Over The Border II - Wrestling with Social Media

OSWtv's Billy Strachan returns once again with the second edition of Over The Border! This time Billy focuses on how important social media can be to Scottish wrestling.

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Back in ye olde days of UK professional wrestling, the barren times, once World of Sport was removed from ITV in 1985, the only way to advertise your local promotion would be through posters around town, newspaper advertisements, maybe an interview on your local radio or television station if you were lucky. 

An example of the posters one could see

But this 2014...things have changed! 

Here are a few figures for you. 3 BILLION active users on the internet, 1.23 BILLION active Facebook users, 1 BILLION active YouTube users, 284 MILLION active Twitter users. Social media is the most effective way to reach wrestling fans nowadays and there are promotions that have taken advantage of this by making sure that their audience is kept up to date with all the latest news and promotion. 

Here are the top 5 Scottish wrestling company pages on Facebook:

Insane Championship Wrestling: 17,000+ Likes
Scottish Wrestling Alliance: 7,241 Likes
Premier British Wrestling: 5,921 Likes
Scottish Wrestling Entertainment: 3,479 Likes
Pro Wrestling Elite: 3,330 Likes

So keeping your website or Facebook page up to date is so important. When you set up a company page/website you are not only making a commitment to your product but also to your fan base. You can't go on once a month and go "oh aye, this is happening". We are in the age where if people lose interest they will move onto the next thing without hesitation. Social media is also the quickest and most effective way to get a wrestlers character out there be it through a fan page, YouTube promo videos, podcast or interviews.

On the subject of keeping your page up to date, this is a personal preference, but if you don't write in a professional manner or have a basic grasp of the English language, I'm not going to be reading whatever you've written to promote yourself or your show. Basic common sense really. It's a business at the end of the day. This is different if it’s built towards a character, like Switch, but a wrestling promotion should have a professional look when writing.

Don't get me wrong, posters and newspaper adverts and all the things I mentioned at the start of this piece are still effective, they bring in the casual fan that maybe isn't aware of the social media presence the promotion has. Word of mouth is also being integrated into social media with blogs and fan podcasts. 

Oop's...How did that get there? 

If you don't believe what I'm saying I'll give you an example. Grado made a name for himself through YouTube videos, through a social media campaign "Get Grado Booked", he's arguably the biggest name in Scottish and UK professional wrestling today. Without social media, there might not be a “chubby wee chancer fae the tap end of Stevenson” shouting "IT'S YERSEL!" today. 

If you don't keep on top of your social media then it could stunt the growth of your promotion and possibly your growth as a wrestler. Getting yourself out there and making a name for yourself gets you from being a name on the card to THE name on THE card.