A simple formula to keep in mind when drafting copy for digital channels. Remember to use this formula as you tell a story, be conversational, and make a connection by speaking your audience’s language.
A quick tutorial showing PAS formula in action
We thank everyone for their interest in our blog section. Our objective is to constantly provide value through content and online discussions.
Like what you read? subscribe for more
Below are some questions related to the social media marketing scene in Lebanon, we ask to Mr. Abdul Rahman Alieh founder and director at SocialWeTalk, one of Lebanon’s fastest growing social media agencies.
Q. What Are Some Challenges Facing Social Media Agencies in Lebanon?
A. Last time I checked, there were over 70 social media agencies in Lebanon. This competition keeps everyone on their toes. There’s no margin of error. In order to survive, startups need to play aggressively and punch above their weight to gain recognition. But I’ve come to believe that as long as you’re offering something different, completion doesn’t matter as much. Offer something that your competitors are not.
So instead of scouring your competitors’ websites and social media pages to figure out what they’re doing, pay attention to what they’re NOT saying or doing instead, or at least communicate what you have in a different way.
Q. What’s one way digital marketing agencies can stand out from the crowd?
A. A lot of traditional agencies don’t rely on data- they’re so focused on creative. In this day and time, this doesn’t work anymore. The future is here and it’s all about marrying data with creativity. This means that agencies will have to make sure their designers can dissect data in creative ways.
It’s the age of the customer. We have to look at what customers will be doing, and then translate that into brands and value propositions.
Q. How are clients’ expectations evolving?
A. It’s up to us as startups to disrupt the market, to nip at the heels of the big boys and drive change and innovation. Ad briefs are no more shared by email using carefully manicured Word documents; they’re now shared on the phone and on WhatsApp. This dynamism creates an opportunity for nimble startups.
Sometimes you just have to be unreasonable to exceed customers expectations. In the words of George Bernard Shaw, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
Q. How can startups define their culture?
A. One of the most important factors that define any startup’s culture is the synergy of its team- a group of individuals with similar capabilities and identical focus.
What I learned is that entrepreneurs should not hire people and persuade them to believe in their dream; Entrepreneurs need to hire people who share their dream. When this happens, they win, their clients win and the team wins- because happy, motivated people do great work.
Q. How can a small team win clients’ trust?
A. This takes time, effort and stress. To win customers’ trust and loyalty, we had to work aggressively to implement THE SYSTEM- as we like to call it- a customer-centric philosophy whose aim is to streamline requests from customers to designers and social media managers and back- all while maintaining the best possible service. Customers are the real force behind a startup’s success. Their word-of-mouth power and their presence on social media can give startups like ours an edge against all the traditional businesses.
Q. What is currently the main concern for your customers?
A. Some SMEs don’t have a clue, some don’t care, and those who do care are trying to manage their social media presence either in-house or via freelancers. While some freelancers may be experts, most of whom I encountered are either fresh grads or college drop-outs looking for a part-time job. Plus, many small businesses in Lebanon aren’t really fussed about social media marketing beyond using Facebook as a customer service tool. But are they familiar with Facebook’s latest features or the ever-evolving nature of its algorithm?
Traditionally Facebook’s algorithm prioritized “time spent” on posts above all other factors. Now, it prioritizes active interactions like commenting and sharing over likes and click-throughs -passive interactions. It also prioritizes video –especially live video, gives bonus points to brands focusing on community building through groups, and punishes posts with click-baits…
Q. What’s one challenge Lebanese startups –especially those involved in advertising– are facing every day?
A. If you ask anyone on the street about the economic situation in Lebanon, they tend to give the same answer- it’s dead. Local brands are now negotiating more aggressively. As a young startup, you find yourself in a constant pricing battle with freelancers and other agencies. The trick is to position yourself based on your key differentiation factor (in our case, customer intimacy)- this sounds easier that than done. After all, you can provide the best offering, the cheapest offering, or the most comprehensive offering, but you can’t provide all three.
Once you land a client, you should constantly demonstrate your value, otherwise, your client will think of jumping ship. Agencies should spend time investing in their relationships with customers. i.e. offer more proactive customer service, be available around the clock, engage and keep in touch, and keep it personal- the latter may be the most challenging endeavor.
We thank everyone for their interest in our blog section. Our objective is to constantly provide value through content and online discussions.
The answer might be in your Facebook page’s settings. Check this video for details. You’re welcome to read the subtitles or transcript below.
