The most ‘liked’ Facebook pages in Zimbabwe

Even locally, the need for a social media strategy to build a community around a brand or an initiative is clear. Recently, through Techzim Answers and our Facebook page, we gathered data on the most popular Facebook pages in Zimbabwe. The meaning of ‘In Zimbabwe’ here is quite loose; we just wanted those that primarily target a Zimbabwean audience or are primary Zimbabwean themselves as a page.

We think listing them, and together with you readers, observing how the pages have managed to get huge following will help many marketing people, entrepreneurs, and aspiring online community managers out there learn new ways to optimize their social media presence.

Here are the pages we found to be most ‘liked’. We took those that have at least 50,000 likes. The number of likes is as of today. We start with the brand pages then we move to the rest (jokes pages and stuff)                .

Business/Brand Pages

1)  H-Metro Real Life Real Drama
Likes: 120,167
Type: Tabloid Newspaper
This is the impostor page for a popular Harare tabloid called H-Metro.

2)  Morgan Tsvangirai
Likes: 77,835
Type: Politician
About Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s current Prime Minister.

3)  Telecel Zimbabwe
Likes: 77,208
Type: Mobile Operator
This is the official page of mobile network operator, Telecel Zimbabwe.

4)  NewsDay Zimbabwe
Likes: 70,425
Type: Daily Newspaper
NewsDay Zimbabwe, a daily paper belonging to Alpha Media House, is one of Zimbabwe’s 5 daily newspapers.

5)  DeMbare DotComs   
Likes: 66,444
Type: Sports
The page is focuses on one of Zimbabwe’s most popular premier league teams, Dynamos Football Club.

6)  Oliver Mtukudzi Fan Page
Likes:  63,416
Type: Music Celebrity
Oliver Mtukudzi, is one of Zimbabwe’ most celebrated artists, arguably the most actually.

7) myzimbabwe.co.zw
Likes: 61,560
Type: Online news
A local news website.

8) Winky D DiBigman
Likes: 56,263
Type: Music celebrity
This is the official page of arguably Zimbabwe’s most celebrated dancehall artist, Winky D.

The other pages (Jokes, advice etc…)

1) Mbare University of the wise
Likes: 197,000
Type: Jokes and general discussion
The page describes itself as a university of the brave and the streetwise. Mbare is a high density suburb in Harare and is one of the oldest residential suburbs in the country.

2)  Kuzeya Nyaya Dzese na tete Rose na sekuru Joe. Dzerudo, dzebonde nehupenyu
Likes: 127,006
Type: Crowdsourced advice.
The page invites people to send in their stories to a certain email, the stories are posted on the page and the page’s followers discuss the issues and provide advice.

3)  Mugrade Seven (Please note some of the posts are NSFW)
Likes: 96,882
Type: Jokes

4)  Masasi epafesibhuku
Likes: 71,305
Type: Jokes

5)  Kutandara Na Tete MaNcube
Likes: 67,060
Type: Crowdsourced advice
Run mostly like 2 above.

6) Majokosi
Likes: 55,816
Type: Jokes

7) Masasi aCde Chinotimba
Likes: 53,714
Type: Jokes

8) Lets Talk Bout it all with Tandi
Likes: 50,936
Type: Crowdsourced advice
Run mostly like 2 above, but emphasizes SFW content with the rule that “rude or vulgar names will be deleted and blocked”

This was all done manually, so if you know a page that has more likes (today or at least within the next couple of days) than the ones listed above, please let us know in the comments below, and we’ll update the article.

So, what makes these pages popular? What can we learn from them?