It’s not that complicated: Facebook says communication key to business growth

Customers like being able to communicate directly with businesses. Source: Shutterstock

By Soumik Roy | 28th December 2018 | @SoumikRoy

THROUGH a decade or more of change, the one constant is that consumers often adopt new technology before businesses do.

In fact, they have a profound influence on how people discover, evaluate, and converse with businesses and ultimately, how and where they make purchases.

“At Facebook, we saw three significant consumer communications trends this year which we expect will only intensify in 2019: Video, Stories, and Messaging,” Facebook Malaysia Country Head Nicole Tan told Tech Wire Asia.

Earlier this year – in August – Facebook rolled out Watch globally and found strong adoption in the Asia Pacific, especially in India, Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

SEE ALSO: Why 2019 will be a big year for digital marketing in China

The social media giant also found that the Asia Pacific leads the way in people accessing video content on mobile.

This can be credited to the shift to mobile across the region, with smartphone penetration in countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia continuing on its upward trend.

In Malaysia, for example, 97.7 percent of those accessing the internet last year did so on their smartphones. According to Nielsen, Malaysian internet users spent 15.8 hours on average per week accessing the web on their mobile devices.

“While we have beaten the drum about the rate at which people were bypassing desktop for mobile in previous years, 2018 marked the cementing of the multiscreen consumer.”

The simultaneous use of second-screen devices —smartphones, tablets and desktops/laptops alongside TV-viewing has increased year-on-year and is predicted to continue through next year.

Malaysians, like their Asian neighbours, have developed a love affair with their smartphones. Source: Shutterstock

Facebook has found that mobiles are winning the screen battle with PC-only use trending downwards.

This complex ecosystem means that businesses that want to stay ahead of the curve will also need to think about multi-touch, cross-media approaches to engage with customers in 2019.

SEE ALSO: APAC businesses outperform Western peers in digital transformation race

This year, in order to ensure that Malaysian businesses and entrepreneurs stay ahead in this digital age, Facebook Malaysia introduced its “Made by Malaysia, Loved by the World” program to train up to 2,000 local businesses, together with partners MATRADE and AVANA.

Another interesting development is the consumer adoption of the ephemerality of the Stories format.

Official figures reveal that people now share more than 1 billion stories every day across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The Asia Pacific region accounts for the highest number of story producers with over 40 percent of Stories being created in this region.

A recent eMarketer report which examined the popularity of Stories, said it plays into several broad consumer communication trends – a preference for sharing photographs or video over typing out a text update, the comfort of knowing what you post isn’t going to stick around forever and the need to share everyday moments with smaller audiences.

“This preference is also driving the rise of messaging.”