Everything you need to know about social media but were afraid to ask / UAE

Overview
UAE consumers embrace social networking and blogs, with strong support for locally focused sites like UAE Women Network and a growing desire for Arabic-language social media like Watwet. Start-up companies and UAE events are actively using social media for promotion, but most companies havent yet utilized social media to its potential in the UAE and MENA market.

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Contents
Chapter 1: About Total Communications & ECCO 4

Chapter 2: Country Research

Chapter 3: Different Social Media Types

Chapter 4: Case Study Examples

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Chapter 5: Online Social Media Tools, Tricks and Listening to the Online Conversation

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Chapter 6: Popular Blog Tools and Blog Posts

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Chapter 7: Other Useful Social Media Tools

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Chapter 1 About Total Communications & ECCO

About Total Communications and ECCO

Total Communications is the UAE affiliate of ECCO International Public Relations, a company owned and operated by 35 of the best independent, owner-managed public relations consultancies around the globe. Total Communications became a member of the ECCO network in 2002. Total Communications is an independent public relations consultancy based in Dubai, UAE, providing specialist support in a number of areas. Established in 1990 by Managing Director Tony Lewis, a former journalist, the agency provides a comprehensive range of PR services for major clients in the Middle East and Europe. As consumers in the UAE and the MENA region are becoming increasingly internet savvy, especially in terms of social media, we have engaged with various projects and events using social media or discussing the new media phenomenon as whole. With our client IIR Middle East, we helped organize and run the Signage, Image and Media (SIM) 2009 event in Abu Dhabi, which featured the Social Media Forum and had notable presenters including Andrew Bleeker, the new media director for Barack Obamas 2008 presidential campaign, the largest social media campaign in history. Martin Newland, Founder of The National and The Daily Mail; Joel Berger, Managing Director of MySpace / Fox Interactive Media for Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Northern Europe; and Husni Khuffash, Country Business Development Manager, Google UAE also addressed the event.

Total Communications +971 (0) 4 336 9909 www.totalcompr.ae

ECCO +44 (0)20 7592 3102 www.ecco-network.com

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Chapter 2 Country research

Country research
The latest research from SpotOn Public Relations (July 2009) focused specifically on Twitter usage in the UAE and MENA region.Relevant figures to focus on include: > The numbers of Twitter users in the MENA region is now increasing at a rate of 17% per month > MENA Twitter community overall has increased ten times over the first seven months of 2009 > 99 per cent of those surveyed tweet in English, 26 per cent tweet in Arabic > Only 50 per cent of Arabic speakers tweet in Arabic > 39 per cent tweet mainly with other Twitter users in the Middle East A study by OReilly Research (August 2009) focused on the numbers of active Facebook users around the world by country and region. For the UAE and MENA region, the most relevant figures were: > 8.3% of active Facebook users come from MENA region > Fastest growth in user adoption in the region is in the 55+ age group. > Male users outnumber Female users, with 59% of the user base being male, and 35% Female. (The difference consists in the users who declined to state their gender) Figures from Alexa, the internet information provider indicate that social media and blogging sites are increasingly dominating UAE web searches and visits. Below are social media sites and their rankings in terms of UAE web traffic: #004 Facebook #010 Blogger #012 UAE Women Network #016 Friendster #024 WordPress #037 Twitter #038 Dubizzle #047 LinkedIn #050 Souq.com #054 Blogspot #086 hi5 #100 Myspace Some other key UAE usage figures include: > 840,000 Number of Facebook users in the UAE (Source: OReilly Research, August 2009) > 5,778 Number of unique users of Twitter in the UAE, which represents 40% of total MENA users (Source: SpotOn PR, July 2009) > 48 per cent The percentage of internet hits for social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, in the MENA region (Source: Euromonitor International)

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> Less than 38 per cent The percentage of companies in the UAE using social media to promote their services, products, or brands (Source: SpotOn PR, July 2009)

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Chapter 3 Different social media types

