When we listed Zimbabwe’s most ‘Liked’ pages on Facebook late last year, one company was clearly conspicuous by its absence from the list of companies and brands that had the largest following on the social network; Econet. This despite that offline, the company commands one of the highest, if not the highest, customer base in the country.
Earlier this year we decided to just list the mobile operators ranked according to their following on Facebook and Twitter. Econet had woken up, but they were still slightly behind Telecel, who clearly had a talent at amassing followers on social networks.
All that has changed. Well, the Facebook part at least. Since January, the Econet Facebook page has gradually surpassed Telecel’s following to become the most followed brand on Facebook. As of this writing, Econet had 207,800 likes, 22,000 ahead of Telecel which had 185,800. Telecel remains in the lead on Twitter by a very wide margin, but it’s worrying that since October they have only added less than 200 followers where Econet has added almost 3,000 followers.
As far as we can observe the increase in followers on the Econet page is because the company started deliberately posting more content as well as posting content that is engaging; polls, product tips, questions to its followers, information about new promos and so forth. It’s stuff Telecel has been doing all this time; the difference probably being that even on the ground Econet has far more customers than Telecel. In the millions. It could also be that Econet content is far more engaging but that’s subjective of course.
There is however still the unanswered question of how many of those Facebook and Twitter followers are actually real people. Remember fake followers are a million dollar business.
More Facebook likes doesn’t mean more revenue directly, which is not what social networking for business is about. This means an opportunity to engage your customers directly on how they are consuming the services, what products they love and those they hate. And, for the local mobile operators especially, this is an opportunity to provide answers to questions customers have, and even the page to act as a customer support channel.
More brands locally could benefit from this direct engagement with customers as long as they approach social with a strategy and not the sparse haphazardness that has been most business social media presence locally.
NetOne in the meanwhile, remains the only mobile operator unconcerned about engaing their customers on social networks. The company has 2,300 Facebook likes and 53 followers on Twitter. They last tweeted on 9 December and took a break!
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13 comments
I am yet to see a critical write up from you about Econet.Can you find out what happened to Ecolife and secondly why Econet monopolizes international traffic origination from outside Zimbabwe.That will be a good research mate.
Or maybe why Econet has one of the highest data tarriffs in Africa yet we have such a vast fibre network serving a small country.
can’t wait to jump the wagon when state regulators force econet to share its infrastructure with other mobile service providers
Won’t happen… ever!
That’s the reason exactly, small country has no critical mass, hence, yu have to be charged more to recoup the capex. If capex was so cheap, every comms company wil be digging up. Lets have more babies to have a vaible big domestic market, then we will knock a couple of dimes from commodity prices (cheek n toungue)
No, you can be sure that you will never see a single critical article on Econet on this site. Why? Who knows. It’s all showers and praises. Maybe when Econet decides to stop advertising here.
AGREED!
Te Ecolife saga dominated this forum to an extend that I once took a break form this site…
What???! Techzim dares not bite the hand that feeds it. This is the curse of commercial blogging, you either lick-spit, or you starve to death. This article wasn’t even worth reading. Both Econet and Telecel LITERALLY buy likes. What’s your measure of popularity exactly Kabweza?
Give us a break big guy… maybe you can’t read, or u just pretending to be stupid. or you’re doing it for whatever:
These guys are actually mostly biased against Econet. havent read anything negative about telecel in a while. or about netone http://www.techzim.co.zw/2013/04/econet-wireless-vanishing-airtime-potraz-and-transparency/
Here’s Techzim’s coverage on ecolife, most of it negative against Econet
Econet quietly switches on Ecolife. The big losers are Trustco & the subscribers http://www.techzim.co.zw/2011/12/econet-quietly-switches-on-ecolife-the-big-losers-are-trustco-the-subscribers/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2012/05/trustco-seeks-to-have-econet-directors-jailed-for-90-days-over-ecolife/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2012/02/with-truscto-agreement-expired-econet-kills-ecolife/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2011/10/trustco-econet-to-resume-ecolife-pending-supreme-court-appeal/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2011/08/econet-appeals-to-supreme-court/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2011/08/zimbabwe-paper%e2%80%99s-questionable-attack-on-trustco/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2011/07/econet-to-appeal-order-to-reengage-trustco/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2011/07/its-business-as-usual-in-zimbabwe-says-trustco/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2011/07/high-court-hands-down-interim-order-against-econet/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2011/06/trustco-side-of-the-story-and-intellectual-property-rights/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2011/06/why-econet-and-truscto-mobile-fell-out/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2011/06/econet-issues-press-release-on-the-ecolife-agreement-termination-with-trustco/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2011/06/trustco-terminates-ecolife-agreement-with-econet/
– http://www.techzim.co.zw/2011/05/more-than-1-6-million-econet-subscribers-have-registered-for-ecolife/
I am a Zimbo employed by a foreign telco company and one of the reasons there seems to be monopolisation if International calls by Econet from out side is this… Econet owns a company in England called Econet Satellite Services (ESS). and most international telcos choose whoever they want to do business with now traffic orignatig from abroad will likely enter Zimbabwe through ESS teleport in England and obviously business being business ESS will choose to terminate that call into Econets network its sister company. Besides if you search for reports on statuses of Satellite teleports in Africa the Mazowe earth station is reported to be in an ill maintained state so if you were the man responsible with making a decision what would you go for quality or what?
Its called popularity BY GHINYA:
why is this news,really??…everybody knows about these facts