Five Friday Facts #48
News
News
China’s not on the list of Top 20 Twitter nations after all
Last week, we asked you to watch this space for updates on a GlobalWebIndex report that indicated that Twitter had 35.5 million users in China in the 2nd quarter of 2012. That number has since been refuted in a The Next Web article in which China is noticeably absent from Semiocast’s list of Top 20 “Twitter nations”. Top on the charts is the US with over 140 million accounts whilst Asian countries such as Japan came in 3rd place with 40 million accounts, followed by Indonesia at 5th with close to 30 million accounts and India in 6th place with 18 million accounts respectively. The Philippines stood in 9th place with 10 million accounts and South Korea at 15th place with 8 million accounts.
September’s top 10 countries for Facebook userbase growth
2 Asian countries topped the list of top 10 countries in terms of Facebook user growth. Indonesia led the pack with a phenomenal jump of 7.6 million users (representing an increase of 19.14% and a market penetration of 19.48%) within a month, far surpassing the average growth rate of 5 to 10%. However, Indonesia and Turkey were reported by the BBC to have the highest number of fake Facebook accounts although their user numbers have not declined significantly despite the removal of fake “Likes” by Facebook. India took 2nd place on the list with a growth of 3.17 million users (5.91% growth and a market penetration of 4.83%) in September. The US came in 3rd on the list with a growth of close to 2.52 million users (1.54% growth and a market penetration of 53.52%). Other Asian nations such as Japan and Vietnam came in at 5th and 7th place on the chart with a growth of 1.53 million and 725,000 users respectively.
Facebook advertisers reap results in Singapore
Marketers have been enjoying a high success rate for social marketing campaigns in Singapore due to the country’s extensive Internet connectivity and highly-engaged users. Scoot, a Singapore-based budget airline, shared its story about how it built its brand and drove sales using Facebook as its main marketing platform. It gained 230,000 Facebook likes from 4 Facebook Pages over a 10-month period and enjoyed ROI of S$61.40 (US$50.20) for every S$1 (US$0.82) spent on Facebook advertising. In all, Scoot assessed that its Facebook marketing efforts resulted in a sales conversion rate of 7%, outperforming email marketing. A two-day Facebook-only viral marketing campaign targeted at Singapore customers achieved a sales conversion rate of 5%; which was impressive even though no advertising money was spent in the exercise. Scoot believes fan engagement and sales would have been higher if there had been advertising dollars spent on this campaign. Notably, FlyScoot was listed as one of the Top 5 Socially Devoted Brands in Singapore in August.
Instagram beats Twitter in August
For the first time, Twitter has been ousted by Instagram as the most popular mobile app in terms of daily user engagement. A recent report showed that Instagram had 7.3 million daily active users (DAUs) in comparison to Twitter’s 6.87 million in the US in August. Instagram users were also found to spend 44% more time than Twitter users on the respective mobile apps. Instagram users averaged 257 minutes on the mobile site whilst Twitter users spent an average of 170 minutes. This is significant considering Twitter has 25% more smartphone users than Instagram. Twitter’s smartphone user numbers stands at 29 million versus Instagram’s 22 million.
Google+ is great for SEO and SEM
Last week, we stated why Google+ should not be ignored even though it may not have captured the attention of marketers, unlike Facebook or Twitter. A recent survey of marketers on trends revealed that only 63.8% of respondents had a Google+ business profile in comparison to 75.8% of respondents with Facebook business pages.
In the same survey, 56.4% of respondents felt that Google+ would gain massive influence in search engine results whilst 69.1% expected Facebook to dominate the social media industry.
Even though Google+ lacks the buzz and user numbers, 66.6% of respondents intend to use the platform to gain followers and make connections. Google+’s significance in SEO and SEM is a major factor of consideration as 56.1% of marketers said they use Google+ for SEO and 65.9% said presence on the platform helps with branding activities. Google+ may trail Facebook and Twitter in terms of popularity as a social media platform to increase interaction with the brand but its still worthy to note that it’s the 3rd platform that comes to marketers’ minds. This may be a platform to watch.
