Now that the big summer football event of 2013 has passed, the FIFA Confederations Cup, attention has turned to the BIG one.  I’m of course referring to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, the second time that the country will have hosted the competition – the last time being way back in 1950.

Next Monday (12th August), FIFA will be launching not one but three new Facebook pages as their push onto the platform accelerates.  Up until now it has been around competitions only, the latest being the FIFA Confederations Cup Brazil 2013 page.  This launch will cover not only the World Cup but also other FIFA activities as they look to engage with fans in a deeper way.

The new pages will be;

1. FIFA World Cup Brazil – as you would expect, will cover all things leading up to and including next years World Cup.
2. FIFA World Cup – charting the history of the competition from 1930 to 2010, accessing some of the huge reams of archive material the federation has.
3. FIFA – will focus on the range of projects FIFA is involved in; from Football Development and Corporate Social Responsibility projects FIFA is involved in, to updates on FIFA’s fight against doping and match manipulation.  And bringing all the behind-the-scenes images, and hopefully some Q&A’s, from the Ballon D’Or in January.

Ahead of the launch, FIFA is giving fans the opportunity to vote on what photo should be the first one to appear on the FIFA World Cup page as the cover image.  There is no prize at the end of it but it is a nice way to get the fans involved from the start.

The vote has proved to be popular so far, boosted by tweets from the 6 FIFA Twitter accounts to promote it beyond the 76k fans the Facebook page has.  They’re not only taking the Facebook likes into consideration but also the RT’s and favourite’s each photo gains on Twitter.  So far the leading entry, thanks to a rush from Japanese fans, is of Keisuke Honda scoring the penalty that saw them qualify for next year’s World Cup.

Voting is set to close at 18:00 CET on Friday 9th August so get your votes in now over at the FIFA Confederations Cup Brazil 2013 page.  We look forward to seeing how well the three pages take off and the types of content we will see on them, it’s an important time for the federation as preparations are really ramped up.  With the protests at the Confederations Cup it is likely to be a big test as to how they handle any attacks on the pages as well as the PR fall-out any more will have.

UKSN will be talking to FIFA in more detail about their Social Media plans for the 2014 FIFA World Cup later this year.