From our professional experience with some top sport clubs, we have noticed that the concept of membership is slowly changing together with the development of a digital culture.

In fact, in recent years, social networks emerged not only as increasingly important marketing tools, but also as precious public relations platforms, becoming the place where the customers can communicate and interact with a brand or their trusted club.

For example "The Old Course - St. Andrews Links" stands out for a strong sense of history. Facebook is not just a place to upload the latest news, but also a place of memory in which to find old interviews, photos in black and white, and interesting anecdotes about the history of something that over time has become a real institution.

This is particularly important whereas the club has also launched a campaign called "Write your own history", which allows members to take part in the heritage of the club by sharing their own photos and story on the website. The focus of the matter is that history is not written only by professional players, but also by anyone who has something to share with the club.

A member's story is as important as those of the characters already described. It is them to enliven the daily life of the club with their own story. In this way, the partners will feel even more bound to the heritage of the club itself, more than a simple subscription is able to do. In fact, the art of storytelling gives the readers an incredible emotional boost, making them feel part not only of a particular story, but also of the brand which that story describes.

Next to the storytelling , there are many tools and techniques able to widen the range of action, such as the production of user-generated contents: don't forget that the customer is "the marketing arm of the company". Try to imagine how powerful can be to record a sport competition (like a sailing race) directly from the players' point of view through a Gopro camera.

In the end, we might state that the raising of a digital culture is the core of a proper communication strategy in order to increase the clients' awareness and stimulate a stronger sense of membership.