Different social media types

UAE and MENA users gravitate towards globally popular blogging and social media sites like Facebook, Blogger and WordPress. However, regional start-ups are also popular and command large numbers of daily visitors and active members. UAE Women Network is an Arabic online community and forum for UAE women. From the sites mission statement, available in English, the site promotes balance for the UAE women between her various roles, increasing mental, familial and social stability. Its an open forum for women of the UAE to connect and discuss issues, while adhering to social and religious values commonly held by the public. Its an extremely popular site in the UAE, ranking #12 in traffic. While it doesnt crack the top 100 in other MENA countries, nearly 11 per cent of their users are from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and users from Oman, Egypt, and Kuwait are also well represented on the forum. Dubizzle, which was originally launched in 2005 primarily as Dubais first online community with an extensive classified section, grew exponentially with 4,000 unique daily visitors with active discussion forums between members and reviews and blogs about Dubais entertainment, dining, and shopping offerings. In 2009, it expanded and also launched an Abu Dhabi version of the popular portal. Its the 38th most popular website in the UAE. WatWet is the Arabic-language answer to Twitter, and has about 25,000 users in the region, though most are from Jordan where WatWet was launched. Its social-networking and micro-blogging in Arabic, and is gaining a heavy following with its SMS-update service that allows users to update their pages through SMS.

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Chapter 4 Case study examples

Case study examples

Wild Peeta Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace Having no real advertising or marketing budget would seem to most a massive disadvantage when starting a restaurant in Dubai. Wild Peeta, however, who opened their Emirate shawarma-based restaurant in November 2009, believe they have an edge global brands cannot touch, as online relationships with customers and followers have brought with them a fan base of over 2,000 individuals. They had decided to make the company 70 per cent delivery-oriented. This meant heavy advertising would be required, and without the budget for that, they resorted to Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. At the end of 2008, they started a group on the social networking site Facebook, and earlier in 2009, branched into other networks MySpace and Twitter. The ripple effect of their online followers has been significant, with word of mouth escalating. We have directly reached over 2,000 people following Wild Peeta and each of those people has between 20 and 300 people following them, said Al Awadi. Over the past four weeks soft opening, the brothers have asked customers where they heard about the restaurant. Rather than online, visitors told them it was word of mouth. So where it started off with the trendsetters online now today it has evolved into the general public. The companys new approach has earned it a media spotlight in newspapers, TV and radio across the region. Beyond free advertising, the restaurant hopes to benefit from the personal touch, where larger corporations struggle to do well. Building relationships with their customers online is a time-consuming practice, but one which Al Awadi feels will build a lasting customer loyalty and strong brand. A likely future challenge for Wild Peeta will be maintaining such a personal touch online as the business grows. (Source: www.gulfnews.com/business/general/wild-peeta-brothers-tweet-their-way-ontogourmet-spotlight-1.523457) Dubizzle Dubizzle Dubizzle is The largest classified and community portal in the United Arab Emirates, offering Property listings, Job vacancies, Classifieds, Discussions and much more. Dubizzle was founded in August 2005 and has grown considerably over the past 4 years. Launched in 2005 as Dubais first community website, the portal integrates the citys diverse communities and presents its multi-cultural happenings and views through a user-friendly online resource. Dubizzle.coms main listings include classifieds, properties, events in town, service providers, reviews of professionals, restaurants and hotels, salons and spas, as well as community forums. Since its inception, Dubizzles classified listings have already crossed

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1,600 in 22 categories, including car and 4x4 combined listings of over 800. Its property listings have crossed over 2,000 in 15 categories. The user-friendly portal offers the widest range in buying, selling, rental choices, be it computers, cars, villas, apartments, books etc. It also lists the upcoming conferences, exhibitions, business seminars, charity and community events. Said J. C. Butler and Sim Whatley, co-founders and managing partners, We believe that every city needs an integrated community website which can provide comprehensive information on various topics at the click of a button. When we first came to Dubai, it struck us that Dubais lively community required a portal that would amply reflect its exuberant trade and multi-cultural happenings, which led us to the idea of creating Dubizzle.com. In 2007, Dubizzle launched a new initiative aimed at giving individuals within the community a voice. With the site already boasting an impressive 4,000 visitors per day, Dubizzle discuss became a unique forum which allows members to create profiles, raise new issues and participate in ongoing discussions. Expanding to Abu Dhabi in May of 2009, the company now looks to move throughout the region. (Source: www.ameinfo.com/116544.html)

