Get 1000 visitors to your blog in 30 hours only

Dubai, June 2011: A couple of days ago, as I was checking the stats of my blog, I realized that I have 15 posts so far that attracted more than 1100 visits 8 weeks time (when I launched the blog). I thought this is isn’t a bad number, taking into consideration many factors that are geographic and demographic in addition to the one main fact which is the nature of the topic I am focusing in a B2B style and not addressed to the mass. I am sure that 1000’s of bloggers have attracted this number of visitors in the 1^st hour or day, but what the heck; I am thrilled about this humble advancement. By the way, this is not the subject of the topic, what I wanted to share with you today is my personal experience on How I could attract the first 1000 visitors. A lot has been done, so I won’t share it all in one post obviously. For this particular post, I decided to talk about the TIME it took me to find the audience, listen to their needs, and identify clear tactical objectives, generate the right content, share it, and then bring the visitors.

You might think that doing all that requires lots of time and energy. Most my acquaintances, friends and colleagues (almost 99%) defend their inactiveness on social media with lack of time. This made me do a rough calculation to estimate how much time I spent to be able to attract the first 1k visitors and what was the percentage of that time spent over the full 8 weeks i.e:24X60=1440. It’s for sure that time spent will vary from one blogger to another and will mostly rely on the level of readiness, clarity of objectives and ability to develop good content in a timely way , but nevertheless, the time I spent is equivalent to only 2.2% of the total  1440 hrs (8 weeks). In an easier count a max of 46 minutes/day. So if this was a job, I would be working 46 minutes a day only and living a social and business active life that involves thousands of people and bring in reasonable cash.

After all, it seems the time needed to become active on social media (professionally) is trivial in comparison to time not well spent online or even offline.

More will come soon, hope you enjoyed and benefited from this one.

Best,

Hameed

5 deadly content flaws on Facebook

Dubai, June 2011:Before I decided to write this post I had a discussion with a colleague of mine who shared with me an interesting dialogue that took place between a brand and a fan. Obviously we’re talking about facebook and a brand’s fan page. We will not dig into the objectives of using facebook by brands and why they go there in the first place. This post discusses what content these brands use on facebook and whether it will get them to their objective (that’s if they’ve set any) and what results will come out of it.

The brand I’ve randomly selected is a hair care product that has an international reputation and has been in the market for decades. When I read through the fan page, it reminds me of the Mexican soaps that invaded the Middle East in the early 90’s and continue until today. The scenario comes as if two Arabic Language teachers are having a dialogue in Damascus or Sanaa. What are the flaws of such a scenario?

1.       The content is not tailor-made to suit the taste of a social media FAN in general and that of facebook in particular; it was rather a copy of press ad content.

2.       Indistinguishable feed: The statements of different fans were all in formal Arabic and give the impression that they were tailored by the same person (fan) although they represent different fans. This shows fabrication of content and will drive real fans away from the page.

In principle, social media doesn’t have a place for the formalities similar to that in mainstream advertising. The advertiser has to be extra careful of misinterpretations and is solely focused on generating sales or what leads to it.  Hence, only few ads make it to the mind and heart of a consumer and those are called the “creative or out of the box” ones. To me, social media is a reflection of one’s social standards and practices and these rarely come in strict standards and protocols. Hence, I can’t understand how any one on social media expects to engage with the audience by being so uptight and formal.

As for the visual side,

3.       The BIG flaw is to insert your press ad on your facebook fan page and expect to engage your fans. A simple definition of social media says that it’s all about entertainment and stresses on the fact that it’s FREE entertainment. If you think that saving a few cents by not developing your social media customized visuals will help you save the day, well you’re wrong. Many have realized the importance of social media required content and are not only developing visuals but also application and gadgets that help engagement. Here comes my repeated advise to companies who wish to go on Social Media (don’t if you’re not ready, and ready doesn’t mean a facebook and twitter account…)

And then there’s the SMART way to engage fans..

4.       Offering a free product or service for members to register, follow, or accept your friend invitation. This is a simple one, have you asked yourself why you went on social media or how did you first hear about it? In both cases you’ll get the same answer, it’s the infotaining experience and never the free gift. HOW the heck will I receive a gift from some company based in Timbuktu when I’m living in Dubai? Can someone tell these companies that internet is global. Presence on social media is dependent on your entertaining content that offers information for free and not a free product that I might not need or even care for.

Followed by “Look at me I’m so sexy”

5.       Self praise or Exaggerated nonsense. On another page, I could read the following “ we offer the best bla bla in the market and we only care about providing our customers with the best after-sales bla bla”. People, when you’re on social media, you praise your customers, they praise you. It’s never the opposite. Your brand fan page should become a REVIEWS page or recommendations page signed and filled by those who tried and experienced your product/service. This should all happen in an infotaining way.

