Football has been on the minds of fans and casual viewers alike as the World Cup inches closer to its dramatic final showdown, but the Cup action isn’t just limited to the pitch. The event also brings with it plenty of social media marketing opportunities. In fact, putting in a strong performance on the field can do wonders for social media numbers.
Social media marketing platform Socialbakers has been keeping tabs on how all the action translates into social media performance. Perhaps not surprisingly, the German national team saw their total interactions on all of their owned social platforms rise by more than double between 20th and 25th June as they took a thrilling victory over Sweden, and player Toni Kroos also inched six places up the player interaction leaderboard.
Top players’ interactions number in the millions
While a strong performance can certainly give the numbers a boost, a few names are consistently at the two of the social media leaderboard. Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo is a huge fan favourite, and he’s completely dominating Socialbakers’ list of total interactions of football players on the various platforms. He has easily taken first place with his 3,936,942 interactions from the 14th to 20th of June. More than 2.7 million of these have been on Facebook, while Twitter accounts for nearly 1.2 million.
Argentina’s Lionel Messi isn’t far behind, with 2,610,248 total interactions, but unlike Ronaldo, nearly all of them have been on Facebook. Sitting in third is Brazil’s Neymar with 1,301,165 million total interactions. No one else is even approaching a million interactions, with France’s Paul Pogba and Egypt’s Mohamed Salah rounding out the top five at 531,893 and 354,313 respectively. Harry Kane of the UK is sitting in sixth place, but as the top scorer in the tournament, his interactions have climbed by more than a quarter million since the first match.
Mexico is at the top of the leaderboard when it comes football team interaction from the 14th to 25th June, with Germany, France, Spain and Portugal rounding out the top five. The UK, meanwhile, is sitting down in 12th place, due in part to a lack of Instagram presence.
Huge audience, vast marketing potential
As the biggest sporting event in the world, the World Cup draws the attention of billions of people across the planet throughout its month-long duration. Thirty-two national soccer teams are in attendance, and with such high levels of engagement already being seen well ahead of the scheduled final match on 15th July, the international marketing opportunities are tremendous.
