More than half of fans watching the FIFA World Cup will share adverts that tie-in with the tournament with their friends to support their favourite brands, recent research has shown.

A clear sign to companies that  the World Cup is important to be connected to, officially or unofficially, the new survey by RadiumOne shows that social is going to play a huge role in the footballing festival this year.

Other research also suggests that most firms will find Facebook a more successful hunting ground for marketing campaigns than Twitter.

According to the data from CrowdTap, 65% of fans watching the World Cup prefer Facebook, compared to just 17% opting for Twitter. Of those using Facebook as their social outlet throughout the tournament, 47% suggest that they will update their status during a match.

This data agrees with the statistics that Shift has provided in breaking down football fans further. According to its data, the top six teams in this year’s competition all have more fans on Facebook than they have following them on Twitter.

Broke down further, the top brands will also be expecting more traction from their Facebook drives than their Twitter campaigns.

Major brands such as Coca-Cola and Visa have total fan numbers on Facebook of just under 100 million. On Twitter they have just five million.

Indeed, Twitter only has 50 million football fans worldwide according to Shift. While this figure seems relatively small, it is still likely to be an important battle ground in the next month, with over 3,200 tweets per second sent throughout the 2010 World Cup final between Spain and Holland in South Africa.

At Pressroom, we feel this clearly shows just how important social is going to play for brands of all sizes throughout the tournament.

It does not have to be just those officially aligned with FIFA either, as savvy marketers can latch on to trending topics to optimise their feeds.

Steven Morris