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Social media users in Saudi Arabia are among the most active in the GCC. Social media platforms are increasingly dominating the communication and media scene in the country. High engagement rates and numbers of interactions are creating attractive opportunities for companies to engage in social media marketing.

Social Media Domination is one of the main topics that the upcoming ArabNet Riyadh 2015 forum will address. Around 20 local and international experts will share their insights on social media platforms, techniques, and technologies in a series of talks and panels to help users navigate the Saudi scene.

The Online Project (TOP) recently published a report titled “Reintroducing Social Saudis - A Throwback Report” to outline how social media consumption has changed over the past years.

The report focused on 4 platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube). It mentioned that “Instagramming” and “Snapchatting” for example, were new trends among Saudis, owing to the platforms’ growing popularity worldwide.

The report highlighted the fact that video was the most engaging shared content across all social media platforms. Since Facebook and Instagram introduced video content, YouTube can no longer claim exclusivity on this media. Moreover, these two platforms have given the online video scene more exposure.

The report also found that Arabic was the most used language in social media posts, surpassing the number of posts in English by 7.5 times.

The Astronomical Growth in YouTube Videos’ Popularity

YouTube became the second most visited website in Saudi Arabia this year (after Google), with 2.9 billion views by end-July 2015. As early as 2012, Saudi Arabia had made the headlines of technology news when Google revealed that the country ranked first globally in YouTube views per capita.

The top 10 YouTube channels in Saudi Arabia are local channels in Arabic (led by Sa7i, EyshElli, and Al-Timsa7). The report mentioned that each of the top 30 channels in the country posted 2 videos a month, with an average duration of 4:13 minutes for each video.

On average, there are around 606,872 subscribers per channel in Saudi Arabia, and each video has an average of 106,000 views.

Facebook Still Leads with Engagement

According to the TOP report, the number of Facebook users in Saudi Arabia increased from 7.8 million in 2013 to reach around 11 million by mid-2015, with most of these users being young men aged between 25 and 34.

The average Facebook user posts around 10 times a week. Furthermore, around 9% of Saudis interact with their brands via Facebook, and 87% of these interactions are in Arabic. It is worth mentioning that around half the questions asked are answered within less than 4 minutes.

Facebook video is growing at a quick pace, allowing the platform’s performance of shared videos to reach the same level as YouTube, although YouTube is still way ahead of Facebook when it comes to searched videos. Currently, for every 8 YouTube links shared on Facebook, there are 6 Facebook videos posted. However, Facebook videos receive twice the engagement that YouTube links get.

Video on Instagram Is the Most Engaging Content

Instagram is considered as popular as Twitter in Saudi Arabia, with around 8.8 million active users recorded at mid-2015.

On average, Saudi users post around 12 times a week. Posts are currently divided equally between photos and videos, with video posts generating higher levels of interaction.

Most used hashtags on Instagram (#Style #Cooking #Clothing #Makeup) indicate that the platform is gradually turning into a female community.

Twitter's Strength Is in Retweets

Twitter is the fifth most visited website in Saudi Arabia, with Saudi nationals making up 40% of total users in the Arab region.

One key insight about Twitter is that Saudi users tweet 5 times a day, and 87% of these posts are re-tweets.

The number of Twitter users grew by 80% from 2013 to mid-2015, exceeding 9 million users. They are already outnumbered by Facebook users, and Instagrammers are rapidly catching up with them. This is probably owing to these two platforms’ high engagement rates around video content.

Check out the video below that TOP produced to accompany its report: