Indonesia tops social media beauty chatter on Instagram

Indonesia (38%) takes the lead in social media chatter around beauty in the second half of 2018 compared to Malaysia (29.3%), Philippines (27.5%) and Singapore (5.2%), according to a report by Meltwater.Titled “Beyond Skin Deep”, the report found that Instagram is the channel of choice for talent-led collaborations in Southeast Asia, with eight times more beauty influencers on Instagram than on other social channels such as Twitter and YouTube. Indonesia, in particular, stands out for leading the shift with Instagram, as usage numbers doubled to reach over 44 million in 2017.Social media influencers are now also preferred over celebrities for beauty collaborations due to higher engagement, ROI and credibility among niche audiences, said the report. In Indonesia, influencer Marcella Febrianne Hadikusomo (@cindercella) topped the list. Febrianne received a score of 95 out of 100 possible points – the highest for beauty influencers in Indonesia. The top influencers in each country are ranked by Meltwater’s social influencer discovery tool, which takes into account an influencer’s popularity, content, social media presence, audience, and engagement rates.Findings also pointed towards the trend of J-beauty (brands from Japan) making a comeback with a share of voice of 58.7%. K-beauty (Korea) and C-beauty (China) fared considerably lower at 21.9% and 19.4% respectively. According to the report, one contributing factor could be that Indonesians are travelling to Japan in greater numbers on the back of positive macro-economic trends that are propelling more people into the middle-class bracket.By category, face products were the most talked about products on social media in Indonesia. Meanwhile, lip category is the most popular in the region, with Estée Lauder’s range of brands dominating the overall conversation.In view of this, Meltwater Asia Pacific regional director, media solutions, Mimrah Mahmood said brands need to be more strategic in their talent collaborations. According to him, they should look not only at vanity metrics like follower numbers, but also incorporate deeper insights such as average engagement per post, true reach, and demographic data to determine whether an influencer appeals to the right audience. He added.Influencer marketing budgets and future collaborations will only grow bigger, pushing the US$500 billion beauty industry to become even more creative, transparent and accessible.Quoting Euromonitor, Meltwater said Indonesia’s beauty and personal care market is worth US$6 billion and is expected to reach US$8.4 billion by 2022. For the report, Meltwater tracked and analysed social media mentions of the top beauty and cosmetics companies across millions of posts from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, blogs, review sites and online forums.(Photo courtesy: 123RF)