5 Ways to use Twitter for your Brand in the Middle East

Today's newspapers talked about how Saudis were asking for better pay on twitter. See this article in Gulf News Oct 8th. The hashtag is here and doing well in the Middle East. But how are brands using the power of twitter? Most brands we know usually do a lot of one way product-bragging rather than try and create a dialog. Here are five ways I've seen that brands here in this  region can follow and engage well on twitter...

1. Engage in a dialog. Try and have an exchange rather than just do brand/product shoutouts. Basically, you are looking for conversations and ways to connect to the people out there. That's a feeling of community, of following, not preaching product benefit. And, for a brand, twitter is a lot about customer service. The key word there is service. Service as an on-going and meaningful dialog with your customers.

2. Participate. There's a golden 80-20 rule that suggests that around 4 out of 5 of your tweets should be involvement with your followers, your 'community'. Which means you need to Retweet, re-post with comments and add value. It's the sharing and caring that shows value for those who follow you and those who you want to be followers. It also shows you are on topic  and on trend and are not me-me-me. Most twitter communities in the Middle East seem to like participation and replying. They like being heard. Also, look to leverage the 'sneezers' or viral influencers.

3. Provide Value. If you are pure selling product benefits and features, you are not really going to get much out of twitter engagement. Try and provide tips, useful information, useful links, re-shares of stuff that's relevant to your genre but not necessarily about your brand. Value is about knowledge, news, information. And for your brand or product the tease-and-reveal works well. Have special offers? Twitter is the place to put those out.

4. Write well. Twitter for brands is often about mastering the art of writing a 140 character headline. Grab the attention with a clear benefit and perhaps a call to attention. The link, the photo are like the rest of the ad. It's the first few attention grabbing words that matter. Craft those well. Remember 60% of active twitter users use their mobiles. Grab the attention quickly and succinctly.

5. Stay on trend, react quick, be relevant in the now. Twitter is all about the here and now, so you can't keep tweeting about your brand, for your brand or product while asleep at the wheel. Stay on trend. Be aware of what the conversations are about and see if there's a fit. Tweet on those.  This doesn't mean you try and hijack trending hashtags. And, no point on tweeting about hot trending global topics unless they mean something to you. Geo-fence your strategy. Your topics have to be in context and be current.  No one likes yesterdays news other than fish-and-chips shops.

Twitter as a platform have made a serious commitment to the regoin and you can ask for help if you want to leverage better. Lisa Szatsznajder is Twitter Account Manager for the GCC. No, I wasn't paid to write this post. You can ask her @LisaJSz 

Tom Roychoudhury is chief innovations officer at MCN (Middle East Communications Network), one of the largest advertising, marketing, media, PR and social agency groups in the region.

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10 Sure Shot ways to make Fan pages work on Facebook in the Middle East

Facebook revealed last week that there are over 28 million users who log on every day in the Middle East and North Africa. That's a large number that brands can target in the region. And about 15 million of them access the social platform via mobile. So, how do brands and their fan pages hope to succeed in reaching this large number, finding the right fans and engaging?

From having worked with several leading brands on their Facebook strategy, here's what I think works towards building successful fan engagement on Facebook in the region.

1. Be Visual
This is the best trick in the Facebook-in-the-Middle-East book. For me, this is the holy grail. I've worked with clients' brands who can't figure out why on certain days, they hardly get any Likes on their posts, and actually get drop-outs and 'UnLikes'. If you look at the insights provided by Facebook and check back, you'll quickly find the visual connection. Posts without visuals – no matter how strong on copy – hardly ever work in this region. So, post photos. Each time, every time. Specially as we recognize how many fans out there are accessing their timelines via mobile, photos are king.

2. Ask Questions.
This too works like magic. Ask fans what they want to wear. What they like eating. Which are their favorite ways to use your product. Leave room for comment and answers and engagement just seems to go sky-high via responses, Likes and shares. The questions aren't tough ones, and they don't always have to be about your brand or product – simple, everyday engagement can be had with easy, quick questions which people want to answer, where they feel their opinion and vote is important.

3. Contests
Again, like Questions, Contests work in the Middle East like magic. Facebook users, specially women, love to participate in contests – regardless of reward size. If the mechanics are simple, they will join in, they will engage. Contests have accounted for some of the most successful Facebook marketing campaigns, so look into having some on your fan page.

