Consumers’ love affair with brand content across social media continues to grow, and the message is clear: ignore these platforms at your peril.
This was a key point emerging from the influential annual Social Media Landscape SA – 2017 briefings held recently in Johannesburg and Cape Town and led by Arthur Goldstuck, managing director of independent technology-research and strategy organisation World Wide Worx. The research had been compiled by media information provider Ornico, based on analysis of all social media networks in South Africa and surveys of 116 companies and agencies.
The study focused on the “top” five platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube), while also looking at the five “rising” platforms (WeChat, WhatsApp, BBM, Periscope and Snapchat).
It showed that 91% of the brands surveyed this year were using Facebook, 88% were active on Twitter, and 66% were on YouTube. The percentage of brands using Instagram increased sharply – from 42% to 62% – and Instagram user figures grew by 32% to 3.5-million users.
About 26% of the brands quizzed said they intended to use Instagram as an additional platform in 2017, with YouTube projected to attract a further 16%, illustrating the growing appeal of photo- and video-sharing networks. The trend is for South Africans to post to Instagram during working hours – to save on mobile data – and the top YouTube accounts get an average of 37 000 views per video.
About 14-million South Africans are now on Facebook, the country’s biggest social media platform, with 85% of them using mobile devices to engage (a big increase from 77% the year before). Brands average around 5.7 posts daily on their Facebook pages.
The second-largest network is YouTube, with 8.74-million users – and the trend shows that videos are getting longer (an average of 132 seconds per video).
Twitter rose to 7.7-million users over the survey period, and Goldstuck said the best time for brands to tweet was on Thursdays between 9am and 10am. LinkedIn (which has 450-million users globally) grew to 5.5-million active users in South Africa in 2016, up 19% from 4.7-million in 2015.
Social media is “maturing into a more measurable environment” that can be leveraged more effectively by brands.
“The statistics on the uptake of social media in South Africa are amazing – proof that individuals and brands are realising the power of social media,” says Flow’s Melanie Feris.
“Social media is very powerful – it can make or break your brand. And just because you’re tweeting and posting live videos to Facebook doesn’t mean you’re building your brand.”
“As the head of Flow’s social media department, I spend hours on social media platforms, and I can easily spot the brands that know they have to have a social media presence but don’t actually know how to do it.”
“If you think that posting hundreds of pictures of the soap, the buttons, the washing powder and the bread that you stock in your little corner store to Instagram every day will get you more customers, it won’t.
“But if you tweet that you’re selling freshly baked bread at R1, for one day only, you probably will get more customers through your doors.
“You know the saying, ‘Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad’? The same applies to social media.
“Yes, anyone can tweet. But it’s the knowledge that will help you know not to tweet LOL at someone whose grandmother just passed away, that will help your brand.”