Digital Marketing, Social Media, Web 2.0, Web Analytics, Web Design

The major misunderstanding about media and blogger will be resolved once you read this article carefully:

Brands Treating Bloggers as Media

Brands think that blogs are media too! Well, the time has come to slap you with the reality! Bloggers are not media people they are not authorized to publish content and they own no publishing license! They are free spirits and true personal voices using their own vision and perception to speak their minds about you!

Media agencies on the other hand, are established entities responsible for content publishing in a systematic and legalizes approach; content may be delivered via any medium such as the internet, television, print, and audio CDs… Publishing in definition is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information — the activity of making information available to the general public. Blogs however, is a form of publishing but is defined as a personal journal published on the World Wide Web. Blogs are usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often are themed on a single subject, the web self-empowered publishing tools such as “wordpress” has enabled individuals to get into publishing their journals. As a blogger you are not required to be a writer or a certified journalist, you are just someone with good writing skills writing in your own daily diary! (Definition by Wikipedia)

Now the first major misunderstanding is that brands think bloggers are Media! First and foremost if the media sends press release to blogger and the blogger published them this means end of “Blogging”! It’s no longer the personal voice reader is thriving to hear, it’s the media influence! This unfortunately leads to the dilution of “Blogging” as a concept! And not only that it also endangers media content to be misused, putting your content in the hands of an individual who may misuse it in any sense is your responsibility, the blogger in that case is not liable!

Bloggers are confused

Second misunderstanding is the blogger themselves acting as media, I personally do not blame them as they are young enthusiasts who got the attention of the brands and extremely thrilled about it! Brands themselves have confused blogger, brands must be responsible in directing bloggers and empowering them with tools and inspirations to blog naturally about them.

I personally am a blogger as you can see, and I appreciate everyone who voices out his thoughts and opinions in a blog format! However, the concept here is not being deployed properly. Brands must understand how to employ bloggers to their benefit, and differentiate between mediums as mentioned in my previous article.

Blogger Evaluation Criteria

The most important thing is that brands must know the criteria of evaluating a serious blogger who can be of benefit to their brands, there are too many of them and differentiating the influential bloggers is a task on its own. Remember that the number of “site hits” doesn’t say much about the blog performance, simply because in Web Analytics a“hit” is not a measurement value a “Hit” on your website is the retrieval of any file, like a page or graphic and other resources such as scripts like .js and .css files etc…from the web server (“Read my article about “hits definitions – HIT OF MISS”). The real measurement is to understand about the visitor page views; meaning the single impression made by a site visitor, which is something usually not announced by the blogger, also you need to look at the bounce back rate (the rate of site visitors dropouts).

Evaluation can be through looking at the quality of blog’s content, number of engagement, number followers, comments, and what type of comments is important, ask them for analysis of their blog visitors look further into the bounce back rate and page views, and most important google their names and see what is their reputation in the blogshpere. I would add to that interview the blogger getting closer to him/her before you decide to hand him/her your brand reputation.

Conclusion

Media must understand that bloggers are supportive channels to other major medias, there are smart ways to use them. Blogs influence the mass in the sense that its people talking to people, so communities can relate to their content in a much personal level than official media. Simple ways of using them is to call on them to speak about your brands in their own voice give them the freedom, don’t expect them to write about you leave it to them! All you need to do is to make them like you. Remember very well if the blogger starts writing about you only to show off then it’s no longer valid it’s fake and no one like that! This message is for bloggers too, if you are true to your blog then embrace the freedom of your opinion and be courageous!

The question I repeatedly get is “What will I tweet”, where will I get the content and how?!

In a study by San Antonio-based market-research firm Pear Analytics who analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from the US and in English) over a two-week period in August 2009 from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM (CST) and separated them into six categories:

• Pointless babble – 40%
• Conversational – 38%
• Pass-along value – 9%
• Self-promotion – 6%
• Spam – 4%
• News – 4%

(wikipedia.org)

From the above stats you can tell that “Twitter” is all about “conversation” even the small talk “Pointless Babble” can lead to amusing conversations which will end up in engaging experience with another Tweep; for Example if I Tweet “I just saw a flying UFO” someone else maybe intrigued to “Tweet along” … the Twitversation may take nowhere but it will for sure effect the participants one way or another! This is exactly what you need to experience on “Twitter”!

