Social Media Round-up: Week One

The first weekend of RWC 2011 exploded into action on Friday night with a multi-site fireworks display around the Auckland waterfront and a dazzling ceremony at Eden Park. On Saturday and Sunday fans around the world were fixated on eight matches that were often dominated by the underdogs. 'GO JAPAN' was trending worldwide on Twitter and over 3,000 people tagged "rugbyworldcup' in their Facebook posts.

The statistics on Twitter over the first weekend were impressive too. Over Friday, Saturday and Sunday;

• There were over 310,000 Tweets mentioning RWC 2011 across all the popular hashtags and keywords excluding 'rugby'
• The official hashtag #RWC2011 was tweeted over 150,000 times
• Over 231,000 tweets contained the keyword 'rugby'. A normal weekend would see just 9-12,000 tweets
• The @rugbyworldcup Twitter account gained over 10,000 new followers
• Combining all mentions of popular RWC 2011 keywords and hashtags the opening weekend had an estimated Twitter audience of over 35 million people¹

Over the last 7 days the number of tweets mentioning a variety of RWC 2011 tags and keywords have spiked

The Opening Ceremony had global interest on Twitter

After the Opening Ceremony we reviewed the last 1,000 tweets mentioning #RWC2011. Most of the tweets shared were from people in New Zealand or England but throughout South Africa, Australia, Argentina and the United States many people were listening and engaging on Twitter.

 

Flickr

The Opening Ceremony was full of colour and smiling fans. There were hundreds of cars driving around the city waving flags and cheering. Check out RWC 2011 as seen on Flickr over the last seven days. Remember to get your photos included just tag them 'RWC2011' in Flickr.

YouTube

Our YouTube video of the week was filmed on Saturday September 3rd at Sylvia Park Shopping Mall in Auckland. Since then it's been viewed almost a million times. On Twitter 'Flash Haka' was mentioned over 1,000 times and the video has been mentioned or embedded in 100's of websites and blogs.

 

Over Friday and Saturday the keyword 'Haka' was mentioned over 16,000 times on Twitter and featured in over 170 blog posts.  

Match of the week on Twitter

The Wales vs South Africa match on Sunday night reached the biggest audience on Twitter

  

The last 7 days on Twitter and Facebook

Note: For these official stats we're only tracking official accounts and hashtags like #RWC2011 and @rugbyworldcup. There are others being used like #RWC and #RWC11 which are included in the first weekend stats mentioned at the top of this post.

Which team had the largest percentage increase in followers on Twitter over the last seven days?

RWC2011 on Facebook gained over 80,000 new fans over the last seven days but the All Blacks proved their brand is engaging on Facebook with 1,000's of fans tagging them in posts and photos and commenting and liking their stories.

  

This week we're awarding the All Blacks fans the Social Media Engagement Trophy. Kiwi fans were the most engaged with their team over the last week. The Opening Ceremony and the New Zealand v Tonga match was the most watched TV show in New Zealand's history.

For those who are unsure what Hashtags are. On Twitter people can add #RWC2011 to their tweets which when posted creates a clickable link that takes you to a search report listing all the recent tweets mentioning #RWC2011 from around the world. It's a way to track and see what everyone is tweeting about on a certain topic.

¹ Potential Twitter audience is calculated based on the number of tweets mentioning one of the popular tags or keywords multiplied by an estimated 100 followers each. Tags include country specific short codes for each game like #NZL for New Zealand or RWC with or without the hashtag.