Social Media in the Middle East and North Africa

At the Social Media Enterprise 2011 Conference in Dubai in February, Yasser AlKharobi, Head of Corporate Marketing, Rotana Media in Saudi Arabia - a prominent Middle East social media visionary - gave the opening presentation on the huge opportunties for business in the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA).  He summaries the tone of his presentation in this short video,  There is no more "communication" in marketing and PR - it's now got to be "social communication".

Social Media on the Move

Dubai: One of the Wow factors of the Social Media Enterprise conference was the stats on the popularity of social media in the Middle East and North Africa.  The most striking thing is that mobile exceeds ADSL subscriptions by a long way, so people are interacting on the move and they love it.  There are over 1.6m mobile accounts in Saudi Arabia alone.   There are 900 local social media sites in Saudi and 6 months ago, Arabic domain names in Arabic script became available although delegates were not sure what impact this would have -  Facebook remains the big player here.   But in many parts of MENA, it's considered inappropriate for women to post pictures of themselves, and there remains big concerns about the propriety and safety of women using social media.     Many companies are successfully using social media in MENA, including Burger King, Ethihad and even Viagra.  But it's clear you need the help of local agencies who understand the cultural and religious differences of consumers here.  In Saudi male social media users exceed female users three to one, for example.

The other big topic at the conference was how companies are using Foursquare to market themselves in MENA.   People here, like everywhere else, like a bargain or special offer! This application detects your location and finds venues or shops which are very close and wish to tempt you in with special discounts or offers.  Restaurants and cafes are using this very successfully.

Across the world there are 5.3bn mobile cell subscrptions (some people have more than one of course) and nearly 1 billion people in 143 countries use 3G.  Loads of potential for growth.  And over 55s useage of mobile networking is up 12 per cent year-on-year defying stereotyping.  And as was pointed out at the conference, companies are waking up to the fact that this age group have money to spend.

Egypt and Twitter

At the Social Media Enterprise Forum in Dubai.   Speakers from all over the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and India and just me from London. Learned more about the Arab world in two days than I've learned in years.  All the talk at the conference is of course about Egypt and the role social networking is playing (and also in Tunisia, which unbelievably seems a long time ago).  The jury is out about how twitter was used - we need to see the post event analysis from the experts.   Yasser AlKharobi who is the Head of Corporate Marketing at the Rotana Media Group in Saudi spoke about how social media is used across MENA.  Before the crisis, 40 per cent of all internet use in Egypt was on social networking and only 16 per cent on news.    The figures post the crisis will be gripping.

Of course the use of twitter in organising causes and protests is beyond doubt.  We saw it in London at the student fees demos.  But there were protests and uprisings (see the fall of the Iron Curtain) before Twitter. What is interesting is HOW it was used and to what extent it truly changed the speed of events.   I think I'll be looking most closely at the views of the Arab social networking experts I've met at this conference when it's time to make an assessment.

What's also interesting is the many different ways people in Egypt tried to get round the Egyptian government pulling the plug on the internet.