Disney, Starbucks, Red Bull, FC Barcelona, Oreo and FC Madrid are the only other brands in the Top 50! Today, brands need to understand how to get their Facebook engagement right. At Innovations_Digital we work closely with our client’s brands to help them with their Facebook presence. Here’s our take on what to avoid as a brand on Facebook…

1. Not responding.
Facebook is a social engagement channel, not a broadcast medium. It’s about a conversation not a one way communication. If someone says “hello” or “that’s good”, the least you can do is respond. Facebook is all about connecting and engaging in a dialog with your fans, your consumers, your followers.

2. Respond, don’t fight.
Responding is important, but a tactful response goes a long way in building a brand’s social reputation. There’s absolutely no point in arguing with an irate customer or a disgruntled fan. Brands should have a pre-set policy on how (and who) to handle negative remarks posted on Facebook.

3. Deleting negative comments
This is actually worse that getting into a FB fight! Deleting a negative comment does not make it go away, it only escalates the matter. Perhaps a direct message to the person posting a negative comment is better. Nestle Kitkat got into a meltdown over deleting negative comments – which became a social PR disaster. Again, having a plan helps. Rather than deleting or arguing and trying to prove a point, have a brand policy. After all, it’s about Customer Service.

4. Posting too much.
Brands that are new to Facebook often feel they have to post every day – ten times a day! Wrong. Brands that post too many times a day will get ‘unliked’ before they know it. People do not want their pages inundated with a brand’s posts.
Let’s not forget that posting too many times is like sending through too many text messages to your fans on their phones. It’s spamming! The average number of posts for a brand should be once a day. Once. If there’s a special promotion or limited engagement offer etc, a brand could get away with 2 – 3 posts a day. Anything more, and we have overload.

5. Posting too often, too close
Another big mistake. Social media is media after all, and you can ruin it by posting too many times, and close to each other. Even if you are posting two or three posts, posting them together within minutes of each other is called “clumping” and that’s a #fail. Social engagement  is about ongoing – meaning nicely spread across, not all in one go.

6. Repeating and re-using published content.
Been there, done that! Reposting the same content is a no-no. Unless you have a new spin on it, or have a new reason to repeat a post,  don’t repeat content. Here in the Middle East, we have seen brands use the same lame lines week in, week out – asking about weekends, activity plans and more of the same boring by-the-book repeats. Brands need to avoid making this mistake over and over again. That’s a repeat offense!

7. Responding too slowly.
While a slow response is better than none at all, brands need to remember that their Facebook presence is in may ways all about Customer Service. And when you set up a Customer Care hotline, it’s a hotline, not a slowline. Brands need to respond as soon as possible. The recommended average response rate should be 6 hours or less. A lot of brands get paranoid and have a “respond-within-minutes” policy, but one needs to remember, that yes, while the facebook fan or customer expects a response, and does so as soon as possible, about a 6-hour window is ok. Becuase people have lives outside facebook as well.

8. No descriptions, no signposts
Brands often post their tv spots, photos of events, their print ads without even a hint of what the post is about in the status update. That post is meaningless to anyone else, because unlike the brand’s social managers or brand managers, no one really knows what that photo, that link, that video is all about. Always post a description.

9. Repeating everything in English and Arabic. A Middle East problem
Here in the Middle East brands are very conscious of the need to be “socially, politically and linguistically correct”. They take this further by making sure every outbound post is there both in English and Arabic. They even go so far as to translate responses into both languages and ensure that everything exists on their page in both languages. That’s overkill, that’s boring, That’s a turn off. Fans posting in Arabic may expect a response in Arabic, but it’s not that they can’t read English. And unless an Arabic query and response thread makes  a huge amount of sense for the brand, there’s no real point in translating it and re-posting it. Or vice versa.

10. One way Facebook. No Fan posts allowed.
Here in the Middle East, brands often feel the need for ‘moderated content’ and their way of ‘moderating’ is shutting down the fan’s ability to post on the Wall. That’s removing the half of a dialog, canceling the engagement, the very reason for being on Facebook. Some brands feel that negative PR on their page will damage their reputation, so they shut down the channel. That’s totally counter productive to the principles of social marketing.

