The UEFA Euro 2024 is due to kick off on 7 June 2024 with the first match taking place between Germany and Scotland. Besides watching the games, and given that we’re not athletics, rather digital marketing experts, we’ll do something a little different.
In this article, we are introducing the ‘Digital Presence Euros’, a holistic picture that we have created of each European nation’s digital presence from their official football accounts. As it turns out, many of these nations have a huge potential to capture large demographics of audiences, but they aren’t putting enough focus into growing their digital presence.
So, we’ll use a broad spectrum of online metrics in order to determine which nation is winning the pitch and succeeding online. We’ll also cover which nations are capitalising on growing social media platforms and which have missed the mark despite having huge potential. At the end of this article, we’ll announce the overall winners, for whom we have created our very own ranking system.
Ready? Let’s kick off!
What Is the Digital Presence Euros?
The “Digital Presence Euros” is an analysis of European Digital Strategies that focuses on how European countries leverage digital tools and platforms to achieve various goals. It could be applied to areas like:
Government: Analyzing how European governments utilize websites, social media, and e-government services to engage citizens and deliver services.
Tourism: How effectively European countries promote themselves as tourist destinations through digital marketing campaigns and social media presence.
Business: Analyzing how European companies leverage digital tools for marketing, customer relationship management, and e-commerce within the European market.
Education: Examining how European educational institutions utilize online platforms for course delivery, student engagement, and communication.
This analysis usually focuses on specific aspects depending on the context:
Website Effectiveness: Analyzing website design, user experience, functionality, and traffic for relevant institutions or companies.
Social Media Engagement: Examining how effectively organizations use platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and potentially region-specific platforms to connect with their target audience. This could involve analyzing follower growth, content strategy, and audience interaction levels.
Data Strategies: Exploring how European entities utilize data to personalize communications, target marketing efforts, and understand user behavior.
Digital Innovation: Highlighting innovative approaches like using artificial intelligence for chatbots, virtual reality for training purposes, or augmented reality for tourism experiences.
Conducting this Digital Presence Euros turns out to have multiple benefits. Besides providing insights into how European audiences consume digital content and interact with online platforms, the analysis allows countries to understand their digital landscape, compare their digital strategies with others and identify areas for improvement. By studying successful approaches, countries can learn and adapt strategies to better engage with their audience.
Now that we understand what the Digital Presence Euros is, let’s look into the version we have created.
The Competitors
The competitors for our Digital Euros include the 24 nations that have made it to the group stages of the UEFA Euro. These include the Western European countries of England, Germany, Scotland, Switzerland, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, and Portugal. From Eastern Europe we have Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Turkey, Poland, Czech Republic, Serbia, Croatia, and Georgia, We also have Slovenia and Austria from Central Europe, Albania and Italy from the South and Denmark from the North.
Each nation will be judged using the same available data from official accounts. All data collected is accurate and correct as of May 2024.
Facebook Digital Presence Analysis
We have used two sets of values for this analysis, followers and likes. Arguably, followers have more merit than likes because they indicate a higher level of engagement and interest in a Facebook page’s content.
Followers actively choose to receive updates and are more likely to see the page’s posts in their news feed regularly, reflecting a greater commitment to the page. In contrast, page likes show initial support or interest but do not guarantee consistent visibility of the page’s posts.
Facebook Followers
At a glance, it’s clear to see that England is the front winner for followers, followed by France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Portugal, all of whom have managed to secure at least one million followers. The remaining 18 nations seem to struggle to hit that 1M mark.
The data below shows how many Facebook likes each nation’s page has received. Again, England is the frontline winner, and the nations of Germany, Portugal, Spain and Poland have managed to reappear in the top five.
However, one surprising metric here is that France, which was second in Facebook Followers, does not have Facebook likes listed. The reason jumping to mind is that they simply haven’t turned the feature on in their page settings, which for any marketer is an immediate red card!
Several other countries also commit this foul including Turkey, the Netherlands and Slovenia, which isn’t ideal in terms of digital performance as they are losing out on gathering important data.
