The banking and telecommunication sectors in North Africa have not utilized the power of social media yet, according to Amine Jabali, Managing Partner, Peppers & Rogers Group.

Social networking is becoming more and more relevant in today’s world, especially in the North Africa region. As evidenced by the impact that Social Media has had in fueling the Arab Spring, the companies should embrace this new trend and place increasing focus on Social Media activities. In fact, they need to enter the ‘Social’ era with a structured approach and best practices in their Social Media adoption.

“Telecommunication companies reacted but they have not used the full potential of social media; they have responded only by providing the gadgets, but the telcos are yet to leverage the use of social networking to generate revenues,” Jabali argues. The telecom companies, even the banking sector can leverage through building advocacy or affinity. “As an example, the telecom and banking sectors can create clubs for high school or university students using the power of social media. You can talk to this group of people and know their interest/needs and can bring them forward to be more loyal to you in the early stages of their professional lifecycle,” Jabali suggests.

Jabali notes that customers nowadays are not only intelligent, but also becoming more and more demanding. “It’s not about ‘I’ll take what you give’ anymore. It’s about ‘provide what I need’. It is a challenge for the firm, but we see that companies are adapting to new challenges,” he asserts. “We see more and more customers purchasing smart phones not only because they have cash, but because they know the value of what they are paying for,” he adds.

Many companies have already reaped significant benefits from incorporating Social Media as part of their strategy, by being able to effectively and efficiently build new and reinforce ongoing relationships with existing and potential customers. Marketing can use Social Media to drive brand awareness, deliver relevant information and generate new leads; Customer Support can leverage social channels to respond to enquiries and complaints, as well as solicit customer feedback; whereas Sales can utilize Social Media to support customer acquisition strategies.

“Social Media can also be instrumental in managing and protecting corporate reputation,” Jabali notes. Unhappy customers can reach out to thousands of online users through Facebook, Tweets and other Social Media channels and the adverse effect to company’s reputation through such outbursts can be staggering if the appropriate remediating actions are not taken.

Companies need to have a comprehensive Social Media presence to provide the customers with an ‘always on’ channel that is able to meet their sales and service needs. “Pioneers in Social Media in North Africa will find that investing in this new channel will create not only brand awareness and social engagement with their targeted segments, but also to generate consistent uplift of revenue year after year,” concludes Jabali.

Image Courtesy of  Studentersamfunnet i Bergen

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iPakistan is a new social media initiative set up by a group of Pakistani university students to change the global perception of Pakistan. Reaching out to others via the web, their aim is to re-brand Pakistan and break the stereotypes that often result in discrimination and prejudice towards its people.

Type out ‘Pakistan’ in the Google Images search bar and scroll down the first few pages: one would find pictures of maps,  the Pakistani flag and images that spell out a country torn between poverty and war. Although this may be the harsh reality in some parts of Pakistan, it is not the only reality of this South Asian country, as some are prone to believe.  With the kind of news surfacing daily regarding the conflicts, bomb blasts and political issues of not only the country, but also its neighbors’ it’s not hard to see why most people have a negative outlook on Pakistan. Rehman Ilyas aims to change this by replacing the post 9/11 images of terrorism, extremism and war zone to that of extremely talented youths, scenic landscapes and rich culture.

As a Lahori studying at the University of Hong Kong, Ilyas found himself subject to questions about Pakistan ranging from relatively normal ones such as “Do you have any malls there?” to more ridiculous ones like “Is there Taliban in your family?” He was always aware of the injustice done by the world media news in regards to their portrayal of his country but he was unaware of the severity of it until he arrived in Hong Kong.

“People only got to see that 1% of Pakistan in which the War on Terror is going on, in the media, and take that to be representative of the entire Pakistan,” he said.

Instead of merely complaining, he took action and decided to play his part in correcting the wrongly propagated image of his country. He started with doing his own online research on the subject and pitching the idea to his friends, followed by doing pilot tests on Facebook and a trial website. A survey was even conducted to realistically depict what the world thinks of Pakistan. Tackling the issues from there, what initially started out as a personal contribution to his country has now expanded to a website and a Facebook page with contents from over 80 team members, a diversified group of youths spread over 10 countries all intent on introducing the real Pakistan to the world.

