Floods boost social media use
MCFIVA, an integrated digital-media agency, has seen social-media traffic double during the flood crisis as companies divert their budgets for marketing events to crisis communication via Facebook and Twitter.
Managing director Supachai Parchariyanon said people were tweeting more than 2 million messages a day during the flooding, compared with the normal 1 million per day. This upsurge was mainly the result of alert messages sent and re-sent to people’s followers related to the prolonged flood.
Meanwhile, consumer-product companies, real-estate developers and retail businesses have been using social media to inform and update their customers, especially those in flooded areas. Supachai said his client companies had diverted about 80 per cent of their budgets for marketing events planned for this quarter into social-media communication.
Supachai said the company saw a 10-per-cent increase to 500,000 Twitter users in the past three months. He expected more growth due to the development of third-generation infrastructures.
