Dialog Axiata is Sri Lanka’s largest mobile service provider as well as a leader in fixed line CDMA, satellite television and broadband Internet. With an impressive fan base of 270,000 fans on Facebook, 27,000 followers on Twitter, 335 subscribers on YouTube and 1,300 likes on Foursquare(at the time of writing) it appears that Dialog certainly knows how to build up an online audience. However is this due to superior social media skills or are they just another giant brand riding out the wave of success created from their brand name? Read on along this social media analysis of Dialog Axiata as we delve further to find out.
Dialog’s Facebook Presence
Dialog could very well be called brand building “experts” judging by the response they are receiving to their “Meme Rage” campaign on their Facebook page. Through the use of an app fans can upload meme’s of Dialog’s products and services. This campaign is so successful that their Facebook page is dominated with memes continuously with multiple comments, likes and shares.
Another noteworthy campaign that displayed the ease with which they can create engagement among their fans was the recently concluded Samsung Galaxy S III campaign where fans were asked to post a video of their own version of the viral hit song “Gangnam Style” on YouTube and share the link on the Dialog Facebook page. There was a good response to this campaign, with many videos being shared and the winner received a Samsung Galaxy S III.
Products and services are regularly advertised among the other original content that is published. However, not much customer service is provided through this channel. There is generally very little response to fans comments and questions. It can be assumed then that the main focus here is in creating engagement and not customer service. Will this work in the long run? Time will tell.
Most CSR activities and corporate communications are limited to the company website, with no integration or cross promoting to their other social media platforms. However, pictures of workshops and sponsorship’s are uploaded to Facebook. An improvement they should consider making is to include links to their other social media platforms on the corporate website. Currently these links are only included in their blog. The blog however, has had no recent posts for quite a while.
Tweeting for success?
When taking a careful scrutiny of the Tweets that are sent out it can be seen that it’s mostly the same content that gets published on Facebook that is being tweeted. While it is good to cross post content it would be even better if they also Tweeted more of their corporate communications.
Dialog on YouTube
The YouTube channel features most of the television commercials for Dialog. They also use this channel for demonstrations on how to adjust settings for different mobile devices. Although there are 335 subscribers to this channel there are only a handful of comments and likes on the videos uploaded. Therefore one questions the effectiveness of the content being published here and its failure to engage an audience.
All in all it can be seen that Dialog’s social media success lies in its main area of focus on brand building and engagement through Facebook, and some of the spillover effects are shared by its Twitter page through cross posting of content. Sadly that’s as good as it gets as they do not seem very concerned with the lack of customer service on these two platforms. Also there is not much engagement on their other social media channels. They could further improve by incorporating some customer service elements and integrating them with links to each different channel.