Ilyas also intends to reach out to the world for a greater purpose that could help Pakistan in a myriad of other ways. According to him, “The 2011 floods in Pakistan were worse than the Asian Tsunami and the Haiti Earthquake combined, and an area the size of England was inundated in water. Despite all this, the media coverage and global aid intervention received wasn’t even close as compared to these other recent natural calamities, simply because people around the world were not interested in helping out a country which in their minds, harbors terrorist groups and is a base camp for terrorist activities around the world.”

Setting the global views straight, even one person at a time, could slowly prove to be beneficial for 180 million Pakistanis. With Pakistani businessman and traders at exhibitions around the world facing difficulties when questioned about bringing in supplies reliably to and from a war zone, Ilyas’ project could have a positive effect on his country economically as well.

Along with changing the way others perceive his country, Ilyas would also like to see a few changes within the nation itself. Speaking for a majority of the population, he said, “Most Pakistanis crave for a change of leadership. We are done with having the same corrupt leaders elected again and again, and this needs to end now. Pakistan is blessed with both vast natural resources and human capital, and given the right leadership we have the potential to develop into a regional superpower.”

Another sub-project that Ilyas has been working on is ‘Romancing the Border’ and is aimed at another issue spread across the nation: the social gap between Indians and Pakistanis. With most youths having been raised with a mindset bearing hatred for the other side, the stereotypical views separate the youths despite the fact both sides may be similar to each other in a lot of aspects. Backed by Stanford University’s Peace Innovation Lab, this cross-border initiative provides an online platform for youth from both sides of the border to interact with each other and to encourage pro-social behaviors between Pakistanis and Indians.

Having received positive responses so far regarding iPakistan from both Pakistanis and foreigners, Ilyas hopes to reach out to the masses and in the foreseeable future, instead of us receiving war torn images of Pakistan as soon as we Google the word, iPakistan will appear on the top search results and bring about a positive first impression of the country.

Perhaps it is a sign of change in the world when youths stand up to defend their country, and not in the traditional means of violence or crude words, but by showing the rest of us what their nation is capable of, what makes it beautiful, and most importantly, what makes it their home and source of pride. With that, Ilyas leaves us with one last statement on his beloved homeland, “We are not a country supporting terrorism. In fact, we are the country which has sacrificed the most in the war against terrorism.”

Image credit: Shutterstock.com

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ABC’s hit sitcom will return for its third season on February 14, following an unprecedented, nationwide promotional campaign. Cougar Town, a half-hour comedy starring Courteney Cox (Friends, Scream), follows Jules Cobb (Cox) and her close circle of friends as they attempt to navigate their way through parenthood, marriage, dating and work.

The series has been off the air in the U.S. since last May after ABC opted against giving the show a spot on its fall schedule, offering only vague assertions that it would return at some point at ‘midseason‘. However, the series’ cast and crew have turned to social media in an effort to maintain public interest and to engage with their fan base in a face-to-face manner.

The main feature of their promotional campaign has been Cougar Town viewing parties, which have been in operation across the U.S. for several weeks now as cast and crew members travelled to various cities to interact with fans, offer special screenings of new episodes, take part in Q&A sessions, and to counteract any waning interest as a result of ABC’s delay in confirming a return date for the series, which had previously been airing alongside the network’s Emmy award-winning series Modern Family.

In a further effort to reignite the old and spark some new interest, series star Courteney Cox joined Twitter in January of this year and has since amassed over 90,000 followers. Cox has sent out over 1,000 tweets, the majority of which have sought to publicise the show and to offer Cougar Town fans exclusive behind-the-scenes footage.

As recently as Wednesday February 8, Cox was overseeing a competition to reward 50 fans with bottles of wine – in partnership with THECULTWINE.COM - provided that fans show proof of their age and make a pledge to watch Cougar Town on Tuesday February 14 at 8:30pm.

This is not the first time that cast-members involved with the series have reached out as a way of rewarding and strengthening their audience’s support. In an April 2011 episode, one character read out a telephone number which viewers could in turn call. If they got through, they could speak to actors, writers, and various others involved with the series.

