social web. It has many of the characteristics I'd associate with a social media newsroom.

The photos, though not hosted on Flickr, are "social" in that they can be uploaded by anyone. The videos appear to be piped in through YouTube, a method of which we thoroughly approve for a variety of reasons which I've probably outlined elsewhere and have definitely outlined the draft of the aforementioned article.

But the bottom line is that FC Dallas are showing clear intent to engage with the fans and they're doing it well (well, in this case, being defined by my opinions on how this stuff should be done).

The first MLS franchise to go down the Ning route was Houston Dynamo, with MyDynamo.net. Like MyFCD, this site is well intentioned, well designed and well executed. But there are non-PR benefits for the clubs too. They are able to run ads about events, sales, matches and so on directly to a ready-made bunch of people who want to know.

That community of evangelists is something many brands dream of but football clubs can lay claim to at the drop of a hat.

In general, I've been quite impressed with Major League Soccer's digital approach. While it is naturally a little obsessive over ownership of its materials (i.e. hosting all videos on-site), that is understandable. The fact is, producing excellent downloadable content like the Extra Time video podcast is a useful marketing strategy.

In fact, video is something FCD has done well recently too, jumping on a specific event - Kenny Cooper's goal from his own half a couple of weeks ago - and producing entertaining video in response.

Football supporters are a huge market, full of exciting and innovative content - the difference is, they're desperate to share it with the clubs. Why the clubs, by and large, just don't want to know is beyond me.

Update: Attacking90 pointed me in the direction of MyQuakes, the Ning site of the San Jose Earthquakes.