Social media
Losing the battle for control
A man goes into a shop to look for a new electronic product. He’s already been researching his new purchase online via the manufacturer’s website as well as news sites, product review sites, blogs and by asking his online and offline friends about which brand and products they know and recommend. Armed with this store […]
Life without Twitter?
Over the weekend, I was lost in the dark rainy Al Quoz area trying to get to a gallery where 8 short plays were being staged by Dubai Drama Group in celebration of its 25th anniversary. While driving in circles looking for a lit up sign that says The JamJar, my mind wandered to a […]
Social media measurement
Spot On’s Alexander McNabb is taking part in a panel session on PR measurement in social media at News Group’s PR Measurement Summit in Dubai today. So, as the region’s public relations practitioners meet to discuss the region’s demand for monitoring, research and measurement methodologies, it’s probably as good a time as any take a […]
Social media isn’t socialist media
The idea that social media is a new way of running marketing communications on the cheap is a beguiling one and, sadly, totally incorrect. It is also a piece of thinking that is increasingly common. In fact, using social media for marketing is time consuming, expensive and dangerous. The Internet is filled with examples of […]
Market monopolies
I have always been terribly fond of the image of a small urchin throwing a stone to knock the top-hat off the fat, pompous businessman. I’ve even run campaigns based around the concept in the past, where we’ve been working against an incumbent telco on behalf of the challenger. Taking the role of the urchin, […]
Social media takes time
Social media takes time. Didn’t we mention that? You may have heard detractors say that evangelising social media is fine, but it can suck down huge amounts of valuable company time and get in the way of ‘real work’. And they’re not wrong. A recent survey of 1,460 office workers in the UK claimed that […]
N reasons social media campaigns fail
There are lots of great blog posts around these days on reasons for companies failing with social media programs. Usefully, these are often titled something like: “The N Reasons Companies Fail at Social Media”, where N is a number between 3 and ten (I’ve listed some nice ones at the end of this post). Well, […]
The uninvited guest at the party
As more and more Middle East brands register themselves on Twitter and plan to include the platform in their communications, it is worth remembering that marketing is still the uninvited guest at the party. Twitter wasn’t conceived as a marketing tool and so has not been developed for marketers, it’s been developed for, and by, […]
Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey
Scroll down the page for survey download links Summary 2009 has been a big year for Twitter with the micro-blogging platform’s rate of growth rocketing up to more than 20% per month and now showing annual growth of 1,460 percent (June 2008 to June 2009) according to Comscore. Although it’s still early days for Twitter […]
Jokes
When was the last time someone told you a joke? I mean told, not emailed or Tweeted, texted or linked. It struck me the other day – it’s been ages. And it struck me because someone did tell me a joke – prefacing the gag with “Hey, I got this on email the other day, […]
