Has news journalism been sabotaged by Twitter?
Talking Twitter on the Business Breakfast is always a pleasure and this morning no less so than usual. The question was, “Has news journalism been sabotaged by Twitter?” and my answer was pretty much a resounding “Yes!” There are three major problems with Twitter and news journalism, I think. One is the challenge of real-time […]
Create more compelling content
Five questions to ask your content before you let it go into the wild The Internet these days is getting pretty busy. There are millions of us out there churning out words and adding them to the growing pile for dumpster diver Google to sift through and select whenever someone has a question. How can […]
Happy birthday @spotonpr
It’s five years ago tomorrow that Spot On PR joined Twitter! We haven’t bought a birthday cake or anything and we’re not asking for any presents either, but it does give us some pause for thought. A lot has happened in those five years. Barack Obama had just become a presidential nominee five years ago. […]
MENA Twitter lists
As our Twitter friends will know, Spot On is a big fan of Twitter and was one of the first brands to begin using the social media platform in the Middle East and North Africa. Over the years Twitter has helped us meet new people and brands from all over the world, find job candidates, […]
Intelligent use of social media
The chaps at Studio One wanted to explore how best to use social media, especially if you were starting out with a small business. What top five tips could we give an SME. Naturally, as so often happens with these things, we didn’t really stick to the top five tips and then ran out of […]
The buzz around Arab film
Those of us that are old enough to have known 1970s and 1980s television in the GCC, will remember, among other things, the broadcasting of old Arabic movies from the golden age of Egyptian cinema (or, indeed, turning the TV on to watch the English language movie of the week!). The video quality often left […]
Taking a bite out of the CITC
‘Biting the hand that feeds IT’ is UK-based The Register’s amusing theme line, a reference to the IT news website’s irreverent editorial style, which often has harsh criticism for IT company announcements, spokespeople and other IT news. This week, Saudi Arabia’s English language newspaper the Arab News seems to have decided to do some biting of its own, running a […]
Marketing after the click
In the old days, we used to place advertisements in trade magazines. These often carried ‘bingo cards’ for advertisers to circle numbers corresponding to advertisements. These ‘reader responses’ were collated by the publisher and the contacts of interested readers were sent to advertisers for them to follow up with a brochure and perhaps a follow […]
Ooredoo or just plain redo?
In the age of 24/7 online news and social media, what reaction should brands expect to receive from a major global announcement? Many marketers would expect the answer, and the preparation required to harness the benefit of such a reaction, to be second nature to most global brands. However, it seems that this is not […]
Has the Arab Spring turned into a torrent of cash?
Whilst debate continues, even now, on how pivotal the role social media was in the revolutions of the Arab Spring, there can be no doubt that Arab digital activism woke up businesses and governments across the world to the potential of new digital media. In the Middle East the change in attitudes towards digital media […]