Social Media in Ramadan English

8/12/2019 Social Media in Ramadan English

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Social Media in Ramadan; Exploring Arab User Habits on Facebook & Twitter

2Presented by The Online Project

Introduction

Ramadan has a signicant impact on peoples behaviors anddaily routine in the Middle East. Generally speaking peopletend to consume more media including TV, radio, and printduring Ramadan in comparison to other parts o the year. This isthe time o the year where brands dedicate 20% o their mediaspend to reach out to their customers. The biggest our telecomcompanies spend around 200 million marketing dollars duringRamadan1.

Through our daily interactions with the communities we

manage and the campaigns we have executed here at TheOnline Project, we have observed certain patterns that appearas a trend between brands in different industries throughoutthe year. By analyzing these trends we discovered that socialmedia consumption and user habits change signicantlyduring the Holy Month o Ramadan. As a result, we set outto study these outlying trends by isolating additional variablesthat could affect this shif. By understanding why the behaviorchanges, we can help brands to learn when are the best timesor them to post on social media plat orms and then when to

engage with their audiences.

One observation we made during Ramadan last year was thespike in user activity on Twitter. To understand this sudden leapin activity, we monitored thousands o tweets in our countriesto understand when exactly users are engaging on social mediathe most.

1 Advertising Spending Lower in Ramadan Due to Regional Unrest, Gul News
http://gulfnews.com/business/media-marketing/advertising-spending-lower-in-ramadan-due-to-regional-unrest-1.852859http://gulfnews.com/business/media-marketing/advertising-spending-lower-in-ramadan-due-to-regional-unrest-1.852859


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This year, we decided to take things up a notch. We includedFacebook in our analysis and branched out to include morecountries in the region. Furthermore, in this report, we gobeyond identi ying the best times to engage on both plat ormsand now include analysis o the change in engagement levelsacross the region and sentiment analysis to determine i peopleare more positive or negative during the Holy Month.

We realized that not only do people engage with social mediaat different periods o time during Ramadan, but also theirengagement is exponentially increased. Brands benet romthe increase in engagement, especailly during peak hours,given that the content is entertaining and/or valuable.

Our goal or this report is to determine the contributing actorsleading to the change in consumers online behavior. To doso, we observed Facebook and Twitter activity in nine differentcountries across the region including: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan,Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, KSA and the UAE. The insights garnered rom our research are meant to providea broad and general overview o social media trends in theregion. The data, however, do not reect habits and trends

within smaller communities in each o those countries so treatour observations as a starting point.


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Do people engage more on Facebook duringRamadan?

We measured the level o activity on Facebook by delving intoaverage engagement rates or regional brands during Ramadancompared to other times o the year.

What is the most popular time for people to engageon Facebook during Ramadan?

For this section, we monitored the level o activity on Facebook,on an hourly basis, during Ramadan 2012 and compared it tothe same time interval outside Ramadan. The best time or

Findings


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brands to engage with their audiences was selected as thetime that showed the highest level o engagement in eacho the ollowing countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait,Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, KSA and the UAE. All times shown are

in local time.

Bahrain

Egypt


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Kuwait

Lebanon

Jordan


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Qatar

KSA

Oman


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UAE

Do people engage more on Twitter during Ramadan?

We tracked the number o tweets and retweets generated in theregion during Ramadan 2012 and compared to the same timeinterval outside Ramadan.

What times do people engage most on Twitter?

We monitored Twitter activity on an hourly basis during Ramadan2012, and compared it to the activity generated during thesame time interval outside Ramadan. Similar to Facebook, the


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best time to engage was chosen on the basis o the highestengagement created. As shown in the ollowing graphs, eachcountry displayed a unique level o engagement. All times areshown in local time.

Bahrain

Egypt


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Kuwait

Lebanon

Jordan


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Qatar

KSA

Oman


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UAE

Are people more positive or negative on social mediain Ramadan?

We manually analyzed engagement activity on Facebook andTwitter to track and categorize posts and tweets as either positiveor negative to determine the sentiment o Facebook and Twitter

in the region this time o the year.

Facebook


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Twitter


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Identi ying the best times to engage with your audiencesmay ampli y your reach but to also increase engagement, itsimportant to use relevant content. A great example o howentertaining and valuable content can help boost engagementlevels on your Facebook page is Nesca e Arabia during 2012.

Case Studies


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Another example is Zains integrated campaign in Ramadan2012 that resulted in gaining 100,000 Twitter ollowersorganically. This was achieved by integrating a TV show thatZain sponsored and eatured the Arab star, Shooji, with Zains

channels on Twitter mainly, Facebook and Instagram as well.


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Recommendations

Ramadan is a unique time in the Arab world both onlineand o line. Consequently, what brands know about theircommunitys behavior during much o the year may not applyduring the Holy Month as peak activity times are likely tomove and engagement to increase. There ore, observe andtake note o trends happening within your communities thisRamadan in order to align your publishing times with youraudience and maximize engagement next year.

Optimize your content mix: MENA user interests shif during theHoly Month. Adapt your content accordingly to stay relevantand build stronger relationships.

Increase post/tweet advertising support budgets in Ramadan:as organic engagement rates increase, your advertising dollarswill push content even urther to reach out to more people.

Launch integrated marketing campaigns: social media usage

increase in-line with TV, radio, and print consumption. Integratedcampaigns deliver higher multiplier effects in Ramadan.


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Methodology

The data related to Facebook and Twitter consumption wasretrieved by analyzing a period o three weeks be ore, duringand afer Ramadan in 2012. The logic behind excluding Eid aswell as weekends in each country is to avoid skewing the results.For Facebook, engagement was calculated as the number olikes, comments, shares that regional brands received dividedby the average number o ans these brands had during thattime interval. As or Twitter, engagement was calculated as thenumber o mentions and retweets these brands received.

Regarding the best times to engage, we monitored the topten pages in terms o local an base in each o the studiedcountries, on an hourly basis. These pages were retrieved romSocialbakers.com as o June 2013. For Twitter, we tracked atotal o 8,879 users across the region. We ltered them by onlyincluding users who have created their Twitter accounts be ore June 2012 and have 3000 tweets/year or less. This is less than

ten tweets per day or every user; more would indicate a heavyuser and would skew the results. Best times to engage in each othe studied countries was selected as the hour with the highestlevel o engagement in local time.

Sentiment analysis was done manually by our team o socialmedia analysts at The Online Project or accuracy and to ensurethe human element is present in determining what is positive,negative, and neutral. We analyzed all the engagement wetracked, which totaled to 106,753 comments, timeline postsand tweets, to ensure emotions, such as sarcasm and rustration,were taken into consideration that automated tools ail to detect.


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About TOP

As the Middle Easts leading social media agency,The Online Project develops and executes social mediastrategies or Fortune 500 companies and high proleorganizations operating in the region.


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Contact Us

For general inquiries please email in [email protected]

AmmanTel: +962 6 465 8209Fax: +962 6 465 8206P.O. Box 840616Amman 11184 Jordan

DubaiTel: +971 4 420 9064Fax: +971 4 420 6054Unit G-06Building 4Dubai Media CityDubai, UAE

RiyadhTel: +966 1 463 4462Fax: +966 1 462 6413Al Rabiah BuildingOlaya Riyadh, KSA

Social Media in Ramadan English

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