FIFA Twitter Promotion sees followers grow by 25% , engagement at 11%

While Twitter’s promoted trends and promoted tweets products have received some contention so far – both in the way in which the programme is run for advertiers, and the results that are achieved, EA have recently released stats that show, if it’s done well, a Twitter promotion can achieve positive results. Through a recent consolidated promotion they purchased promoted tweets in September to promote their FIFA 12 video game, followed by a promoted trend that saw them capitalise on conversations around a football match between Totthenham and Arsenal, in early October. The results, they found, far exceeded their expectations.

The campaign by numbers

Perhaps most impressive is the overall growth of followers on the EA Sports FIFA account, which has grown by over 25% during the period of the promotion, to reach over 105,000, now currently sitting at 105,893 :

This figure is worth focusing on, as previous Twitter promotions have shown that while you may benefit from an increase in conversations or mentions, there isn’t necessarily a positive effect on Twitter followers. This is the most important factor for determining long-term benefit of a campaign, which is something Twitter will need to consistently prove to brands so Twitter success isn’t seen as just a short burst of activity. The onus is then on the brand of course, to continue the success with further engaging campaigns.

Looking outside of the follower count to figures related specifically to promoted trends and tweets. For the promoted trend around the FIFA game, EA saw an engagement level of 11%. Engagement within Twitter is defined as a retweet, reply, or favouriting a tweet. This number far exceeds even what Twitter have claimed can be reached with their promotions, where they have previously defined 1.5% as an indicator of success for engagement. In some instances this went even further, when a promoted tweet asking followers to retweet if they planned on buying FIFA 12 soon saw an engagement rate of 15%

Go where the conversation is

These figures for Twitter promotions are certainly impressive and even more so, were needed by Twitter as up until now they hadn’t really managed to prove either the short-term or long-term success of a Twitter promotion. But what’s noteable about this campaign is that EA seemed to go where the conversation was happening naturally. Whether you’re into football or not, you can’t help but notice the huge volume of tweets you’ll encounter during a televised sports match, particularly football. Rather than trying to make people talk about something different, EA simply went to where the conversation was happening anyway and then found a way to maximise this.

In this way you could almost compare the success of campaign to that of sponsored stories on Facebook, which is less about pure advertising and more about maximising the organic, natural activity and conversation that is happening.