A newly born social brand: iTechia!

  Finally, a brand that reacted well and joined the social web, a brand that has shown enormous understanding for the new rules of the web and transformed successfully: iTechia! iTechia is tech store in Saudi Arabia, has branches across main cities, known for being the first to bring the latest tech items to the Saudi market, especially Apple products. Itechia had a great... Read More

You don’t have consumer protection laws? It’s OK, Social Media Will do!

social-media power   In a country that doesn’t have consumer protection laws, Saudi’s are not complaining, they have found their way with the help of new media. We have heard many stories of violating the Saudi customer rights. Today the story involves a big name. AL Shaya is a Giant retailer, actually the biggest in the GCC. Owning the franchise of more than 55... Read More

Carrefour Saudi and the Social Conspiracy Theory!

    Another failure, another brand, this time on a new level, which is good because it proves that having mere presence on social networks is not enough! It indicates again that some brands still have shallow understanding of social media. Carrefour Saudi is known to be one of the preferred hypermarkets there, it has a good market share, enjoys a reputation for high... Read More

What is Social Media friendship all about?

Social Media meant to change our life, bring more individuality to conversations and improve our interactions and communications with a genuine intention to care about one another… It seems the original purpose is somehow lost somewhere along the way. Most people pretend that they care about you and would help you, but they won’t even respond you when you need them; however... Read More

Customer Voice ignores the Brand Voice if…

Brands can no longer afford ignoring conversations on the web and in particular social channels. This seems a very straight forward matter, but surprisingly there are a handful number of businesses and organisations yet to realise the significant consequences of ignored conversations. Customers often find their way to be heard and in this age and day brands may not be able to catch... Read More

How to maintain reputation in Social Media

There are thousands, if not millions of contents on and off line testifying communication is a two way process; in which cover-up and manipulations do not have a place. However some brands and organisations still believe their target audience should see and hear what the brand would like them to see or hear. This may not be necessarily referred as communication as brands may have... Read More

Meet the Geek: Hosam Abu Alam

In my latest trip to Jordan, I have managed to sit down and meet with some very interesting people and experts in the Online and Digital industry in the MENA region. My first meeting was with Hosam Abu Alam, who has been working in online marketing for quite sometime now, he has experience managing and marketing web portals and e-commerce properties for international and regional... Read More

How did one Hashtag Bring AL #Mara3i Brand Down

  It really puzzles me how a big brand and market leader like Marai could fail miserably because of Social Media illiteracy. New media should help such brands to bond more with fans & strengthen its relationship with the consumer and the market and not vice versa. Is it that Arab brands still didn’t understand the lesson? are they underestimating social media power?  are... Read More

G+ the only invite only Social Network Site

Google Plus (G+) is just a few weeks old Social Network Site (SNS) from Google and already exceeded 20 million users, despite the fact the new Social Media channel is still in Beta (invite only). It took Facebook good few years to reach 20 million users, so it is fair to say the new SNS is more dynamic. G+ however doesn’t currently compete head to head with Facebook but instead... Read More

The Digital Experiment: Youtube Success or “don’t pretend you don’t like free stuff”

Note: “Reem’s Digital Experiment” is a series on www.interactiveme.com where I put digital marketing formulas to the test. For this first series, I am going to attempt to create a “successful Youtube Channel by a blogger in the Middle East”. Many of my clients have asked how to do this effectively and while I often reference popular “success stories”, they aren’t... Read More

Reem’s Digital Experiment: Creating an awesome Youtube Channel

Note: This is the first entry in a series that I have decided to call “Reem’s Digital Experiment”. I am going to attempt to create a “successful Youtube Channel by a blogger in the Middle East”. Many of my clients have asked how to do this effectively and while I often reference “success stories”, they aren’t my own. So I’m going... Read More

Social Media is about back to basic

We’ve always had one form of technology in our life, from fishing in 3,000 years ago to satellite technology today. This is all about our power of creativity and willingness to develop the past inventions to make life easier. We’ve always looked for ways to change things, especially making our everyday communications smoother and more effective. Mobile phones, text... Read More

Tweet Arabia! How Arab Brands are using the 140-character space as a Marketing tool

Twitter is on the fast track of growth, reaching around 200 Million users globally, there are more than 1 billion tweets each week! That’s some massive exposure & a lot of eyeballs! Our region is part of Twitter explosive growth, with 1,382% growth rate last year! Twitter is almost parallel to Facebook usage!! with UAE leading the trend, Saudi Arabia and Egypt follows. MENA... Read More

InteractiveME OnSite with Kodak’s Social Media Manager

During the Marcus Evans Middle East Social Media Marketing Conference, we heard a fabulous presentation from one of the Middle East’s stronger social media campaigns. Kodak’s current social media strategy entails engaging in valuable conversations with clients and users. Not only do they listen to what social media platforms say to them, but Kodak actually engages and... Read More

Vodafone Egypt Nightmare: A Bitter lesson about hashtags!

  We still see companies paying a huge price for not understanding the massive role Social Media plays on a brand! The latest victim was Vodafone Egypt; they still didn’t recover from the last firestorm that had hit them late December on the unlimited internet campaign, to just get in another tornado caused by a recent video clip entitled “Power to you”. Vodafone’s “power... Read More

Report: Young Arab Citizens and Govenments on Social Networks

An interesting report published by Youngberry and ThinkMedia Labs highlights what would Arab youth love or hate about their governments presence on social media networks. The report was conducted by surveying 309 respondents who are all Arabic speakers residing in the MENA region between the ages of 12 – 29 all of whom claim to have an active Facebook account. Here are some... Read More

Twitter Usage in the MENA region

Following up on the last post about the Facebook statistics in the Arab world, here will display the findings from Dubai’s school of government results regarding Twitter usage in the Arab world published in their second release of their Arab Social Media Report. Here’s an overview of the major points: At the end of the first quarter of 2011, the number of tweets had... Read More

Latest Facebook Statistics in the #MENA (Q1 2011)

We have been talking a lot lately about the second release of the Arab Social Media Report developed by the Dubai School of Government and even though they had some information and numbers released on the site now the entire report is  available for download. Below we are going to highlight some of the main points and graphs revealed in the report from Facebook and we will follow... Read More

Royal Jordanian New Destination: Social Media Marketing!

  Royal Jordanian is the first airline in the Middle East to earn the term Social Brand! the RJ Brand understood the new age of Marketing and started a conversation with customers using the right social platforms, additionally, was pioneer to launch the first official aircraft tweet up in the region as part of their overall social media strategy. Looking up the social online... Read More

Reminder for the Government Social Media Conference Tomorrow

With all the talk about the second release of the Arab Social Media report prepared by the Dubai School of Government to be released soon, it is likely that we will get more information and numbers tomorrow. If you haven’t registered yet you can do so on the Government Social Media Conference registration page, but hurry because the event will be carried out tomorrow June... Read More