Ultimately it’s about creating an engagement platform that’s interesting and friendly. It’s about having a regular, conversation with your friends. Brands need to understand the difference between conversations (social media engagement) and communications (advertising and marketing). It’s about building a community.

At Innovatoins_Digital, a digital agency in Dubai, we help brands innovate, inspire and energize their experiences and engagements across online, mobile, outdoor, search and social mediums. And, yes, we do get people to “Like” brands on Facebook. By doing it right.

Innovations_Digital will also work with iCARE as the Agency of Record on all their advertising and marketing initiatives including developing their outdoor media, signage, livery, and in-clinic identity applications. A launch campaign is being developed for the series of clinics being purpose-designed across Dubai (Oasis Centre, Tecom and Discovery Gardens, to start with).

The iCARE venture at Landmark is being spearheaded by Anuraag Malhotra, who is also the top legal eagle at Landmark. Rahul Jagtiani heads up the marketing effort for iCARE amongst his other portfolios at Landmark, and Dr Atul Aundhekar is the Chief Medical Officer with the group. From the beginning, Innovations were clearly briefed by the iCARE team about the clinics’ “totally different go-to-market strategies” – which included a position that highlighted integrity, transparency, affordability and genuine quality amongst other key differentiating factors in a fairly over-crowded market.

Innovations_Digital is a leading digital agency in Dubai that works closely with client partners to harness the power of digital and emerging media to develop conversations and communications for brands across online, mobile, outdoor and social media. Together with the iCARE management and marketing team, Innovations_Digital will work towards developing relationships with customers, starting with conversations in social media (iCARE is on facebook) and in working towards making the in-clinic experience something that is genuinely holistic and promising. The iCARE website is under construction.

Just do a search for “let it snow” and watch the flakes fall across your screen until the search result window gets completely ‘snowed’ over and the blue ‘Search’ button at the top becomes ‘Defrost’.  What’s even cooler is that once your screen gets completely fogged up you can also draw on the Google search results page like a finger on a window.

As of today (three days past Christmas) the trick is still on, and it may be a nice idea for Google to keep this on through the cold season. So, yes, even in Dubai, we can sit back at our offices or at home and enjoy the snow.

We hope you had a good 2011 and are celebrating the arrival of the New Year. At Innovations_Digital we wish you all the best for the Season. So, let it snow…

AddThis, one of our favorite social sharing enablers has published a neat infographic on what happened in 2011 on Social. To view the entire infographic, simply click the image above or this link here.

Facebook makes up 52.1% of sharing on the web

Twitter makes up 13.5% of sharing and grows 576.9%

Tumblr sharing grows by 1299.5% and is accelerating

Address Bar sharing creates 1600% viral lift!

Digg and Myspace both continue to decline by almost 50%

Chrome has surpassed Firefox in Global Browser Market Share (Read our story)

Sharing via mobile devices has grown by over 6 times from 2010

iPad users now share more than iPhone users

The top shared events were: Osama Bin Laden being Killed, the Royal Wedding in UK, the US East Coast Earthquake and the passing away of Steve Jobs.

One way of genuinely engaging your target audience via social media include finding out what your target customers are interested in and then talking to  them about it. That’s “content marketing” and this emerging leader in the tools of the trade game is showing up as one of the strongest performing channels – a very close second to e-mail. Yes, brands that are becoming “content publishers” – providing engaging, interesting content are winning the game. When you find it difficult to hard sell – and social media is not for hard sell anyways – creating and publishing content is a great tool.

Content is a great trust tool. If you provide value addition via content, people get to trust your brand. They find your brand and everything they associate with it relevant to their space. They end up trusting your product, believing in it. You get to the top of the top-of-mind position.

Another way is to ask your customers, your target audience about what they really want from you as a brand, or from your product or your industry. When you ask your ‘audience’ what they want to hear, you’re playing their hits, they’ll listen without hesitation – because it’s theirs, not yours. It’s relevant, and meaningful. That’s engagement, not monologue. If you are able to talk to your audience about what their interests are – and then build (or revise) your profile, your benefits around that dialog, you’ve got a winning strategy.

Lead them to where they want to go, not where you think they should. Follow their interests, listen to them, see what they’re really clicking through to, and provide a destination, a result that they want to see, to experience. If you are offering information on a new feature on a camera, no point taking them to a home page. If you’re selling a low-interest car loan, don’t take them to the Financing section on your bank site – take them to a page on the loan and a form that they can apply on.