These tactics have all been designed to keep Cougar Town on the public radar in spite of its middling ratings, with several fans going so far as to display billboards in support of the show during television coverage of this year’s Super Bowl, in the hopes of winning a walk-on role from the producers.

Show-runner Bill Lawrence recently expressed his frustration over the ‘flawed system‘ which monitors television ratings and which will ultimately determine the future of his series beyond this season, explaining that the primary hope of his self-funded campaigning is for:

a Nielsen family [to] … want to keep show alive. Ruining it for the masses or encouraging them to watch on their computer doesn’t matter until the system changes.

While there have been instances in the past of grass-roots campaigns being organised to combat network decisions – for example when Jericho fans persuaded CBS to reverse the series’ cancellation in 2007 – the involvement of the Cougar Town cast in this campaign has been particularly note-worthy, as has the fact the majority of their events have been planned entirely through the use of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

The true impact of Lawrence’s, Cox’s, the audience’s and others’ efforts to promote Cougar Town will be made apparent in the coming weeks when the series returns to ABC’s schedule and everyone involved attempts to lure, and hopefully increase, their 7.3 million weekly viewers from last season.

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On the Beach report that social media is a great way to research holidays this festive season; and not just flights, but hotels and car hire as well. More and more UK travellers are turning to sites like Facebook to find polls, discounts and reviews on their prospective destinations. 40 per cent of UK holiday makers use social media to help them research, a recent survey reports.

On the Beach say social media is useful for providing a range of information including reviews, flights prices and cheap hotels. The report, which was published by the World Travel Market, surveyed over 1000 British holiday makers who travelled locally or overseas in 2011. One third of the respondents using social media reported that they’d changed a hotel booking after looking at social media sources.

Alistair Daly, Marketing Director at On the Beach, commented that Facebook is a useful tool for customers to exchange information. “Our On the Beach Facebook Fan Page provides a forum for customers to quickly and easily give us feedback, suggest pages to friends and look up quotes. It’s a great forum in which to ask questions and get professional advice for booking a holiday.”

Daly continued: “Using Facebook, we’re able to keep in touch with our customers, directly addressing their issues and interests, and alerting them to the best budget deals and cheap flights to Turkey, Majorca and Portugal, to name a few.”

Founded in 1995, On the Beach is one of the UK’s leading online travel agencies carrying over 500,000 passengers every year. On the Beach provides value for money flights and hotels in the world’s most popular beach holiday destinations. They also provide consumers with a huge selection of travel products, from 50 million available seats, more than 30,000 hotels around the world, insurance and in-resort transfer partners.

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Many companies do not see complaints as an opportunity to get free consultation from customers that can solve problems and make their services better for free. It could be that they cannot accept the fact that one unsatisfied customer makes a much greater impact on the image of one brand than the ones who are satisfied and how important it is to have a serious focus in changing these problems.

Companies should be aware about word-of-mouth, but now there is the much more powerful channel: word-of-mouse. Social networks such as Twitter — with more than 100 million active users updating more than 50 million times per day – are the perfect environments to complain and companies should seize this opportunity to gain valuable information about their image.

The advantages of listening and give attention to the complaints are open a channel for a good relationship with customers and increase loyalty, improve the image of the company, use as an assessment regarding performance and quality, study of the market and to be open to what customers want, and to be fast in innovation.

One crucial factor on the complaint management is the time to decrease the amount of dissatisfaction of one customer and turn him as soon as possible to a marketing positive compound. Twitter can became a tool to the companies and help not just in discover what people are talking about as help about the time factor and accelerate the process of a solution.

Companies in Brazil are giving a good example because companies are taking around 5 minutes to 2 hours to answer customers who complains in twitter , much more faster than using the foundation to protect customer – the “faster” way which use to take at least one month.

The US in other hand is wasting their opportunity. Around 70% of companies are ignoring customer complaints on twitter  and consequently losing chances to put their companies and brands to the front of others’ minds in a positive way.

