Hi guys,
I've avoided jumping on this thread purely because actually a lot of the stuff said on here is incredibly damaging to not just myself, to my colleagues and our volunteers.
I wanted to explain a few things, me and
Ben Clasper have regular catch ups about club comms. Me and Brit regularly speak about comms for the men and women's sides. Nothing is done without things being planned out. The posts in question have been something we've been looking at doing for a while. After the hard work of Dave with the new website we now need to utilise it. I have regular chats with Tom Cullen as well and he has always been a very helpful asset to myself over the past year.
Me and Ben have spoken in length on multiple occasions about X/Twitter. I agree it's not a platform we should be using to put it quite honestly. it's a fucking awful site. That's why we've started using Threads a lot more. The website posts, are to promote people going to the website. It's so eventually supporters realise the website is now the most trusted place for news. This means we can potentially remove ourselves from a platform like X/Twitter. We have to utilise this website and we're doing that. I can tell you now Clare as much as I love her wouldn't not what to do with social media data when she has it at her disposal. If you've spoken with her about sponsorship she sells purely because of how much she loves our club, that's what sells our sponsorship.
Everything we do is carefully thought out. You might have noticed our promotion to our game against Horsham last month was a bit all over the place. Me and Ben both agreed that we needed to shake things up not follow the norm that every club sets. It worked, we were 80 supporters short of our first 3000 crowd in September.
A lot of news outlets and sporting organisations might look like they are posting 'clickbait'. We certainly aren't trying to do that to gain any form of monetary gain. It is purely to encourage people to use our website for news rather than having to click through via X/Twitter so we can slowly remove ourselves from the platform.
On the subject of 'abuse' or comments made on this, our social media platforms alongside other fan forums. The last 12 months whilst being some of the most enjoyable 12 months I've had in football have also been some the most mentally damaging I've experienced. Getting called 'pricks' and a 'spastic' before on Facebook isn't particularly easy to deal with. I'll be honest, i've almost quit about 8 times in the last year. I've gone as far as writing a resignation letter to Ben. I've struggled a lot. Football is hard work, but coming on a site like this and seeing your work constantly ridiculed and ripped apart is hard.
I'm 23 years old, this is my first proper job in the football media sector. I'm relatively thick skinned. Naturally as a gay man you become like that with the amount of homophobia we experience on a regular basis. A lot of the comments made are seen by a group of University students. These are 19 year olds taking their very first steps in the industry. I don't know what damage that does to them and their confidence. They travel the south east of England with us week after week covering both of our 1st teams. I know when I was that age, comments made that I see on here and other forums would have broken me.
My mental health has suffered a massive knock over the past 12 months and thankfully the people I work with whether that is Mel, Gav, Joe and Jake or our 2 management teams have picked me up and got through it. Football is hard, especially now, we're constantly finding ways to evolve and change our Social Media approach. Some things will work some won't just be patient with us. It is hard to find a plan that works for every single one of our supporters.
We're trying our hardest, we're going to get things wrong and we're going to get things right that's life and most importantly that is football.
I think what we all need to understand is that it's not always going to be perfect, when mistakes are made by me it annoys me as much as it annoys you seeing them. When our teams lose it ruins my weekend just like you. Just be patient with us if you have constructive feedback or want to discuss strategy with me then my email is:
kianward@dulwichhamletfc.co.uk We can chat on email, have a phone call or meet at a game. I'm always open to what people think we can do better.
We all sometimes need to take a deep breath and think. Not just on here but in life itself, you never really know what people are truly going through.
Have a great week and see you at Champion Hill or on the road (whenever that is) soon.
