Over the past two years, Saudis have changed their behavior in the way they interact, connect and engage on social media platforms. The latest 2015 industry report from The Online Project emphasizes the up-to-date changes in Social Saudis in comparison to the 2013 report.

2. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
2Presented by The Online Project
Introduction
The world of social media has evolved at a prodigious pace,
where two years seem longer in duration considering all the
changes that took place. One of the countries that is still being
impacted by the viral effects of virtual communities is Saudi
Arabia. With Saudi Arabia still being one of the most active
countries in the Middle East on social, it is no surprise for
Saudi users to change their platform preference considering
all the changes that has came to them. For instance, Keek was
noticeably successful among Saudi users in 2013, but even with
the platform’s prosperity, the number of active users stopped
growing in the past year. On the other hand with the gaining
popularity of Snapchat and Instagram worldwide, Saudi users
have also joined the trend of “Snapping” and “Instagramming”.
Life for many Saudis is an ecosystem of apps, with Twitter being
at the top. The country’s market differs from others by being
the most active on social, having the highest penetration of the
micro blog. Saudi Arabia accounts for 40% of Twitter users in
the Arab region, with 5.4 million users tweeting more than 210
milliontweetspermonth.[1]
However,aTwitterrepresentativehas
recently announced that the number of Twitter users exceeded
9 million, making the platform grow with a rate of 80% from the
numbers shared in our 2013 report.
1 http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/saudi-arabia-social-media-prompts-culture-change/1349552

3. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
3Presented by The Online Project
Saudi Arabia embodies opportunities for businesses aiming to
target and reach the vast population of social Saudis, in order
for the massive potential that the country provides to be utilized;
the progression of change regarding social media needs to
be thoughtfully considered, adapted and studied regularly to
achieve optimal results.
In our previous report we established a clear perception about
the behavior of the Saudi user on social networks, by focusing
on understanding the users to aid us in having a solid foundation
to build our report. But now with all the changes that have
occurred, a new report is inevitable to give emphasize to the
importanceofstayingup-todate. Shiftingthefocusofourreport
from, getting to know Social Saudis to, reintroducing them.

4. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
4Presented by The Online Project
The Average
Saudi Social User
Inorderforresultstobeobtainedforanyreport,amethodused
ingatheringinformationmustbeimplemented. Inourprevious
report we succeeded in identifying the behavior of Saudis
on social media, by developing a group of ‘personas’. The
concept of personas was constructed to be a representation
of different users on different social platforms, by mapping out
similar traits and characteristics. Therefore, we were able to
acquire more insights about the different behavioral patterns
that were driven by social media.
To study the change that has affected the users; thus the
personas, proceeding with the same method was evident.
Allowing us to humanize our data and form a better
understanding regarding our audience.

5. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
5Presented by The Online Project

6. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
6Presented by The Online Project
Data
Facebook
• 11 million active users by mid 2015. 3.2 million Of which
are expats.
• 79% of the users are male, 21% are female.
• Facebook English interface is as popular as the Arabic
interface. However, in terms of engagement, Arabic
remained the top used/ written language
• 48% of the Saudi users are Android users and only 11% are
iOS users.
• The average Saudi user posts around 10 times a week.
• Saudis mostly engage between
7 p.m. and 10 p.m. daily.
Thursday is the most active day
of the week.
• 9% of Saudis refer to Facebook
to connect with their brands
through asking a question. 87%
of these questions are written in
Arabic.

7. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
7Presented by The Online Project
Twitter
• 9 million active users by mid
2015
• 27% of the users have no written
bio, and 16% have the default
egg photo set as their profile
picture.
• On average, the Saudi user
tweets 5 times a day.
• 47% of the questions asked are get answered within an
average response time of 3:47 minutes.
• For every 6 Facebook videos posted, there are 8 YouTube
links shared on facebook. Engagement received per
Facebook video is two times the engagement received
per a YouTube link.

8. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
8Presented by The Online Project
Instagram
• 8.8 million active users by mid 2015.
• The average Instagram user follows 511 users and has 288
followers.
• On average, the Saudi user posts around 12 posts a week.
• Thursdays are the most active days. 6 – 9 p.m. is the most
active time of the day.
• Instagram shared posts are divided equally between photo
and video posts. However, 73% of the engagement goes
to video posts.
• Saturday is the most active day of the week. 9 p.m. till
midnight is the most active time of the day.
• Text tweets receive the highest engagement among all
other tweets.
• 87% of what is posted on twitter is re-tweets.

9. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
9Presented by The Online Project
Youtube
• Average subscribers per channel is 606,872
• Average views per video is 105,900
• Top 30 channels in Saudi post twice a month.
• Top 30 channels’ average video duration is 4:13 minutes.

10. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
10Presented by The Online Project
Video Case Study
YouTube vs. Facebook
There is no better way to tell a story than a video and
the basis of good content is good story telling, this is
one of the reasons why video content has grown rapidly
amongst the years, forcing brands and people to grasp its
potential from high engagement rates to the number of
interactions.
Saudi Arabia is one of the countries that proves the
importance of video sharing across various platforms,
given it being the highest engagement earner even on
the famous photo sharing app Instagram. With all of
the positive growth behind video content, platforms
have also shown greater interest in this type of content,
and one of them is Facebook. Facebook has started to
adapt to all different types of content, hence leading
them to focus on their video products even more. That
is why it is important to compare between videos posted
on Facebook and videos that are posted on the main
video platform YouTube. In order for us to compare
video content published in Saudi Arabia, we partnered
with Omar Hussein and conducted this study together
to compare video content posted on YouTube and
Facebook, we chose the “truth be told” show as a method
of comparison, due to the consistency of posting on both
platforms using Facebook native video product.

11. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
11Presented by The Online Project
“Truth be told” is a social experiment show presented
by Omar Hussein that aims to obtain and understand the
differentreactionsoftheSaudiArabiancommunitytowards
different situations. Omar is currently a communication
consultant, he’s also one of the first YouTubers in Saudi
Arabia and a part of the founding team of UTURN; a
Jeddah-based production company that revolutionized
Saudi Arabian news and entertainment, producing shows
that have been watched 286 million times on YouTube.
Omar used social media as a platform to address the
Saudi population, by presenting topics that is not only
light-hearted, but relatable to the Saudi audience as well.

12. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
12Presented by The Online Project
Given the data collected, Facebook videos has grown
and is still growing at a quick pace allowing the platform’s
performance of shared videos to reach the same level as
YouTube, however when it comes to searched videos
YouTube is still way ahead of Facebook.

13. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
13Presented by The Online Project
Conclusion
Based on the data we collected, we have re-identified
common behavior trends associated with the typical Saudi
Arabian social media user in 2015:
• Facebook remained the largest social platform in terms
of number of users. However, Twitter growth surpassed
Facebook by 25% in the past two years.
• Saudis preference towards social entertainment has been
changed through emerging platforms like Instagram and
Snapchat.
• Online video has become a key channel for consuming
content on all platforms, especially Facebook and
Instagram.
• Comedy TV shows and sports are the most popular
categories of online watched videos.
• While YouTube remained the main video sharing website,
Facebook and Instagram’s video growth has shifted
the online video scene towards more exposure. Video
content is no longer a YouTube exclusive.
• Hashtags usage on Instagram is just as popular on Twitter.
Most used hashtags on Instagram shows how the platform
is gradually turning into a female community

14. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
14Presented by The Online Project
Recommendations
• Frequently Study the change in social media and your
target audience and adapt accordingly
• Monitor what people are talking about on all social
platforms
• Humanize your brand by being relevant to your audience
and more personalized
• Focus on the type of content that engages with your
audience, for example in Saudi Arabia the most engaging
are: Links, videos, photos, and plain text
• Due to the ever growing change in social media, new
approaches must be sought in order to reach your target
audience more effectively
• Selecting and optimizing social platforms according to
users’ preferences
• Utilizing Facebook videos, by posting more video content
and knowing when to post
• Engaging with your target audience depending on the
language frequently used by them
• Differentiate between each platform, by knowing what,
and when to post

15. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
15Presented by The Online Project
Methodology
Data for each channel was retrieved in the following ways:
Facebook
1. Using the advertising dashboard - we collected data on
the demographics of users in Saudi Arabia, including age,
gender and relationship status.
2. Using our in-house developed tool - we tracked
comments, likes, shares on Facebook Fan pages in
terms of engagement per user (data was generalized
due to privacy settings). Pages selected were the most
popular pages by local fans in Saudi Arabia according to
Socialbakers, from January 2015 till June 2015.
Twitter
1. Using our in-house developed tool – we collected data
from tweets, profiles and users biography. The analysis
included quantitative and qualitative research ranging
from most common Tweeting time and content of the
tweets. The sample size was 2 M tweets from 0.5 M users,
from January 2015 till June 2015.

16. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
16Presented by The Online Project
Instagram
1. Using our in-house developed tool – we collected data
from posts and users activities that are geo-tagged in
Saudi Arabia. The sample size we analyzed was 1.2 million
posts from 321K users from January 2015 till June 2015.
Youtube
1. Youtube data is generated manually by the Moderation
and Analysis team at The Online Project, for the top
30 YouTube channels in Saudi Arabia according to
Socialbakers.

17. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
17Presented by The Online Project
About TOP
As the Middle East’s leading digital agency, The Online Project
develops and executes digital strategies for Fortune 500 companies
and high profile organizations operating in the region.

18. Reintroducing Social Saudis - How Saudi’s Social Media Behavior changed over the past two years
18Presented by The Online Project
Contact Us
For general inquiries please email info@theonlineproject.me
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Tel: +962 6 465 8209
Fax:+96264658206
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Amman 11184
Jordan
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