Tina Ahmed posted on 15 November 2017
Here at Locowise, we decided to discover which were last month’s top 10 performing Facebook pages in the Southeast Asia region, while also looking more closely at the following countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines & Vietnam.
It’s not because we are nosy (maybe just a bit!) – we also wanted to really get into the flow of using our latest Brand Leaderboard tool… and the results are fascinating.
We ranked the Facebook pages by our proprietary Brand Score which takes all the leading indicators of a high performing social media effort such as audience growth, content engagement and user sentiment, and gives each brand a score from 0 to 100.
Let’s kickstart things with SEA. It’s interesting to note that a Governmental Organisation in Indonesia has the #1 spot on the Locowise Leaderboard.
Considering the page’s Audience figure is nowhere near the size of the other pages (Parabola Orange TV & Basketball Forever) ranked in 2nd & 3rd, it’s impressive to see that Kementerian Pertanian Republik Indonesia is achieving a perfect 100 thanks to its excellent Engagement and Engagement Rate.
Click the country below to discover its Top 10
One of the things that stand out about this ranking is that three of the top 10 Facebook pages in Singapore are food-related (Eatbook SG, Meatmen SG, and Your Food Lab). Singapore is known for its food culture, so this perhaps should not come as a surprise. In the top spot, however – the Shilla Duty Free store’s Facebook page, which managed to attract 205k engagements despite having only 124k fans.
#1 – Shilla Duty Free
#2 – Eatbook SG
#3 – The MeatMen
Our Promoted Post Detection model identified a number of paid posts for the Shilla Duty Free Facebook page, including the majority of its most engaging posts. The post with the highest engagement was a GIF link of K Pop artist “Irene”, who will be performing at a concert in Singapore later this month, in association with Shilla Duty Free. The ‘celeb factor’ of the post, combined (of course) with the paid boost, brought in a whopping 18,495 engagements.
Eatbook SG’s post with the most engagement was a piece of video content featuring a local chef and food stall owner. With its easily digestible runtime of 2 minutes, solid production values, and interesting subject matter, the post attracted 736 comments and nearly 12,000 engagements overall. This is a prime example of Facebook video content done well.
The MeatMen’s most engaging Facebook posts were all slickly-produced instructional cooking videos accompanied by a recipe link. The most engaging one – a recipe for Bean Curd Skin Roll – garnered more than 9,000 engagements. The MeatMen’s photo posts performed worse across the board, with only one photo post accruing more than 1,000 engagements.
The Philippines’ top 10 for Facebook is distinctly lacking in brand pages, but offers an otherwise intriguing reflection of Filipino society. Out of the top 10 pages, three are connected to Christian organizations (MCGI.org, Katolikong Pinoy, and CCF). Meanwhile, two are linked to well known Filipino LGBT personalities (For The Motherland, Vice Ganda Quotes). The number one page, Basketball Forever, shares content about the NBA.
#1 – Basketball Forever
#2 – For The Motherland
#3 – Members Church of God
Basketball Forever’s most engaging post was a piece of video content. The video depicts one of the NBA’s most shocking moments of the season, so it makes sense that it would have generated a ton of interest. To help things along – an incredibly striking thumbnail image.
Sass Rogando Sasot, a prominent Filipina trans woman and social commentator, uses her page to share primarily political opinions and content. Perhaps rather unexpectedly then, her post with the most engagements was a photo with a brief update from her personal life. It received more than 46,000 engagements, including nearly 800 shares.
This Christian organization’s most engaging post was part of a series of images, each including a quote from the Bible (in this case translated into Filipino). Indeed, almost all of the page’s content is comprised of text-based images. It’s worth noting that they have opted to create images with text, rather than posting text-only status updates. It’s hard to imagine that their posts would have received the same level of engagement if they had opted for text only.
Three media platforms (Yeah1TV, YAN TV, YAN News) cracked Vietnam’s top 10 Facebook pages, with two pages from the YAN network in the top 5. YAN News also had the largest Audience among all the Vietnamese pages, with a gigantic 16 million fans. Hotel and resort pages also performed well, with Vinpearl and Salinda Resort taking the #8 and #10 spots respectively. The number one spot belonged to Ms Hoa TOEIC – a page related to an English learning service.
