Barcelona striker and Argentinian international Lionel Messi started a Facebook page today. And after seven hours he had racked up nearly 7 million Likes.

There’s no announcement on his official website. He’s yet to join Twitter. ‘Man creates Facebook account’ is hardly going to make the headlines. So how did the news spread so quickly?

Firstly, you can’t underestimate the passion for football in Leo’s home country and the affection for the 23-year-old star who is widely agreed to be one of the best players in the world. Facebook number crunchers Social Bakers say there are 14 million Facebook users in Argentina, with 62% of them aged between 18 and 34 (the male/female split is nearly equal), so it’s a fair bet that a good number of these are going to Like his page.

But what really did it was the announcement from FC Barcelona on their own Facebook page. When you tell 12 million Barça fans that their star player has just joined Facebook the Likes are going to start stacking up quicker than you can say Camp Nou.

The club also posted the news to its Spanish, Catalan and English Twitter feeds, which have a combined total of 1.4 million followers.

So while not every business will even dream of having the same social media success as Messi, there’s a useful tip here – find the key influencers in your sector and make sure they let their network know about you.

Messi still has a long way to go before catching up with Real Madrid rival Cristiano Ronaldo with his 23 million Likes. But it’s early days yet.