Sochi, 19th February 2014 it was with satisfaction that the IOC reported how during the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games its presence on Russian social media has grown dramatically. Exchanges on the International Olympic Committee’s digital platforms have indeed reached gigantic proportions.
Russians are some of the most engaged people in the world when it comes to social media, spending, according to figures available, over six hours a month on the Russian social network VKontakte (VK) alone.
And they are greatly enjoying their first social media Games. Twenty per cent of the 60 million monthly active users on the platform engage with the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games, and were responsible for 17 million mentions of the Games on VK during the first week of competition alone.
Thus, with 2.7 million fans, the IOC’s Olympic page on VK has become the most popular official community page in the world among Russians. Thousands of Russians have indeed been cheering for their athletes, and the IOC has been sharing their photos live in the Medals Plaza and at other live sites across Russia. And this is the first time that user-generated content has been shared within an Olympic venue.
The Olympic Athletes’ Hub has also been an outstanding success, recording over 40,000 updates from Olympians, teams and National Olympic Committees in the first week of the Games, and becoming the focus point for chats with the athletes via social media.
Over 1,700 photos have been taken at the Games so far and can be viewed on facebook.com/olympics.
Moreover, this platform has received a warm welcome from the athletes competing in Sochi, who enjoy easy access to contacts with other athletes, knowing that they are true accounts, since they are all checked to avoid fake profiles.
In the lead-up to the Games, the IOC’s Facebook page grew by more than 2 million fans. In the first seven days of the Games the page gained close to 1 million new fans. During the same period, Facebook reported that 24 million people were talking about the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games on its platform.
The IOC Twitter account, meanwhile, has added 1 hundred thousand new followers since the start of the Games. According to Hootsuite, 6.5 million mentions of the Olympic Games appeared on Twitter during the first week of competition.
In the past 30 days, 1.2 billion impressions have been recorded on IOC-led accounts on Facebook and Twitter.
There has been great interest surrounding Sochi 2014 in other parts of the world as well. In China, for example, the IOC’s Sina Weibo account grew by 849,752 fans, and there were almost 12.5 million mentions of the hashtag sochi2014 during the first week alone. The IOC brings together a global audience across social networks that currently stands at 33.9 million subscribers.
What a success!
