The social media landscape in Singapore : Edelman DBI

Singapore has a household broadband penetration rate of 117.7 per cent and more than 2.5 million people spending an average of 21 hours on the internet per person. DBI 10.3 tracked nearly 130,000 conversations occurring on Singapore’s online properties – meaning major technology brands were mentioned every two minutes across some of Singapore’s largest online sites 

Here are they key findings:

Brands have yet to realise the opportunity to harness conversations across key media channels including owned (corporate sites, Facebook page etc), paid (digital advertising), earned (third party advocacy) and social (third party platforms like forums and Twitter).

• Across the 130,000 conversations tracked in DBI 10.3, Singapore netizens are most passionate about football and phones, a topic they have responded most to over the past nine months.
• Murmurings about Apple’s standoff with Adobe’s Flash, mobile product launches, and the World Cup were a few of the topics that we tracked driving the online agenda this quarter.
• Few of the top 10 ‘buzziest’ brands proactively engage online, however we have tracked an increase in blogger relations marketing programs.
• Only seven of the more than 50 technology brands tracked by the DBI currently have local Twitter handles (the most active channel surveyed in Singapore), indicating a missed opportunity for many brands to leverage the social media platform to drive deeper online engagement.
• An analysis of the pattern of online conversations show that they tend to grow early in the week, spike on a Wednesday, and then taper off by almost half into the weekend. This indicates a large number of people discussing and sharing information about technology brands at work, an insight that requires marketers to consider the implications of timing, alongside targeting and channel selection as part of a social media engagement programme.

 

All channels are created equal. However, some are more equal than others.

 

• Twitter was once again the top channel for technology conversations in Singapore, with more brand mentions than the next two channels combined.
• This continued trend suggests Singaporean's preference for forum-based technology discussions may be waning, increasing the significance of Twitter for brands wishing to engage with consumers online. Twitter accounted for more than 24 per cent of all online conversations in Singapore with more than 30,000 – 'Eat-Drink-Man-Women' forums consisted of nearly 17,000 conversations while 'Kopitiam' totalled approximately 5,300.
• Overall, trust, engagement and quality of interaction continue to determine overall channel influence.