Social Media Round-up: Week Two
In this week's social media round up we check out the reaction after one of the biggest Rugby World Cup upsets of all time and highlight some of the smaller teams who are building huge fan bases on Twitter and Facebook.
RWC 2011 mentions on Twitter
Last week we found fans around the world referring to Rugby World Cup on Twitter with a variety of hashtags. The official hashtag is #RWC2011. This week we noticed a significant drop in the number of people using unofficial hashtags so we've combined the lot to compare RWC2011 against the number of tweets that just contain Rugby. The opening weekend (FRI - SUN) of RWC 2011 created over 260,000 Tweets. The 2nd weekend saw more than 137,000 Tweets mentioning Rugby World Cup.
Tip: You can click on any of the images in this post to enlarge them
Australia vs Ireland
New Zealand became a loving sister to Ireland on Saturday night as both nations celebrated an Irish win over Australia. On Saturday over 80,000 tweets mentioned Ireland while only half that mentioned Australia. The emotion around this game was incredible. We tracked the sentiment for the game after the half and full time whistles At half time the action was already above the line as fans kept optimistic for their teams success. Notice that most of the negative lines are already for Australia.
At full-time there are hardly any negative posts for Ireland in the 2nd half while Australians try to keep positive. In the last ten minutes finally Australians realised the outcome and the shock sets in.
It's interesting to note that Ireland have over 43,000 followers on Twitter but Australia only has a little over 17,000.
This week on Flickr
Each week we capture fan pictures posted on Flickr tagged with 'RWC2011'Facebook post of the week
With over 6,500 Likes, almost 1,500 comments and over 450 shares on Facebook this All Blacks Facebook update was the most engaged post from any team in the RWC2011 last week.
Team Review
In this week's team review, we eliminated New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and England from the reports as they all have over 100,000 fans on Facebook and receive the lion's share of mentions on Twitter. We're interested in discovering which teams over the course of the tournament gain the most new followers or fans and which teams have the most engaged fan base. The first graph charts new followers on Twitter and new Fans on Facebook over the last 4 weeks. Samoa and Argentina are battling it out for the most new Facebook fans; while Ireland, Wales and Argentina have gained the most new followers on Twitter.
The average number of interactions on Facebook adds up how many comments and likes fans make on a team's Facebook status update. Samoa and Argentina get the most engagement on Facebook but Ireland dominate the number of Twitter mentions for these teams.
This week we're awarding the Argentinian fans the Social Media Engagement Trophy. Over the last couple of weeks Argentina has consistently featured gaining 1000's of new and highly engaged followers and fans. Congratulations Argentina!
To help your team win next weeks Social Media Engagement Trophy just rally the troupes, make sure all your fans and followers are mentioning the correct @Name on Twitter and tagging their team in Facebook posts. And look out as Ireland is on a roll!
For a full list of all the official RWC2011 Team Twitter accounts please click here.
Please note: All statistics are based on official Twitter and Facebook page data. Not every team has official pages.
RNZ 2011 / Justin Flitter
