“Facebook is like your mother’s fridge. You keep going back to it, but the content never changes,” Elna Smit, Senior Online Research Specialist at Columinate, said at the Digital Media and Marketing Association (DMMA) Roadshow yesterday (Wednesday) in Cape Town.
The latest statistics regarding South African Internet users show that 88 percent of social media users prefer Facebook above other communities.
Twitter takes the second place with LinkedIn sharing the third place with YouTube.
Branding statistics show that users are more likely to respond to, do research on or engage with brands that have been criticised, rather than praised on social networks.
While 71 percent of South Africans are following brands on social media, 61 percent of those come across it randomly and 39 percent search for brand information online.
“Lure in with promotions…but the trick is to keep it new,” Smit advises brands that seek web interaction.
Considering South African Internet use, 64 percent of users have been active for more than five years and only three percent have joined within the last six months.
Daily Internet activity sits at an impressive 91 percent, whereas the least performed Internet purpose is said to be gambling, at six percent.
Internet access is almost equal over weekends (49 percent) in comparison to week day usage, and most surfers go online in office, but prefer spending web time at home with convenience the main motivation.
Laptops are the favourite device for South Africans to log on, with Internet Explorer still the most used browser with 63 percent engagement, but Google Chrome is the most popular for those who employ multiple browsers.
More than 70 percent of web surfers use two or more devices to access the Internet and smart phones are the preferred device among cell phones for cruising online.
Statistics were produced via a weblink survey conducted on 226,316 South African people and a panel of 1,034 members through quantitative online questionnaires between September 21 and October 5.
“We got a nice chunk of what was going on at that time,” Smit commented on the result.
Columinate supplies online market research services, making use of both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies in to data collection, analysis and reporting.
