Confessions of a social media expert: Arto Joensuu
This article is sponsored by the marcusevans Middle East Social Media Marketing conference that will take place on the 29th & 30th of May in Dubai. We will be writing more articles in this format leading up to the conference where we will ask the expert speakers of the conference different questions related to social media and in the MENA region. Our second expert is Arto Joensuu. Arto Joensuu is the Head of Digital Marketing, Middle East and... Read More
Middle Eastern countries growth on Facebook last month
A new article released on Inside Facebook today gives an interesting look about the traffic on Facebook from the Middle Eastern countries. And although there were upto 7 countries which have gained 100,000 users in the past month there is a bit of surprising and unexpected loss of users in a couple of the major countries of the region. Below is the chart prepared by Inside Facebook, as you can see Egypt is leading the pack with 500K users as previously... Read More
Confessions of a social expert with Racha Mourtada
This article is sponsored by the marcusevans Middle East Social Media Marketing conference that will take place on the 29th & 30th of May in Dubai. We will be writing more articles in this format leading up to the conference where we will ask the expert speakers of the conference different questions related to social media and in the MENA region. Our first expert is Racha Mourtada. Racha Mourtada is a Research Associate with the Governance and... Read More
Hsoub new startup Focusing on the MENA
I recently found out about a startup called Hsoub founded by group of students studying in the United Kingdom. It is an internet-advertising solution that focuses on the Middle East and North Africa, aiming to connect advertisers with publishers from the MENA. Hsoub Ads works in similar way to Google Adsense and is very simple to use with a clean user interface, it is built to help businesses to enter the MENA market by advertising in high-quality... Read More
Facebook and the MENA region
I haven’t written about facebook for a while now so I think an article is overdue. There were some very interesting news about facebook and the MENA region last week mainly the biggest gaining countries on facebook for the month of April. According to Inside Facebook Egypt is the 7th biggest gainer on Facebook in April gaining about 0.5 M users which translates into a rise of 8.3% which comes as part of a 3-month growth rate of 38%. Which actually... Read More
5 free entries to attend the Government Social Media Conference
Yesterday the organizers of the Government Social Media Conference announced that they will providing 5 free entries to the conference by applying on the website here, all the request in return is for you to tell them why they should choose you. For those who aren’t aware about the prices for registering to the conference you can find that information here. There are two types of passes: One day pass for USD 999 Two Day pass to attend the... Read More
The Domino’s effect (Part 2): Social media use the MENA region can learn from
Earlier this week I wrote an article about Domino’s Pizza success with using social media to handle and manage a crisis that threatened to damage their brand. In this continuation we will see how they managed to turn around the brand and use customer’s negative feedback to their advantage leveraging the power of social media. After dealing with the video of the employees preparing the tainted sandwiches, Domino’s had to now bring... Read More
Mark your calendar for the Government Social Media Conference
On June 7-8 for the first time in the MENA a Government Social Media Conference will take place in Dubai, UAE at the Al Murooj Rotana Hotel. The conference is organized by The Business Council and after speaking with the conference manager Mr. Hijazi Natsheh he confirmed to us that this event will be the first of many with the possibility of it being occurring in different locations and not just in the UAE. When we asked Mr. Hijazi why Government... Read More
Q&A with Dakwak’s CEO & Co-Founder Zaid Amireh (Part 2)
This article is a continuation of yesterday’s discussion with Zaid Amireh, CEO and Co-Founder of Dakwak. Yesterday we discussed Dakwak’s background and how they came to be along with some technical details. Today we will be discussing how they secured funding to start such a venture and if they have any tips or information for anybody thinking of starting on their own. Business 1) Do you have or had any investors if yes can you please... Read More
Q&A with Dakwak’s CEO & Co-Founder Zaid Amireh (Part 1)
A while ago I read about a startup from Jordan called Dakwak, they provide an easy and fast way to translate and localize any website to a language your audience and visitors want. I thought it was a pretty cool idea so I got in touch with them and wanted to know more about them and see if they had any advice for people starting up new ventures in the region. Below is the discussion half of the discussion we had, the rest will be posted later on... Read More