#1 – Ms Hoa TOEIC
#2 – War Comissar
#3 – YAN News
The Ms Hoa TOEIC page found the most success with photo posts. In fact, all seven of its most engaging posts were images. This one in particular received by far the most engagements, with an impressive 20,000, including over 1,500 comments.
War Commisar, which posts content about the Vietnamese People’s Armed Forces, also sticks primarily to photo posts. It is also one of the few Facebook pages we see using hashtags regularly, with “#ComCom” accompanying each of their posts. Their most engaging post above received more than 6,500 engagements.
YAN News’ most engaging piece of content was a short and highly shareable video, just over a minute in length. Incredibly, it received more than 55,000 shares out of 184,000 total engagements, which is an outstanding proportion of shares. It also received an enormous 38,000 comments. It’s worth noting that the copy accompanying the video explicitly asks users to share the post.
It appears local social news and celebrities, make a big impression with the active Malaysian Facebook users. “Top and Trendy” Media Hiburn takes the lead on the Leaderboard with a Brand Score of 99.3. The new trend of Halal Make Up & Muslim fashion, drives “muabellaz” to the second spot with a high engagement rate whilst in 3rd place, “The Saikapkeli” takes the highest Audience size of 4.9 million.
#1 – Media Hiburn
#2 – Make up by Bellaz
#3 – The Siakapkeli
A featured link about famous Malaysian TV stars, Amyra Rosli & Amar Bahrain, having their first child delivered (no pun intended!) 46,473 engagements. We’ve noted the most optimised post format for this page are Links. Having content shared from Media Hiburn’s direct websites not only drives traffic but creates a space for their readers/viewers to engage with the stories.
Make up by Bellaz‘s content with the most engagement was a video post, featuring the Social Media star herself. Setting rules for a competition (where Fans had to Like Share the video!) tallied a total of 81,499 comments – was it do with the competition? Nope, just all her fans saying “Hi Bella” back to her from the video!
Nostalgia plays a big part in The Siakapkeli best performing content post from last month! This post accumulated 46,903 shares, showing that relatable posts get people engaged.
A varied range of Facebook pages have made the Top 10 for Thailand, however, the top 3 to note – a national publication, a beauty pageant and a social media website that shares cat videos and hilarious GIFs! “Thai Rath” not only gets the top spot, the page achieves outstanding results in audience size & engagement.
#1 – Thai Rath
#2 – Miss Grand International
#3 – 9GAG in Thai
An inspirational figure that meant a great deal to the people of Thailand, King Bhumibol’s cremation took place on the 26th October. As the whole nation continued their prayers for the King, the world shared their condolences as Thai Rath posted a live video link of the ceremony on their Facebook page, achieving a total reach of 2,318,016.
Miss Grand International is one of the top 3 beauty pageants in the world. Headquartered in Bangkok, the final took place last month in Vietnam and a live video was posted on the Facebook page. The use of hashtags has supported the engagement of the post, scoring 432,039.
Being renowned for popular ‘user-generated content’ – originally from Hong Kong, 9GaG have developed a Thai only portal and it has been incredibly successful on the Thai (social media) scene! A meme created by the famous Tom Hanks Film was shared 4,166 times and received 61,165 engagements.
Looking at the Top 10 for Indonesia, football related Facebook pages appear to be dominating. However, the Ministry of Agriculture take the #1 slot – not for the number of fans but for a brand score of 100.
#1 – Kementerian Pertanian ID
#2 – Parabola Orange TV
#3 – Tere Liye
Preserving local farmers is a new campaign that the Ministry of Agriculture are driving around the country. A promo video has been created to inform the masses but surprisingly has not been placed as a paid boost. Regardless, it still received 3,943 organic engagements.
Orange TV, showcases the Traveloka Liga 1 – Indonesia’s very own competitive football league. A country passionate about sports and their home teams, the Indonesian TV Broadcaster, have advertised a promotion for the packages to drive more customers. The offer didn’t gain many active shares but it did gather high engagement of over 254K.
Novelist, Tere Liyre, is a motivational writer whose work has been adapted for the screens. What is significant with this particular page, is the use of ‘Status’ only posts. It is best practise to post on Facebook photos or video related content to achieve an optimised outcome, however, Tere Liye has changed the game. The ‘statuses’ posted are daily mantras, to inspire and guide readers which has triggered over 18K reactions.
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