Emerging markets are driving growth online, we know that much already. But it turns out companies in these countries are also the most devoted to social media.
That’s according to social media analytics business Socialbakers, known for producing some of the juiciest social stats out there. And, as far as the company’s founder Jan Rezab is concerned, the rest of the world needs to follow the example that is increasingly being set by emerging market companies. Rezab took to the stage at LeWeb London to talk about his company’s “new industry standard” called “Socially Devoted“.
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“By defining Socially Devoted companies, we wanted to start a discussion in the industry,” says Rezab. “Socially Devoted companies communicate openly, actively respond to fans and make sure customers receive a quick answer to feedback or questions. Socially Devoted companies set a new global standard that other businesses can adopt to improve their social media marketing strategy.”
The Socialbakers research study revealed:
- On average, companies respond to only 30% of social media fans’ feedback.
- Local companies tend to have higher social media response rates than their global counterparts, with 40% responding to customer queries.
- More than 25% of global companies have a closed wall on Facebook, meaning users can’t post questions or feedback.
- US-based companies tend to perform less effectively on social media channels than their regional peers.
In the new study, the most Socially Devoted companies are those that respond to feedback quickly and have the highest number of wall posts on Facebook. Rezab observes that Facebook performance is only a starting point. Socialbakers encourages companies worldwide to embrace other social media elements, including live chat functions and platforms like Twitter, as a part of their social media marketing strategy.
Emerging market countries are the most devoted
Rezab says that in fact the five most “socially-devoted” companies are all located in emerging markets. Rezab notes that the response time from these companies to questions and comments online from consumers ranges from 16 minutes to just under two hours. That’s a vast improvement on the average industry response time for brands to online comments, which Socialbakers says is 28 hours.
The most “socially-devoted” countries, according to Social Bakers:
|
Brand |
Number of Fans | Question Response Rate | Number of Questions Answered |
| Personal Argentina | 309,968 | 89.13% | 14,306 |
| Claro | 415,026 | 96.99% | 10,266 |
| Acer Indonesia | 612,837 | 95.05% | 4,992 |
| LBC Express Inc. | 58,176 | 91.75% | 4,083 |
| Comunidad Movistar Argentina | 385,451 | 91.67% | 3,301 |
| Volaris | 335,410 | 77.92% | 3,297 |
| Safaricom Kenya Official Page | 130,201 | 88.52% | 3,255 |
| KLM | 1,540,788 | 94.14% | 2,843 |
| Vodafone Nederland | 82,926 | 92.27% | 2,758 |
| Claro El Salvador | 133,270 | 96.74% | 2,758 |
These stats support research from Pew Research Center, TNSDigitallife and Brazilian-based F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, which all suggest that emerging market countries are dominating social media growth and finding new and innovative ways to engage with audiences.
According to Rezab, Socially Devoted is the “new open standard concerning all social networking platforms.” Right only Facebook is being measured but it can be plugged into other platforms such as Twitter and Google+.
“Being ‘Socially Devoted’ concerns everyone, from brands to media companies, movies, but is mostly focused around companies providing services to customers — airlines, automobile, telecom, infrastructure, and others.”
Social Bakers suggests three ways for brands to become more socially devoted:
1. It’s an open company
What does this mean? The company has set-up its official networks as a net for working with its customers, it has all the means set-up in order for fans to communicate on these networks (open Facebook walls, etc.)2. Company responds to its fans questions — min. 65%
The company has to respond to as many of its fan questions as possible. We say at least 65% of all questions should be responded. The industry benchmark to date is 30%.3. Company responds on time
You are running a customer care site, not responding in time means that a message won’t get to your fans in time for them to even notice. The current industry benchmark is over one day, but in real-life, you should be aiming at 10 – 30 minutes. Depending on the nature of your service, you should consider 24/7 support.For us, this is not another campaign, this is not a shot in the dark. This is something that companies have to do in order to properly behave towards their customers. We will continue to work on this standard and extend this, work on more rankings, trying to figure out more details about user and companies interactions. The social marketing industry is about answering our fans.
Michelle Atagana is in London, covering Le Web for Memeburn