The Domino’s effect (Part 1): Social media use the MENA region can learn from
We are all fascinated with social media even though recent reports and surveys from the MENA region have stated that most marketeers in the region are facing difficulties with it especially dealing with negative feedback from consumers and creating value for their brands from it. So I did some research about social media case studies that have occurred recently and one that kept popping up is how Domino’s Pizza dealt with a crisis that... Read More
Q&A with Taqwa.me CEO Kerim Nu’man
A while ago I tweeted asking if users liked our new redesign and if they had any comments or feedback, and Kerim Nu’man from taqwa.me replied giving a few suggestions (which we are currently working on), however after that we got in touch with him and wanted to know how taqwa.me is doing and what his plans are for the future. For those of you who are not familiar with Taqwa.me it is a search engine that lets the public decide for themselves... Read More
Inkezny wins first place at Startup Weekend Cairo
Startup Weekend Cairo (SWC) a 54-hour event that brings leaders and entrepreneurs together was held last week in Cairo at the American University of Cairo (AUC) in partnership with National Net Ventures (N2V) and The Business School at AUC. For all the people who were following the tweets on #SWcairo the event seemed to be a huge success with loads of entrepreneurs, mentors, speakers and judges that all contributed to a high octane event. The 3 day... Read More
Middle East Social Media Marketing Conference
A very interesting event that will hopefully provide better insights for all the marketers in the region on social media will be taking place later this month. This is something we’ve been talking about a lot lately since all the reports and surveys from the MENA region always produce the same answer “The need to understand social media better” and so on. you can visit the conference’s page for more information, but it is definitely... Read More
The rise of the social customer in the MENA region!!
Social media has changed the way customers interact with brands, forever! Customers have evolved with the growth of social media, one-way-messages through traditional media channels and the interruptive method is at its lowest point in history. Customers now are engaging with different social platforms every day that are constantly influencing their behaviors and decisions, people are not putting their trust neither conviction on the so glamorous... Read More
Dubizzle bigger than Twitter in the UAE!
I read a tweet today that was quite interesting, according to alexa Dubizzle ranks higher than Twitter in the UAE. Dubizzle which is a classifieds website that was launched from Dubai quickly gained popularity in the past years and has now expanded all over the MENA region. So if this could be done within 5-6 years, I think with the right marketing strategies they can obtain the same level of success across the region. Check it out: Read More
Blackberry Playbook Review
A couple of days ago we got our hands on the new Blackberry Playbook here in the UAE. The device looks sleek without any buttons on surface everything is controlled via hand gestures. It does however have a small on/off button above the screen on the edge along with a increase/decrease volume and pause play button. When I started to fiddle with it I was lost and very unimpressed I opened an application and couldn’t figure out how to go back... Read More
Demo Camp Dubai Review
Yesterday we attended DemoCampDubai for those of you who followed the tweets the event had its ups and downs, but that’s not what I’m going to write about in this article I will focus on giving a summary on all the demo’s and scoring them on the basis of their presentation, demo, idea originality and usefulness from 1 – 5 (1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest). Of course these will be my own interpretation and not official... Read More
Like Hummus and Shawerma? You’re probably a MAC user
Mashable posted an article today about the difference between MAC vs. PC users. The comparison was carried out by over 700,000 registered users at Hunch.com over the period of March 2009 and April 2011. The Diagram below displays the difference between the users but as I was reading two things really stood out: MAC Users prefer to eat Hummus and Shawerma’s Zeitoun was listed as one of their favorite books which is about a book about a Syrian... Read More
Are you a fan of new ideas? Then don’t miss Democamp Dubai
We previously mentioned here Democamp Dubai an event happening tomorrow between 5 p.m – 8p.m at The American University in Dubai, School of Engineering Bld. 3rd floor. According to the organizers there is a number of great submissions which should make the event very interesting, so for all the people in Dubai interested in finding out what the next venture coming out of the region will be should definitely attend. For the people from the MENA... Read More
