Both Joe Akkawi (@JoeAkkawi) and Ion Gonzaga (@ionGonzaga) have covered the event quite exhaustively on their blogs (and I highly encourage you to check it out) so I’m not going to be doing that again. I will however talk about my impressions of the event.  The entire event was very Google-esque, right from the choice of the venue to the setup of it. Not only was it done in an informal setting, the Google team (and especially Ari) were extremely welcoming and encouraging of our feedback, and were extremely gracious in receiving it – both the good and the bad. In fact, at one point @IbaMasood and I went into a semi rant of sorts against Gmail’s search operators and Ari was listening intently. I’m not sure if/when improvements may be made, but at the very least it served as catharsis. I can imagine the other attendees may have had similar conversations with the team.

The event served as a great way to meet fellow bloggers who I have only met virtually until now as well as a catalyst for discussions about issues affecting us – not necessarily with Google products. The Google team here must be lauded for effectively putting together a great event without turning into a sales pitch as Iba may have feared. Ha.

I only managed to get a few pictures of the event which can be found on my Google+ page (had to be done). I must say I’m already looking forward to the next one.

Tags: bloggers, google, google plus, mena, tweetup
]]> http://www.kanjhan.com/2012/01/21/hanging-out-with-google-in-the-uae/feed/ 1 http://www.kanjhan.com/2012/01/21/hanging-out-with-google-in-the-uae/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Kanjhan/~3/ioM8FakStyc/ http://www.kanjhan.com/2011/11/05/5-key-considerations-for-effective-mobile-marketing/#comments Sat, 05 Nov 2011 13:15:42 +0000 Bhavishya Kanjhan http://www.kanjhan.com/?p=724 A few weeks ago I attended the Mobile Marketing Association Forum in London. It’s held in various cities across the world, but the London chapter heads up the EMEA market. The two day conference featured professionals not just from various industries – banking, insurance, FMCG, travel – but also from the various areas of the mobile ecosystem – brands, agencies, developers, solution providers and publishers.

Over the days and through the sessions, there were a few themes that stood out, themes that digital marketers should pay close attention to, themes that will influence and determine the success of their campaigns in the coming years.

Mobile is creating new activity – Mobile is creating and fostering activities that did not exist before. Right from citizen journalism to geo-social activity; the interaction of users within and outside their social networks is not the same anymore. The omnipresent nature of mobile has resulted in a dramatic shift in consumer behavior.  Yes Social Media gave the users the power and platform to express themselves, but it is mobile which ensure the power remained in their hands when they were on the streets; for most of the tweets, photos and videos came from a mobile (or maybe a tablet) and not a laptop or a desktop.

Contributor to the Economy - Many of the marketers at the conference had ‘mobile’ in their title. A lot of these jobs didn’t exist until recently. With the world still recovering from a recession – and fears of a double dip – the digital marketing industry is one of the very few which has shown signs of growth – double digital growth –  (IAB, 2011) and mobile is set to serve as an industry growth catalyst. With fill rates declining (meaning consumption is more than ads served) and this budget to time spent ratio considerably lower than other mediums; the only way is upwards.

Extension of Reach – We often think of reach as the size of an accessible audience. With growing penetration numbers and continents leapfrogging generations of technology, not only does mobile have an unparalleled reach; but it lets you increase your brand’s exposure to an existing audience. Debenhams released a set of mobile applications in the UK and has found that usage peaks at 10pm. No other platform can reach out to the user at that time with such high engagement levels. Jonathan Stephen from jetBlue believes mobile has given his airline the opportunity to connect and influence passengers offboard in ways that have not been possible before. The experience of flying now begins much before the user arrives at the airport.

Don’t do Mobile in a silo – In a guest post on the Econsultancy blog, I havediscussed the importance of using mobile to extend the experience of the user.  The best examples that include mobile were about using the medium as part of a larger campaign. Yes ‘Integration’ and ‘360 degree approach’ may sound like overused buzzwords but their importance must not be downplayed. The style of integration is just as important as the act of integration. Think cross platform as opposed to multi-platform –the latter is making the content available across multiple channels resulting an either/or situation when it comes to content consumption. The former actually works towards building a solution making multiple platforms work together and concurrently.  Weather.com’s mobile apps provide a different set of content when the microphone on the phone detects the TV channel; content that complements and not duplicates what is on TV. Eliminate redundancy.

