Dubai New Year Parties Cancelled

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has ordered cancellation of all the New Year Celebrations in Dubai. This decision has been taken due to latest fight at the Gaza strip between Palestine and Israel. Check out this news posted on the official website of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum declaring the cancellation of the celebrations.

Social Media Measurement Bubble

Further to the previous post on Social Media Measurement, the six steps can be combined into the following model:- 1. Attention/Analytics: Standard web metrics as mentioned in the previous post, are applicable to websites as well.
2. Participation/Reaction: This indicates the extent to which users’ engage themselves with the content on a particular platform. The engagement can be in the form of comments, scraps, posts, rating etc.
3. Authority/Connection: Fetching inbound links, trackbacks, pings to a blog or sites.
4. Influence: Viral, word of mouth, spread, user base, followers, subscribers
5. Emotions/Sentiments/Relationship:user loyalty, attachment, enthusiasm etc

The five factors sum up the metrics of measuring social media. But this is not one-size-fits-all sorts of model, it varies depending on the type of company/organisation, its SM goals, budget, objective and intention. It depends on the factors that go behind the social media campaign and the weightage assigned to each of the bubble changes. In total it should sum up to 100%.

There are a few who are not concerned about "attention" i.e. page views that a site/blog generates. They would typically be focused on ensuring subscription of their RSS feeds, or any other application on the website.

Hence, marketers should carefully set out their objectives and then select appropriate metrics to ROI.

This entry is posted by - Isha Shah (S.P.Jain Global MBA - Marketing alumni and an avid Social Media Marketer). She can be reached through mail at: ishashah86@gmail.com

Measuring Social Media Marketing

Social media is a conversation powered by various Web 2.0 platforms. It is a conversation that takes place between Customers, Marketers, Employees, and Investors and web surfers. Social Media as a conversation is not organized, controlled or in a form of an advertisement. It is dynamic, vibrant, emergent, compelling, insightful and of course full of fun! One needs to engage in the conversation by being listening, contributing, and participation. Hence, Social Media Marketing (SMM) is not just a medium of communication but a place for marketers to understand its target audience.

There are majorly six steps to measuring social media marketing for any brand, personality or individuals and that is:

1)Setting the objectives: The SMM goals will be different for every business or organization, SMM can - create brand awareness or build idea, increase visibility, leverage existing social media sites to the company’s advantage, help in Creating a multi-pronged marketing strategy
attract & Motivate through Potential Customer Experience etc.

Make is measurable, set appropriate deadlines, set the kind of changes in attitude and behavior that is expected, output & outcomes. One thing that many digital marketers face difficulty is in measurement and the first step to measure is to set RIGHT objectives. The objectives should be in the interest of the organisation and community.

2) Determining metrics of measurements

Relationships: Quality, mutual trust, conversation index, power of influence, etc
Analytics Outcomes: Benefits, costs and risks.

3) Defining Stakeholders

4) Benchmarking against competition

5) Selection of measurement tool : Various free and paid tools are readily available in the market such as Omniture, Google Analytics, Radian 6, SEER, Jeremiah’ list, Buzz Logic, The CGM Dashboard, Alexa, Del.icio.us, Veoh, Feedburner, Quantcast, Yahoo pipes etc. They measure the following statistics but the list is endless:
>Number of unique users, participation & engagement, returning v/s new readers, referring traffic, Google page rank, links from other sites, page views etc

6) Analysis and Re-strategize
Using the tools a SM marketer can analyse the position of the campaigns and then decide if it’s worth the money. The ROI calculation becomes very important in this case nevertheless, social media definitely has long term returns. ROI can be calculated keeping account of expenses such as Cost of campaigns+ media expenses + no. of responses

This entry is posted by - Isha Shah (S.P.Jain Global MBA - Marketing alumni and an avid Social Media Marketer). She can be reached through mail at: ishashah86@gmail.com

Sharjah Taxi Chaos..

You must be aware that passengers need to pay an additional fare of AED 20 to travel from Sharjah to Dubai in a Sharjah Taxi from Dec 1. This is an effort to compensate the taxi drivers (and empty wallets of the public) for their time lost in the traffic jams. Not surprisingly some of the taxi meters are yet to be updated with the new charges. Today I had taken a taxi from Sharjah to Al Qusais and when I asked the driver about the new rule; to my surprise he was not aware of this. Luckily, I did not have to pay the extra charges as the taxi meter was yet to be updated, but this shows the lack of communication between the taxi drives and the authorities, which is frustrating for the public. I fail to understand who will be getting the additional bucks – the drivers or the transport authority? Does AED 20 justify for the time lost traffic jams and for the people who commute regularly in a taxi?

Emirates ID Card

Emirates ID Card registration has been a hot topic amongst the expats for the past few weeks. The local papers have recently reported that expats can register after 31 Dec 2008 without attracting any penalty. Click on this link to check the Emirate ID Registration Schedule.The plan is to use Emirates ID card to store info for the following cards/services: -

• Labor Card.
• Health Card and Health Insurance card.
• Electronic Portfolio.
• Commercial and Banking applications
• Driving License.
• Passport.

Few questions arise : -

¨ I hope this means in future as expats we don’s have to issue Labor Card, Driving License, Health cards etc ever again as we will renew Emirates ID every year.
¨ Will there be any major issues if one doesn’t register on time? Rumors are that you will not be allowed to stay in the country. Check out this link which explains the consequences of not registering for Emirate ID by 2010.

Easy steps on how to "register" for Emirate ID Card.

Google plans to pre-install Chrome on computers

Dear Friends,

The search giant looks at pre-installing Chrome on personal computers by probably doing distribution deals. Google wants to break the monopoly of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. You have to agree that both the companies are fighting a war in the virtual world even though they may not be officially accepting it. Google has tried to enter most of the markets where Microsoft has a strong hold. The VP of Product Mgmt at Google says, "Versions of Chrome should also be available of computers using Macintosh or Linux software in the first half of next year, allowing the browser to be used on almost 99 per cent of computers worldwide.” Google is trying to do a 360 degree sweep in the market. Chrome is still in its beta phase and once the perfect/enhanced version is launched they may give Microsoft run for its money. What Microsoft did to Netscape, will Chrome be able do to Microsoft? History may repeat itself. We'll have to watch out Google's strategy and product offering; hope it doesn't turn out to be a fake promise. IE's popularity remains strong and it will take time for Google to catch up with Microsoft on this front.