So this is what I want you to learn is how to watch conversation flowing and pick up on them, whether you are tweeting as a person or company,  you need to jump in and join the babble otherwise you are not only losing the fun but you are defeating the purpose of Twitter!

To answer the urging question, how do I come up with “Tweets” I would simply answer initiate and join conversations. Remember conversations are defined as exchange of thoughts, opinions, feelings; and information, an act that you brilliantly practice every day. Twitter is another platform to practice this natural human act.

Initiators of Tweets:

1. Asking questions
2. Sharing information
3. Encouraging Dialogue
4. Giving Opinions
5. Intriguing interests
6. Talk with everyone about everything

I found this tool (bettween.com) it allows monitoring conversation between other tweeps; which may help you find and monitor conversation

Keep those “Twitversation Going”….

Yoda and Batman have big ears and superman has the ability to listen through walls – Learn from them

Why haven’t we thought about it before? All super heroes we know have the super power of true listening and as a result have the ability to save the world! So since we do have ears by default and hearts then combine both together and there you go; you have the secret weapon of “TRUE LISTENING”!

At this age and time customers gain control over brands; they are able to turn you into  a frog or prince whenever they wish. By all means you have no choice but to stand in front of this magical power of social media channels use the power of dialogue!

Establishing dialogue plays a vital role in marketing your brand, managing and maintaining brand reputation and expanding your reach.

Steps to join the Dialogue:

1. L —- I —-S—-T—–E—-N
2. Genuinely indulge in the process of creating dialogue based content
3. Be yourself!  Be Human
4. Close all the loops
5. Give personal attention to user regardless if he is a customer or not
6. Make it part of your daily routine

I have spoken about listening in the beginning and this is where the dialogue process begins. Indulging in the process allows you to be focused and able to captivate the user through cultivated content leading to a genuine experience. Real indulgence will result in a lasting relationships with your customers, and attracting prospects. This indulgence process is exactly what the customer expects these days, they are no longer satisfied with a greeting from your floor staff, and a “thank you come again note” from your cashier staff, the customer is expecting long and lasting relationship with the brand allowing him/her to connect to you farther than the sales transaction.

Be yourself, it’s very easy to spot a fake and you know that! So why embarrass yourself! The days of polished marketing messages are over, it’s now the time to reveal the mask and speak from heart to heart!

Closing the loops comes easy when you are both true to yourself and giving personal attention to the dialogue in action, so never leave a comment not responded to, or a question not answered or a good mention of your brand not thanked and of course do not leave a negative feedback unattended too and fixed!

Social web must become part of your daily routine just as emails are! Remember if you chose to be on social web that’s it! No chance to leave or disappear! You got to keep going and growing. To manage the multi channels and monitor your channels use the available tools on the web and be proactive about it, I’ll mention few but there are more of course: HootSuite, Social Mention,  Scoutlabs. You got to spot the sentiment of the dialogue and jump in when you need to.

Remember that Social Web is an emotional ecosystem show the human side of your brand and enjoy the process. So it’s all about being human, genuine and showing true emotions.

Regional players of the luxury industry convened to discuss strategies and share views on the market at the Luxury Forum 2010, organized by Leoron Events (www.leoron.net). Stylendubai.com took on a significant role as a partner to the event and a speaker where the co-founder Dawser Al Hadidi was invited to speak about the importance of the online channel in brand marketing.

Guests to the event included key players from various facets of the luxury industry such as fashion, jewelry, hotels, travel, and automobiles, to name a few. The primary goal of the Luxury Forum was to provide a market-oriented platform for attendees to meet and discuss business ideas and practices specific to the Middle Eastern markets. Guests were able to meet, network, and build relationships with other players of the luxury market in the region. In addition, the Luxury Forum provided guests a unique opportunity to learn more about the online channel and reach luxury consumers in an innovative way.

