Singapore – Interactions made by Singaporean public agencies and government bodies were much more evident on the social media platform Instagram than any other platforms, with a 12.7% increase from 2020 and a total of 1.69m interactions, according to the latest data from unified customer experience platform Emplifi.
According to the data, there is a 1.2% increase in content produced by these entities, from 5,409 in 2020 to 6,219 in 2021. In comparison, Twitter accounted for the largest proportion of published content at 53.01% or 30,671 tweets. However, interactions were 2.16%, or 158,737 interactions. Facebook, which made up over 30% of content across platforms, received the largest share of interactions at 72.9%, or 5.37m interactions.
While Traditionally ministries and statutory boards have leaned towards Facebook and Twitter, social media platform Instagram emerged as the platform with the highest engagement rate (1.18%) and share-of-voice (70.7%). Conversely, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter saw declines in their share-of-voice.
Some of the campaigns that showed higher engagement include the National Parks Board (NPB) #CityInNatureSG, Gov.sg #IGotMyShot, MOH Covid-19 Vaccination, Gov.sg TestTraceVaccinate and MOE #OurSchoolStories campaigns.
Varun Sharma, vice president for Asia-Pacific and Japan at Emplifi, said, “Social media emerged as a crucial platform to keep people informed and aware during the pandemic. Now, as the world gradually eases restrictions, social channels continue to prove their effectiveness to initiate two-way dialogues.”
In addition, public sector agencies also used short-form videos, which were the best performing content pieces. For instance, Singapore Tourism Board’s (STB) YouTube content skyrocketed in 2021, with a total of 32,683,601 views for the year, having released 157 videos.
Lastly, the data highlighted the rising popularity of user-generated content (UGCs) in driving audience engagement. In comparison to 2020, the audience was 8.9% more engaged with government profiles, with almost half (48.2%) of user-generated content published in 2021. Overall, UGCs from government profiles grew 1.4 times, from 37,621 content pieces in 2020 to 54,525 content pieces in 2021. The share of interactions on UGC also saw an uplift of 1.22% to 2.38% in 2021.
“There has never been a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to creating content for social media. This has led government bodies to innovate their social media strategies to ensure they are reaching the right segment of the audience, with the right message at the right time. We are now starting to see many public sector bodies moving onto TikTok, including STB, National Parks and NEA. We expect TikTok to become more widely used in 2022 as organisations become more comfortable with the format. The mix of social channels to drive public action and engagement is good to see and sets a great case study for marketers,” Sharma concluded.
