5 Social Media Lessons from the World Cup Frenzy

Not only are we hearing about it every where on the radio and seeing it everywhere on TV but we are even getting full coverage, if not more, online. Twitter is being dominated right now with hashflags for their favorite teams and slogans following the World Cup. Other social media networks like Facebook are being bombarded with World Cup campaign videos and pictures. Not only that but the players are getting in on it too, sharing their private celebrations and pictures of their loved ones. It is a pretty exciting time for anyone who likes soccer.

All of the entrepreneurs out there should see this as an ice breaker into almost any network. Even if yo're not that into soccer, social media makes it easy to “get into it”. Check out the 5 lessons you should be learning from the social media trends on the World Cup:

1. Brand Consistency is Everything: Whether on Twitter or Instagram, the World Cup is presented in a seamless way. FIFA World Cup has its own Instagram account, which helps to set the tone of the event. For English speaking folks, there’s #WorldCup and #Brazil 2014. The Spanish-speaking world is using #Brasil2014. If you want customers to build expectations about your brand, you need to be consistent in how you present yourself. Whether that’s through a branded hashtag, blog posts, or design, what’s important is that every time a potential customer comes across your company in the wild, she adds whatever new information she’s gleaned to a mental file. Her next encounter with your brand must meet or exceed these previous expectations. Otherwise, you’ll create a disparity, and that’s how you lose customers.

2. Each Member of Your Team Matters: Many of the FIFA players have their own social accounts and actively share their thoughts and photos from the latest events. In business, you can leverage each member of your team in much the same way. Having just one social media account for your company won’t necessarily cut it if you want to convey authenticity. What better way to accomplish that than by having your team members speak for themselves in their own, authentic voices?

3. The More Content You Create, the Better: The majority of the teams participating in the World Cup this year are on Twitter. This means creating new content, very frequently. From Instagram photos to clever tweets to compelling videos, they’re tackling it all. For entrepreneurs, following this model can be a tad intimidating. But that’s largely due to a misconception about the act of content creation. That is, you can take a single piece of content — a blog post, let’s say — and use it as the seed to create several other pieces of original content like a podcast, a slideshow, or a even a series of tweets.

4. Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin: The World Cup is the most socially-engaged sporting event in all of history, according to Adobe Digital Index projections. Business owners stand to suffer major missteps if they spread themselves too thin. While it might seem like a good idea to be active on every social network, it’s a much better idea to be active on a few and really knock it out of the park.

5. Engage Your Customers: As I mentioned before, the World Cup brand is being reinforced on Twitter thanks to hashflags. Basically, if you type in “#” plus a country’s three-letter abbreviation, a flag will show up in your tweet. It’s cute and clever and quickly attracts attention. Similarly, the Australian Socceroos have taken social engagement up a notch by using the #GoSocceroos hashtag to solicit questions from fans across all the major social networks. Fans just needed to include the hashtag #AskRyan along with their questions. These questions were collected and then answered in an Instagram Q&A with Ryan McGowan, one of team members.

Did these 5 lessons give you a better idea of how to create more effective and successful engagement through social media networking?

Article Source: Forbes

Image Source: Anne Frohlich on Flickr