I hope I wasn’t too flexible describing the flaws of companies FRESH to social media. If you have experienced more flaws, please don’t hesitate to add them as a comment on my blog www.bloggerhameed.blogspot.com

Hameed

Is the BIG BOSS IN on Social Media?

May 30, 2011:Many challenges rise along the way when it comes to a well utilized social media and digital marketing in general. Here in the Middle East, the main challenge is “THE BOSS”. Most of the bosses who started the advertising and communication business in the region in the early 60’s are still running their empires and do have a say on how this industry should be controlled. Unfortunately, although we owe it to them to have reached this far in communication, but it seems that they have decided not to go any further than TV. They did accept internet lightly, but they would still prefer a TVC or a creative outdoor campaign over any digital ‘nonsense’.

That is my own opinion and I do blame them for not supporting the digital era enough until now as it will surely help and support NEWER ‘generations’ initiatives and will take BIG budgets to the online world. As a result, people will follow, as they always did follow gold rushes around the globe, and the digital world will become more valuable and influential over any brand health survey.

The main reason that made me raise this subject now is the slow pace of agencies integrating social media into their mainstream services. No proper endorsement by the BOSSES yet. Let’s not underestimate their influence and touch over the industry and how some of them became real icons of it in the Middle East and will continue to do so. Sometimes, I feel that it is our role to help them endorse new media and promote it to them as if they don’t have the rich communication background. That said, I am trying to learn more about the actual size of this state and I would really appreciate it if you can take 1 second of your time to answer the below question by clicking on the link.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8HQBMDC

Thanks for your contribution.

Hameed

A university student is NOT your social media solution

It feels good when you discuss social media with communication experts who didn’t have the chance to get engaged yet and they confirm to you that, with your help, they are aware of social media and have a good idea on how they can use it to promote their company or service… What’s doesn’t make you happy though is when you find out that the same expert is looking for a university under/graduate to help manage his social media scene! That might be the case in US and EU, but in my opinion it can’t be the situation in the Middle East .

Although I mentioned earlier when I talked about web experts taking the role of communication experts in “who’s doing your social media?” last April, I want to reaffirm the point by extending it to internet addicts who are mostly amongst high school and university students in countries such as KSA, Egypt and Jordan. The first thing that comes to a mind of a client who is trying to engage clients on social media is “I’ll get a university student, they'l do the job…” well, I don’t think that this is the wisest business decision. Below points are debatable, please do get back to me if you don't agree.

·         A student doesn’t have enough consumer experience to take it to your customers.

·         A student might be very active online, but not offline (the real world) and that doesn’t attract/engage the majority of social media users (the new comers) who are still active socially offline.

·         A student doesn’t have the maturity to understand brand messaging and brand DNA and might improvise what doesn’t suit the brand he’s promoting.

·         A student is an individual and it will not be smart to trust with your company’s communication strategy/plan.

So after all, the experts who will be doing your social media are still PR experts but they need to represent the communities you are trying to engage with. Therefore, the extracurricular activities part in the resume of a PR professional is the most insightful part about what communities he/she can engage with and help bring to your website/brand/shop… so better start looking at that and discussing it with your candidates.

I would love to hear your different opinions and hope I was able to highlight an important point. Please do comment and write back.

How to measure your social media effectiveness

It’s not just about the numbers of followers or likes

 ‘Almost’ enough with basic talk and let’s discuss tools you can use to successfully pitch social media to those who still can’t see the ROI generated. In fact, the below is not really my own, most of it might be  based on experiences that I went through, but it is only fair that I give the credit to Mark Paddock from Social Media Pow. We all agree that once an ROI is clear, the client/brand guardian/organization… will buy in quicker and will soon turn into a practice custodian himself. And that’s exactly the point and the objective of this post.

What Return On Investment has your Social Media Marketing achieved for you so far?

It’s incredibly important for a company to know how they will measure this, even from angles you wouldn’t have thought about. It’s not just about the numbers of followers or likes. It’s about all the other benefits Social Media Marketing brings. Below are the metrics we measure for our clients that give a full picture of the impact of Social Media.

#1 Converted Sales – The most obvious metric and the easiest to measure results.

#2 Leads created – Next best thing to a sale is a hot lead. We must measure the leads gained from our social media activity and monitor when they convert. Track the links posted in your messages/updates/tweets etc.

#3 Customers Converted to brand advocates — This is (as Neil Glassman of Social Times puts it) the Holy Grail of social media marketing and is the most difficult for brands to attain. Your social media initiatives have identified influencers; your content on appropriate platforms facilitates user-generated content; and, as a result, your advocates lead the social media conversations about your brand. Every brand should strive for this — few will achieve it.

