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Social networks are a fundamental tool that organizations use for promotional, informative and relational purposes. From this last point of view, social networks allow organizations to gain visibility and generate interaction with audiences, thus contributing to maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with them. In the sports field, as in others, the use of social networks is widespread not only by sports clubs or entities, but also by individual athletes. Instagram in particular is one of the networks that has experienced the greatest growth in recent years and that is why, from the international academic field, attention has been paid to the use of this network in the sports field.
Based on this approach, this research analyzes the use of Instagram by Spanish athletes of recognized prestige, with the aim of evaluating its effectiveness as a mechanism to generate interaction and promote relations with the public. From this perspective, questions such as the effectiveness of Instagram to generate visibility or the influence of various elements, such as the type of post or the complementary resources used in the text, in the generation or increase of interaction are raised.
The study focuses on a sample of 17 Spanish adult athletes who received a "Premio Nacional del Deporte" (Rey Felipe, Reina Letizia, Rey Juan Carlos and Reina Sofía) between 2013 and 2017. For each of the selected athletes a compilation of all their Instagram posts for the year 2018, using the Instagram Scraper tool, was made and an analysis of emission and reception was carried out. Regarding the emission, aspects such as the number of published posts, the type of post (image or video) and the use of resources such as hashtags, mentions and emoticons were taken into account, while from the point of view of reception they were collected data of number of followers, likes and comments.
The results show a high diversity both in the number of published posts, which range between 39 and 348 entries per year, and in the number of followers, which varies notably depending on the notoriety of the athlete, from the little more from 16,000 by Ruth Beithia to over 27 million Andrés Iniesta. There is a majority preference for the use of images (82% of posts) compared to the use of videos, although the use of complementary resources such as hashtags, mentions and emoticons is highly variable depending on the athlete and does not seem to significantly influence in generating interaction. It is also verified that the members of the sample are not very active in following other accounts, since the number of followers is barely over 1,200 at best. The total of the publications accumulates almost 230 million likes and more than a million and a half comments, although the difference in results per athlete in these indicators is highly variable. In general terms, more followers generate more likes and more comments, although this increase is not proportional and no significant increase in interaction is generated from very high numbers of followers.
These results corroborate the interest of Instagram as a network with high capacity to generate visibility and interaction with audiences, although the popularity of the athlete influences, in the first place, the number of followers and, therefore, the possibilities of interaction.