MTN is performing best in terms of fan engagement on Facebook, doubling the likes, shares and comments of leading operator Vodacom in spite of having less followers.
Social media analysis firm ZASocial Media tracked user engagement with South Africa’s operators between September 11 and October 12 of this year, giving MTN an engagement rate of 5.7 per cent with its Facebook fans, ahead of Vodacom’s 1.7 per cent.
Vodacom, the country’s largest operator, has 307,196 Facebook fans compared to MTN’s 166,771, but MTN leads on engagement between fans and the content it posts.
The report, however, defended Vodacom’s lack of engagement.
“As a Facebook Page grows larger, it becomes more difficult to maintain what most would call “decent engagement levels”,” the report said.
Vodacom came out in top in terms of responding to customer queries, however, responding to 97.2 per cent of queries within the three hours of initial posting, compared to MTN’s 95.1 per cent.
Telkom Mobile came in second with an engagement rate of 3.2 per cent, though it only has 45,589 fans. It responds to queries from customers within three hours 95.9 per cent of the time.
Cell C has 76,805 Facebook fans, but low engagement at 1.3 per cent. It scores better on dealing with issues, responding to 95.4 per cent of its customer queries within three hours.
8ta is the least engaged operator, with 0.3 per cent engagement with its 64,000 fans.
“One common insight gathered from this one month audit is that all the MNOs have a somewhat misplaced content focus,” the report said.
“If engagement is an important metric/KPI to determine your social media efforts, you should revisit your content structure in terms of the ratio of categorized content that is put out. Examine the performance of each content type and find out which type brings you more engagement. Once that’s done, look for ways in which you can replicate what works and cut down on what doesn’t.”
