الإعلام الاجتماعي أداة تسويقية

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Mo Elzubeir in Opinion

Social Media Tips for the Consumer

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Mo Elzubeir in Tips and Advice

I have seen many Twitter HOWTO’s and Guides, but I have yet to come across one that shows consumers how they can get the attention of brands/products. We have all been busy talking about how we can talk to consumers, how we can engage with them.. which is all great, but we seem to forget that just like marketers, a lot of these social media tools are new to consumers as well. After all, we are all consumers.

Being on the monitoring end of things, I hope that I can give some insights to how brands see the world and how you, the consumer, can make your voice better heard. The most important thing you need to know is this: good brands are really trying to listen.

Give your opinion weight

Anonymity is perhaps one of the Internet’s biggest double-edged swords. We like being able to make anonymous comments. It removes a veil of civility that we often put on when communicating with others. Being anonymous online is like having a license to kill. Say what’s on your mind and it won’t have to come back to haunt you — that’s at least in theory.

This is fine, but if you were an active blogger, forum contributor, twitter user, etc., your opinion has weight. Yes, marketers weigh your opinion based on how much influence your user id carries. Do people retweet your tweets? Do they link back to your blog posts? Do they comment on your posts? The more people do, the more weight this user of yours has influence. The more influence he has, the more weight the opinion associated with it has.

So, maybe you don’t want to give up being completely anonymous.. but do consider using a pseudo-name consistently.

Simplify your sentiments

There are millions of posts and tweets happening everyday. It is virtually impossible for a person to sift through them as they happen. What marketers do is rely on computer technology to tell them when someone is mentioning their brand favorably or unfavorably. Sentiment assessment is not as sophisticated as we would like it to be. In fact, most programs do this horribly. So, if I were to talk about a product and wanted to express disappointment, using emoticons in close proximity with the product’s name is a good way to ensure that programs can pick up on it. Also, using strong and clear descriptives “sucks”, “disappointed”, etc. in close proximity to the product also helps.

This is similar to the problem journalists started facing when they had to start thinking differently when writing headlines and leads to stories posted on the Internet. Writing for print and writing for the net is fundamentally different. Clever puns and wordplay don’t always work very well in our Search Engine Optimized websites. This is a very similar situation.

Engage with the top

Don’t be shy. I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Most heads of departments/organizations care about the product and/or service they offer. When Google first launched their ejabat service, many people (including myself), questioned the Egyptian ‘g’ initially used in the name of the service. Engaging with the product engineer directly was so easy it was almost unbelievable. Not long after, the name has been changed to the more encompassing “ejabat”.

Remember that in most cases, product and/or services providers are not out to hurt you – they have a genuine interest in being the best at what they do. It’s not an us vs. them scenario. We’re just all trying to figure out how we can better talk to one another.

Why twitter statistics cannot be trusted

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Mo Elzubeir in Opinion

The National is carrying a story on how twitter is yet to lure the Middle East. In his piece, Tom Gara (@tomgara) claims that Twitter will never make it in the Middle East due to a number of reasons, mostly social and cultural.

The debate has started from a clever press release by Spot On PR, which offered some statistics on the usage of Twitter in the MENA region. The figures are depressing, to say the least. However, I don’t trust those figures, at all.

Spot On’s Carrington Malin was kind enough to share the report with me and even point out that others may have arrived at different numbers. There is a reason why that is the case. Twitter has been, from the very beginning, ultra-protective of its users and information on them.

I spent some time poking around Twitter’s API to see how I can harvest similar types of statistics but to no avail. The only way to do this is to actually follow all users in the region. Finding who they are is an almost impossible task unless you work for Twitter.

So, how did Spot On arrive at their figures? Well, they say they have done it manually as the numbers are small. Do we really know that they are?

Based on questionable (but otherwise applaudable effort) figures, Tom Gara concluded that the Middle East is just not going to embrace twitter the same way it did not embrace blogging. He cites issues like “protecting the family name” as one.

Here is my problem with Tom’s op-ed. Blogging and twitter may share the same concept in that, anyone can publish anything to the world. The difference is, blogging requires a lot more stamina and dedication. All you need to tweet is a mobile phone (well, one that gets you online).

What has happened in Iran has highlighted how incredibly easy it is to use it. The issue is not that culturally the Middle East is not suited for “social personas” as Tom tweeted back to me. The issue is that we don’t have anything to say. Yet. There needs to be a catalyst for quick adoption (as in Iran). However, I do expect gradual adoption to continue nevertheless.

At the end of the day, regardless of our ethnic and cultural heritage, we are all social beings. We scream for attention. Some of us go on to become professional attention-seekers while others end up behind closed doors. Twitter offers us an opportunity, 140 characters a time, to get that attention. You don’t have to be clever. You don’t even have to be able to spell. Just random thoughts will do.

PR agencies need to stay out of evaluation

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Mo Elzubeir in Opinion

After years of being in the media monitoring and evaluation business, I still find it difficult to understand why PR agencies insist on selling their ‘analytical’ services. I cannot stress how absurd this is: does your accounting department perform an audit?

We have been involved in a marathon of a pitch process for a client in a rather specialized industry. While it is a 3-way pitch, our fiercest competition comes from a PR agency! The fact that the client is even considering a PR agency (oh they call themselves whatever they want, marketing communication, public affairs, bla bla bla.. — at the end of the day, as far as actual work needed for this client, it’s mostly media relations with a bit of advertorials) is rather curious.

While one can understand that clients don’t fully appreciate the difference between a communication evaluation agency and a public relations shop, it is harder to forgive when a client demonstrates a thorough understanding of what the evaluation reports should include and exclude.

No one in the industry here seems to see anything wrong with this picture and I am beginning to wonder if it’s just me who feels that way.

Let us ask this differently then. If media evaluation companies were to start competing with PR agencies for PR briefs, would the client even notice?