The Middle East Social Media Marketing Guide will give you a complete step-by-step overview on setting up your own brand's social media presence, including Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and LinkedIn profiles. It also tells you which are best monitoring tools out there, so you'll never be overwhelmed with too much to do and too few hands!

1. INSIGHTS INTO SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS!
Mastering the basics
Researched & created by IQPC for
The Online & Digital
Marketing Summit

2. “Social media is just a buzzword until you come up with a plan”
Zach Dunn

3. SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE ARAB WORLD:
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
TOTAL FACEBOOK USERS IN ARAB TOTAL TWITTER USERS IN ARAB
WORLD: 27,711,503 WORLD: 6.5 MILLION
FASTEST GROWTH SINCE JAN 2011:
EGYPT
2 MILLION NEW
FACEBOOK USERS

4. SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE ARAB WORLD:
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
USERS BY GENDER (%) NUMBER OF TWEETS
PER DAY: 252,000
LEBANON 45 55 PER MINUTE: 175
EGYPT 36 64
TUNISIA 42 58
JORDAN PER SECOND: 3
41 59

5. “A brand is no longer
what we tell the
consumer it is – it is what
consumers tell each other
it is.” Scott Cook

6. SO HOW CAN YOU MASTER SOCIAL MEDIA?

7. Decide
1. Have you considered that you need to enroll your team into a social media course?
2. Have you received the buy-in from senior management for rolling this campaign out?
3. Have you informed the IT & web teams (they’re the ones who’ll provide the technical tools)
4. Are you ready to handle customer service queries & complaints in real-time,
online – publically? Is your Customer Services Manager on-board with your plans?

8. Listen
1. What is your market talking about?
2. What are their concerns?
3. What do they want from products
like yours?
4. Have they had a bad experience
with you or a competitor?
5. What is their biggest obstacle to
buying?
In a nutshell: know
THEIR story before
telling them yours.

9. Focus
1. You don’t need to be on every social network (Facebook,
Twitter, etc.) at the same time
2. Figure out what you want to achieve:
1. Lots of fans
2. Feedback on products
3. People sharing your links
4. People talking about you
3. Social media is a tactic, NOT a strategy
4. Different social networks require
differing levels of daily or weekly commitment
5. After considering the above, choose the
network that works best to achieve your
goals and build your strategy around it

10. Engage
1. Start sharing your opinions, advice and content
2. Give your followers & fans (your potential and existing customers) feedback on their
opinions: remember, they are always right, even if they’re not!
3. Is there something they’re looking for that you can offer? Let them know, by
demonstrating it instead of telling them about it. Demos go a long way!
4. Accept constructive criticism
5. Ask them for suggestions, ways to improve and what they want from your industry
6. Provide them with solutions to their concerns when applicable to your expertise

11. “You will make mistakes. If you are sincere about helping the community, the
Learn authenticity will show and your mistakes will be forgiven.”
Zia Yusuf
1. Sign up to social media marketing blogs and resources
2. Read updates regularly – this is a fairly new marketing channel, things change daily.
In the case of Google+, they changed in 16 days
3. Challenge the norms. Just because advertising on Facebook didn’t work for product
A, doesn’t mean it won’t work for product B
4. Don’t worry about mistakes and failed campaigns. Discuss, re-direct and improve
5. Attend seminars, conferences and forums such as Click Egypt – this is where people
like you come to learn, discuss, debate and decide

12. Measure
Measuring the ROI of social media continues to be a hot topic among marketers, whether
in the board room or at industry conferences.
Being a new channel, metrics for social media measurement are still in their infancy, with
new metrics arising regularly due to growth in various aspects.
‘Do you measure the ROI of a phone? No you don’t, because it is a medium, not a product.
Similarly, social media is a medium and should be seen as such.’ Alexander McNabb

13. Measure
You can, however, measure your success in certain ways as follows:
1. How many followers/ fans do you gain per week?
2. Has anyone bought a product from you based on something you said on the network?
3. How much time are people spending on your website once they click on its link on your
social media page? (you can get this info from your Google Analytics. Here’s how)
4. How many times are your tweets re-tweeted or your Facebook links shared?
5. How many times are you mentioned on social networks? Google’s ‘Social Alerts’ lets
you set up alerts where you receive emails on when this happens

14. SIDE NOTE:
If you’re enjoying these tips on successful
social media marketing, you may want to
gain live advice and knowledge from the
experts who will present Click Egypt in
November.
Click here to join Egyptian marketers at
the biggest marketing event in the region.