Only the relevant succeed – Okay that’s probably a strong statement and may imply that the ‘irrelevant’ fail, which is not true. However just like the internet, mobile marketing can perform extremely well if the message is made relevant. The weather.com mobile application works with brands to create ads that are ‘climatically’ relevant; the Dunkin Donuts Coolatta ad is shown on a hot day, or Zyrtec ads are shown for areas with high pollen activity. The same ad can be customized for different weather conditions – on a hot day an ad for an automobile will encourage going for a long drive, on a rainy day the messaging changes to exhibit the car’s traction control and other safety features. Relevance.

Compared to the other advertising mediums, Babs Rangiah of Unilever says, the internet is still in kindergarten, and mobile in its infancy. However mobile has the advantage of learning from internet advertising and not repeating the mistakes the internet industry made in its early days. And this is something Greg Stuart – current CEO of MMA and former IAB board member – is adamant on achieving.

 This post first appeared on the Clique Media blog

With new lists in place, Facebook has made it easier to target status updates/posts/links to certain groups of your social network. But one couldn’t possibly have a list created for each sub group of the network. Which is why on the fly  lists would work perfect. If I had a link/post that I imagine only a selective audience would appreciate – a joke that only  the guys in my network enjoy, or a video that is relevant to my friends from Dubai and India, but not England – I could merely select any of the elements of a profile, to create a list on the fly and have it sent to them.

For a brand page, Facebook already lets admins target a post to users from a particular country or speaking a particular language, why not roll out profile based targeting to both users and brands.

Click here to read Adapting digital marketing for the Middle East

Click here to read the post on Econsultancy blog

Last night Facebook revealed a bunch of changes which fixes 4 of the 7 things I wanted Facebook to fix for businesses (1 was already fixed, leaving 2 more to be done). Apart from a redesign of pages – making them similar to user profiles – Facebook now allows admins to browse Facebook as a page. This means the admin may like, share or comment on other profiles and pages, as a page. It may go on and ‘Like’ other pages and have a news feed of it’s own. A page admin will also receive notifications of likes and comments when he logs in and may even choose to receive email notifications. The page may also have ‘Featured Owners’ which allows the page to showcase their admins and for users to reach them directly.

The last but in no way the least change comes in allowing iFrame tabs on pages and future plans for deprecating FBML and FBJS. This now means brands can feature their applications on the page itself and users will not have to leave the page thus making a lot of brand owners very happy. There’s also another bunch of changes coming on Photos, allowing higher resolutions, improved tagging and a new lightbox style viewer.

With all these announcements, Facebook has definitely set the scene for a dramatic shift in user experience. The first step for pages/brands will be to try and set this up and use it right. Social Media agencies will definitely cross-post, both across their own and others’ communities to build audiences. This may result in an increase in spam and bacn. There still will be legitimate uses for this, the first example comes to mind of a brand with multiple fan pages (based on on geography) or a brand with multiple sub brands. (Microsoft –> Xbox, Windows, Office etc); these are the pages that will definitely benefit from this improved integration.

By improving the experience for brands and pages, Facebook is increasing its attractiveness to business by reaffirming its commitment to them. Although there may a fair amount of changes required, both technical and strategic, these are only going to be better for the brand in the long run.

• Viewing the Daily Nabit when logged in on GoNabit.com = 1 REDpoint
• Buying the Daily Nabit before it tips = 150 REDpoints
• Buying the Daily Nabit after it tips = 50 REDpoints

What will these points get you? 100 REDpoints give you $1 of GoNabit store credit. Pretty nifty idea really, but not really ground-breaking.

But here is why this this is a brilliant move by GoNabit. The one thing that has separated Social Buying sites from other eCommerce websites is the lack of switching costs for a user, or for that matter a seller. What this means is that once you register and use a site like eBay or Souq.com, you build up a feedback rating with every purchase or sale which in turns helps you do the same easier; every action is cumulative. But with GoNabit or any other Groupon clone, there was simply no need for a user to stay loyal to any one of them. The website with the better deal got the user’s money and this battle was fought everyday.