Here are a few tips for companies to use Twitter as an efficient way to develop a good complaint management system:

• Team: The Company must be a team prepared to deal with complaint and with enough power to reach a balance between  company/customer interests and have enough powder to create solutions. Make customers talk and in the end do not have the powder to solve make him talk with one person, after to another, after with the manager, and the director just increase the level of irritation;
• Open the eyes: search who is talking about your company and what they are saying;
• Open the “voice”: contact the person in order to understand the dissatisfaction and open the relationship. Be polite and show empathy. Be aware that there are much more people watching this “conversation”.
• Give possibilities for solutions and show interest. It is also important remember that customers sometimes can abuse and this is not acceptable, but if the company shows their face in environments such as Twitter, others will understand.
• Time: all of this must happen quickly, and it is also related to the quality of the personal responsible for this task.
• 140 characters: remember the power of these characters in both sides: customer to the Companies and Companies to the customers.

The market has changed a lot. Before it was a few companies and a lot of customers with high level of loyalty, nowadays the reality shows a lot of companies and customers with no loyalty that are full of power to impact the network. The complaint management system must reach dissatisfied customers wherever they are, and for sure, a lot of them in Twitter.

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Social Media continues to expand around the world and impact it, in its own way. In Guatemala, e-Marketing didn’t start picking up until about 3 to 4 years ago and it wasn’t only until about a year and a half to two years ago that agencies started to develop social media strategies.

After seeing some of the success from local companies, restaurants started taking advantage of it, to get their share of the market. It continues to expand throughout the years, with Facebook being the biggest social media platform utilized in Guatemala today. With only 2.5 million people with access to the internet in Guatemala, 1.6 million people have a Facebook account.

However, before Facebook, hi5 was considered one of the most popular social networking sites. In 2008 hi5 had 12,831,000 Latin American unique visitors ages 15 and up, while Facebook had only 7,711,000. MySpace became very big 2 years ago. According to comScore, social media has always been huge in Latin American countries. They are heavy internet users and mainly use the internet as a way to communicate with others.

According to Enrique Parros of TPP Emarketing, Twitter is a Social Media platform that is starting to grow in Guatemala and the reason for this growth is that mobile phones are becoming more easily attainable. The demographic segment in Guatemala that is currently active on twitter is mostly made up of kids, but 24- 35 year olds are starting to pick up on Twitter. This is why twitter is still an educational process in Guatemala.

The main social media Platform used for marketing in Guatemala is currently Facebook, due to the high concentration of people logged into Facebook. Facebook, to TPP Emarketing, is a great way for consumers to communicate with a brand. It is also a great way for people to interact with the brand, which will later help them to decide the future of the brand, and where it is heading. Another way Facebook is being used in Guatemala is as a focus group.

One major success story for TPP Emarketing is from the Facebook page Claro, which has 264,196 likes on Facebook. Gallo was also another great example of how successful Facebook was in helping to boost sales. In April of 2011, Gallo had about 90% of the market share in the country.

TPP Emarketing works with so many brands, such as Claro, P & G, and McDonald’s, that it would be hard to manage each account separately. This is why they use Hootsuite. It is a service used to manage social media accounts on one dashboard. With Hootsuite, companies like TPP E-marketing can manage their Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Foursquare and myspace accounts at once, and even schedule posts for later dates.

E-marketing is still growing in Guatemala, and for some it is still a learning experience, but digital marketing is always growing and expanding. Agencies are starting to pick up on it and take advantage of the marketing tools that are accessible. Some of the services offered today are SEO marketing, Public Relations, E-Mobile, Social Media and E-Advertising.

Digital marketing may be growing but TPP E-marketing understands the importance of utilizing it in their marketing campaigns and strategies.

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Where are the children who play hide and seek in the streets, fly kites, jump ropes, ride bicycles, play with dolls and cars, spend hours building a Lego’s castle during their childhoods’ golden age? They are no longer easily found in the outside areas around their neighborhoods.

Instead, infants are hiding themselves and replacing their group activities on a sunny day for more and more solitary pleasures under their home roofs. One in four Brazilian children uses the Internet, according to research done by the Comitê Gestor da Internet (CGI), the Internet Manager Committee.

In the same report, the group reported that 90 percent of children surf the web to play video games and do homework. Video games, especially Internet games, are holding children’s attention who stare at a computer screen for hours and hours.

Children are also becoming familiar with modern technologies, such as smartphones that allow users to access the Internet just by touching the screen with a finger. They can download games on their phones, and play for long periods, which can represent a regression in their social activities and developments.