Steps:
(1) Go to Facebook ‘General’ settings
(2) You can see a setting called ‘Age Restrictions’
(3) Make ‘Age Restrictions’ is set to ‘Anyone (13+)’
Hope this resolves your problem 🙂
….
We thank everyone for their interest in our blog section. Our objective is to constantly provide value through content and online discussions.
….
You can check this video I created to build your marketing dashboard.
The marketing dashboard’s objective is to translate your marketing plan goals and targeted audiences into clear tactics and manageable marketing tools. It will focus your energy and resources on particular tasks throughout the year.
Free download>> bit.ly.SWT-Dashboard
We thank everyone for their interest in our blog section. Our objective is to constantly provide value through content and online discussions.
We thank everyone for their interest in our blog section. Our objective is to constantly provide value through content and online discussions.
I summed up the answer to this question in the below video. Please read the transcript in English below (or the subtitles) if you’re not an Arabic speaker.
1- First, we need to go to Facebook Events
2- Then go to Birthdays, as shown. Right-click, copy link address
3- Go to our Google Calendar. Click on the menu item, choose ‘From URL’
4- Paste the link, then press “Add calendar”
Now all our friends’ birthdays are on Google Calendar!
Ramadan is a rather exciting month of the year for Muslims; loaded with festivities, happy family times and a chance to spiritually retune. During Ramadan, the whole routine lives of Muslims changes. Their sleeping hours, feeding habits, and both work and school hours are affected by the distinctive rituals of this month. Evidently; as a result, their engagement with media entirely shifts to accommodate their new routine and reflects directly on the advertising and marketing scene.
Since social media usage in Lebanon and the Middle East often peaks during Ramadan, it should be considered a primary medium for advertising. Especially that millennials are increasingly shifting away from television and towards the Internet.
Did you know that around 39% of the Arab World’s population uses social media? Last year, Facebook had around 156 million users and Instagram recorded up to 7.1 million in the region. Additionally, tweets about Ramadan has previously reached up to 74.2 million. Those numbers have prompted Twitter to introduce special features for the holy month in order to ensure a distinctive experience for their users.
Undoubtedly, the festive season provides a great opportunity for marketers to reach out to their customers and tap into new markets. So we at SocialWeTalk have compiled 3 action items to consider when engaging your audience in Ramadan.
(1) Post Visual Content
As studies have shown, the fasting Muslims rely on social media in order to pass time. People love to share pictures of their Iftar meals, religious and spiritual content and of course to follow up and comment on their favorite series’ and shows during this month. So Ramadan is an opportunity for you to showcase your brand visually and attract more traffic to your social media accounts. However, remember to demonstrate how your brand embraces the principles of Ramadan by focusing on family and community, reflection and self-improvement. This leads to building authentic connections with your audiences.
(2) Watch Out for Active Times
Marketers need to be aware of the changes in user behavior during this month if they want to launch successful online campaigns. Interestingly, users are most active before Iftar, as they are trying to pass whatever time is left before they break their fast. They are also most active around 10 pm and around the times of their favorite shows and between midnight and the early morning hours as they are up for their daily Sohour routine.
(3) Launch Games, Competitions & Puzzles
Since this increase in usage is mostly motivated by fasting Muslims looking to pass time while waiting for Iftar, entertaining and engaging content such as games, competitions, and puzzles is ideal. Those interactive features are attractive for they keep the users occupied and amused. In addition, the promise of winning prizes is a very popular notion in Ramadan. Ramadan is known for being the month of generosity. All television networks opt for featuring game shows that are heavily oriented towards awarding a major prize in order to display this generosity. The same principle also works in social media. When the user is promised a prize, they are more motivated to engage.
Most importantly, you need to always prepare an innovative social media strategy ahead of time to accommodate the behavioral shift in social media usage among customers during this month. This will guarantee the ultimate marketing and advertising opportunity for your product. However, remember to account for cultural and religious sensitivities, and always position the Muslim consumer at the forefront of your brand’s planning.
Do reach out to us to learn how to maximize performance on Facebook and Instagram, during Ramadan and all year round!
Ramadan Mubarak for all!
Human Being invented Social Media. In return, social media rehashed the World.
Social Platforms are nowadays, the largest yet loudest platform that connects you to the whole World. The propensity to share opinions and state of mind in real-time has transformed the way we do life and it is also transforming the way we do business.
And speaking of business, have you noticed the huge number of pictures and slogans of political candidates for parliamentary elections scattered on your social newsfeeds?
Yes. Elections are business. Thus, candidates rely heavily on social media and online campaigns to increase their recognition in today’s crowded market, also to improve their adherents’ loyalty.
