Kaka’s 10m Twitter followers shows growth of Football Social Media

Real Madrid and Brazil star Kaka became the first footballer to hit the magic 10 million Twitter followers mark this month. The  midfield maestro is 1 million fans ahead of his nearest competitor and fellow team mate Cristiano Ronaldo who sites at just over 9 million followers. On Facebook, Kaka boasts an impressive 15 million Likes but the positions are turned as Ronaldo has a staggering 42 million Facebook Likes – the highest of any player or team in not just football, but sports!

Kaka’s popularity on Twitter is most likely down to the fact that he personally updates and creates content for his followers as supposed to hiring in external community managers. A modest and shy footballer, Kaka puts a lot of effort into engaging directly with his fans.

Furthermore, Kaka uses a multi-platform approach to his social media, meaning, rather than just posting exclusively on the one social network he cross promotes his Twitter content on Facebook, Facebook on Twitter and even more impressively his Instagram profile.

Instagram, the subject of a 1 billion acquisition from Facebook this month, is still unknown to most in the football industry. However, that hasn’t stopped Kaka from using the photo sharing app to accumulate over 134k Instagram followers.

Since this blog first started in December 2010, there has been a huge growth in Football Social Media and this landmark goes to show how close the game and digital communications has grown in such a short amount of time. As sports fans continue to flock to social media sites in order to follow their sporting heroes, players and clubs must pay more attention and think strategically about their online activity.