Co-founder Dawser Al Hadidi brought to the program Case Study: “The Web: Creating the Right Dialogue to get the Consumer to Connect with Your Brand”. A subject which has been hammering on business’ heads for a while now; her presentation focused on how businesses can build dialogue via the online channel to engage consumers with their brands.

“The web has given businesses the chance to connect with their consumers at any time and place,” says Dawser. “It’s no longer about polished brand messages that go one way, it’s a two way dialogue with conversational stream that is more human than ever.”

Dawser’s presentation featured case studies of two renowned luxury fashion brands that used social media in their marketing strategies and received remarkable results. By reaching out and involving consumers in a more interactive manner, Coach was able to enhance sales and expand its market with its “Design Your Own Tote” program. Burberry also benefited in the same manner with its interactive “Art of the Trench” idea.

Using the successes of these luxury fashion giants, Dawser aptly demonstrated the need for businesses to consider integrating social media within their overall marketing strategy. “Luxury brands have been reluctant to use social media marketing for fear of losing control over their image,” she explains. “It’s time to gather their courage before it’s too late. Their existence on the social web is key to maintaining their image, and the fact that people are discussing their brand online with or without them being there is inevitable.”

Stylendubai.com serves as another successful example where brands have used the online channel to reach today’s luxury consumers. It is a unique platform allowing brands to reach their target audience in an exclusive and focused manner. In being the ultimate source for luxury fashion and regional designers; Stylendubai.com supports luxury brands in building the essential distinctive and prestigious platform associated with the luxury concept to directly connect with their consumers.

I added this photo cause I thought it’s really funny it is a myth that an Ostrich hides its’s head from fear of danger, the truth is it does  this sort of behavior beacuse it’s giving itself a free deep cleansing facial (Joking)

The new media on everybody’s mind and probably some agendas; some took it on and experimenting with it others are reluctant to dive in!

During the time I have experimented myself and then studied the subject I extracted some of the most common myths about Social Media which have been circulating around it:

Social Media is for kids and geeks only

Well that is true; if you want to spend time gaming and chatting with friends! but for marketers it’s no game at all, social media is powerful tool to present brand personality at times where consumer gains control over the sales process and has total freedom to post his opinion whatever it was!

So the truth is social media is a legitimate marketing platform just as TV, Print, Web, Outdoor is!

Social Media jeopardize business reputation

Well if you accept to be an ostrich with its’ head in the sand at first sense of danger! Well the danger you are hiding from is inevitable it exists whether you like it or not. Choosing to hide from it is the real ‘Danger’. Consumers are already discussing your brand so you technically are on social media without you knowing. Your passive existence will put your business reputation in danger.

Social Media no time to play

An excuse I hear often is we don’t have time for Facebook and Twitter, we are too busy working on real marketing strategies! Well not good excuse! And you won’t get away with it for long! Social Media is a real marketing platform which must be integrated with your overall marketing strategy with time and staff assigned to it.

Social Media is for free

This is not entirely true, social media is certainly not for free; it is in the cost effective and cost saving category. The real truth is you need specialized people to run it for you and this will cost you, you do have the option to train your existing staff but you need specialized people to train them. Eventually you must deploy the right measurement solution to maximize and optimize your social media presence and give you an overall picture of your performance including ROI that will cost you.

So Social Media is no scary monster, no play, not a free ride, join in with no excuses!

As  I was expecting Google to be intrigued by all the data posted on “Twitter”, it was not difficult for them to think of searching Tweets archive or even live Tweets search!

Google is introducing a new feature named “Google Replay” a search facility to allow users to go back and search for tweets. It will take you back to March 2006 to the beginning of Twittersphere! The engine will archive tweets and make them available for search after 6 months of their published time. The feature also provides a diagram allowing search for Tweets by hour, really cool, check the demo

This comes just in time with launching Twitter Search, a full-fledge real-time Tweet search allowing users to search by language, and a more advanced search with very smart filtering! You can even search Tweets by Attitudes, VS !

