Tag Archives: OTS
2011 South African Budget Speech Online
Please note this is a re-post from an article I wrote on 24/02/2011 on http://www.brandseye.com but the website has since changed format and my posts are no longer accessible there.
– Did you budget for this much conversation?
Since yesterday, BrandsEye has been tracking the online conversation surrounding Pravin Gordhan’s 2011 South African Budget Speech to present you with a balanced appraisal of volumes and trending topics thereof.
97% of this conversation came from consumers – showing significant engagement by ordinary people in their own personal capacity. Considering that there was no celebrity-inspired stunt driving online conversation as was the case with Pres. Jacob Zuma’s 2011 State of the Nation Address, this is a considerable amount of unadulterated online conversation for a single event measured over two days. 2% thereof came from press-related sources, while the remaining 1% was pushed by enterprises such as Deloitte.
67% of this conversation was exchanged on Twitter, which included 109 retweets. Facebook served as a platform for 15% of the conversation, with miscellaneous websites and blogs such as mybroadband.co.za, techcentral.co.za and marcforrest.com driving the remainder.
“Tax” was the most trending theme with 16.8% of budget-specific conversation – relating to the various taxation adjustments for the following budget year. The 80c increase in sin taxes per carton of cigarettes specifically, was of particular concern, holding 6.5% of the conversation. Other notable influences of this theme would have included the R 8.1 billion worth of tax relief granted for the following financial year.
Exchanges about the fuel levy increase and taxes on gambling winnings over R 25 000 were also influentialholding 9.3% and 7.3% of the conversation respectively. A further 8.3% of the conversation talked about the R 800 billion set aside for infrastructural improvements without cutting the budget deficit.
The Independent Online and @BusinessLiveSA was the most engaging/engaged with online presence, accounting for 2.6% and 2.3% of the total conversation. Other prominent entities who were either drivers of/engaged by conversation were @stephengrootes, @khayadlanga, @Mgigaba and @DeloitteSA.
6.7% of this conversation came from a respected source, which has a reach 1000 or more people. In total, thisconversation reached approximately 2 690 970 people, thus generating an earned media value of R 609 180.75.