4. Ask for engagement
Start with a "Share this..." statement. Post a Fill-in-the-Blanks, drop in a poll, ask fans to comment. Have a clear engagement strategy which will quickly grab attention and then create a simple way for fans to engage. Start with an arresting visual and then ask for the next step – have a clear call to action.

5. Go far. Go wide. With your content.
Really, you should be talking about a wider range of topics than what your product or brand does, or your next sale. Open up and engage fans with what we call peripheral topics – have fun with these and keep it human. Facebook in the long run may be your marketing tool, but its a dialog and an engagement first, and you won't get two-way if all you talk about is you.

6. Be human. Have a voice that is recognizable as human. And be precise.
As mentioned, while going wide spectrum with content scope, be human in your approach. Be personable, approachable, real. Facebook is not advertising. So it's not about a sell. It's about how one fan used your product in a special way. Or about how you as Community Manager enjoyed the movie.
Keep your posts short. It's now pretty obvious that shorter posts (around 140c or less, just like twitter) work more in your favor than a long story.

7. Utilize Insights.
Thats what Facebook Insights are there for. Most early Facebook Social managers didn't bother with analytics, they went with gut. Fine,m but with such real time information available today, you can adapt on the fly. React, reward, run fast and quick. Check out which types of posts are working, check out what are good days and bad, good times to post for your audience – and the best part have a clear understanding of who you are talking to and engaging with. Then start over if needed.

8. Have a great visual impact with your Cover Photo and your Profile shot
That's your first impression so, make that count. Fans usually come to your Page just once or twice – make sure you create a fun, memorable impression. And your profile shot, is what they see over and over. Make sure it's clean, recognizable and is memorable.

9. To hashtag or not to hashtag?
Well, every one wants to bring social under one common voice - so they're using the one uniting hashtag (#holygrail) across all the media like twitter, instagram etc. That's OK, but Facebook isn't really a quick in-the-now, search-on-a-tag kind of medium like twitter. So, use the # only when you feel it's going to add value, when it will help fans participate and when they work with your post. Limit # usage (rule of thumb is one #) and never ride on hijacks.

10. Advertise.
Today, anywhere in the world, but specially here in the Middle East, one SURE SHOT way to grow your reach, improve your fan-base and engage is via Facebook ads. You simply cannot without using ads. Invest in Faceook ads, and you are bound to see returns. One client's posts went from 12 Likes to 9000 Likes per post with a simple ad strategy. Pay to play.

There are a few other simple things that help increase your Facebook fan page engagement quickly and easily. Because only around 10% of your fan base will ever see your ads, posting a few times more than what you would like is one chosen path. Other barnds seem to like posting Links to useful sites, infographics, How-Tos etc. Some succeed with precise Time-of-Day strategy. If you'd ask me what I would absolutely do for a brand?

I would post beautiful visuals (like Pinterest), keep my posts short (like Twitter), and have questions, how-to-use and make it funny (like YouTube). You Like?

Tom Roychoudhury is chief innovations officer at MCN (Middle East Communications Network), one of the largest advertising, marketing, media, PR and social agency groups in the region.

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Facebook in the Middle East: first ever numbers released

Every one tells us that the Middle East is one big Facebook country. We also heard in a conference that Facebook are not a social media company – they are a mobile platform. So add that up: About 15 million people access Facebook in the region from a mobile or tablet computer daily!

Wall Street Journal on October 1 tells us that Facebook has revealed the number of people using the social network in the Middle East and North Africa for the first time, having launched operations in the region in May last year. About 15 million people access Facebook in the region from a mobile or tablet computer daily

The figures in the region mirror the global trend of people using Facebook, but the advertising-dollars are yet to catch up despite overall growth in digital spending, according to Jonathan Labin, head of Facebook in the Middle East, Africa and Pakistan.

“Ad spend per capita is still much lower here than in other parts of the world,” says Mr. Labin. “If you compare the time spent on digital compared with the ad spend, there’s a huge gap [in the region].”  While that sounds like a major sales push, you can't quite avoid the truth behind it.

Here are some key facts about Facebook in the region, and how they compare on a global basis.

- Every month, 56 million people are active on Facebook in the Middle East and North Africa.