Although public network shall be utilized to improve campaign engagement and reinvigorate Lebanese democracy, yet ours have an obviously different purpose.
A candidate’s image and online popularity are largely significant down the line. Thus, many of those who are (or not) in power, are striving to maintain yet darn their notion in this hustle and bustle through allocating tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, absolutely, online.
Specifically, platforms like Facebook and Twitter authorize candidates to directly get across voters, even to mobilize supporters and influence the public agenda.
Nevertheless, the good (and bad) thing about social networks is that affairs could alter at the last minute and we might be facing a lot of surprises during the elections.
Yet, and apart of all those motives and “must dos”, what I’d like to query at this point is the following: are tomorrow’s victors dependent upon the excellence of their IT cells?
The answer is at your polling station!
كان لنا شرف العمل مع شركة نهاز للاستثمار على تطوير محتوى موقعهم الإلكتروني باللغة العربية. أتقدم بالشكر الجزيل لطاقم فريق الشركة على احترافيتهم ومحبتهم طيلة فترة العمل .وأثني على جهود فريق عملنا في “سوشال وي توك”. جعل الله افتتاح موقعهم الإلكتروني بادرة خير وكلل جهودهم بالتوفيق والسداد
nahaz.sa/ar : الرابط
Twitter is low cost and viral in nature, which makes it a favorite tool for everyone. Yet, may people wonder what they don’t get as much engagement on Twitter as they do on other social platforms.
Below, I share with you 10 actionable tips you can take to improve your brand’s presence on Twitter.
1. Share original content. Given the nature of Twitter, people want fresh information. Be unique! Share breaking news or original content and you will increase your chances of being followed on Twitter.
2. Ask for a retweet. Asking for a retweet generates 3-4 times the amount of engagement. Just add ““please retweet” at the start or end of tweet.
3. Include a Picture, Always! Tweets with images generate 150% more retweets than text-only tweets. Upload it natively (directly on to Twitter). This will ensure it’ll be visible on the timeline. Don’t use a third party image host.
4. Thank others for retweeting you. Let them know that you are appreciative. This will help you build a relationship with them.
5. Retweet Others. Building relationships on Twitter is very important, especially with influencers. Retweeting their tweets will help you build good rapport with them and increase your chances of retweets.
6. Be part of the trend. Check out what’s trending and participate in the conversation. Add your 2 cents! But make sure you leave unique content and don’t be afraid to show your personality. Hilarious comments/ memes have potential to go viral!
7. Use hashtags. If you’re not sure what hashtags to use, why not check out a tool like Ritetag. It’ll help you reveal stats for each hashtag!
8. Schedule your tweets using tools like Hootsuite. If you don’t have time to tweet, or if your customers are in a different timezone, then it’s better to schedule your posts. Just make sure to follow a certain content strategy (tone of voice, hashtags, images, using questions…). We at SocialWeTalk, use Later and Hootsuite to help our clients post engaging content around the clock.
9. Be active offline. If you own a store, or if you engage with people in conversations all day, have them know you’re on Twitter. Add your Twitter handle to email signatures, business cards, A5 plastic stands on your store’s counter, flyers, etc…
10. Use the power of testimonials. If you stumbled upon a useful blog post on Twitter, or tried out a new service/ product, you may want to leave a positive review. This will not only help you position yourself as a reader/follower to best practices in your niche, but will encourage people and brands to retweet your testimonial, thus increasing your exposure.
Of course there are more tips to increase engagement on other social media platforms as well. Let me know if you need more info and I am happy to help 🙂
This holiday season was perhaps the biggest showcase of the year for advertisers in Lebanon and the Middle East. During which, many brands hope to improve their social media marketing efforts in order to take advantage of the many opportunities it contains and to avoid major marketing pitfalls. As ad space becomes scarce, more brands look to get a piece of the action, despite the fact that advertising costs skyrocket and chances of making an impression plummet.
With digital literacy going up in Lebanon and the rest of the region, social media has emerged as an increasingly popular source for entertainment, research and socializing, particularly during holidays when people have significant free time on their hands.
But how exactly would you achieve better quality ads and reach your target audience on social media at an affordable price?
This is usually the starting point of every marketing plan. Businesses claiming they know their target audience strictly from experience, often squander vast sums of money on advertising and end up being disappointed with their ROI.
I always find it useful to start by defining my client’s target consumer and then back it up by solid research. If you’re not familiar with defining a target consumer, you might find it useful to sketch up personas. Personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. They help you personalize a market segment you’re trying to attract.
