SA Businesses ignore Facebook

2.6 million South Africans use Facebook, and study released by MWeb early in 2010 shows that social networking has become conventional in South Africa. Despite South Africa’s growing love affair with sites like Facebook, businesses are not yet taking advantage of the new platforms.  

Friendship 2.0 looked at sites like Facebook and MySpace as well as applications like MSN Messenger and found a reasonably large number of South Africans are quite well versed in using these sites. So, local business are then missing out on a captive audience. Although 84% use the internet for work related activities, only 16% use social platforms to promote their businesses. This is remarkably low considering how well business and social networks go together in countries like the states.

87% of the South African online population is employed. The survey showed that business people are online a great deal. Over half those surveyed have the Internet permanently at work. So, it makes sense to incorporate online strategies into businesses daily routines. But few busnisses use instant messaging tools or chat rooms to conduct their daily business despite the advantages of faster inter- and intra-office communication.

Skype, the online telecommunications application, is mostly used to for work related activities like communicating with colleagues, clients, partners and suppliers. Although only 40% of those surveyed used Skype, 60% of those used it for work. This is probably because P2P calls and VOIP calls reduce telephone charges.

Despite Facebook’s high penetration (82%) in South Africa, Facebook chat is only used by 23% of users for work. The counter-argument could also be that using services like Skype use a lot of bandwidth in a country where bandwidth is sparse and expensive, and reduce productivity – but, if businesses started making use social networks, they might be able to afford employees have a chat with mum at the office.

Using social networks for spying

The reluctance to move into using social networks for business may be due to a general nervousness about the applications themselves. The survey shows that 60% of Facebook users use the site only to peruse other’s profiles rather than actively updating their personal content. The inactivity on social networks may be nothing more than mistrust for the safety and privacy of social network sites.

The social networking site with the most active updaters is Twitter: 72% of Twitter subscribers use the site to tweet rather than perusing others’ tweets. However, Twitter has only penetrated to 28% of South Africa’s online population. But because Twitter allows you to update your status quickly and easily, as well as reply to, link to, and DM (direct message) your subscribers, it seems a logical way to talk to your clientele.

Scared of the social networks

Twitter is a relatively new service – and the study shows that 22% of South Africa’s online population are intimidated by new social networks. It must have taken around three or four years for Facebook to penetrate the South African youth.

But Friendship 2.0 has shown that social networking in South Africa has taken off in a big way with only 32% of users not using the Internet to socialise. This has huge implications for South African businesses as sites such as Facebook have demonstrated their power for targeted advertising. And with Google Adsense, there is basically no excuse for not taking advantage. Applications for instant messaging also have huge potential for increasing the efficiency of business communications.

With so many people on the web, and on social networks - even if they are just spying on exes - businesses should come to the party. At the very least, having some well placed ads and a fan page on Facebook increases the businesses’ visibility on the web. As people begin to use social networks to find companies, businesses will be missing out on more and more new work.

The Friendship 2.0 study was conducted by TNS on behalf of MWeb. A survey of a group of South Africans was conducted, and the results weighed with the South African online population.