- On a daily basis, 28 million people in the region log on to Facebook.

- About 33 million people access Facebook in the region from a mobile or tablet computer on a monthly basis, while 15 million are active on a mobile device on a daily basis.

- Globally, there are 1.155 billion monthly active users and 699 million daily users.

- On mobile, there are 469 million daily active users across the world.

- About 41% of global Facebook’s ad revenue in the second quarter came from mobile.

- Facebook says Just Falafel, a U.A.E.-based food franchise expanding outside the region, invested $400,000 on the social network last year and received an estimated $8 million return on its investment in revenues.

- Newsfeed is the most popular form of advertising on Facebook in the region and globally.

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Mobile. One in Five in the world today access web via mobile. The new First screen!

If someone told you that one-in-five of people online would access the web via a small, hand-held device a few years ago, you’d laugh. The mobile phone has come a long way – thanks to advancements in screen tech, access, smartphone adaption, and of course, changing media consumption patterns. We believe that you can’t really call it the “third screen” any more in the line-up of one, two, three (one being tv and two being the computer screen). More andmore people are reliant on the internet for their news, their entertainment and their social lives, And mobile is showing them the way.

Mashable reports: People around the globe are accessing the web via their smartphones more often than ever. So far in 2013, 17.4% of web traffic has come through mobile, representing more than a 6% increase since 2012 when 11.1% of traffic came from mobile.

Statista’s chart below shows the increase in mobile web traffic over the last year, broken down by continent.

Mobile web traffic more than doubled in South America, the continent with the largest growth rate, where web access via mobile leaped from 3.2% to 6.8%.
Asia and Africa lead the planet as the two continents with the most-mobile web users, with 26.6% and 23.7%, respectively, of web traffic coming from mobile devices.

Image courtesy: Mashable report

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5 Ways to use social media to lure talent and hire the best

How things change. Who would have known that Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (and YouTube as well) would emerge as some of the best talent recruitment channels out there today? The proverbial headhunter is turning to social media as well, but while the old-fashioned talent recruitment agency hasn't altogether disappeared, more and more companies are looking to lure talent via social. Here are five ways that companies are looking to social media in helping their recruitment drive...

1. It's about storytelling. Yes, storytelling is the buzzword of 2013, and how. Besides engaging consumers and creating relationships between brands and products and customers and consumers, storytelling is playing a big part in establishing corporate credentials in front of a potential workforce. Social storytelling is live wire – far more dynamic, in-the-now, real, almost-unedited compared to website based trumpeting. Potential candidates get to know their prospective employers better via social. Often they can engage directly with employees or even prospective bosses.

2. Targeted contacting is possible on social. The stories or interest-focused contact points on social are far ahead of a simple web-based communication. A newspaper as has an email address at the end. A social post or tweet is on-going in opportunity and is totally scalable – it can fine tune-in to the interest and skill-set match, and that tune up or down in engagement depending on engagement level, result of the communications and progress in the recruit cycle. A page insertion in a trade magazine goes that far. But social contact is far more rewarding and facilitates very tightly focused moves to disseminate critical information about company, jobs, teams and leaders.

3. The talent search process becomes a lot easier because today's social platforms offer up huge and deep insights into both people and companies. LinkedIn can be micro-filtered to find someone out there, and the process works in reverse as well. Potential candidate listing and contacting has become a lot easier with these tools, and there are no hefty fees involved. As well, the word of mouth power on social works amazingly well via people's network of friends and their contacts. Companies are often requesting re-tweets of their job postings and looking for shares on facebook.

4. Real insights are making a big difference in the ways companies pre-profile candidates using social media platforms. Increasingly companies and HR departments dig deeper than the CV mailed in. They will look at a LinkedIn profile. Further, to "find out more about the real person" they'll try and access a facebook page.

5. Finally, companies today are being more open on their social media policies when luring candidates. Young candidates who are totally wired often seek 'social benefits' as much as they do vacation days. Two-thirds of college students ask about social media policies during job interviews, while 56% will either not accept a job from a company that bans social media, or they will circumvent the policy. The survey adds that 41% of employees say companies marketed a flexible device and social media policy to recruit them, says the Economic Times.