15. Top tips -
1. Choose to create a Facebook Page instead of groups. Groups are restrictive
2. Let your brand name be the title of your Page, place your products under
that in dedicated tabs
3. Invite staff to ‘Like’ the Page & get involved by engaging on it
4. Populate it with content as well, not just demos of your products. Give
people a reason to visit and share. This can be news, blog posts etc.
5. Update weekly if not daily
6. Add company news, videos, photos of employees / office. This puts a
human face behind your corporate image
7. Invite existing clients to ‘Like’ the page. If possible, have them add
testimonials on your ‘Wall’
8. Advertise your Page using Facebook’s advertising platform. Make it worth
people’s time to ‘Like’ it, e.g. give them a free trial product or free
download if they do

16. Top tips -
1. Choose your Twitter Handle (@yourname) wisely. Try keeping it short as it
takes up space when people retweet you
2. Make your bio keyword-rich and focused. E.g. say ‘Egypt-based car rentals:
4x4s, sedans & hatchbacks’ instead of ‘the best car rental company in Egypt’
3. Start your Twitter existence by asking questions, getting feedback and
constructive criticism
4. Retweet industry news and comments by industry gurus. People will
respect you as someone who shares information on things they are
passionate about

17. Top tips -
5. Try tweeting or re-tweeting at least once a day if not more
6. Don’t worry about numbers of followers. Quality matters more than
quantity. Having 1,000 fans with buying potential is better than 100,000
without it
7. Invite existing clients to follow you, and follow them back. They will most
likely retweet your tweets
8. As far as possible, follow back the people who start following you
9. Master the # (hash) tag. These are social bookmarks on Twitter and let
people follow trends and topics that are being discussed e.g. #cars #FIFA
Resource: One of the best guides for using Twitter for business was written by Chris
Brogan. Twice. Click here & here to learn how to maximise the business potential of your
tweets!

18. Top tips -
1. Setup your company profile on LinkedIn and use it as the standard for all
employees on LinkedIn
2. Ensure keyword-rich bios mentioning your exact job function and company
3. Advertise on LinkedIn using their LinkedIn Ads feature. With over 200
million highly segmented professionals on it, you have the opportunity to
focus your ad on those 10 individuals in Cairo you really want to connect
with
4. If you want to get in touch with someone not within your network, find a
mutual connection and ask for an Introduction. Introductions as highly
valued on LinkedIn

19. Top tips -
5. You can connect your LinkedIn account to your company Twitter account so
that anytime you tweet something from it, it gets shared on your LI profile
6. Join groups on LinkedIn focused on your industry. People share weekly, daily,
and in some cases hourly! Take part in discussions there and start connecting
through this
7. Add the ‘Answers’ application on LinkedIn to your profile. Answers allows
professionals to ask questions on products, industries and more, and gives you
the opportunity to show your expertise
8. Share content. LinkedIn allows you to share your presentations, videos, etc.
In fact, a great way is to add the SlideShare application, where your content can
then go beyond this platform and be searchable on Google!

20. Hone your skills
Want to know how to create and manage a great Facebook
page? Visit this page by Hubspot which explains (with video) in
basic steps how to create that winning page
Still figuring out how to master the art of tweeting, retweeting,
& mentioning? Still confused on what RT, MT and D mean on
Twitter? Visit this page – also by Hubspot – which gives you the
low-down on how to be a champion business-tweeter

21. Tools
Download these great tools to simplify, organise and monitor
your social network presence. Best of all: they’re free!
1. Tweetdeck: An application that works on desktops, iPads &
iPhones; it allows you to monitor multiple accounts on
Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn and others
2. Hootsuite: A web-based application ensuring you are
always connected to your network wherever you are. Being
a web-based platform means all you need is a smartphone!
3. Seesmic: A cross platform application that allows you to
break up your Twitter stream into multiple columns,
manage multiple Twitter accounts etc.
4. Ubersocial: A smart-phone based application which allows
you to use & monitor multiple Twitter accounts directly
from your phone

22. Finally, remember that your social media campaign
may be your responsibility to run, but it is owned
by all your employees. Work together to share,
innovate and finally: convert your fans into
financial returns!

23. Congratulations!
These are the basics you need for social media marketing.
With social media marketing strategies changing daily – and new networks
rising regularly – you need to stay abreast of the latest best practice. We
already shared with you some key SEO tips recently, and over the coming
months we will share with you many other tools to master the digital
marketing field, including email marketing, copywriting and
mobile marketing.
What’s more, in October, we will share with you a detailed Digital Marketing
Guidebook, which will include insights into better social media marketing!
The Online & Digital
Marketing Summit
21-23 November 2011 Sofitel Cairo, El Gezirah, Cairo, Egypt