Nation
Facebook Likes
England
7.9M
Germany
6.4M
Portugal
4.8M
Spain
3.9M
Poland
1.2M
Croatia
595K
Scotland
540K
Belgium
527K
Romania
349K
Austria
252K
Serbia
215K
Georgia
223K
Albania
205K
Italy
236K
Switzerland
194K
Czech Republic
188K
Hungary
170K
Slovakia
94K
Ukraine
42K
Denmark
11K
Slovenia
N/A
Netherlands
N/A
France
N/A
Turkey
N/A
Importance of Facebook in Digital Marketing
In Europe alone, Facebook has approximately 408 million monthly active users. It’s massive for digital marketing efforts and remains one of the most popular platforms on the continent.
However, there are shifting trends, in that the platform is struggling to retain younger demographics, with other platforms challenging the site’s monopoly in social media domination.
Will Facebook Reign Forever?
This becomes apparent when we look at Facebook vs Instagram data for this report. The example below shows that Italy, which has 251K followers on Facebook, has 5.9M followers on Instagram. That’s 23 times the number of followers, which indicates a massive shift as to where people are spending their online time. Luckily for the Meta, however, they own both Facebook and Instagram, so they won’t cry about it for too long!
For the Instagram analysis, we’ll looked at both the amount of followers and the typical engagement rate for each nation’s official football account. The engagement rates in particular will indicate the quality of their online content and how their audiences are valuing their social media presence.
Instagram Followers
Portugal takes the win on this one, leading the way with over 17.1M Instagram followers. We again see the familiar faces of France, England Germany, Italy and Spain among the leading positions.
To further highlight the point mentioned in the above Facebook analysis, the amount of followers in the top ten positions of Instagram amounts to 65.2 million followers, whereas on Facebook it amounts to 17.27 million followers.
So, it begs the question of whether or not Facebook is equal value to Instagram. In the context of your own digital marketing initiatives, should you pay more attention to Instagram because that’s where the people are? Our guess, maybe you should, particularly if you’re appealing to younger audiences as part of your digital strategy.
Having said that, Instagram followers aren’t the only important metric for measuring success on the platform. You also need to think about engagement rates, in order to determine the quality of content and what your audiences like to interact with.
The engagement rates listed below flip the previous winning nations on their heads. The top five do not have any of the typical leaders of France, Portugal, Italy, etc., despite their massive followings. Instead, it’s Slovenia that shoots into first place with an impressive engagement rate of 2.60%, followed by Serbia, Hungary, Switzerland and Austria.
Nation
Engagement Rate
Slovenia
2.60%
Serbia
2.51%
Hungary
2.41%
Switzerland
2.19%
Austria
2.04%
Slovakia
1.92%
Georgia
1.67%
Poland
1.33%
Romania
0.97%
Ukraine
0.92%
Albania
0.87%
Croatia
0.86%
Denmark
0.85%
England
0.81%
Germany
0.81%
Czech Republic
0.78%
Turkey
0.71%
Belgium
0.51%
France
0.48%
Italy
0.46%
Spain
0.37%
Scotland
0.34%
Netherlands
0.24%
Portugal
0.22%
Instagram Engagement vs Followers
Another amazing stat that emerges here is Portugal. This country holds the top position of Instagram followers at 17.1 million but is at the bottom of the pile for engagement rate at only 0.22%. When we take a deeper look into the engagement levels in terms of average likes per post, it also becomes more apparent.
Nation
Instagram Followers
Avg Likes per Post
Germany
6.4M
52,135
Portugal
17.1M
37,323
The example above shows that Germany, despite having over 2.5 times fewer followers than Portugal, averages over 15,000 more likes per post than Portugal. So what is the lesson here? More followers will not equal more engagement. Online content still needs to be interesting and effectively appeal to target audiences in order to convince them to engage with your brand.
X/Twitter
This dataset lists the number of X, formerly known as Twitter, followers per competing nation. France (6.3M) and England (6.2M) lead the chart with the highest number of followers, indicating a strong social media presence on the platform.