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Chapter 5 Online social media tools, tricks and listening to the online conversation

Online social media tools, tricks and listening to the online conversation
/ General tools, for UAE and global use, which we recommend you look at are: > Google Alerts Can help you track what is being said and receive streaming or batched reports. Set a comprehensive alert to monitor across various media news, blogs, web, videos and groups > MonitorThis Enables you to scan up to 20 different search engines at any one time > Samepoint Tracks conversations across multiple sources > Social Mention (and Social Mention Alerts) Pulls content from across 80+ social media properties directly. You can also set up daily Social Mention Alerts to track what is being said about your brand on a daily basis > whostalkin.com Is similar to Social Mention and enables you to track over 60 of the Internets most popular social media platforms As well as monitoring what is being said about your brand, you should also track what is being said about key competitors and topics specific to your business. / Platform-specific Tools include: > BoardTracker Is a search engine, message-tracking and instant alerts tool for forums > Ego Surf Helps you keep track of where your blog is mentioned not only within Google but also within Yahoo, MSN, delicious and Technorati. It keeps a historical track of your ranking too so that you can track changes over a period of time > Friendfeed Search Is a conversation tracker for Friendfeed > Google Blog Search (and Google Blog Alerts) Googles index of blog posts, allows you to see who is blogging about your brand and what theyre saying. With Google Blog Alerts you can set up daily, weekly or as-ithappens alerts for any time someone mentions your brand online > Technorati Allows you to search the blogosphere. You should search for your brand on Technorati and subscribe to RSS alerts so that when someone blogs about you, you find out > Monitter Provides real-time monitoring of the Twittersphere

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> TweetScan (and Twitter Email Alerts) Enables you to see what is being said about your brand on Twitter. It includes the option to set up Twitter Email Alerts > Tweetbeep Is a kind of Google Alerts for Twitter that will show you who is tweeting about your brand and related topics. The key is to make your search as specific as you can, you can even narrow it down to a specific place, otherwise you may get more alerts than you bargained for > Twitrratr Allows you to see the tone of voice of what is being said about you and how much of it is positive, negative, neutral > Twitter Search Allows you to see what people are saying about your brand or on a particular topic / Other tools you may find useful are: > HowSociable? Allows you to measure your brands visibility across social media > Del.icio.us Is a way of saving bookmarks and allows users to manage their bookmarks online and share them with friends. Searching for your brand, product or event in this way can be a real eye-opener it is a good way to see how and in what relation others are talking about you.

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Chapter 6 Popular blog tools and blog posts

Popular blog tools and blog posts

The most popular blog tool in the UAE, according to figures from Alexa, is Blogger, followed by Wordpress, Twitter, and Blogspot. All rank in the top 100 sites for web traffic from UAE users: #010 Blogger #024 WordPress #037 Twitter #054 Blogspot Bloggers from Saudi Arabia are perhaps some of the most prolific bloggers in the GCC, but the UAE also has a high number of regular bloggers.

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Chapter 7 Other useful social media tools

Other useful social media tools

The UAE does not have specific Social Media Tools yet, however below is a list of the most popular Social Media websites and blogs in the UAE. > Freedzilla Feedzilla is a news aggregator which categorizes news stories by topic. Feedzilla manually aggregates news summaries found in RSS feeds, and redistributes them in either RSS format or as a news widget. www.feedzilla.com/widgets/rss-news-world-news-uae.asp > Newsvine Newsvine JSS feeds provide a dead simple way to display items from the Newsvine column somewhere else or if to grab general purpose news headlines for placement on another site. > StumbleUpon StumbleUpon uses / ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When users stumble, they will only see pages that friends and like-minded stumblers have recommended. This helps users discover great content, which is more challenging to find using a search engine. > Digg Once something is submitted, other people see it and Digg what they like best. If the receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of our visitors to see. > Reddit

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