Tweetup is another engine allowing paid for search created by the old time bid-based marketplace  inventor Bill Gross. The service allows advertiser to pay per impression and calculates rankings based on an algorithm that uses data from which measure tweets influence.

“TweetUp is to Twitter what Google is to the Web,” Said (Steve Case, the former chairman of AOL Time Warner. )

Happy tweeting….

The Association of Image Consultants International (AICI) recently hosted its second Dubai Chapter conference, at which Stylendubai co-founder Dawser Al Hadidi was the event’s key speaker.

Presented at the prestigious Address Marina Hotel and Resorts, the conference was coordinated by Rana Saab, who serves as the official AICI Ambassador for the Middle East. Guests included AICI members, Image Consultants, and non -members of small business entrepreneurs and professionals attending the event to glean new ideas on social media from Al Hadidi’s lecture.

“Social media has become an integral part of any business’ marketing strategy,” Al Hadidi asserts. “My objective at this event was to help marketing professionals embrace social media and make it second nature in their marketing approach.”

Read Full Article

By Dawser Al Hadidi

For all those with “Twitter” accounts! Twitter is a responsibility! Once you gain your first follower, you are accountable to entertain his ears with your Tweets.

If you are big, small, medium business, or a celebrity figure! You have got to use it! Your first and utmost goal is to increase your followers and not just any followers, remember I spoke in my article “Road Less Travelled” about technologies’ blessing which allows us to target ads and messages to the right people! Twitter is no different, you really want to gain the right followers, and make sure they are increasing, in Twitter’s case both Quantity and Quality are equally vital to the success of your Twitter life! You also need to make sure that the gap between your followers and following is not that far, 100 to 200 maximum. If it is more than that it suggests you are not interested to listen or interact with other Tweeps, and this certainly defeats the purpose of Twitter being an interactive and collaborative social media platform.  In this case I say please “lose it”! On a technical level it will get you into trouble in future keep reading to understand why…

Twitter best practices to increase followers are not yet that defined, however, you must work hard to grow your followers, and I believe organically is the best way. I grew my follower organically and now I feel safer and more confident that they listen to me and my influence numbers have massively spiked up from 0 to 39 according Klout. Yes! This is what you want. You want to influence people, get your message out there!

One very important piece of information you must know is that Twitter monitors accounts for aggressive following and follow churn (repeatedly following and un-following large numbers of other users). Usually some people do that to draw attention and gain followers so they start following people and then unfollow them a short while later. Twitter considers this a spam technique and will suspend the account that uses this practice that’s why I always believe that automated following services is not effective in that sense, as it may cause you to unintentionally commit the follow churn!

There is a limit on the number of people you follow enforced by Twitter; you are only allowed to follow 2000 people, however, you can increase but  this depends on the ratio between your following and follower, example you will not be able to follow 10,000 people if you have 100 followers,

Twitter has a very good reason for  imposing such rules; these limits improve site performance by ensuring that when Twitter send your message to all of your followers, is actually meant to reach those followers and it’s not just throwing message to large numbers, It’s basically a healthy way of disabling spam on their server.

You should not feel bound to follow who follows you, but make sure you respond to their “@messages” and interact with them when needed. Again I repeat that Twitter is not a passive media, it is no more broadcasting messages to the mass! Twitter is targeted and interactive.

Another good rule of Twitter do not “tweet too much or too little”! Meaning you are allowed 1000 Tweet a day limit set by Twitter, 250 Direct messages. Use them… They are yours.

A healthy Tweep will Tweet 5 – 10 Tweets morning, 10 – 20 afternoons, and 20+ at night, do not exceed your limit. And always leave at least 5 seconds gap between each Tweet, remember people are following many others and they need time to catch you Tweet thread.  You can read further about Twitter ethics in my previous article.

One last and not at all least do not disappear from Twitter, you are only allowed 24 hours of absence! Twitter is an engagement media engaging your followers is a must to maintain your Twitexitance.

By Dawser Al Hadidi

This is not about “cake” I put this picture to make drool!