Except now, there’s one reason to choose GoNabit over, say, Cobone. Of course, the site with the better deal still wins but users may feel more rewarded making a purchase on, or even when simply visiting GoNabit. In a world (especially our region) where Social buying websites are cropping up much like “falafel carts” (credit: @AFahad), GoNabit’s program does set it a little apart and may work well for both them and their users

Your move @CoboneDeals

P.s. Here’s a tip, if you’re logged in to GoNabit, view the deals from all the cities and you can rack up 6 REDpoints everyday instead of just 1. Not much, but it may still count

However marketing buzz around mobile is similar to what it was around Social Media about 2 years ago. Adoption of marketing on this new medium is growing but it hasn’t exploded yet. All signs (and predictions) point to that happening this year – 2011 just may be the Year of the Mobile.

As for 2010, it was without a doubt the year of Social Media; which is why as we step into 2011 we have many marketers asking if the ad spend is going to be put into Social or Mobile. It doesn’t have to be one does it? @Siddhi_D delivers an answer right to the point with “With the capability to cross integrate the likes of social with display, social with mobile, search with mobile etc there will be limited fragmentation whilst reaching the core audience.”

As much of a buzz word ‘integration’ is, I believe that really is going to be the key to effective digital marketing plans this year. Instead of it becomes an either/or situation with Mobile and Social, both can be used, in tandem to deliver effective results. An example of this is taking the banner to a landing page which features a Facebook fanpage like button or taking them to a YouTube video where they may subscribe to your channel. These are of course simple examples but it’s a start to the direction we should start exploring in.

I guess what I’m trying to say is by taking your focus off click and pageview that come in just today, we’re essentially building connections that will last for much longer (by fans, followers or subscribers) increasing the value your brand receives per click. Think strategic, not tactical.

1. Sheer abuse of Hashtags

This is actually a personal pet peeve of mine but I strongly believe #You #are #an #idiot #if #you #tweet #like #this. In fact you don’t even need to #tweet like this. Hashtags were used for adding context to a tweet which it may otherwise lack. If I tweet “the traffic today is horrible”, adding a Dubai or UAE hashtag adds geographical context to my tweet, without which it might not have made sense. But if I tweet “#Foursquare and #Facebook go head to head in geo location”, I just wasted 1.43% of the character limit.  A perfect example of using Hashtags is for tweets from an event. Use them sparingly to increase their value instead of #cheapening them. Ha!

2. Calling it the next big thing

Sigh. Alright, listen up, if Social Media was the next big thing in 2008/09, it can’t be the next big thing in 2010. So stop talking about Social Media as our saviour. For businesses it may a dramatic shift in the way how they can now  communicate directly to their audience, but these very users have been using ‘social media’ as tools to communicate amongst themselves for a long time now. Remember forums? That was ‘social’ media too. In some aspects it may be a revolution (and I use this word very loosely) but for the most part it is an evolution. And more importantly these tools are now here, use them instead of merely talking about them.

3. Assuming it’s cheap or free

Social Media is not cheap and it’s definitely not free. While some of the tools and platforms might be, the medium is not. The medium requires considerable investment of your time, staff (who you pay a salary too) and of course cash for a lot of tools. But Social Media surely is a ‘cheaper’ medium where the costs are lower than other media, more importantly it is a more cost effective and trackable medium. Free, however, it is not.

4. The cross posting noise

Ow my poor social ears. Every foursquare checkin on Facebook, every Facebook update on Twitter, every tweet on LinkedIn and every LinkedIn update on ? Relevance people, think relevance. Every platform was designed for a different set of social connections and a different kind of conversation, use it accordingly. If I want to know where you are, I’ll send you a Foursquare request, if I want to see all your links, I’ll follow you on Twitter, if I care about your babies, dogs, cats, anythingelseyoureallycareabout, I will add you on Facebook; chances are we’re connected on more of these networks than ones we’re not. So for the love of god, please add signal to the stream, not more noise.

5. The Automation

OK, lets recap on what social media is supposed to be; open, transparent, personal, engaging and insertBuzzWord. If you setup a bot to tweet all your RSS feeds, you’re not personal. If you spam users with pre scheduled tweets, you’re not personal. If you’re repeating tweets, over and over again, you’re not personal. I don’t care if Guy Kawasaki says you must use HootSuite, SocialOomph, ObjectiveMarketer or whatever other tool, if you keep spewing links in my timeline every 30 minutes, I know you’re not there, so stop trying to pretend like you are.

There, I’m done venting. I must admit I am guilty of having done some of the above at some point but never taken it to the extremes. I would like to know your thoughts though. Do you agree with me? Or am I overreacting Or maybe I’m just speaking into empty space. Hello?

Image Credit: Rob Cottingham

Click here to read the article on Bayt.com