The research showed that 42 percent of the children, from five to nine years old, access internet from their homes, and 29 percent of them usually are by themselves when they use of it. Contradictory to previous studies that showed more children in the 13-18 age group used social media, research shows that one third of the children from five to nine years old are engaged in social media.

The most common websites used in Brazil are Orkut, Facebook, and Twitter. While kids are spending their times in social media, adults are not engaging themselves as much on the same websites. According to the website vagas.com.br, which receives résumés and job applications online, out of the 54,000 resumes registered, 8 percent of 30-34 year olds have a profile on Facebook, 9 percent use Twitter, and 11 percent use LinkedIn.

For people older than that, the estimate is even lower, with only 4 percent that use of Twitter, and 5 percent that use LinkedIn and Facebook. The general social media public is made up of those under 24 years old. Adolescents use Twitter the most at 44 percent, Facebook at 43 percent, and LinkedIn at 25 percent.

Brazilian social media users are not balanced in numbers. Children and teenagers use the technologies because they grew up in an environment surrounded by the innovations. Now adults and the elderly are following online trends by trying to insert themselves in the same environment.

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Andreas Kaplan and Michael Heinlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content.

According to Kaplan and Haenlein there are six different types of social media: collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia), blogs and micro blogs (e.g. Twitter), content communities (e.g. YouTube), social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft), and virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life “Wikipedia, Social media”.

Today it had become almost the main source for information and secondary source for advertisement in the world. Twitter as a social media is not as popular in the Middle East as facebook, which became a hit over night.

Twitter for Egyptians is either unknown, or not understandable, so in both cases useless, but worldwide it is a good communicational tool between companies and their buyers, celebrities and fans or people who share the same interest — all can communicate easily and find each other fast.

Although twitter is an easy, fast communication platform, Egyptians used to prefer facebook because it has much more diversity on offer. In Egypt, there are many social levels — the lower class, middle lower class, middle higher class and high class — but they all have internet access at either their home or internet cafés which makes it easy for them to connect to social media.

It was easy to understand facebook and how people can communicate through it, which made it popular fast. But for Twitter there were two reasons against it: it came second and was difficult to understand. Twitter in the past didn’t have the advertising on the web it has today which limited its outreach in countries such as Egypt.

And for those who knew about it, it was hard and obscure to them to understand how it actually worked. Eventually the Egyptian people learned about Twitter and some created accounts but usage was limited as often is the case with communities that depends on personal networks.

The story took a turn during the Egyptian revolution on January 25 where protesters used twitter to plan the millions of protest and to discuss it without the knowledge of the government. The twist made a lot of people want to join Twitter to be able to follow the current events and reach audiences worldwide to tell them about the revolution.

According to India Times, “approximately 15,000 citizens used Twitter accounts to find and spread information about the protests.” Twitter helped spread the thoughts of the protesters and the events from el Tahrir square. Reporters, ordinary people and foreigners tweeted worldwide about the revolution both before and during it.

After several hours of protesting, people worldwide would know what happened through Twitter updates. News channels quoted the protesters via Twitter and three days later the government blocked the site from the internet because they finally understood its power.

The administrators of the social network knew about it and made phone calls to people in Egypt so the revolution could continue to tweet its message. They even made televised announcements to let Egypt know the world was listening.

Unfortunately after the end of the revolution, few have continued to use their twitter account. The age group still using it are also still between 16 and 35 years of age, meaning older people have yet to catch on. Still, you can find shops and companies in Egypt which have chosen to keep their presence on the social media site and use it for advertisement.

Twitter had a big role during the revolution but afterwards, only a small amount of people have continued to use it. Despite the excitement and wonder of the events that led to the fall of Mubarak, Twitter remains an unremarkable communications platform in Egypt — simply the fastest platform for information dissemination for a limited amount of time.
MOHPhoto / Shutterstock.com

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Social Media Today dedicates itself to understanding and studying the complexity of new media in our societies. This innovative website, gathers professionals from all around the world, forming a comprehensive community on the dwelings of social networking, advertising, publicity and other subjects.

