World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is very, very big. Sometimes it’s easy to imagine the organization as some fringe network with only a few devoted fans. Surprisingly , this is not the case. WWE has a huge fanbase worldwide, and their website, WWE.com, has over 14 million unique average monthly visitors worldwide. In fact, WWE.com has had more attendance than ABC.com, CBS.com, NBC.com, NASCAR.com, PerezHilton.com, NHL.com and UFC.com. More people attended the last Wrestlemania than the last Super Bowl. Amazing numbers to be sure, but it has only been recently that WWE has decided to go viral by launching their own social media campaign.
WWE is not actually a stranger to the social media world. WWE Universe, their own social media platform, has already reached 610,000 users in the two years since its release. So what then prompted WWE to start reaching their fans through Facebook and Twitter? According to Mark Keys, VP of web production, digital media, “People were engaging on those sites and communicating about our products anyway, so we might as well embrace them and bring them into the fold.” And it certainly worked well for WWE. Over 500,000 Facebook users clicked “Like” for the WWE Facebook page, before WWE had even started promoting their Facebook campaign. At the time of this posting, WWE’s Twitter page has over 160,000 followers. On the WWE Universe site’s live chat feature, which runs during live TV and Pay-Per-View events, site users stay active for an average of 45-50 minutes.
The above graph shows popularity of Google searches for “WWE” as compared to “super bowl”. Even in when the search term “super bowl” peaks in February (because that’s when the game is held every year), it still barely surpasses the popularity of “WWE”, and even then not every year.
Needless to say it’s impressive what WWE has done with their social media campaign, but how can this be applied to other businesses? One important aspect to note is that WWE recognized that their fans were already on Facebook and Twitter, and even already talking about WWE over those sites. By creating a Facebook and Twitter page, WWE created an outlet for their fans on those sites, which increased brand recognition and loyalty. There are plenty of Facebook and Twitter users, and those numbers are growing each day. Creating a social media campaign is a cost effective way of reaching many fans that are looking for your services.
Written by Brennan Mack