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Get Innovation into your company's DNA

Are innovator's born that way? Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsico worldwide. Maybe she was born with it? (Or is that Maybelline?). Steve Jobs. Mark Zuckergerg. Richard Branson. Jeff Bezos. Born innovators or can you download innovation? Can your company acquire a culture of innovation? Rebuild and create a new DNA that's got innovation as core?

Most brands or companies that are seen as innovators today have a common problem – and an even more common solutions approach to that. They first recognize innovation. Second, they encourage and let it thrive. Third they communicate innovation from every angle – make it oxygen. And finally, these leading companies, usually have innovators at the helm, or have leaders who strongly support the culture.

Innovation is born out of curiosity. Innovators observe the world around them, sometimes from different angles, but it starts with a keen sense of awareness. Then they ask questions, they get curious about the why, when, how, where, who and they tend to find answers that are obvious, or are incredibly intellectually out there and mould-breaking. The obvious solutions are usually out there for every one to have seen, but often they are hidden due to corporate ennui. And innovators always seek out challenges – they meet new people, ask new questions, travel to new places. They find because they seek.

By nature, innovators don't fit in. Too often, in my earlier days, I was part of agency protocol that ensured via interviews and testing that people we hired fit in. They had to be like us. Like me. Or we faced a threat of possibly hiring someone who would Think Different. Huh? This still goes on every day, in every way that companies are hiring today. Thus the profiling test, thus the personality modeling, the multiple-choice fill-this-in-our-way-or-go-elsewhere. It's the fear of the anti-establishment. The corporate numbing comfort of same-same.

If you really want to reconstruct your company's DNA hire some people who have different DNA's to yours. That's the only way to reconstruct. And then, find ways to cultivate and encourage this new, and different way, of thinking. This gets difficult as company sizes bloat. Big ships have large turning circles. Startups don't have this issue. They're nimble. One easy place to start is recognition. Step 2 is usually reward – and it's not always big-company-fat-paycheck reward. Freedom, autonomy, authority, and a sharp sense of go-get-it is often all innovators are looking for. Fair monetary compensation is important. Innovators get poached easily. You can't hide that light under a bushel too long.

One other area to keep an eye out for is the success/failure syndrome. Innovators by intuition are failures. If they don't fail, they cannot discover success, or re-invention. There is no challenge. The bigger challenge is to fall down, pick yourself up and then go on to win. Corporate leadership that instils fear of trying or failing is blunt and old hat. Corporate leadership also needs to recognize that innovation at Apple is different from innovation at HSBC and different from innovation at JWT or your corner store. You can't replicate form-factor innovation at Apple and apply it to a innovative new form of micro-wallet transactions at a bank.

I also believe that innovation is top-led. It's both participation and encouragement. It's about leadership making difficult choices that are outside the norm. It's keeping the playing field fair but open. And to be able to communicate that, to push that across everything the company does when possible. With the innate and keen ability to be able to move the goal posts as and when.

Yes, you can.

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Instagram video leaving Vine trailing behind

Instagram video is the new king of the microblog video format. The 15-second format Instagram video is not only popular with the masses, but brands are flocking to it. Some top brands – already familiar with Instagram as a platform – have naturally taken to the newly introduced video blog on it.

Some brands are naturals on Instagram – using the earlier still-photo platform comfortably and successfully. Starbucks, Gap, Nike, Burberry were leaders on Instagram. Today, just over a week after the video-format launch other brands have joined the Instagram video bandwagon – MTV, Disney, Ford, Cisco, eBay, Facebook, Intel and GE – just to name a few. Smaller, local brands are not far behind either. Mashable reported earlier that two-thirds of the world's Top 100 brands were already on Instgram. For them adding on video will come easy.

Intabrand studies done in the last week of June, 2013 show twice as many top brands using Instagram videos than Vine. Engagement figures were astounding – nearly 190,000 on Instagram that week vs only 225 on Vine-on-Twitter.

Vine wasn't huge. Ever. For starters, it launched on iOS, meaning that the huge Android base was neglected. Instagram on the other hand already had a base of 130 million users. Add to that Facebook – the Instagram parent brand – and you've got a massive 1 billion plus audience in the making. Video is naturally more engaging than photos. Facebook have always maintained that. The acquisition of Instagram was proof. Naturally, brands are excited about Facebook and Instagram together – a one-plus-one giving eleven!

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