Nations like Austria (61.9K), Czech Republic (54.8K), Romania (47.3K), Albania (25K), Slovenia (23.4K), Ukraine (21.1K), Georgia (11K), and Slovakia (7.539K) are at the lower end of the spectrum. The following numbers indicate a limited reach and possibly less influence or engagement on X.
Nation
Twitter Followers
France
6.3M
England
6.2M
Germany
3.2M
Spain
2.7M
Portugal
1.8M
Turkey
1.1M
Italy
937.5K
Netherlands
489K
Poland
466.8K
Belgium
401.3K
Croatia
299.5K
Scotland
261.8K
Switzerland
150.1K
Denmark
100.9K
Hungary
81.3K
Serbia
81.1K
Austria
61.9K
Czech Republic
54.8K
Romania
47.3K
Albania
25K
Slovenia
23.4K
Ukraine
21.1K
Georgia
11K
Slovakia
7.539K
It’s important to note that for this analysis, countries with larger populations and more widely spoken languages (like French, English, and German) tend to have higher follower counts. However, the social media strategy for each nation also has a massive impact on creating an engaged user base, and as such shouldn’t be discarded in the analysis of engagement.
How Important is X/Twitter for Digital Presence?
The social media platform X, formally Twitter, has taken some PR hits in recent years, including the drama surrounding its rebranding after Elon Musk bought it. According to StatCounter, only 3.59% of internet users use X, which isn’t much when you compare it to Instagram, which has twice that number of European users (7.61%).
In terms of digital presence, however, you still want to have the platform in your toolkit, the reason being that audiences almost expect it as part of your online identity. Without it, you also risk capturing audiences who still value the good old days of Twitter. Although X has seen a 15% decline in global daily active users, it’s still worth having for the time being.
TikTok Digital Presense Analysis
TikTok reports an average of 134 million European users per month. The video-sharing platform has quickly risen in popularity, experiencing significant growth during the COVID-19 period, which has proven not to be a passing fad.
Nations that are currently attracting a popular following on TikTok could arguably be praised for their ability to pivot their digital strategies, ensuring that they have remained aligned with trending consumption habits.
In this part of our analysis, we examine TikTok follower counts, total likes, and the quality of video content across various European official football accounts. These metrics provide insights into the platform’s engagement and the success of users in capturing and maintaining audience interest.
TikTok Followers
For every metric we have analysed so far, it mainly appears to be a contest between England and France, who both have managed to compete in the top three positions for at least one metric per category. TikTok is no different, but this time it’s France leading the way with 3.4 million more followers than England.
One competitor we haven’t seen in the top rankings yet is Belgium. However, on TikTok, they fall at position four for the most followers (1.9M) and at position five for the most likes (16.5M), coming before the likes of Spain, Italy, and Germany.
Arguably, this shows how the TikTok platform allows for smaller accounts to gain global attraction, something which has also been observed at a small business level, who have shared ins similar successes.
TikTok Likes
‘TikTok Likes’ accumulates all of the total likes the account has gathered on each video, which is why the data here is significantly higher than the follower counts. Again, France tops the board for this digital presence metric with over 198.4 million likes
Nation
TikTok Likes
France
198.4M
England
142.5M
Poland
32.5M
Portugal
16.7M
Belgium
16.5M
Spain
13.8M
Germany
12.4M
Italy
10.2M
Austria
6M
Denmark
3.3M
Scotland
2.5M
Serbia
2.1M
Czech Republic
238.3K
Slovenia
232.1K
Ukraine
209.8K
Romania
287.8K
Slovakia
142.3K
Albania
144.7K
Switzerland
639K
Hungary
535.1K
Croatia
102.8K
Georgia
24.1K
Turkey
24K
Netherlands
51
The reason for this is probably the quality of the content, which when you look at France’s profile appears to capitalise on international football celebrities like Mbappe. Their pinned post (and most popular with 47.6M views) features the footballer answering questions about himself.
