Great interview about social media in the Khaleej Times last week...
As a platform to assist families moving to
the Gulf, ExpatWoman.com makes the most of social media to reach as wide
an audience as possible.
Gail Potter, editor of
ExpatWoman.com, ensures that the website has a consistent presence
across the social media spectrum. Despite the site being active in
different GCC locations - Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar – its
message remains the same in each place.
“We have a consistent voice across the website, the forum and all our
forms of social media, blogs, Twitter and Facebook, and we ensure that
the same brand message is being delivered. We have simply merged the new
forms of social media into our already existing and highly successful
web platform.”
ExpatWoman.com has had an interactive forum on its website for the
last 10 years and has since expanded into other social media platforms.
“Forums were actually one of the earliest forms of social media to exist
and we have the number one forum in the UAE today.
“We resisted using Facebook and Twitter, originally, as we felt we
didn’t need more social avenues, given the popularity and nature of our
website. But we have a Twitter account and a Facebook page now that are
used as an additional means to reach readers who like to use these media
streams.”
Potter has been working in PR and marketing for the last eight years
with considerable experience in managing companies’ social media
accounts.
She knows the best way to engage with customers, and how to avoid
upsetting consumers. “Any campaign must be user-friendly, contain
information of interest and be unobtrusive.
Every effort needs to be taken to ensure that a campaign doesn’t
adversely affect a consumer’s experience of the brand. Potential
customers can be turned off by pushy and aggressive marketing tactics.
“The common mistakes are making a campaign too complicated. For
example, asking for a lot of effort from people, not letting them view
an offer before liking a page, making users to make shares of things-
basically anything that forces a user to do something they might not
necessarily want to.”
Read online>>
