Web playing a key role in marketing - Social Media

Middle East Internet users are finding more ways to maximise their use of the World Wide Web aside from finding the information they need by using it also to market businesses, a survey revealed.

The research by global marketing communications firm UM , entitled “Wave 5 — The Socialisation of Brands”, showed that users in the region do not surf the Internet just for info and shopping, but to also promote market brands to consumers.

“For marketing communication specialists, it is crucial to understand consumers’ social usage, influence and motivation to help brands build equity, drive sales, increase loyalty and create brand endorsement,” UM MENA Regional Managing Director Paul Katrib said.

“Social media continues to change the way we interact with our peers and fundamentally impacts our thoughts, feelings, attitudes and behaviour.”

The MENA results were impressive, showing that 26 per cent of regular active Internet users have joined at least one brand community compared with 57 per cent who visited official company Websites. Of those people who joined a brand community, 76 per cent said they thought more positively of the brand as a result, 72 they are more likely to buy the brand, 73 per cent said they felt more loyal to the brand and 63 per cent said they recommended others to join.

The research revealed that users contribute material such as written pieces and media, and updates on their daily activities via social networking sites.

The study also showed that on the average, a user is in frequent contact with 38 people via social networks. It also showed that there has been a 60 per cent increase in the number of people creating new profiles on these Websites.

Over half of active Internet users in the region own a laptop and have access to a broadband connection, with around 90 per cent accessing the web from home and the rest through a mobile device.

The Wave 5 study also identified over 540,000 social media amplifiers — those users who have more than 345 friends and followers over social networking sites — in the Middle East and North Africa region. They also enjoy a higher level of activity, and their role as influencers who try to give opinions and recommendations are deemed important.

Most importantly, social networks enable active Internet users to create a network of digital friends who share the same interests or needs. They enable them to acquire a sense of belonging to a group or community.

This year’s findings were discussed by a panel composed of some of the region’s social media experts, including du Chief Strategy and Investments Officer Raghu Venkataraman, CloudAppers Master Chief Dr Baher Al Hakim, Socialise founder Akanksha Goel, AMEinfo.com Editor Edward Poultney and Innovations CEO Tom Roychoudhury.

alvin@khaleejtimes.com

Alvin R. Cabral 

Web playing a key role in marketing - Social Media

Middle East Internet users are finding more ways to maximise their use of the World Wide Web aside from finding the information they need by using it also to market businesses, a survey revealed.

The research by global marketing communications firm UM , entitled “Wave 5 — The Socialisation of Brands”, showed that users in the region do not surf the Internet just for info and shopping, but to also promote market brands to consumers.

“For marketing communication specialists, it is crucial to understand consumers’ social usage, influence and motivation to help brands build equity, drive sales, increase loyalty and create brand endorsement,” UM MENA Regional Managing Director Paul Katrib said.

“Social media continues to change the way we interact with our peers and fundamentally impacts our thoughts, feelings, attitudes and behaviour.”

The MENA results were impressive, showing that 26 per cent of regular active Internet users have joined at least one brand community compared with 57 per cent who visited official company Websites. Of those people who joined a brand community, 76 per cent said they thought more positively of the brand as a result, 72 they are more likely to buy the brand, 73 per cent said they felt more loyal to the brand and 63 per cent said they recommended others to join.

The research revealed that users contribute material such as written pieces and media, and updates on their daily activities via social networking sites.

The study also showed that on the average, a user is in frequent contact with 38 people via social networks. It also showed that there has been a 60 per cent increase in the number of people creating new profiles on these Websites.

Over half of active Internet users in the region own a laptop and have access to a broadband connection, with around 90 per cent accessing the web from home and the rest through a mobile device.

The Wave 5 study also identified over 540,000 social media amplifiers — those users who have more than 345 friends and followers over social networking sites — in the Middle East and North Africa region. They also enjoy a higher level of activity, and their role as influencers who try to give opinions and recommendations are deemed important.