With the help of research, CRM, sales team’s feedback, social media interactions and your very own experience, you might find it useful to create personas based on:
If you have several target audiences you may want to create several buyer personas, each representing a unique segment. You’ll then assign as many demographic and psychographic details as you deem fit. I still remember some of the personas a client of mine created; “Go Getters”, “Attention Seekers”, and “Hamra Dwellers”.
This exercise can be a lot of fun, especially if your graphic designer decided to impersonate them as funny cartoons or characters from a popular TV show. Check out the following example:
A hidden benefit is that you could explore new audiences you never thought of before. If your persona is a teenager, and you haven’t known what teenagers did since N’Sync were popular, you may hire an intern or host a focus group with teenagers from your family.
Bottom line: the clearer your avatar is, the easier it is to find them on social media.
You may find it more difficult when you tackle your persona’s psychographic angle because there’s so much information that’s relevant to how and why people make their purchasing decisions. You may want to start asking yourself:
Research tells us that consumers across the Arab world in Ramadan tend to watch more videos, do more searches, and spend more time on mobile.
As any experienced marketer will tell you, seasonality is very important. Allow me to demonstrate.
Running the same report for any other Gulf nation reveals huge spikes in search during Ramadan. Then after Ramadan, the term’s search volume drops back to a flat line, reflecting the beverage’s return to relative online obscurity.
Once you have a good sense of what your audience looks like and how it behaves online, you can use Facebook Ads Manager to estimate the size of your audience.
Additionally, Google Analytics can provide a world of insight into how visitors interact with your website: where they come from, how they got there and what services they’re interested in. Such insights can help you reduce the cost of social media ads. Inside Google Analytics, right under the Acquisition tab, you can see which networks your audience is engaging with you on. It’s a good idea to visit Facebook Insights to validate your findings.
Now, let’s sneak a peek at your competitors. Facebook is the epicenter of social networks, so it’s best to start there and see how active your competitors are. Head over to Facebook Insights, and click on ‘Add Pages’ under ‘Overview’. Select three to five competitors.
This step allows you to keep an eye on your competitors’ activity and will tell you how their audience is engaging with them on Facebook.
Follow your competitors on Instagram and Twitter too. Find out what hashtags they’re using and how often their posting images or tweeting. It’s always a good idea to write down any competitor you can think of on an Excel sheet before adding their Instagram usernames and Twitter handles in adjacent columns.
Another good idea is to create a competitors list on Twitter. Just don’t forget to make it private.
Facebook offers a lot of tools to help you reach your target audience. Have you tried the Audience Insights tool? Using Audience Insights, you can gather a lot of useful insights on your audience such as:
Another great way to expand your audience on Facebook is to target lookalike audiences. When you create a Lookalike Audience, you choose a source audience (a Custom Audience created with a data partner, your pixel data, your mobile app data or fans of your Page). Facebook then identifies the common qualities of the people in it (ex: demographic information or interests).
Now that you’ve identified your audience, how exactly do you grow and maintain customers on social media? The answer, in my opinion, lies in two major elements:
Let’s take Facebook. Facebook is closing in on the 2 billion milestone. The first quarter witnessed 80 million new users, contributing to a whopping 1.94 billion monthly active users and 1.28 billion daily active users.
But is YOUR audience on Facebook? If the answer is yes, remember the following guidelines that have worked for a lot of my clients:
Now that you’ve defined your audience and experimented with content and publishing, run your analytics. Facebook offers a great analytical tool under Ads Manager. You’ll be able to measure each ad’s performance against its audience. Unless you run analytics, you won’t be able to determine which social media strategy is doing well. If a campaign is performing less than expected, compare it to other ads, study its cost-per-result and try to find out what’s wrong. It may be the message, tone of voice, image or something else. Remember, it’s better to focus on two platforms that are performing well rather than be on every social media channel.
Finally, inject some personality into your brand. I am a big fan of Sandwich w noss’ Facebook presence. To those of you unfamiliar with the brand, they’re a local street food restaurant with great presence on Facebook and Instagram. With active discussions, humorous photos, and almost always engaging content, they never fail to disappoint their customers!
Decide on a personality for your brand, then work on a content that promotes that personality. Add engaging content to the mix and you’ll have an established brand following.
People in Lebanon are now online more than ever before. This trend only seems to escalate during the holy month. By properly defining your audience, and deciding on a great content strategy there’s is ample opportunity to reach and shape the perceptions of your target audiences