Facebook, the social media giant, has now reached a 665+ million user base with 80 million new accounts in the first quarter of 2011. There is no doubt that it has hit the Sri Lankan context with a 47.2 percent online penetration that is a user base of 830k+ taking the country into the 75th position of the global Facebook list. However, Sri Lanka experienced a 7 percent drop in the user base that is over a 64k+ users. Mark & Comm Limited (MNC), a strategic marketing, reputation and communications partnered with Social Baker, the heart for Facebook statistics and a leading Facebook application developer, to bring in insights into Facebook pages in Sri Lanka and how it is mis-used when it comes to brand engagement, and the measures taken to tackle and change perspective.
moreInsights to users from Sri Lanka
If we take the global scenario, nearly 30 percent of the new account registrations have been made by users in the age group of 18-24 years of age. This remains the strongest one on Facebook and at this moment represents over 210 million Facebook users overall.
This is the same with Sri Lanka where 45 percent of total users in Sri Lanka are from the age group of 18 to 24 years.
Second biggest age group on Facebook global is from the 25 to 34 years age group with almost 20 million new account registrations this age group totals 174 million Facebook accounts as of now.
Its trend is same in Sri Lanka with this age group being the second biggest age group with a 33 percent share.
Interestingly, Sri Lanka boasts a massive male user base of 65 percent when compared to the 35 percent that makes the female user base. Founder MNC, Thanzyl Thajudeen, states that Facebook is more of a masculine type when it comes to Sri Lankan Facebook pages from a branding point of view than a users' point of view.
It's highly visible that brand marketers and agencies hold massive promotional and content that is mostly masculine type but yet the female audience is just starting to pick up on Facebook in Sri Lanka with self-expressive brands on the rise.
The third biggest gain of Facebook users in the first quarter of 2011 has been in the age group of 35 to 44 years of age, almost 11 million new registrations and 90 million Facebook accounts in total. However, Sri Lanka also experienced increasing users from this age group during the last month.
More than this age group, it's visible that the 13 to 17 age groups is second biggest in Sri Lanka as it saw increasing user rates, according to the graphs presented here.
Mis-use: It's not fan growth that matters, it's engagement and Facebook has definitely hit brands and organizations in Sri Lanka to think and act on the platform. However, it seems that brand marketers and agencies have mis-used this strategic tool and hence have led to a promotional tool.
MNC have been watching many brand pages from Sri Lanka and concludes that the trigger given is some promotional game such as "Win tickets and reloads" or "Like us and stand a chance to win".
As consumers move towards preference and likes apart from promotional materials being bombarded at them these pages are being taken as a motive of increasing short term revenue and platform to carry out promotions.
There is also a misusage when it comes to brand engagement. Thanzyl Thajudeen stated that Sri Lankan Facebook pages mainly those official pages of brands and organizations are only concerned with increasing the fan numbers, and the agency or the marketer who handles carry out Facebook advertising to increase the user growth with triggering a promotional message that easily makes the user to click the like button. But what happens here is that it is good for short-term but you are actually not winning the lifetime value or what we call as the lifetime like of a fan or user.
With many brand marketers practising on this basis, the whole Facebook platform when it comes to Sri Lanka is hence being perceived as another promotional platform. It's time to change this type of usage brand marketers will be surprised if this tool is taken as a strategic and a longer term tool rather, it's so disappointing to see this.
Mark and Comm Limited (MNC), a local partner for Social Bakers, carried out an analysis using one of the best engagement monitoring and enhancement tool SocialBakers Page Analytics, taking from January 1 to April 12 from pages in Sri Lanka taking four into account to give out how engagement matters than just growing fan numbers. MNC took four pages namely Odel (the retail clothing giant), Dialog Axiata (the leading mobile network operator), Iraj (the constant Hip-hop and RnB music artist) and EFM (the most favourite lifestyle radio station) to just give out as how Social Bakers Analytics identifies engagement areas and why brands and organizations need to use this Analytic tool which are available on subscription packages to monitor and increase engagement on Facebook.
Insights to Odel, Iraj, Dialog, and EFM from January 1 to April 12
SocialBakers Page Analytics gives detailed analysis for Facebook pages and hence is a great tool for brand marketers and agencies. It covers many areas of the page such as a quick overview of the monitored page; detailed analysis with regard to gain of fans, detailed analysis of posting on the wall, shows how much fans engage on this page, shows mistakes page has done while posting, list of the key influencers on page, and shows how much the page responses to its fans.
Fanpage Score measures critical areas of the page such as Content, Fans, Post Quality and Engagement meaning that the higher the Page Score, the better the performance it is on Facebook.
If we look at Chart Three, Odel, the retail clothing giant in Sri Lanka is having a 24 percent engagement rate which is of course really good as the maximum index score is 30 percent. Dialog Axiata, the leading MNO, engages at 14 percent; Iraj, the hip-hop and RnB icon, engages at 12 percent; and EFM, the favourite lifestyle radio station engages at 7 percent. So now, we could see the importance of engagement rate which is critical to a page. Engagement measures how well fans interact on the Facebook page. It takes into account comments and likes and calculates number of interactions to the total number of fans. If you have a page and do not have any idea at which rate you are engaging the fans at, ask these questions for yourself - Do you attract your fans? Do they interact with you? How many of them have engaged with your wall posts? This is why using SocialBakers Page Analytics give you the edge for the page.
Another interesting insight this Page Analytic tool gives is the most happening content type.
This is called the post category in the tool that evaluates posts on the Facebook page measuring the number of wall posts made on the page, the number of fan posts made on the page wall, the distribution of wall posts type.
Odel and Dialog Axiata's most favourite content type is status whereby Iraj and EFM's favourite is video. This is natural in the offering, for example Odel and Dialog is more of a message and offer based page giving out updates on offers, etc but whereas Iraj and EFM which are more of an entertainment based page giving out latest musical videos.
SocialBakers Page Analytics also gives recommendations on your posting strategy. We measure whether your page posts too often or too little, if posts aren't too long or too short.
It also takes into account the situation when you post more content more than once. In general, this section gives you hints and recommendations on how to post effectively in order to reach the maximum amount of your fans. The maximum index score is 25 percent.
It also gives insights to post quality where it measures the quality of your content published on your page. Our index checks whether the page posts different content, if it posts regularly. We measure this index for the past 30 days. Maximum index score is 30 percent. Further to all this, it also finds out which fans influence and engages with your page on a constant basis this is great as you could reward and influence them to influence the rest and increase engagement.
SocialBakers
page analytics is key
SocialBakers Page Analytics is a key tool to be used by brand marketers and agencies to keep up the engagement and enhance growth and dialogue.
It gives brand pages real-time information about fan engagement or quality of the postings on the Facebook page and finds out which content generates the biggest buzz whereby improving communication on Facebook.
One of the best reasons as to why it is key is that it allows you to compare different Facebook pages, even the ones that you don't own on Facebook. This gives a detailed analysis of how your friends or competitors are using their page.
As it's tiring and the must to keep on track with your Facebook page, SocialBakers Page Analytics tool makes it easier and saves tons of your time, no more manual comparing of Facebook pages, it provides all in well-arranged statistics and graphs.
(This report is published by Mark & Comm Limited (MNC), a local partner for SocialBakers.)
Courtesy - Daily News By Thanzyl Thajudeen
