As a person working in the Saudi agencies ecosystem for the last 12 years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with many decision-makers across government and private sectors. Whenever a new concept or idea is suggested, we always hear the same thing: “Can we make a video?” Regardless of where this content will go (Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) clients always believe a video will score much better with social media consumers, no matter what the nature of the content is.
However, we have seen a lot of interesting changes in the behaviour of social media consumers in Saudi Arabia across 2020/2021. People are paying more attention to static informative posts. Consumers are hungry for number-oriented posts and they are sharing and engaging with this type of content more than ever before. When the Covid-19 pandemic started, people started to pay more attention to numbers and facts, listed in a direct and shareable format. We have seen higher engagement rates with static designs across Twitter especially; this might even indicate a higher focus from the young Saudi nation toward the achievements, momentum and goals of the 2030 Vision.
Since 2016 the whole country has learned the importance of numbers in every detail of its strategic and transformative Vision. People have saved and reposted content to take pride in, and celebrate the amazing achievements so far, looking for more infographics and static designs with important information.
We also noticed that:
Larger private companies, especially in the telecoms industry, banking and aviation, have embraced the trend,
using well-designed statics to highlight important announcements and offers.
Twitter is the most popular platform to find and share static posts with family and friends.
Professionals will use static posts as the starting point for an article to express a wider opinion or a view about certain changes.
This is a sign of great maturity in how Saudis consume visual content, and this will influence the way agencies should present their content. Video will always be king when it comes to entertainment, but this doesn’t apply to news anymore.
Consumers want to see numbers, share them and have an opinion about them in a much simpler and direct way. In conclusion, social media strategies, like any other communication platform, should be agile, evolving with the key behavioural changes and cultural progression of every market. This will influence the development of new tools and value offerings to engage users in a meaningful way.
