Sina Weibo accounts for 9% of Man Utd’s 100m social connections

Premier League social media giants Manchester United have broken yet another record, storming through the 100 million connections threshold when all accounts are aggregated. The club's growth in China is particularly interesting with Sina Weibo accounting for 9% of its connections. With a huge Chinese market to chase down, the club look well set for further impressive growth. 

Facebook connections lead the way for Man Utd accounting for 64% of all connection. The club's growth has been nothing short of spectacular – the total connections number is up 68% from 12 months ago when it had a total of 60 million connections. And this is a 202% increase on the May 2013 figure when the club had 33 million connections.

Man Utd's twitter growth – twitter followers account for 6% of the total connections figure – has been impressive in the UK where it was a late entrant to twitter with its English language account. While the club lags behind Arsenal and Chelsea in terms of total numbers, it is gaining on them weekly. In the four weeks since the end of the season the club has put on 120,000 new followers – almost twice as many as Arsenal and just over twice that of Chelsea.

While the club may have been a slow starter with its English language Twitter account, it has not been slow with other social media as the chart below shows.

Eleven different social media platforms combine to make the 100 million total with the new multi-channel platforms like LINE set to become increasingly important as the club seeks to communicate with its massive supporter base internationally.

The club is also embracing newer platforms, opening its WeChat account in April. Although currently at only 17,000 connections this can be expected to deliver big numbers quickly.

For Man Utd there seems to be no threshold that it can't bust through on social media as its growth seems to get faster. Can the club double to 200 million connections over the next 12 months? With the team, under Louis Van Gaal, showing promise on the pitch, a return to Champions League football next season and some exciting new player signings, it would not come as a major surprise.