Loyalty to a football club is the intensity of feeling that binds a person to his club cause rather than whether the emotion is positive or negative.
According to a study done by Oxford University recently most of the succesful teams allover the world are able to maintain and even enhance their supporter base, even when they do not deserve it.
This phenomenon explains that the humilating relegation of a club can be equally as effective in binding fans to a team as winning a cup or league.
In African football, Ethiopian clubs led by Fasil Kenema supporters are a good example of fiercely loyal fans who have stuck by their team in thick and thin.
Since the club was established decades ago the fans have been on same journey even when the team didn’t get results and when the club fortunes soared.
The history of shared painful losses is as important as the joy of winning the league in creating the so called self-shaping experiences that fuse the fans indentity with the club and fellow supporters.
In recent years every succesful club are in a rush to get into social media,something that has amplified their reach in a high number.
This is another aspect of creating loyalty as football is a saturated market with immense competition.So many clubs in Africa have been left out on that and those clubs who have engaged themselves many are innactive.
Clubs must engage their fans so that they get a cutting edge of marketing strategies and technologies to stand out.For the struggling clubs in various African leagues there is need to engage more with their fans to convince them to be loyal to their brand and not forget about the importance of loyalty and audience.
Social media is a tool that simply gives the clubs a away to interact with fans.Each club need to understand the importance of dialogue with fans in developing authentic enslasting relationships.
Just simply focusing on the likes that a club has is not important.For a long time growth any serious club should not forget it fans.They are the ones who come to their game,paint their faces and scream their support from the stands.
A great effort to reward the fans is for the clubs to allow fans to show their colours online while making them feel special by giving them exclusive access to a team-related items.
Majority of Africa teams need to design clear marketing strategies.Giving fans high-resolution branded cover photos and offering them to fans with a one click upload app is an easy thing of creating strong fans base.
Information about a club and a link back to the official facebook page is important as it automatically appear in the description any time a fan upload anything such as a photo which virally propagate the brand.
Growing use of Facebook in Africa is something clubs needs to take as an asset.Cover Photo app help fans to show support and love to their team something that definetly increases interaction with the fans.
When fans increase the use of installation of cover photos on their pages it increase news feed visbility for the clubs and likes increase substantially through organic engagement and awareness about the clubs
These are just the some simple ways to develop relationships between the fans and the clubs in the era of internet.
-Reference:University of Oxford research papers