#4 Increased “likability”. How Likeable Are You?— Now i’m not against counting FB “Likes” as a metric. After all if a visitor clicks “Like” then they are effectively saying “i’m willing to be notified of your posts”. Though “Likes”, “Followers” and “Connections” plus other readily available metrics like re tweets and shares do not necessarily indicate engagement or intent. However the speed in which likes appear can indicate the viral effect of you marketing. If it took 1 month to get 50 likes then another month to add 250 likes then clearly your page popularity is spreading virally.

#6 Social Sentiment and Reputation — Too many brands spend too much time “defending” themselves against negative tweets and other social media comments. Earn a positive reputation by promoting what’s positive about your brand. Use buzz monitoring tools like Hootsuite or Google Alerts to monitor the positive a negative mentions of you brand or company name. Do your upmost to appease the negative commenters and thank with the upmost appreciation the positive commenters

#8 SEO Improvement— Your social media initiatives are a part of, not apart from, your other marketing activities. And your website is not likely to be taken dark any time soon. While it’s not a good idea to habitually kick customers from social media platforms to your web site, your social media content and activities can be used to improve your search rankings.

Take the time to make sure your profiles and pages are as keyword rich as possible. There are plenty of text boxes for you to populate so do it thoroughly. Linkedin Profiles and Company pages plus Twitter and Facebook pages carry the most weight for SEO.

#9 Reduce costs — A company with a “social” business culture has genuine, transparent internal communications with employees actively engaged in wider social activities. With all eyes and ears open, everyone is more likely to approach his or her job as a stakeholder, seeking increased efficiency and improved products in ways that hit the bottom line. And the top line.

#10 Provide improved customer support — Social media provides a wonderful opportunity for “push” customer service. You can be where your customers are hanging out and enlist the help of their peers with advice and solutions. Brands that listen carefully — and this is not a new concept, folks — can use social media to make changes in their communications processes to reduce support incidences and increase customer satisfaction.

Thanks Mark and to all those who read that far. Will be happy to read your comments and answer any questions.

The 10 most repeated statements about Social Media I heard in the last 1 year

For those who were generous enough to follow my blog and read my posts, you will realize that most of my posts were inspired by people I meet. Well, the people are not exactly the source of the inspiration, it’s their statements. Just like anything new or in trend, it will become the talk of town until another trend hits. Before this happens, I thought of sharing with you the most repeated statements/descriptions I heard about Social Media in the last 1 year. To make the read more interesting, I segregated the statements to suit individual groups orbiting around social media in the Middle East.

1-PR Managers/Directors:  “ We want to get you on social media, let’s do your facebook and twitter”

2-CEO’s, Consultants: “I don’t have time to blog, but we need to be active on social media”

3- a 50+ Chief Communication Officer “Don’t you think social media is a trend and it will soon die out?”

4-Web developers: “ I can get you on social media in 2 minutes, what would you like to name your facebook account?”

5-Media planners: “Digital media is the new thing and you should definitely be there, but you need content developers”

6-Advertising professionals: “We do social media, but we need content developers, web experts and community managers”

7- Fresh bloggers: “I blog but no one comments on my posts!”

8-‘Traditional’ bosses: “I was careful and shut down all social media sites, don’t want my employees to waste time”

9- Online addicts; “if you’re not on social media, you’re not living”

10- Me: “ Social media is all about a wider and richer access to brand/life experiences, if you want to enter it, you need to have had an experience”

The Ostrichs of Social Media

Having shisha and discussing communication with friends brings out lots of opinions and perspectives on hot and cold topics in the field. A friend of mine who is a brand guardian for a leading UAE bank when asked about why his client hasn't entered the Social Media carnival yet, he replied that his client is avoiding the mess that social media will bring out. In other words, hiding behind his finger/s. What every brand, company, organization and social figure should clearly know is this:

IF YOU HAVEN’T PERSONALLY SIGNED INTO SOCIAL MEDIA YET, IT DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU’RE NOT MENTIONED AND DISCUSSED AND ATTACKED AND LOVED AND HATED THERE.

In different words, if a chemistry professor at a reputable world university chooses not to blog, tweet, Linked IN, Youtube, wiki and facebook, then any of his students who will utilize Social Media to communicate what he’s teaches  , will become the point of reference and gain authority on SM that the professor will not be able to achieve.

To learn whois talking about you this minute,  just go to google, select realtime tool and insert your search keyword. Take a look at how many social media users are talking about you on twitter and facebook (micro blogging), if you feel that doesn’t affect you, go to google, use the blog search tool and search your brand/subject. And by the way, this is called LISTENING.

So, a small advise to my mint flavored shisha friend, do your listening exercise and learn about your brand on SM, and get ready to engage the audience who was capable in toppling regimes so far.

Best