I was just thinking about how much more information, news, views, articles and interaction with Barnsley FC we get now compared to a year or so ago. We seen some of the players getting on board with Twitter as well as the likes of @Not_Keith_Hill and @NOTFilcker who provide a hilarious spin on life at Oakwell. A much improved Barnsley Player service including prematch interviews, match highlights, and full match replays. Award winning matchday programme which now has plenty of interesting and original content and rumours of that the matchday magazine will be made available as an iPhone/Ipad/Android download! Smartphone apps providing us with BFC news and the latest videos etc Early days but we seem to be seeing a refreshed offering from the Chronicle and promise of more to come in the new year. Use of social media to interact with fans Oh and a new look BBS ! As we head towards the 125 year anniversary of this club of ours what would like to see improved in this area next? <edit></edit>
I don't know what the answer is gally but the club needs to find something that gets into the counciousness of the townsfolk of Barnsley and not just the enthusiasts who seek it out. Advertising is key, If you walk round the town centre or the smaller centres like wombwell or hoyland etc, you'd be hard pressed to know that the town had a championship team.
Id like our board of directors or owner to stop hiding. I've heard John Ryan talking up Barnsley FC more in the last year than I've heard Don Rowing or Patrick Cryne do it in the last 3. I was talking to a group of friends last week about Rotherhams new ground. All of them are local lads who support premiership teams (christ knows why) and Tony Stewarts name came up which led the conversation round to the owners and/or chairmen of other local teams. All of them could name the relative people from Rotherham, Donny, Sheff Utd, Wed and Chesterfield but they drew a blank at Barnsley. Says it all really
An overhauled website with original RELEVANT stories published regularly and less spam advertising. An updated and improved media presence IN the stadium. Media isn't just about online, it also includes the things after you have walked through the turnstyle. BFC were on sky recently and yet all the TVs showing OUR game were turned off in the stands. bizarre, baffling and down right unprofessional in my opinion. Get a big screen scoreboard built for less than £40k (and not the laughably high figure quoted by Don Rowing) and use that for media. Trailors for Barnsley Player could be shown on it. Promotional packages for the programme, website, clubshop, upcoming games, the club in general could all be shown on it. Don Rowing and the club seem to have taken a very blinkered view with regards to a new scoreboard and appear to have forgotten about all the benefits of having one and all the promotional purposes that it could be used for. You mention that we are about to celebrate the 125th anniversary and yet we are using a scoreboard that is probably 20 or 25 years old (it was second hand wasnt it?). A bigger presence in the town and surrounding areas using less advanced media such as posters and billboards.
On the topic of the new BBS Any chance of a decent mobile version of the site any time in the future. I used to be able to view the old BB on the dial-up skin, threaded, loading only about 35kb of data. Even the "Classic view" with all pictures turned off etc is at least 20times larger to load and the actual mobile setting is God awful. For some reason, and perhaps I'm using it wrong, but I can only view the latest post in the thread - so I've no idea what came before it. It's taken my view of the BB down to next to nowt as reading from the mobile on the train was the time I got most viewing in.
Re: On the topic of the new BBS Ive been having the same problem with mobile view for last week or so. Was fine up untill then but now i can only view the past post in each thread when on mobile....... Strange......
Re: On the topic of the new BBS I've mentioned it before, wireless internet connection around the ground. Either free or as part of the subscription to the Player service. And yes, many with smart phones have data allowances with their contract, but the 3G signal around Oakwell gets swamped at half time so its painfully slow.