I decided to write this article to teach new tweeps how to use Twitter. I will write a more advanced article after this one so keep visiting this blog.

For those of you who did not read my previous posts about Twitter, I will quickly summarize it:

Twitter is a micro blogging social media platform allowing 140 characters to speak your mind, thoughts, daily events, market your brand, skills, support you customers, anything you want to say read more about how to best use this medium in my Twitterethics article.

Signing up for an account:

Visit www.twitter.com press on the green button “sign up” as shown in screen 1

Once you are on the sign up page you need to enter all fields to be able to create an account, make sure you select a light and short user name, remember you have only 140 characters to use for your tweet messages and your username is counted within those characters. So making it short will allow you to tweet easier.

Note: don’t let the CAPTCHA scare you, enter the scrabled letters as you see them if you cannot see them clearly you press reload it will give you another one until you are able to see it and type it correctly.

Now that you signed up and you got your account, you can start tweeting, so get on www.twitter.com and enter your user name and password, just click on the “sign in” button on top right of the page, the sign in window will appear and enter your credentials, make sureyou always remember your password. If you happen to forget it, there is a “forgot password” service below the sign in button.

Tour around the home page:

When you land on the home page you will see your Twitter Home page, on this page you will see a display of other people Tweets (Tweet is a term for the message entered in the text field on top, under What are you doing?) once you start following them. I will speak about getting followers in just a bit. Now we focus on getting oriented with our twitter home page.

@username on the right bar, is your mentions, anyone who mentions you whether it’s a reply to something you tweeted, or a retweet (repeating what you say will elaborate on that later on this article). Remember all @replies and retweets are visible to the public.

The Direct Message you see just under the @username, is your private Twitter inbox, it is a feature which you can able or disable, allowing other Tweeps to send you message which you will be able to view only, this will not be visible to the public. I advise you to allow DM as it will open more opportunities for you on Twitter to connect with others.

Favorites is a button you use to distinguish the best tweets, if you really like some of the tweets    you can press on the star shape next to a tweet and it will be gathered in the favorites page

The search box you see under favorite is used to search for names of people celebrities or a subject of your interest.

Trending Topic, any topic comes with a “#” symbol means it has been a most talked about subject and Tweeps have given it the “#” sign, therefore, it will be categorized within the trendy topics.

RSS it means “Really Simple Syndication” meaning you can use this tool to access Twitter Feeds without actually logging into Twitter. If you are a blogger you might want to check out Twitterfeed. This tool automatically sends your blog update to Twitter.

Getting on with Tweeting:

Tweeting is like speaking, it’s up to you what you want to say! however, I must let you know that if your tweets are not interesting enough people will not follow you. So share thoughts, ideas, knowledge, books you read, anything that will add value and raise interest, you can also speak about your day you experience, the point is to share and interact. Twitter is a social gathering place, I personally find it a great source of information, and many use it in marketing their product and services, so it can be used in the professional world.

Followers & Following:

The essence of existing on Twitter is to follow people and be followed, the term follow means follow their thread of tweets, and the same goes for you as a follower, you choose the tweeps you like to follow.

The follow menu is very easy, once you click on any name you will find a small arrow once you click on it you will find a menu as shown in the image:

@ Mention Username: is what is used to reply to this user and the message will be shown on your page, his and your followers.

Direct Message: the same as we explained earlier, this feature is to send a private message to a specific user

Unfollow: is used to stop following a particular use.

Block: is used to block a person from following you, it is possible to unblock a person. cleaning twitter for those who misuses this platform. So if anyone who you suspect as a spammer. you can report the account to Twitter.

This screen shows your own followers in brief, you can click view all, which gives you the full list of who is following you

Twitter Commands:

I will share only one very necessary commands for now.

RT @username: a command used to repeat the tweets you like, make sure you type it in the top text field box as mentioned here” RTSPACE@USERNAME” and then copy the tweet you liked and hit update.

Keep watching my blog I will write another article about more advance Twitter commands and get into the settings of an account, how to customize your background and picture and more…

I recommend you go through the Twitter blog to read more Twitter stories.