The FIFA World Cup 2014 in Brazil has turned out to be one of the biggest social media events and sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google+ have emerged as real winners in covering this event. Since so much is being talked about the football game and the social media's impact on it, why not also try to understand the lessons that can be in turn learnt from the football game and used to build an effective social media strategy for your organization. Goals A football match can be won only by making the maximum number of goals. Similarly, a social media strategy is effective only if it takes you towards your ultimate goal i.e. generating leads. Planning for both social media campaign and a football match has to be done keeping the ultimate goal/target in mind to achieve success. Importance of Strategy Two competing teams in a football match have same number of resources (11 players). So what makes one win over the other? The answer is strategy! The way an effective strategy is necessary to win a football match, similarly, a powerful strategy is must to run any kind of social media campaign. Importance of Players Teams in a football match make sure to use all their players in their best positions to achieve maximum advantage and great results. In a social media advertising strategy too, you need to make sure to use your players i.e. the keywords strategically for the campaign to be successful. The aim should be to appear in the high ranks on social media platforms. The football team captains many times swap the position of players and at times send the non-performers back to replace them with better players during the match. Similarly, you should monitor the success of your social media campaign and replace the high competition keywords with low competition keywords ( good monthly search volume + low competition keywords = SEO success ) to make it effective. Need for Monitoring While watching a football game, have you ever noticed the action on the sidelines? Chances are you will see the coach taking notes of the action. During the match, the coaches stand and take detailed notes of the match being played for building strategies in the future. In fact, now the teams install their own cameras around the field as well. This is done to gather real-time data about the game to be analyzed later. Future strategies and decisions based on the analysis of this data are much more effective. Each move in a match needs to be closely monitored in football; similarly, your organization's social media strategy also needs to be diligently monitored and analyzed. This will inform you about areas you are successful in and areas where you need to make improvements. Making informed decisions at the right time will definitely give you an edge above your competition. Competitive Intelligence If a football team is able to track a particular weakness in its opponent and knows how to make use of it, it is surely at a great advantage over them. Capitalizing on the opponent's mistake has sometimes been an effective strategy to win a football match. Similarly, while making a social media campaign strategy, knowledge of how your competitors run their business is important. To legitimately and ethically compile competitive intelligence on your business rivals, monitoring "mentions" of your competitor's brand can help gain valuable insights. You must know how to use the public data available on social media for your campaign to be a success. At BluEnt, we leverage the best industry resources to execute social media marketing plans for the world's most valuable brands. Our expertise in social media and technology helps our clients create maximum brand awareness and new business opportunities on popular social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ and YouTube. To know more about our social media services, click here.