As early as mid-July, Singapore’s national flag can be seen well above the skylines, reminding citizens of the upcoming National Day parade on August 9th. After four long years, the parade returns to the city of Padang and jump-starts the race for early preparations. Large Global and local companies released promotional offers, and the national government prepared eco-friendly fun packs. Meanwhile, local citizens decorated their homes with red and white. The buzz also ensued on social media, so we decided to explore how the three prepared for the celebration. How exactly did social media impact their image? We examined the effects through our social media marketing data platforms that helped us monitor the parade.
Air Show and Fireworks
This year, the National Day parade returns to Padang after four long years. Although the parade was a few weeks away, the national air force, the Red Lions, was seen practicing for their air show. They even documented their process and welcomed questions on Facebook from citizens using the hashtag #AskMeAnything.
Citizens frequently asked about the size of the flag, or how many people were needed to fold a massive flag. Others were curious about the challenges and difficulties of the process. Documenting their rehearsals and engaging the audience provides visibility into the entire preparation process. It builds a stronger connection with the citizens of Singapore and serves as a consistent reminder of the upcoming festivities.
On social media, citizens awaiting the National Day Parade mentioned and tweeted about the pre-show practices, expressing their love for the nation. Using our social media marketing data, we found two heart tugging posts.
Vehicle March Through Five Cities
People are excited about the National Day parade, but not all can attend the festivities. Knowing this, the government decided to dispatch 60 vehicles to continue the celebration of Singapore’s 54th birthday to five cities: Jurong East, Woodlands, Wisma Geylang Serai, Bishan, and Punggol.
By using our social media management tool, we also located the majority of the posting and interactions to the social media platform, Facebook. We were even able to find some of the trending posts concerning this specific topic.
The National Ministry of Defense also took this as an opportunity to release the new Wheeled Recovery Vehicle. It is said to have more “dedicated and responsive recovery support” to the army within an urban battlefield. Racking up more than 400 likes on Facebook, citizens thanked the hard work of the armed forces within the comments.
However, our social listening tool also showed us a few negative posts that surfaced amongst the trending topic. A few citizens expressed frustration with the low-quality photos the government released of the vehicles and even did their research to find higher resolution pictures. The anticipation of the National Day parade is causing quite the commotion on social media.
Securing Parade Tickets
Another popular trending topic we discovered through our social listening tool is the limited parade tickets available. We used our sentiment word cloud to show us which words on social media produced positive, neutral, or even negative sentiment. Many words that stick out are “win,” “ticket,” “pair,” “follow,” and “apply.” Permanent residents and citizens of Singapore can apply through a ballot system hosted by the national government that awards randomly chosen citizens tickets. But, for those who aren’t so lucky, they have to find other means. Hence, global companies have employed this to their advantage by creating online quizzes and reposting promotional offers.
The Strait Times, a famous Singaporean news media, even asked their readers to answer a short quiz to be entered for their parade ticket lottery. Needless to say, companies are using limited tickets to their benefit and gaining more visibility within social media and planning to find the lucky winners of their contests.
With social media growing faster than ever before, it’s no wonder that many express their frustration and excitement online. However, it can also make it extremely difficult to track the content of every post. With the aid of a social listening tool, it can be effortless to analyze the sentiments of each post. It can also help narrow down the source to the topic, the parade show, or the promotional offers. Or track all posts that mention your brand and its associated keywords. See how social media marketing data can help monitor your brand’s image. Request a demo today.
