Comparative Analysis of FaceBook Pages of Dubai & Singapore Tourism

In the present “Social Era”, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus play pivotal roles in building individual brands. Previously we compared the “Twitter” page of “I Love Dubai” & “YourSingapore”. In this blog post, we will compare their “Facebook” page. Twitter, though an effective marketing tool is still way behind Facebook. Facebook enjoys a user base of 800 million worldwide. It’s the sheer volume of Facebook, which has helped it metamorphosed from a pure play social networking site to one of the biggest digital marketing platform. The tool used will be “AllFacebookStats” & “Simply Measured”& period of analysis will be one month & one week respectively.  

                          Fig 2: shows the count of fans of both the pages.  Source: allfacebookstats

Fig 3: compares the number of fans added for both the pages in the last one month (Selected dates). Source: Allfacebookstats.

Table 1: compares both the pages across various interaction parameters, for last one month. Source: AllFacebook Facts

Fig 4: shows number of weekly own post for the pages, in the last one month (Here Ws means weeks, starting from 3^rd week of Jan; since the analysis covers only one month, 3^rd week of jan & last week of feb are  not  fully covered). Source: Allfacebookstats 

Fig 5: shows average interactions (Likes + Comments) per “own posts” on a weekly basis, for both the pages in one last month. Source: AllFacebook Stats

Fig 6: shows the comments & likes on photos & videos in last one week for “I Love Dubai”. Source: simply measured

Fig 7: shows some of the popular posts of “I love Dubai” in terms of likes. Source: Simply Measured

Conclusion & Suggestion

·         In the last section we did an analysis of twitter accounts of “YourSingapore” & “I Love Dubai”. The former had an insurmountable lead over the later. But in case of Facebook, it went spectacularly off the mark. “I Love Dubai” has outplayed “YourSingapore” across all the parameters- post, links, likes, comments, rate of adding fans etc.  

·         The “I Love Dubai” page suggests- videos are more interactive than photos.

·         YourSingapore has bigger fan base than “I Love Dubai. In spite of this, it’s taking a beating is lack of regular updates coupled with lower degree engagement per updates.

·         YourSingapore needs to ramp up the number of updates. Moreover updates need to be effective in engaging the users. It can take guidance from its Dubai counterpart. Some of most engaging updates as indicated in fig 7 are related to celebrities, cars & world famous buildings. It calls on “YourSingapore” to do something on similar lines to ramp up, its likes & comments.    

Comparative Analysis: Twitter Pages of Singapore & Dubai Tourism

Singapore and Dubai are two of the “top 10” tourist designations, across the globej. Singapore was 4^th most visited city in the world while Dubai was 7^th, in 2010. (enjoyourholidya.com, 2011)  With such a statistics, stating that they are not tourism hubs par excellence will be an understatement. Dubai is world famous for “an arsenal of spellbinding real estate constructions”; while Singapore’s strength lies in its, cosmopolitan culture and status as a world class business hub.

Notwithstanding the geographical and cultural imparity, they share lot of similarities across various cultural, social & economical parameters. One of them is- they have visionary leaderships which emphasize on robust marketing of their respective states. Both Singapore & Dubai are among the most well marketed destinations, across the globe. 

   

 Twitter: an effective destination marketing tool

The advertisement & brand building across various industry verticals is being transformed, with digital / social media encroaching vigorously onto the space, so far dominated by traditional media. (Print, Outdoors, TV, Radio etc). The tourism industry has also not escaped from this new digital revolution lead by Social Media. These days Social Media plays a crucial role in various areas related to tourism, one of them being branding in the form of- showcase information, handle queries, contain negative perception etc. All the Social Medias, Facebook, Blogs, You Tube, Twitter etc play a pivotal role towards constructing the Brand Identity of a tourist destination.

One such platform is Twitter. As much 2011, it has 200 million users, with 100 million active & 50 million daily users (jeffbullas.com, 2011). It is this sheer number of users that makes this micro-blogging site a great digital marketing platform for tourist destinations. The following blog post will do a comparative analysis of Twitter account of two of the leading tourist destination- I Love Dubai (Dubai) & YourSingapore (Singapore). The tool used will be Tweet Stats & Klout.

Twitter statistics analysis

Fig 2: shows no. of Tweets for I love Dubai & YourSingapore over the period of last 19 months. Source: Tweet Stats

 Table 1: Compares the two pages across various twitter engagement parameters. Source: Tweet Stats

                 Fig 2: shows the aggregate daily tweets for both the pages. Source: tweet stats

                   Fig 3: shows the aggregate hourly tweets for both the pages. Source: Tweet Stats

Klout Score: measure of twitter account influence

Every social media channel has its influence. The social media platforms exercise its influence by motivating target audience to Retweet, Share, Like, Comment etc. The more the target audience engages in such activities, the more is the likelihood of influence. Klout is an analytical tool that helps, estimating the degree of influence for various social media platforms. It will be used in the given analysis, to compare the influence of the both the Twitter pages.

Table 2: compares the Klout scores, no. of people & topic influenced; for both the pages. Klout Score: measures the ability to drive action with the help of retweet and replies.

  Analysis

·         Over all “YourSingapore” has a much better “Twitter Presence”, marked by a very high number of tweets in comparison with “I Love Dubai”.

·         “YourSingapore” also receives a much higher engagement from the audience. This is reflected with the high percentages of Retweet & Responses.  

·         Notwithstanding, the zoom in mid 2010; the number of tweets has gradually dwindled henceforth for “YourSingapore”.

·         In the past few months, both the pages have similar “Twitter Presence”. In fact it’s slightly favored towards the “I Love Dubai” page.

·         When it comes to the “Klout Parameters”, there is high parity across the two pages.

Reference

1>     Enjoyourholiday.com, 2011, available at <http://www.enjoyourholiday.com/2011/04/18/top-10-most-visited-cities-in-the-world / >

2>     Jeffbullas.com, 2011, 11 new Twitter facts, available at http://goo.gl/FEsAo >