By Etienne Jones
With a rising want in immediately’s football market to use social media as a lot as doable, clubs within the Non-League ladder have began to utilise totally different strategies to increase their outreach as a lot as doable.
Using social media in several methods can assist a membership enhance their viewers, significantly within the age brackets under 30, while increasing its attain to markets it might not have beforehand reached.
It additionally helps construct stronger communication, construct relations amongst the area people, and doubtlessly increase advertising and marketing alternatives.
The NLP will discover how clubs throughout the pyramid have used new methods to increase their social media presence, and the way profitable these efforts have been.
For unique tales and all of the detailed Non-League information you want, subscribe to The Non-League Paper web site, digital version, or newspaper from as little as 14p a day.
Hardly a Bunch of Amateurs
Dorking Wanderers have had a meteoric rise all through the pyramid, discovering themselves locked in battle with Worthing on the high of the National League South for a spot in subsequent season’s Vanarama National League.
Wanderers’ battle to compete in Step 2 has been in a position to be seen in its entirety by a artistic documentary collection that has been working since November 2020.
Bunch of Amateurs, spearheaded by Rich Phippen, have been filming a YouTube collection known as Dorking Uncovered for six seasons, publishing weekly episodes about every sport.
The collection goals to present an in-depth take a look at the Wanderers’ marketing campaign, with supervisor Marc White allowing filming and manufacturing.
As the content material has expanded to TikTook, the Bunch of Amateurs account has grown to slightly below 500,000 followers, with some clips of White reaching 4 million views.
The first episode, revolving round an Essex Senior Cup tie in late November at Horley Town, amassed 220,000 views on YouTube.
To date, Bunch of Amateurs has amassed 210,000 subscribers on its channel, while Dorking Wanderers has 55,000 followers on X.
For comparability, title challengers Worthing have simply over 23,000.
With YouTube views constantly coming in at below 100,000 each episode, and the Bunch of Amateurs group serving to create content material round their very own membership, BoA FC, the venture reveals simply how far a membership can attain internationally.
PICTURES: Stuart McAlister
Little Alex Horne’s massive venture
Chesham United have been the most recent group to make the leap into YouTube documentaries, however have chosen to take an alternate stance when trying into the membership and what soccer is all about.
Led by well-known Taskmaster ‘little man’ Alex Horne, who was appointed director of the membership he avidly helps in 2022, All In: Chesham United takes a deep dive into the operations, the human figures and the psychological facet of working a soccer membership.
Started in December 2025, every episode lasts round 20 minutes and combines speaking head interviews with matchday footage and covers each the lads’s and girls’s sides of the Generals.
The hottest episode, which has gained 60,000 views, follows girls’s captain Tasha Smith by a significant FA Cup fixture, earlier than switching to the lads’s group skipper Steve Brown and reflecting the affect of his management.
With the documentary falling in the identical season that Chesham is making a push for a play-off spot within the Vanarama National League South, it additionally supplies a direct comparability between this and the Bunch of Amateurs manufacturing.
All In: Chesham United has amassed 9,000 subscribers on YouTube within the 4 months it has been on-line, suggesting {that a} humanising, laid-back, in-depth manufacturing can present success if a membership is trying to lengthen its group.
Especially when a supporter can resonate with the presenter.
From Twitch to the turnstiles
Moving up north, Daisy Hill had been a aspect in monetary bother at first of 2025.
Having attendances of simply over 50 spectators, the North West Counties North aspect had been struggling to fund day-by-day actions.
However, on on-line streaming platform Twitch, Aaron Hunt booted up Football Manager 2024 with a modded database and took management of his native membership.
Hunt has amassed 415,000 followers on TikTook and 118,000 Instagram followers, with a good portion of his fanbase following together with the stream, to which Daisy Hill media volunteer Alex George took discover.
“I was at work, and it was actually down to my girlfriend,” George stated. “She saw that he was streaming Daisy Hill on Football Manager.
“At the time, we were averaging around 70-80, so I thought if we could get him down for one game minimum, that game can set us up for the rest of the season.
“I dropped him a message on Twitter with the club account. I was watching the stream as he responded, and he agreed to that.”
Cashing in
Even although Hunt didn’t make his first agreed sport, he was headhunted by supervisor Lee Hill to doubtlessly be a md, as his affect would assist appeal to new sponsorship.
Hunt was voted in unanimously and set to work securing offers and planning work to enhance the membership’s stature and monetary safety.
With the brand new chairman’s first sport towards Atherton Laburnum Rovers, over 900 individuals confirmed up to Westhoughton to watch the sport, while influencer OffendedGinge streamed his go to to his following of 1 million followers, which resulted in a 1-0 defeat.
In the aftermath of the sport, over £5,000 was raised to restore the pitch, while OffendedGinge turned the title sponsor of the bottom to rename it the “Ginge Power Stadium.”
The cash created from the fixture helped safe funding for the rest of the season, and the summer time interval too.
Hunt leaves his mark
George stated: “People know it as Hunt’s club. We have people who came from Scotland for a game, and they knew who Daisy Hill were, and that’s something that will never be lost.
“When people hear Daisy Hill now, they’ll still know who we are, and I think it builds a long-lasting thing. It’s left an impact on the club.”
Whilst Hunt lately confirmed he is now not with the membership, the year-long enchancment that the Bolton-based aspect has undergone has set Daisy Hill up for survival within the subsequent couple of years, with Nicky Hunt guiding the Cutters to tenth within the desk, 18 factors adrift of relegation.
With the digital age changing, clubs now should stay on their toes to discover new methods to enhance income streams, attain new audiences, and put themselves in a greater place for the long run.
Is it time on your membership to observe within the footsteps of these forward of the sport?
READ MORE: Premier League star Jarrod Bowen steps in to help Hereford tackle pitch drainage issues