Hard sell is the last thing you should be doing on social media. Think about it, you don’t go over to a friend’s place for dinner and start selling him your golf set. Friends don’t like that. If you’ve really gotten into “social” media, please do be social. Engage them, tell them a story, provide some information, share a joke, show them an interesting video. You can sell the product downstream.

And, finally, social is about shared experiences. If they genuinely “Like” what you have for them, they’ll tell friends, and friends will tell their friends, and like that it rolls forward. Make what you say easily shareable. If it genuinely adds value, brings a smile to someone’s face, causes a positive reaction – they’ll share it. But it’s your job to make that process easy. Provide all the buttons, the links, the encouragement. And, of course, the right stuff.

At Innovations_Digital, a digital marketing agency in Dubai, we work closely with our clients to harness the power of social media.

Source: Top 5 Browsers from Nov 2010 to Nov 2011 by StatCounter

While we can’t comment on market shares we can tell you why we made the shift from Firefox, the champion of open standards to Chrome, who did it one better. Here is the rundown on 10 things that make Chrome our browser of choice.

1. The Interface is “browsing” friendly

While copywriters within our agency get very critical with the meanings of words, we couldn’t but help throw some of that thinking in here too. Browsers are meant to help us, “browse” the big wide world of web. One of the common concerns amongst designers in our midst is usually the hundreds of toolbars that our most probable end users have installed in Internet Explorer. What could have been good real estate in the first fold is wasted by spyware bars. We love Chrome for its focus on allowing us to cut through the crap and really enjoy our browsing experience. Its especially more suited towards the smaller resolution screens.

2. Dedicated Apps & Games

Mozilla Firefox made add-ons popular but it was really Google who took it one step further with their app store for Chrome. When the boss is away, we sneak open a tab to catch up on some Angry Birds. And the fun doesn’t really stop there. For the productivity freaks there are tons of excellent collaboration, management and note-taking tools. For the women and food channel watching men, may we suggest BBC’s Good Food app.

3. Address Bar = Search Bar

At work I’m stuck on a PowerPC which only leaves me with Safari and Camino, both of which are really quite crap. Yes, you Apple Fanboys, I’ve said it. Chrome’s search bar is the address bar and the address bar is the search bar. It’s that simple. Even Apple in all their infinite loopy wisdom could never build that. With the mini-search bar prevalent in both Firefox and Safari, they’ve wasted some ample space that Google have been able to give to its “under the hood” section.

4. Google Instant

Google launched Instant search in September last year and they’ve ensured that Chrome gets the same loving too. So start typing away a search query in your “address” bar and you will instantly see search results popping up. Since they’re not being fed by Siri or Apple’s autocomplete dictionary, you’re bound to see stuff that you might actually find worthwhile or have a good laugh at what people search for.

5. Web History is a breeze

Going through web history is easy on all browsers but Google’s search algorithms make it that much more sweeter and accurate. Since most sites couldn’t care to write better page titles, this feature makes going through your past dalliances that much more easier. There is no need to bookmark everything anymore. It’s all there in your history and indexing makes it easily accessible when you need it.

6. Extensions!

Firefox has add-ons and they were part of the reason why I stuck with Firefox for the longest point. But Google’s extensions do just what the packaging says. It extends your browsing experience. Both Picnik and the Goo.gl URL shortener that come mighty handy for me all the time. Also, until very recently the whole restart action to install extensions on Firefox had become quite painful. With Chrome, you just keep going.

7. Google Apps + SPDY

Google claims that their apps when loaded in SPDY are 64% faster than over HTTP. An optimized layer over the traditional hyper text transfer (HTTP), SPDY comes standard with Chrome and you’ll instantly notice a incremental speed gain when using Google Apps – Mail, Docs, Spreadsheets, Calendar and more…

As this is experimental stuff, currently you’ll see its effects mainly on Google’s Apps portfolio. If Chrome continues to rocket the way it is right now then other browser makers – Apple, Mozilla, Microsoft & Opera – too might have to take heed. However, the speed hump for complete transition is two-sided – SPDY requires both sides to be optimized – on both servers and the user’s browser. But this is definitely a +1 for Google and Chrome.

