Rob

With the World Cup well and truly under way, it is quite interesting to observe how football fans are beginning to use social media to express their shared passion for football with other fans across the world.

With Twitter, fans can express their views and see what others have to say live as a match happens. By using Tweet Deck or Trends Map, you can see what other fans around the world think about the same topics as you.

Likewise, Facebook campaigns have been used to get behind a team or to make fun of a situation. A Facebook petition to have France vs. Ireland replayed attained almost 500,000 ‘Likes’! At the moment, Paul, The Psychic Octopus has just under 200,000.

Social media is making following sports online an interactive experience. Fans no longer just read about the latest games and stories, they can express and share their opinions on them as well.

Update: Check out these World Cup 2010 Social Media Stats from Simply Zesty! Some of these figures are staggering – CocaCola’s sponsored Twitter hashtag #WC2010 recieved 86 million impressions in just 24hrs!

An interesting example of a large company acknowledging the importance of social media and putting it at the center of the way they approach marketing. Sports drink Gatorade recently created the ‘Gatorade Mission Control Center’ in its Chicago HQ. It could best be thought of as a war room for monitoring the brand in real-time across social media. The video below gives an indication of its role at Gatorade.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InrOvEE2v38

More figures on the continuing growth of social media. According to a Nielson report on worldwide internet usage in April 2010, 22% of all time spent on the internet is spent engaging with Social Media. While that may not seem to be that much, it is actually quite a significant amount of time when you take into account that this report is on a global scale.

75% of internet users worldwide visit a social networking site every time they go online (a 24% increase from last year) and they are spending 66% more time on these sites than they did a year ago. These figures show quite a significant increase in the usage of social networking sites compared to just last year!

Click Here for the full report.

While it may seem a bit obvious, a report by a social media marketing company called Syncapse suggests that a brand’s Facebook Fans spend more each year on their products and services than the average non-fan. The study on 4,000 people who ‘Like’ the top 20 brands that have pages on Facebook has estimated that a Facebook Fan will spend $71.84 more each year on the brand than someone who has not ‘Liked’ them.

It seems that the average Facebook Fan (of the top 20 brands on Facebook at least) will spend on average $136.38 on that brand annually (almost double the amount that a non-fan will). The average Fan was also found to be more valuable to these brands than the average non-fan in other categories such as loyalty, propensity to recommend, brand affinity, media value (efficiency of Facebook vs. other ways to reach consumers) and acquisition cost.

Click Here for a PDF of the full report.

According to a TypePad report published today, bloggers who installed Facebook ‘Like’ buttons on their blogs have reported a 50% increase in referal traffic from Facebook. This increase is basically due to the fact that when people read these blogs, and ‘Like’ them, it comes up on their friends Facebook pages that they ‘Like’ the blogpost in question. This gives their Facebook friends the opportunity of discovering the blogs that they find interesting and, if they are also interested in the topic, they may click through and read it for themselves. This 50% increase in blog traffic from ‘Likes’ suggests that the ‘Like’ button is an effective way in spreading recommendations and endorsements between friends online.

I know this report refers to increasing traffic to blogs in particular, but it suggests that Facebook users are giving the ‘Like’ button their seal of approval. This is an encouraging sign for brands embracing the ‘Like’ button (e.g. Levi’s, EasyDeals.ie) as it suggests that there is potential in spreading product information and marketing messages through social networking sites.

Click Here for more.