How can HK better leverage social media marketing for Brand HK?

Social media is often used as a platform for brands to engage with their target consumers. According to a report conducted by Meltwater, three in five marketers and communication professionals in APAC regard social media as more important for their organisations due to economic uncertainties. On average, 34% of their total marketing budget will be invested in social media, with 77% of respondents planning to increase spending or keep them intact.

Hong Kong’s government also recently adopted the power of social media marketing as a strategy, while it recently revealed a social media ad spend of over HK$20m on its strategic communications programme Brand Hong Kong to promote the city as “Asia’s world city”.

Don't miss: HK spends over HK$20m on social media advertising for Brand HK, Weibo sees highest growth

Industry players MARKETING-INTERACTIVE spoke to believed that this is due to social media platforms being the key communication channels to mass audiences in Hong Kong. This is backed by Meta’s survey which revealed that Facebook had 4.45m Hong Kong users and Instagram had 3.6m users in Hong Kong in early 2022. As of January 2022, 88% of HongKongers were using social media, which is an increase by 3.7% compared to 2021.

Given that social media is gaining appeal not just for communication but also information dissemination, Yvonne Ma, founder and managing director of Eighty20, an agency which has provided digital solutions for global governments, said that by leveraging social media platforms, the government could reach a wider audience and engage with citizens more directly and effectively.

She added that the Hong Kong government had been facing increasing scrutiny and criticism from the public, particularly in the wake of recent political and social developments. “By investing in social media promotion, the government could attempt to control the narrative and shape public opinion in its favour,” she said.

Echoing her view was Ken Cheung, digital director at KREW DIGITAL, who said that Hong Kong government was getting used to leveraging of social media after witnessing social movements and the pandemic. “Since the government was more confident to manage (the) crisis through social media, they would put more budget on social media for promoting Hong Kong,” he said.

The transparency of the metrics and operations on social media platforms is also one of the reasons, Cheung said. “Some media owners may not disclose some figures, for example the breakdown of audience reached or engaged. However, the advertising platform on social media is in fact open to the public, therefore even government officials without professional knowledge know how to operate the channel and evaluate its results,” he added.

Given the current digital landscape globally, Jeffrey Hau, CEO and co-founder of social media agency PRIZM Group, said the government’s decision to invest heavily in social media to promote Brand Hong Kong is a reasonable move. However, it is also crucial for the authorities to pick the right social media channels as the Brand Hong Kong campaign leans towards businesses and professionals rather than the general public.

“We are required to jump into different shoes for each region and consider the uniqueness that lies in terms of culture, social media behaviour and languages,” he added.

Weibo as one of the biggest platforms used in China sees highest growth

With so much budget spent on Brand Hong Kong’s social media advertising, the brand is seeing satisfactory ROI in terms of followers' growth. According to the official government statistics, all social media platforms Brand Hong Kong has operated on have recorded growth over the past three years, while its Weibo account saw the highest growth (+721%). Meanwhile, its Facebook page has garnered the most followers of 128,315 among all other platforms at the end of 2022, however it has the lowest growth rate (+15%).

Commenting on the phenomenon, Roy Ha, founder of Hardchi Creative said the differences of growth rate between Brand Hong Kong’s Facebook and Weibo pages depend on their fan bases. “Since Facebook has a broader fan base, the percentage of growth is comparatively less than the Weibo. But the actual number of growth in fans is still significant. Also, Facebook is widely used in many countries while Weibo is mainly for the Chinese market. This has contributed to a wider fan base,” he added. Agreeing with his views was KREW’s Cheung, who said that Hong Kong is just one of the places for foreigners to travel, as such, they might prefer to follow other social media pages upon their visits to other markets. “Therefore, the Brand Hong Kong Facebook page may not be that crucial for people around the world to follow especially there were no propaganda campaigns from Hong Kong government,” he said.

Meanwhile, the impressive growth rate of Brand Hong Kong's Weibo page indicates the brand's audience base has further expanded into mainland China, according to Cheung. "Chinese people who used to travel to Hong Kong frequently before the pandemic may tend to follow Brand Hong Kong’s Weibo page during the lockdown to get more information about Hong Kong to prepare themselves for a future trip to the city, leading to a significant growth for its Weibo page," he added.

On the other hand, PRIZM's Hau attributed the growth of Brand Hong Kong’s Weibo page to the platform’s algorithm and the way the platform actively pushes “traffic” to its own page. Meanwhile, he said that it is natural to see its Facebook growth rate slowing down as it was established earlier than its Weibo page, being the platform with the most followers.

“However, it's important to remember that the number of followers alone doesn't determine success, and content interactions and engagement are key factors. It shouldn’t be a money game if it fails to bring meaningful conversion,” he added.

What more can be done?

The growth rate recorded on different social platforms under Brand Hong Kong is certainly a good sign to expand its reach to wider audience, according to Hardchi Creative’s Ha. However, he said Hong Kong is still lagging behind other regions such as Taiwan, USA, and the UK. “In these countries, political leaders make good use of social media to propagate their ideas, especially during the election period. They rely heavily on social media to promote their political campaigns,” he said.

Seconding his view was KREW’s Cheung, who said the government should leverage social media to push regional promotion campaigns, saying: “FMCG brands no matter whether the headquarters is from Hong Kong or other regions, they love to use social media to push regional promotion campaigns, since there are unified metrics for KPI measurement, and they can also sense different behaviours of different countries to the same creative which is rolled out across different regions,” he added.

Meanwhile, PRIZM’s Hau said apart from the budget spent on social media, the quality of content, relevancy to the audience, and the precision of the media targeting strategy are also key. “I have already seen many video contents produced by tourism boards from various countries on social media such as YouTube locally in Hong Kong, and also collaboration with Hong Kong local influencers,” he added.

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