The World Cup is a Marketers Dream

The World cup is creating a real time case study for how a major world event can impact social media. 3.6 billion human beings will be watching the world cup which creates a large pool of users that marketers will have the opportunity to grab their attention on the social networks through content creation and marketing. The fact is that half of the world’s population will be watching the world cup. Over 5.7 Billion dollars will be utilized during the course of the world cup. Marketers have an opportunity to spread their buzz throughout the networks in real time and engage with audiences worldwide. There are 64 soccer matches that span over 32 days of play and in a 90 Minute game 17% of the time are spent in commercials. Brands are spending big money on commercials but other markets are able to take advantage of the best kind of marketing, guerrilla marketing.

World Cup: The Biggest Social Media Event… Ever

Let’s look at the last heartbreaking tie game for the USA vs Portugal. When Ronaldo scored in the last 10 seconds of extra play time his name was mentioned on twitter 1.5 million times! If you were the lucky handle to get your Ronaldo tweet thousands of times, that is a significant amount of social media exposure and probably many new followers. In comparison, Clint Dempsey the US captain only received 465k mentions throughout the course of the match. The cup has only just begun and the later rounds will continue to build the ultimate social media case study and give new opportunities for marketers to reach new audiences.

Facebook and The World Cup

According to Facebook 10 million people has 20 million actions during the US vs. Portugal matchup. Facebook has created functionality to have a homepage that shows all of the latest happenings in the world cup while twitter gives the option for users to use their nations flag as their avatar image. Twitter also added “hashflags” that display the image of the flag of the country when tweeted.It is reported Facebook is receiving the most engagement ever for a sporting ever and will continue to measure user reception.