So, it begs the question, if one was posted for Harry Kane, would it generate similar engagement results?
When you look at the number of users per country, France (21M) and England (23M), it’s clear to see why both nations have made an obvious and successful attempt to jump on board with local consumption habits.
However, one thing to point out is that not all TikTok traffic will come from local audiences, especially given the reputation of famous players e.g. England’s Harry Kane, France’s Mbappe, and Portugal’s Ronaldo. So, the nations with famous footballers should receive a spike in global attention.
This at least appears to be the case for TikTok, especially when you look at Portugal data which as a nation, only has 3.3 million active TikTok users, yet it is in position three for both followers and likes.
YouTube Digital Presence Analysis
An estimated 19.75% of Europeans are YouTube users, which is a significant part of the population. In digital presence terms, it is a goldmine if you can manage to gather a loyal subscriber base, as the engagement levels tend to be way longer than other social media platforms. For this analysis, we look at both the subscriber base for each nation, to see how popular they are, and the amount of views on their most popular YouTube video.
YouTube Subscribers
One theme that keeps reappearing in this analysis is whether or not the population of a country (and its percentage of engaged YouTube users), has an impact on the amount of YouTube subscribers for each nation’s official football channel.
Judging by the data, it does, but it does not mean an absolute certainty for the subscriber base. Take for example the UK, which reportedly has 56.2M YouTube users, (falling third in European YouTube usage). Yet, it has taken first place for this analysis and is very closely followed by France.
Germany has the highest portion of YouTube users (67.8M) followed by Turkey (57.5M), yet these two nations come in at position four and seven in the rankings above. So the population of YouTube users obviously does have an effect but is not a guarantee for YouTube success.
YouTube Video Views
France takes the edge in this category, with a staggering 28M views on their most popular YouTube video. This video shares backstage content of the French team preparing for their final World Cup match in 2018 against Croatia. This video has garnered more than double the number of views on England’s most popular video which only has 11M.
However, the data does not account for when the video was posted. France’s video was posted in January 2019 whereas England’s most recent video was posted in March 2024. So given a little more time, this could quite easily change. One thing common in both videos, however, is that they depict key events, whether it’s the World Cup or in England’s case the famous Lukaku assist that took place in the recent match between England vs. Belgium match.
The overall number of YouTube subscribers, for each nation, tends to be much less compared to the other social platforms mentioned above. One could argue that this is due to the consumption habits of each nation, or the fact that a subscription to a YouTube channel is much more of a commitment compared to other socials.
In either case, subscribers are most definitely important in terms of digital presence. YouTube SEO is now more popular than ever, and having 1000 dedicated audiences who are watching 30 mins of your video content could be of more value than 10,000 who only engage for a few seconds. Ultimately, it depends on your digital marketing goals, but we always advise for quality engagement over brief brand interactions.
Digital Presence Euros Winner
As he aim of this analysis was to identify which countries are leveraging digital tools effectively and engaging their audiences online, and based on the stats we listed above, the leaders in each categor can be summarised as follows:
Facebook Followers: England
Instagram Followers: Portugal
Instagram Engagement Rate: Slovenia
X (formerly Twitter) Followers: France (tied with England)
TikTok Followers: France
TikTok Likes: France
YouTube Subscribers: England (followed closely by France)
YouTube Most Popular Video Views: France
And the Winner Is…
Yes, the croassaint-eating nation, France.
Based on the analysis of various metrics across platforms, France emerges victorious in the Digital Presence Euros! Their strong showing across categories like follower counts, likes, and even YouTube video views solidifies their position. So, well done, Madame France!
Conclusion
The “Digital Presence Euros” is a unique analysis that goes beyond the pitch, examining how European nations utilise social media and online platforms to engage with fans and build their digital presence. It assesses various metrics like website effectiveness, social media engagement, and data strategies.
By focusing on quality content that resonates with the target audience, along with utilising the right platforms for different demographics, countries can build a strong digital presence and foster fan engagement.
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