Which Nation Leads The Sochi Social Media Medal Table?

The Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia is well under way. But, who is leading the social media medal table?

We’ve had a dig into some social media data to see which nation is in the lead. Firstly, we’ve looked at the number of Twitter mentions for key countries as compared to their medal counts (all data 01/02/2014 - 11/02/2014) as shown below:

As you can see, Great Britain is punching above it’s weight in terms of mentions of the @TeamGB Twitter account as compared to medal haul, potentially showing how into the Winter Olympic coverage the British public really are. The Netherlands, Russia, and Switzerland aren’t performing so well on Twitter as compared to their medal hauls, however this is due to a combination of factors such as lower Twitter usage (in Russia), and lack of official accounts for the Winter Olympic teams, meaning that mentions and hashtags are slightly more fragmented in their usage. The USA is the surprise here, with relatively low mentions of their official accounts. However this does not take into account the mentions on all of the individual athletes which is high for the US team.

On Facebook, Austria is leading the way in terms of engagement rate on it’s page, with Switzerland and Canada coming in second and third. These are traditional cold-weather countries that perform well in the Winter Olympics, and with slightly smaller fan counts on their official Facebook pages, the engagement rate spike is slightly easier to generate.

In terms of growth rate of the official Facebook pages, Canada is streaking ahead, adding 28% to it’s audience size in the last four weeks. The USA and Austria are next in terms of raw numbers of fans liking the page.

Team GB are right in the mix in all of these graphs, showing again that the Winter Olympics is part of the public consciousness right now, even if it hasn’t quite captured the imagination like the Summer Olympics do.

Content like this by Team GB is helping to increase their engagement rate & acquire new fans- Jenny Jones related posts have flown over this period after she won Britain’s first ever snow based medal:

Post by Team GB.

On Twitter, the strategy is similar, with visual posts such as this driving new followers and retweets:

That was simply brilliant! @jennyjonessnow will receive her Olympic #Bronze medal this afternoon. #GoJenny #GoTeamGB pic.twitter.com/uDDDC2lYHx

— Team GB (@TeamGB) February 9, 2014

It’ll be interesting to see how social media and medal data continues to compare, and whether TeamGB will see another lift in terms of engagement from further medals. At present the cold weather countries are winning in terms of medals and social media presence (engagement and growth), however the Twitter mentions tell a slightly different story. This shows the opportunity that some of those nations are missing out on by not focussing their countries’ Twitter users on an official account and hashtag.

Enjoy the games!