The State of Social Media in South Africaby Darsana Vijay

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An analysis of South Africa’s 50 most valuable brands1 revealed that 45 out of 50 brands have an active social media presence on one or more social networks. However only 36% of these brands had accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. Most notably, Instagram was the least preferred social network for brands despite the higher than average engagement other brands experience on this platform.

Let us take a closer look at how these brands used Facebook during the year 2016.

The top 50 brands have been selected on the basis of this list: https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/136833/these-are-the-50-most-valuable-brands-in-south-africa-in-2016/

BRAND PRESENCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS

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15

30

45

Facebook Twitter Youtube Instagram

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of B

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No. of brands

On average, the top 50 brands had an audience of 377,249 on Facebook. They also grew their Fan numbers by 35%. Yet, this trend is not uniform and there are a few outliers, as you can notice in the chart below. Take a look at the audience size and the growth rate of these brands:

Foschini had the highest growth rate – 140%. They added almost 1.5x times more Fans that they did in the beginning of the year. Nampak on the other hand had little or no Fan growth. By the end of the year, their audience size dipped slightly from what it was at the beginning of the year.

Pick n Pay had the most number of Fans, surpassing 1.5 million. They managed to grow their audience size by 25% during this period. MTN also had over 1.3 million Fans. They experienced a Fan growth of 35%.

While some brands grew their Fan base at a steady pace, others experienced sudden surges in the number of Fans. This could be for different reasons. Let us take a look at two cases.

FAN GROWTH RATE

Growth

A marked rise could be seen in Foschini’s Fan numbers. The brand experienced rapid Fan growth from July 16. There was also an increase in the promoted Posts, which suggests that the brand ran ads as well, thereby getting more people on their page.

FOSCHINI – FAN GROWTH OVER TIME

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7K

6K

5K

4K

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Jan 16 Dec 16NovOctSep NovJunMay Jul AugMarFeb Apr

Jan 16 Dec 16NovOctSep NovJunMay Jul AugMarFeb Apr

On May 10, Clicks added 6,299 new Fans. The surge in Clicks’ Fan numbers coincided with a new campaign they ran - #FightFluFeelGood. Ads that the brand ran as part of the campaign would have given a boost to their growth rate.

CLICKS – FAN GROWTH OVER TIME

The South African brands studied here post quite regularly to Facebook. Typically, in a year each brand posts 536 times. This is quite high compared to the global standard. The average number of Posts published by the top 100 brands according to the Interbrand list is 274. Clearly, the brands studied in this report are heavy users of Facebook.

There were, however, a few outliers. Vodacom posted the most with 1,233 Posts, while Nampak had the least (22). The chart below shows the number of Posts published by the top 10 brands (according to posting frequency).

VOLUME OF BRAND POSTS

Volume of Posts

There was no definite link between posting frequency and engagement. The chart below shows the interactions that each brand received on average. This includes engagement in terms of Likes, Comments and Shares that the brand received per Post. This is placed alongside the number of Posts published by each brand. (Only the top 10 brands in terms of average engagement have been included here)

INTERACTIONS PER POST VS. POSTING FREQUENCY

On average, brands received 637 Likes, 53 Comments and 22 Shares per Post. Carling Black Label was most engaging on Facebook, in terms of average interactions. The brand came in first even when ranked according to the Unmetric Engagement Score. Mr Price got the most interactions overall. While Mr Price was the most ‘Like’d, Picknpay got the most number of Shares.

Engagement

It is important to consider how promotion affects engagement. Promotion gives a huge boost to the visibility of a Post, thereby leading to greater interactions. If you still aren’t convinced, take a look at the difference in the interactions a piece of promoted content fetched in comparison to organic content:

ENGAGEMENT – ORGANIC VS. PAID

Avg. Interactions No. of Posts

In terms of volume, paid content amounted to a little less than 30% of organic content. But the interactions per Post for paid content is 7.5 times that of organic content.

Photos were the most popular content type among the brands studied here. More than 75% of all the brand Posts were photos. Take a look at the main content types and the extent to which each was promoted:

Split of Content

Evidently, marketers are embracing visual content as you can see from the minute share of text-only content. But it is important to consider whether photos are the most effective in bringing in engagement.