8. Download Bar

I had to download an add-on in Firefox called Statusbar to show my downloads into my status bar. It was the most thoughtfully made app for me until I found that Chrome did it naturally. That was the day I finally succumbed and set Google as my default browser. Well that and the fact that I didn’t need Better Gmail anymore as Chrome already did Gmail better. For those of you who are unaware of what the status bar is, its the bar at the bottom of your browser window. Every time you hover on links, you’ll see the destination link at the bottom. That’s the Status Bar.

9. Updates

I have no qualms with Firefox about how frequently and actively they update their browsers. But somehow Google does it without making too much fuss about the whole affair. Also, Firefox’s update cycle is getting quite ridiculous. The whole one release a month from June of this year is making it quite difficult to keep up with version numbers. Ultimately, browser makers need to realize that its not about version numbers but really how stable your current version is.

10. Built-in Flash & HTML5 support beats competition

All of the 5 leading modern day leading browsers support HTML5 but only Chrome in there takes the cake in HTML5 support benchmarks. While HTML5 is still a new and not completely exploited framework, Google Chrome beats Firefox by a slight margin and they both leave the others biting dust. What this means for you is that Chrome is best placed as the best browser for you to experience content as designers and developers dabble in this framework.

Chrome comes with built-in Flash support and runs this in a sandbox so you’re always protected from any security threats therein. Gone is the page leading you to Adobe to download the Flash player and instead you have a browser that is ready to play the worst site intros you can imagine.

What is your default browser?

Here is a little poll so we can all begin to see which browser is the favorite amongst you folks.

View This Poll

Telecoms and airlines seem to have the highest rates of response, while the automotive sector is the least ‘socially correct’. Only 2.5% of social media messages are ever answered by the wheeled heeled. Oh, and the media industry? Just 1% of queries are answered!

In the US, for example, social networks and blogs reach around 80% of active internet users. The US market’s brand-in-social metric is amazing. Around 55% of active adult social network users follow a brand. But are brands responding? In the UAE, there are 2.62 million facebook users. Where are the brands?

Agencies that work with brands are also to blame on this for not showing the way. While the agency scenario is rapidly changing, a lot of the large ‘do-it-all’ ‘through-the-line’ agencies haven’t warmed up to the social trends yet – leaving their brands in the dark and the silent.

At Innovations_Digital, (a digital focused agency in Dubai) we call this amazing pall of silence and lack of response the ‘whisper mode’. And, this is difficult to understand. Clearly, the numbers are showing where the wind is blowing, but brands don’t have any idea on how to play with the wind. This amazing consumer channel – with its instant feedback, it’s open source field of consumer action and reaction is being ignored. Imagine, the sheer ignorance or arrogance of a brand like British Airways – who started their facebook interface with a wall closed to posts (now you can, though, they’ve learnt quickly).

Social media has both a long tail and a short response time lag. Things happen in the instant. Brands should not sit back and wait to respond – because word about the brand (specially negative) spreads rapidly in the here and now. And brands who shut down communications or delete negative posts when they happen are committing social suicide. That’s clearly failing to understand the ABCs of digital marketing.

The whole point of being in the social media space is to be social. And being social means to engage in dialog – brands need to realize that it’s not another billboard or newspaper ad. Brands need to remember to be ‘socially correct’ – too many posts, too frequent tweets are also not done – that’s shouting. But to not respond, to wish it away, to hope for the best is just playing ostrich and sand. And that’s dumb. That’s why brands fail in social networking.

So, be a little careful about what you’re posting on Facebook – those wild Friday nights and parties may end up on the recruiter’s desktop. Recruiters definitely check LinkedIn, but most profiles on the ‘business-minded’ profile and networking site are fairly clean. It’s the Facebook wall post, the crazy tweets and the ‘anti-social’ comments across all social networks that have a nasty long tail.

As a digital agency in Dubai, Innovations_Digital works closely with clients’ brands to help develop their social media marketing solutions, and helping their recruiters to use social media is just one aspect of the spectrum.

With the recent crop of several online shopping/e-commerce sites in the UAE, we’ve begun to wonder if this trend truly resonates with YOU, the consumer as well.

