ExpatWoman In Khaleej Times

 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>>

New Expat Web Services Site

We've launched our new look Expat Web Services site this week- and it's looking great! You can check it out here www.expatwebservices.com

ExpatWoman.com April 2012 Infographic

 

Some great statistics for April from Google & Effective Measure

Dubai foreign trade reached record 1.1 Trillion Dirhams in 2011

Wow, what an amazing figure! Check out his story from WAM News Agency..

WAM Dubai, Apr 18th, 2012 (WAM)--Dubai's foreign trade climbed to a record 1.1 trillion dirhams ($299 billion) in 2011, up 22 percent from the previous year, according to the customs authority. Imports increased 21 percent to 442 billion dirhams, while exports rose 44 percent to 98 billion dirhams. Re-export trade climbed 18 percent to 161 billion dirhams, the authority said. H. H. Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai said the record surge in the volume of Dubai foreign trade " reflects the strength of our national economy and its consistency", adding that it is also result of prudent financial and economic policies adopted by the national financial institutions under directives by the wise leadership. He called on all competent authorities to double efforts and step up cooperation and coordination to sustain the momentum of the economic and trade boom. WAM/MN

ExpatWoman.com Infographic

We've had our infographic done for ExpatWoman.com and there are some amazing statistics... basically if you are looking to market to women in the UAE we are the number 1 site! Get in touch today on sales@expatwoman.com.

Facebook

We've applied a very organic approach to our ExpatWoman.com Facebook page. We have been running it for only 9 months and have nearly 4,000 followers... that number is peanuts when compared to our 250,000 unique visitors to the website per month though!

We see our site as a forerunner to what is now called "social media"... our forum has been running for about 8 years and has a new post every 20 seconds- it gets very busy in there! So for us, Facebook is something that we need to do to connect to our readers in that stream but our focus is and always will be the main website.

Here's some Facebook stats...

87% of our "Likes" are female unsurprisingly!

We actually get a great response to the posts that we put on Facebook and believe this is because we have let the membership grow on its own without pushing "liking" our page too heavily- so we actually have a fan page that is populated with genuine fans who really want to interact with us on Facebook and have not just clicked "like" to enter a competition or some other forced entry path.

We'll keep you updated on our Facebook journey and also take a closer look at our Twitter account too!

ExpatWoman At Murdoch University Social Media Forum

 Our Editor was on the panel for this debate... read what she had to say...

Firms must up the ante on digital marketing

Businesses in the region can leverage the untapped potential of social media and other communication platforms.  By Rania Moussly, Staff Reporter, Gulf News

Dubai The Middle East holds the lowest ratio of content uploaded on YouTube versus the ratio of content viewed among the major regions of the world. This means there is great opportunity for companies in the Arab world to create marketing content on a website that receives three billion visits a day.

The lack of YouTube content from the Arab world presents great marketing opportunities due to the fact that in 2011, it was the most visited social media site in the UAE alone.

Promoting Brands

"In 2010, Google was the most visited site in the UAE, then came Facebook, and then YouTube," Akansha Goel, executive director at Socialize, a UAE-based social media and training agency with clients such as Coca-Cola, Samsung and Mall of the Emirates, said. Goel spoke earlier this week at the Murdoch University Women's Lunchbox event where UAE digital marketing experts debated all things related to social media and brand marketing.

Coke is, in fact, the world's biggest brand on Facebook with 36 million fans. The company's fan page grows by one million fans every fortnight. "Social media can help any business unless it's a very niche B2B company," Goel said.

However, with over 450 social media platforms on the Internet, it is important for companies not to spread themselves too thin. "It's said that when a tool gets boring for the geeks and nerds, that's when it starts to get interesting for businesses," Goel said. "When your mum and cousin start using it, that's when companies should start taking the risk."

She added it is not worth the time or effort for businesses to take risk on investments in uncertain channels. "It's not worth investing all your digital marketing budget on Google+ at this point in time because although it's growing, not everyone is on it," Goel said.

The latest figures reveal there are over 800 million Facebook users worldwide, with 28 million in the Arab world. Twitter whisked past the 200 million user mark, while LinkedIn lags behind with 130 million users. These growing figures represent huge untapped marketing potential for businesses.

"In the Middle East, there are more people on Facebook than the number of newspapers circulated in the region," Goel said. "It's easy to increase a brand page's fans from zero to 1,000; but then the question is what do you do when they get there."

She added the real test of a good marketing manager is what they do with their fans as a poorly managed social media channel can cause serious damage to a brand's image. "Step one is getting the fans and step two is getting them to come to your store or buy your product," Goel said. "Essentially, social media channels are just a different platform of communication."

Gail Potter, content manager at Expat Web Services for the website www.expatwoman.com, added a lot of brands falter in digital marketing by being too pushy or not regularly updating their pages.

"It's about working across the board to keep a consistent voice for the brand, be it on social media, television or in the papers," Potter said. "Make sure the same engaging message is being delivered across all platforms."

Pitfalls to look out for

Other social media marketing pitfalls businesses need to look out for is what is actually written in the post. "It can't be repetitive, everyday it's got to be something fresh and exciting for people," she said. "Common mistakes I see are bad spelling, capital letters, broken links as well as company pages that aren't updated for months or a year."

Potter added it is important for businesses to make sure they have constant access to their social media pages. A change in management or agency, causing an access glitch, could seriously harm the brand.

"Ignoring complaints or deleting negative posts could always backfire, so it's important to take every single comment on your page positively," Potter said. "The negative comments are the most important because those are the ones that need to be addressed to change minds."