The chart below shows the engagement that each content type received and how much it owed to paid efforts:

INTERACTIONS PER POST BY CONTENT TYPE

Organic

Promoted

Organic

Promoted

SPLIT OF CONTENT

ENGAGEMENT PER POST TYPE

GIFs got the most number of interactions (as a sum of Likes, Comments and Shares) per Post. However, the brands studied here posted very few GIFs compared to other content types (look at the previous chart for reference). Marketers were aware that GIFs get them a lot of engagement, as they supported a sizeable portion of them with paid efforts. This trend was the same on Twitter as well:

On Instagram, photos got the brands more engagement than videos. While the average photo brought in 428 Likes and Comments, a typical video got only 142 interactions.

Carling received the most number of Likes on their Post congratulating Kaizer Chiefs on winning the Carling Black Label Cup. The massive number of Reactions it received owed to paid efforts as well.

Top Posts

Most Reactions: Carling Black Label

Most Comments: MTN

51K

591 Shares

1.2K Comments

Congratulations to Coach Philani on leading Kaizer Chiefs to their 2nd #CarlingChampionCup. A well deserved victory!

Carling Black LabelJuly 30, 2016

MTN got the most number of Comments in the group by engaging their audience in a contest. Usually Posts like these prompt social media audiences to Comments with the promise of a gift or giveaway. MTN boosted the Reach of this Post by promoting it, thereby ensuring greater participation.

638K Views

22K

385 Shares

13K Comments

Which oldie do you prefer: A) Nokia 3310 or B) Siemens C45Drop us a COMMENT below. #TheGreatDebate

MTN South AfricaApril 6, 2016

Pick n Pay surprised shoppers during the Christmas season by footing the bill for some of their loyal customers’ holiday shopping. This earned them the most Shares for a single Post. The Post also had an estimated Reach of over 2 million. Along with promotion, the large number of Shares made the post get on more Newsfeeds.

The brands studied here published 327 campaigns in all during the year 2016. Take a look at the engagement that the top 10 campaigns received:

CAMPAIGNS – ENGAGEMENT

Most Shares: Pick n Pay

638K Views

19K

4,875 Shares

2.2K Comments

We wanted to give back to some of our valued shoppers - see what happened when we surprised them with festive cheer! #PnPKeepsOnGiving

Pick n PayDecember 21, 2016

Campaigns

Shares per Post

Comments per post

Likes per Post

Four of the top 10 campaigns were by Mr Price - #WomanCrushWednesday, #MothersDay, #MRPxEverydayPeopleStories and #MRPmystyle. 67% of all the Posts that were part of these four campaigns were promoted. The other major reason for such splendid engagement is the interactive bent of their Posts. Most of these invited social media audiences to participate. In both #MRPxEverydayPeople Stories and #MRPmystyle, the brand asked Fans to send them a picture of their #OOTD. Similarly, for the Mother’s Day campaign they got Fans to tag their mothers in the Post and post a comment with their plans for the day on it.

Customer Service

RESPONSE RATE % (REPLIES/MENTIONS)

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Around the world, customers are turning to Twitter to get support from brands. According to one study, 72% of these customers expect the brand to reply to them within one hour. For brands in South Africa on Twitter, even though 23 of the 50 brands responded to a total of 195,000 tweets, the average response time is more than 6 hours, sixteen times longer than what most customers expect.

ABSA

Nedbank

VodacomMTNza

FlySA

Cell C

Absa and Vodacom are standout brands in terms of customer service. ABSA responds to over 83% of @-mentions that it receives while MTNza replied to over 69,000 tweets - more than any other brand in South Africa. However, it’s MTNza’s competitor, Vodacom, that is quickest to apologize in its customer service tweets with over 2,900 tweets.

On Facebook, the brands received on average 4,718 user Posts. Vodacom got the most, a staggering 31,062 while Netcare saw only 19. Brands typically respond to over 50% of user Posts. Cell C was most responsive, with a response rate of 84%, while Media 24 was least responsive (2%). Absa kept up its Twitter customer service track record with a response rate of 81%.

The brands studied here used social media in varied ways. Each brand behaves differently on social media depending on their social media objectives. There is no way to arrive at an optimum posting frequency, for instance, without considering how it serves the social media goals brands set for themselves. Social media performance, in that sense, is relative. Yet, it is essential that brands constantly evaluate how their Posts are doing with respect to their goals and benchmark it against their competitors and aspirational brands.

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