A recent article by Barry Hurd, a speaker on online business practices, gives insight on the top five questions business owners must ask to completely understand social media policies and how to work with them to their advantage. They often rely on traditional human resources tactics and forget that they too can manage their workers by using online channels.

Who owns it?  Hurd brings up the important question: if employees are authorized to post online during work hours or if they must do so as a part of their job, who truly owns the company’s social media policy? Owners should take into account that a laid-off employee can easily take a firm’s mailing list and all of its contacts, causing hundreds of dollars in damages.

One must make proactive decisions regarding online communication and the owner must make sure his or her is its leader and the head of a social channel hierarchy.

Do you have access to all your social accounts 24/7? This topic is also related to leadership and control. One must be in complete control of the communication hierarchy to ensure that there are no leaks and that all of the company’s assets are protected.

Have you identified mission critical paths? Hurd said that a vast array of processes for a social media policy need special supervision, and some have particularities that must be taken into account. Barry Hurd singles out sales, marketing, security breaches, employee/client privacy, investor relations, regulatory concerns, among others:

“Each of these communication processes have mission critical elements that are accelerated by social media usage. In many cases the most immediate requirement is the management of fast and effective communication for senior managers and executive leadership.

In the world of social media policy, many mid-management employees feel they are doing the ‘right thing’ and are unfortunately trying to make decisions in an area of business that they are acting blindly in.”

Are you monitoring your employees for rogue communications? What should you do when an employee disrespects you or a company client? This is a very delicate matter which must be settled using sensible criteria and one must be very careful of its consequences; they could potentially violate someone’s civil rights and liberties.

And finally: Does it influence hire/fire decisions? This question takes into consideration the legal requirements of firing someone based on a comment they made in a social communication channel.

One must take into account the legal precedents involved in such cases, and according to the National Labor Relations Board, ”Our review of cases found many specific policies alleged to be overbroad, including those that restrict discussion of wages, corrective actions and discharge of co-workers, employment investigations, and disparagement of the company or its management.”

They have “only just begun to address these many important issues, and it is, of course, hard to speculate as to how the Board will rule as these cases develop and whether those decisions will withstand judicial scrutiny. It is hoped that this survey can assist employers and counsel identify issues with which they should be aware as they grapple with the application of labor law to employee use of social media.”

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Have you ever wondered if you are being watched when you use your social media or your mobile phone? The recent Retrevo Gadgetology study discovered that a lot of snooping and tracking goes on among people who know each other.

In other words, strangers are not the only people who collect personal information without your knowledge — also your intimates spy on you in secrecy. You would be surprised to know how regularly your parents, date or spouse read your emails or text messages or even track your comings and goings.

The study, which surveyed more than 1,000 online users, found that the percentage of spouses and parents who admit to digital snooping is significant and among romantic relationship – on the rise.

In the Retrevo Gadgetology study, more than a third of respondents, 33%, admitted that they have at least once checked their partner’s email or call history without his or her knowledge. The number for married couples is slightly more with 37% of married respondents admitting the same.

Parents, however, are the worst online snoopers. The number is highest among parents of teenagers with 60% snooping on their kids and possibly for good reason since 14% of those parents reported they found evidence that supported their concern.

Not only is snooping on emails, text messages and call history more common today but smart phones with built-in tracking technology make it easier for a suspicious partner or parent to secretly track their loved ones.

The majority of parents claim that they don’t have a problem with tracking their children’s location with a cell phone service or other device. Especially mothers are prone to snooping, accounting for 64% while fathers make up 53%.

Additionally, Retrevo researchers stated that when they looked at the data from their study conducted a year ago, they were surprised to learn that snooping had increased across the board. Overall, the number of people less than 25 years of age who check their boyfriend or girlfriend ’s personal digital correspondence rose from 38% last year to 47% this year.

Plus, women are more likely to admit to snooping than men.  For 2011, the number of women saying they check their partner’s phone-calls, emails, and text message without them knowing is 35%, whereas the percentage of men who do the same account for 30%.

Ultimately, while the government is busy crafting legislation to protect our privacy and prevent companies such as Apple and Google from tracking our online activities, the Retrevo Gadgetology study show that consumers may have just as much to fear from people they know.

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