Southeast Asia is the fastest growing region for Internet, digital, social media and mobile activity. There are more than 340 million Internet users in the region, which is experiencing double-digit growth in most segments and most countries of the region.
With such potential and growth expected in the region, should your business have a social media presence? If so, which platforms are best to engage your audience.
We’ve broken this into two parts, and in part 2, we will focus on Twitter and YouTube, to highlight the relevance of the platform, as well as share how brands can use the platforms.
Social Media option 3: Twitter
Twitter isn’t doing as well in Southeast Asia as Facebook or Instagram, and if you’re reading this in the region, do a quick dipstick test in the room to see if anyone’s actually on the platform.
However, recent stats are showing that increased attention to this region, has helped improve usage, especially in Indonesia. Twitter recently launched a ‘lite’ version, which claims to be 30% faster and 70% cheaper in terms of data consumption than the standard app. It also takes up less than 1MB of space.
All of which are critical growth factors for the many countries in the region, where pay-per-use is the most common form of internet usage through mobile.
Most brands use it as a branding tool, and certain brands encourage dialogue through the platform. This can mean as a customer service platform and even a way for the company CEO to engage directly with customers. Where it has shown promise is to push app downloads through advertisements, with Twitter beating Facebook in multiple categories when it comes to conversion and app retention.
A tip for maximising your Twitter account is to use management tools like Hootsuite, and schedule your tweets to be sent out at differing times and often even repeat them across the day. This helps reach a wider audience and if you have a customer base across multiple timelines, it helps keep engagement high across 24 hours.
Social Media option 4: YouTube
Ah, YouTube, my old friend.
We all know what YouTube is and how it works. What we may not know is how brands use YouTube beyond those slightly irritating 15-second commercials before we can watch the latest cat video.
YouTube usage is on the rise, especially with the increase in video content that requires platforms like YouTube to host and then promote that content. Brands are starting to jump on that bandwagon.
However, an issue we’ve noticed is that brands tend not to leverage the platform enough. They see it as a storage platform for their videos online and make little attempt to engage or use it as a branding tool. Conversions through YouTube ads tend to be decent due to the dynamic content that allows brands to tell a story.
YouTube is similar to Instagram, such that quality matters over quantity, so focus on a great video that tells your brand story and clearly indicates the value to the viewer. Use that content to engage, convert and attract your customer base through paid advertising. From a budget of a few hundred dollars, we’ve helped brands increase website traffic by over 150%.
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To read part 1 of this series, click here.
For more articles about the region’s startup and tech news, visit Voices or Tech for Business.