FIFA 2014: Is Facebook World’s Biggest Stadium ?

As our beautiful planet opens its eyes to the FIFA World Cup 2014 on Brazilian soil, social media sites are gearing up with new features to entice more audience. These features offer football audience, which stretches across the globe, all the latest highlights and information from the World Cup in real time.

The social networking giant, Facebook, is also trying to attract advertisers, by claiming that its user base is the world’s biggest platform. Facebook states that 500 million users fall into the category of soccer lovers.

This figure is based on page likes by its users, and it is almost double than monthly active user base of Twitter, which stands at 255 million. Facebook says that nearly 40 percent of its 1.28 billion users are football fans and its FIFA World Cup page alone has 20 million followers.

This is definitely good news for marketers because if they have an effective social media marketing strategy, Facebook can be a hot spot for them to advertise their business. In addition to this, bloggers can optimize blog content for social media for effective marketing through compelling and apt content.

On 10 June 2014, Facebook added new features to help its umpteen football fans to follow the FIFA World Cup, which is from June 12 to July 13. Now, Facebook users will be able to keep track of their favorite players and teams during the tournament in a special World Cup section, called “Trending World Cup.” This hub is available on the Web as well as mobile devices and will include:

• Scores and highlights from matches
• A feed with real-time posts from friends as well as from relevant teams and players
• An interactive map, which displays the geographic location of football players’ fanatics across the globe

This tool also offers a game calendar on the right-hand side of the page with time, date and a countdown. Below it, a few links to team’s Facebook profiles are presented.

Rebecca Van Dyck, head of consumer marketing at Facebook, said that this World Cup hub will also be available on “feature phones.” But, in feature phones the section will be “less graphical” than what’s shown on smartphones and on the Web; however it will include the same information.

Facebook has also launched a page called “FacebookRef”, which will serve as an official referee who comments and gives substantial inputs on games. Facebook opted for a countdown to present this unique feature, with videos of a man in his mid-fifties. The name of man has not been released and he only shows his face. This man has the responsibility of keeping Facebook users engaged with his prolific and thought provoking comments on the FIFA World Cup.

According to FIFA, the tournament organizer, an estimated 909.6 million viewers had watched at least one minute of the Word Cup final in 2010 when Spain beat the Netherlands. In comparison, at least one part of the opening ceremony of Summer Olympics 2012, was watched by nearly 900 million people. That means the presence of your business on social media channels can prove to be lucrative to your business.

Facebook had just 500 million users in 2010, when the last FIFA World Cup took place in South Africa. Now, the same count is of only football fans (people who have “liked” a team or a player) on this social networking site. This shows that social media is spreading its wings with great pace and becoming favorite activity among people. Therefore, it’s high time to learn and adopt some effective social media marketing tips, so that you can promote your business efficiently on social media and pump up your sales in prompt manner.