Exploring Personalities and Experiences: How Football Magazines Use Facebook and Twitter to Enhance Their Brand Identities

Magazines have reported on sports since the 1800s, though the consumption of sports news has shifted from traditional media to digital sources. Audiences, in turn, choose content based on their perceptions of media brands. Applying the model of Esch's brand steering wheel, this essay explores how an international selection of monthly football magazines use Facebook and Twitter to enhance their brand identities, highlighting tonalities and iconographies. This preliminary investigation also shows that the magazines 11 Freunde, FourFourTwo, and Placar had different strategies for each network; Panenka and So foot partially cross-posted content; and Il nuovo calcio posted the same content on both platforms. Exploring emotional and visual associations on social media can attract advertisers who align with facets of a brand's identity.