The annual Design Indaba conference remains a calendar highlight for the local design community. In a bid to gauge its impact and popularity MarkLives.com teamed up with reputation management firm BrandsEye to track social media discussions around the event right prior to, during and immediately after the conference and expo, which took place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre in early March 2012.
BrandsEye tracked 20078 mentions of the event via numerous social media platforms. Some 92% of social media feedback was generated by consumers, 4% by businesses (for example where tweets originated via brand feeds) and 4% by the press.
Seventy-nine percent of the conversations were carried via Twitter and only 3% via Facebook. BizCommunity.com produced 2% of all mentions and psfk.com 1%.
The conversation cantered on South Africa with 55% of commentary originating here while 19% of conversations were produced via accounts registered in the US, 6% from UK based accounts, 3% from the Netherlands and 2% each from Italy, Germany and Canada. Ninety-two percent of tweets were in English.
Interestingly 42% of those active in discussions were found to be male and 58% female. Sentiment was largely positive or neutral (listing quotes, links etc. without expressing an opinion).
