Social media
Looking forward to ArabNet 2012
This week, from the 27th-31st March, will see the fourth ArabNet and it’ll be the fourth time I go along for the conference. It’s not all about the conference, though – the event is being billed as a festival and it’s shaping up to be just that, with five days of events with a developer […]
Facebook down – thousands of brand pages inaccessible
Facebook may have been inaccessible for millions of Internet users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa for a couple of hours or so on Wednesday. Although the site itself appeared to be working, users across EMEA found that they couldn’t access the site at all. #Facebookdown became a global trending topic on Twitter in […]
We are all publishers
We are all many things. You can be an oil executive, commuter, father of three or violent crime victim to journalists, depending on whether they’re quoting you on oil prices, late trains, the joys of parenting or the nasty gash in your cheek. On Thursday, all four of the UAE’s English daily newspapers report on […]
Social media marketing in the UAE
How fast are UAE businesses adopting social media best practices? Dubai One TV’s Emirates 247 news programme interviewed Spot On’s Alexander McNabb about social media trends in the UAE and how social media is changing company communication. Watch the interview Dubai One TV Emirates 24/7 – 8pm February 14, 2012 (5.54 mins) Listen to a […]
Online advertising in the Middle East
Wednesday’s Dubai Eye radio’s #Unwired weekly digital programme featured a special segment on online advertising in the Middle East & North Africa featuring Spot On PR’s own Alexander McNabb; Professor John Grainger Pro-Vice Chancellor and Executive Vice President Academic Services of Murdoch University in Dubai; Kamal Dimachkie, Executive Regional Managing Director of Leo Burnett; Google […]
Five Smarter Tweeting Tips
Just in case they’re of any use, here are five smarter Tweeting tips triggered by things I’ve been noticing cropping up on Twitter recently. 1) Want retweets? Write for retweets! Just in case you’re asking, 117 characters is a ‘retweetable’ tweet – well, it is for me – you can retweet without having to edit […]
Alexander at MediaME Forum 2011
Spot On PR Director Alexander McNabb spoke at the MediaME Forum 2011 in Amman, Jordan earlier this week about digital public relations and reputation management. The annual event organised by Middle East advertising and marketing portal MediaME was attended by some 300-400 advertising, marketing, public relations and digital professionals from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and around […]
The Freedom Meme
A new report from the University of Washington’s Project on Information Technology and Political Islam comes to the conclusion that social media played a central role in the events we have all come to call ‘The Arab Spring’. Ever since the events of early 2011 started to unfold around the region, there has been debate […]
Night of the Twitter bots!
About 9pm Friday evening (Dubai time) my email inbox began filling up with ‘now following you’ email alerts from @spotonpr‘s Twitter account. My first thought was somebody must have name-checked us somewhere, perhaps a #FollowFriday thing, but a quick look at the Twitter handles showed that these were fake accounts (each account’s handle was first […]
Hiring PR people for the digital age
What skill sets should PR job candidates have in the digital age? Carrington Malin explains how Spot On PR’s list of recruitment criteria just got even longer.