Most importantly, social networks enable active Internet users to create a network of digital friends who share the same interests or needs. They enable them to acquire a sense of belonging to a group or community.

This year’s findings were discussed by a panel composed of some of the region’s social media experts, including du Chief Strategy and Investments Officer Raghu Venkataraman, CloudAppers Master Chief Dr Baher Al Hakim, Socialise founder Akanksha Goel, AMEinfo.com Editor Edward Poultney and Innovations CEO Tom Roychoudhury.

alvin@khaleejtimes.com

Alvin R. Cabral 

Social Media Monitoring: Why using search engines is not enough?

Most people think that they can conduct their Social Media monitoring using search engines only. I'm a big fan of Google but we have to wade through a massive number of irrelevant messages.

The use of search engines:
• Help find some information, but they do not pinpoint information, you will not be able to process the entire amount of information.
• Information humanly processed: Going through the websites and directories is labor intensive, error-prone, tedious and time-consuming.
• Inefficient methods: the time analysts spend to find, collect and aggregate data instead of analyzing data and gaining the competitive edge.
• Ranking technology will not let you retrieve first the more relevant documents.

Let's say that we spent hours (even days) to build a corpus of relevant messages around our subject of interest:

Corpus of relevant data.

Now that we have structured data we can use that information in order to produce different kind of deliverables, here are some examples:
• A newsletter per Business unit or division.
• A dashboard: a graphical scorecard which measures the evolution of the number of documents, compares persons or brands, evaluates the tonality of discussions, identifies the most critical message, blog post, tweet or discussion, then list the most active sources and determines the issues that are most often addressed and the companies most often quoted concerning a given issue and that for all types of sources and in all languages.
• Experts can use this system in order to write reports that can be published in a format and with a frequency adapted to recipient needs (weekly CGM summary, monthly reports, quarterly studies, strategic analyses or recommendations…).

Maybe you have a powerful tool for analytical processing of information but do you really know what your information need is? Did you take the time to qualify the information that you need to gather?
Prior to start using a Social Media Intelligence tool it is necessary to qualify your daily and strategic needs in terms of information in order to optimize your monitoring system in the best possible way.
These can range from knowing your brand health to engaging with your audience online and optimizing your image or defining new risks and protecting against them.

Social Media Monitoring: Why using search engines is not enough?

Most people think that they can conduct their Social Media monitoring using search engines only. I'm a big fan of Google but we have to wade through a massive number of irrelevant messages.

The use of search engines:
• Help find some information, but they do not pinpoint information, you will not be able to process the entire amount of information.
• Information humanly processed: Going through the websites and directories is labor intensive, error-prone, tedious and time-consuming.
• Inefficient methods: the time analysts spend to find, collect and aggregate data instead of analyzing data and gaining the competitive edge.
• Ranking technology will not let you retrieve first the more relevant documents.

Let's say that we spent hours (even days) to build a corpus of relevant messages around our subject of interest:

Corpus of relevant data.

Now that we have structured data we can use that information in order to produce different kind of deliverables, here are some examples:
• A newsletter per Business unit or division.
• A dashboard: a graphical scorecard which measures the evolution of the number of documents, compares persons or brands, evaluates the tonality of discussions, identifies the most critical message, blog post, tweet or discussion, then list the most active sources and determines the issues that are most often addressed and the companies most often quoted concerning a given issue and that for all types of sources and in all languages.
• Experts can use this system in order to write reports that can be published in a format and with a frequency adapted to recipient needs (weekly CGM summary, monthly reports, quarterly studies, strategic analyses or recommendations…).

Maybe you have a powerful tool for analytical processing of information but do you really know what your information need is? Did you take the time to qualify the information that you need to gather?
Prior to start using a Social Media Intelligence tool it is necessary to qualify your daily and strategic needs in terms of information in order to optimize your monitoring system in the best possible way.
These can range from knowing your brand health to engaging with your audience online and optimizing your image or defining new risks and protecting against them.