Firstly, those solution builders (like ourselves) that are expecting to see this post ramble on into incessant whining over issues with payment gateways, should probably find another outlet. We’re not going to get into that debate. We’ve heard enough of it and don’t want much more with it. This is about the consumers and us – well, outside our day jobs – and how we look at shopping online, here in the UAE.

It seems that this trend is erupting. More and more brands want to sell products online. And we’ve been helping them do so too. But somewhere along the way, we’ve lost track of what it means to buyers.

Touch – Feel – Buy

We’re never too far from a shopping mall, here in the UAE. And distances here aren’t that big either. Its no surprise then that the reason that most retailers are afraid to jump into the online space is because it might hurt what experience their consumers take out of it. Most of us, here at Innovations_Digital have spent considerable time in mature e-commerce markets. We’ve come to miss Amazon and its Prime two day delivery. We miss shopping online the way these markets have evolved to. But there was always an element of touch, feel and then buy online.

A visit to the Gap store would allow us to try the 1969 boot-cut before heading online to buy the same for 10% off the sticker price. For shoes it was the same. And so was it for electronics too.

We think from a touch-feel point of view, ecommerce will probably never compete unless Willy Wonka could truly build us his awesome TV. But there is a social recommendation issue in the region too. Reviews are hard to find – and believe – on sites that have shopping carts that we’re never truly ready to buy unless its pure WOM or peer pressure.

Does Exclusivity Work?

Gilt Groupe whipped up the private online luxury sales model and has been able to not only sustain it but diversify it as a lifestyle proposition across various segments. Since then many have followed. Rue La La, Beyond The Rack and Prive are all respected propositions similar to Gilt. In the local market, we’ve seen Sukar and MARKAVIP do the same. They offer luxury products at massively discounted prices to buyers in the region.

Have you ever shopped at either? Their delivery schedules are deplorable but most users probably forgo that for the huge discounts that they get on the oft repeating collections of Kenneth Cole, Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. On a perception level, the Sukar and MARKAVIP may seem like gated communities but we’ve found that readily allow users access within 20 minutes of “applying for membership.”

So, this is truly a perception of “exclusivity”. The fact that you – and quite a few others – have access to exclusive discounted luxury products probably has a high appeal to consumers. We’re always eager to know if either of these sites is on your daily to-view list.

The Groupon Model

GoNabIt (now LivingSocial), Cobone and Groupon all thrive on the group buying model. But we’ve rarely ever seen a deal not been provided to the user even if the target wasn’t reached. Also, there has slowly been news pouring in that the Groupon Model is already beginning to fade for brands and merchants. While this issue shouldn’t be attributed to Groupon per se but its the effect that it is having.

How merchants can convert a one-time user who walks in with a Cobone voucher to a returning one should depend on the merchant itself. But its the non-exclusive competition that Groupon and its type of websites provide that it has the negative effect on merchants. Every week you can walk away with a massage deal from a different spa. Every week you can book a different yacht or redeem vouchers at different restaurants.

As a business I can understand why they hate it, but as a consumer you’re excited about the savings you’re getting. But somewhere after the initial rush to buy vouchers online, do you ever feel that we’re hitting a saturation point with what is available on these platforms for you as a consumer? If you’ve used Groupon, Cobone or GoNabIt, how often do you return to it?

As a digital agency in Dubai, Innovations_Digital works closely with clients’ brands to help develop their e-commerce marketing solutions, develop best practices for their brands in the online domain, and work closely in helping develop their best consumer engagement practices.

Here is a simple poll for us to understand some of the many problems that you may encounter when shopping online. Also, please leave us your comments  on why you like/dislike the prospect of shopping online.

View This Poll

Innovations also worked on developing the identity for Balance, and works with the new-age spa on their Search solutions – providing Search Engine based marketing initiatives. The agency worked closely with the Balance marketing team to design and develop the fresh, clean look of the website. The aim was to keep a holistic, fresh and clean look, and to provide information which was easy to understand and navigate through. The site is developed using a bespoke Content Management System.

Innovations worked on the pre-launch campaign, with a series of super large billboards at the Oasis Centre Mall. The Balance Wellness Centre is located next to the hip new ayurvedic-based restaurant – the Balance Café. Innovations worked on the logo, the menus (built around five ayurvedic body types called “doshas”) and communications material for both the café and the spa and wellness centres.