As the Cricket Frenzy grips all of us first with the World T-20 and now the Champions league T-20. Here is an exclusive case study by Socialbakers who recently examined the social media performances of the Cricket teams. They have paid particularly close attention to fan growth, interactions and engaging posts on each of the team Facebook pages.

1. Case Study:
2012 Cricket World Cup on Facebook

2. The Study
The 2012 Cricket World Cup took place in Sri Lanka from
September 18 through October 7. The finals were held on
October 7 between West Indies and Sri Lanka. The
tournament champions were West Indies leaving Sri
Lanka in second place. During the event, Socialbakers
monitored the cricket teams’ performance both on the
field and Facebook (Official Facebook Pages only).
We paid particularly close attention to the Fan
Growth, Interactions and Response Rate of each
team. Were the champions on the field also the social
media champs? Socialbakers analyzes each team’s
statistics to find out!

3. The Teams
On September 18, Australia had the largest Facebook fan community with 1,508,220
fans. However, as the tournament progressed, other team pages grew considerably.
Pakistan experienced a fan growth of 11,089 from September 18 through October 7.
This was the largest increase in absolute numbers. On the other hand, Bangladesh had a
decline in fan count by losing 4 fans for a total of 3,320.

4. Fan Growth
» If we look at the percentage of increase throughout the entire time period, Pakistan still
wins with a 41% increase in fan growth. Next is Sri Lanka with a 20% increase
followed by West Indies with a growth of 9%.
» When we examine the very bottom of the list, we see there is a tie for last place between
Bangladesh and England. Both teams experienced an overall increase of 0%.

5. Interactions
Interactions are an extremely important part of a Facebook page. These are the total
number of Likes, Shares and Comments on a post submitted from the brand itself. So,
which team had the most interactions during the tournament? The winner is, once again,
Pakistan with 102,848 total interactions. Pakistan saw the highest number of interactions
on the last day of the tournament with 18,208 fan interactions.

6. Interactions
Next is Australia with 70,949 total interactions. Third place goes to West Indies with
42,649 interactions. The champions also received their highest number of interactions on
the last day of the tournament with 14,394 interactions when they posted their
championship photo. The photo received 1,561 Likes, 503 Shares and 138 Comments.
.

7. The Most Engaging Post
The most engaging post during the tournament came from Pakistan. The team
posted a picture of a popular Pakistani player. The picture received 7,803 Likes, 246
Shares and 428 Comments, contributing drastically to their total interactions..

8. Response Rates
When we examine response rates (how often teams respond to their fans), each
team fails miserably. As we have mentioned before, a successful brand responds to
their fans at least 65% of the time. During the Cricket World Cup, the highest response
rate came from England with 12.5%. Second place was West Indies with a .66%
response rate. Third place goes to South Africa with .53%. All of these numbers are
extremely low and send fans the wrong message.

9. Summary
When a brand makes the choice to participate in social media, it must in
fact make the choice to be social. Creating a Facebook page for the sake of
having one is not enough. Pages are, in theory, a “hangout” for fans, a place to
feel connected with their favorite brands or products. One very important way
for fans to feel connected is to communicate and be social with the brand. Yes,
it may take more time for brands to commit to responding to 65% of fan
comments, but leaving fans satisfied and happy is worth more than any amount
of time.
In conclusion, while some teams excelled in interactions and fan growth,
all teams failed at response rate. West Indies may have won the World
Cup, but Pakistan takes 1st place in social media.

10. We hope you enjoyed this exclusive study on Cricket World Cup 2012
team’s social media performance.
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
You can reach our support team at experts@socialbakers.com.
Get more information at
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