Social Media Workshop with Rotary Club of Metn Gate, in Support of Sesobel

Sesobel is a Lebanese NGO founded in 1976 acting as a Social Service for the Welfare of Lebanese Children. Their work is highly known and very few are the chances for someone living in Lebanon to have not heard of them yet. Rotary Clubs a,k.a Lions Club are an international organization known for its clubs which usually attract people from different walks of life and expertise who are usually organized as chapters that work towards addressing and improving many social issues while upholding ethical behavior.

When a Lions Club is organizing workshops and courses in order to support an association like Sesobel, no matter how busy you are, you tend to say  "I'll be there". That's what happened when a friend of mine reached out and proposed I become part of this effort, organized by the Rotary Club of Metn Gate.

So on May 2nd, 4th, 9th and 11th, I will be facilitating 4 sessions of 3 hours each discussing various aspects of social media.

Our plan is to cover the following points:

• May 2nd:

• Introduction on Social Media

• Business Value of Social 

• Choosing Your Medium

• Building Your Team

• Dos & Dont's

• May 4th:

• Facebook Intro

• Business vs Personal Pages

• Advertising on Facebook

• Hands on exercise: Launching a Page

• May 9th:

• Twitter Intro

• Best Practices & Examples

• Tools & Useful Sites

• Hands-on Exercise: Launching a Twitter Account

• May 11th:

• Overview on Instagram

• Overview on Snapchat

• Overview on Pinterest

• Social Media Crisis Management

• Putting it all Together

But those of you who know me or have attended any of my workshops, know it's never a clean cut syllabus but more of an explorative journey where we dive into the subject and navigate it based on the audience's feedback and interaction.

If you are interested in my workshop or any of the other workshops offered by other distinguished professionals, I strongly urge you to subscribe on the following link a.s.a.p. You would be gaining valuable insights and also giving back to those in need of assistance via Sesobel.

For additional information and registration.

https://www.ihjoz.com/companies/490

From Crisis Communication to Roman Ruins: Euromed PPRD Workshop in Jordan

My long experience in facilitating courses and workshops has taught me that no two audiences are alike, much less when you are moving into an entirely new country and culture.
The EUROMED PPRD SOUTH II program landed this past week in Jordan. A country rich in history tradition, sunshine but most of all in warmth from its people. As a Lebanese, I can assert that there is a special bond that always connects us Levantines with each other. We have shared history, geography, climate, traditions, family ties not to mention woes and troubles.
Jordan has always been one of the most welcoming places I have visited and I was extremely enthusiastic to be back there again, this time with the PPRD team.
In case you have not caught wind of what our workshops are about, they are part of a bigger effort to prepare mediterranean countries to face crisis and disasters. Our team addresses Communication in times of Crisis more specifically and helps countries create the awareness needed to build their communication teams and apply the right communication strategy for those difficult times.

The audience in Amman was similar in structure to what we had noticed in Beirut, in the sense that attendance extended beyond the Civil Defense forces to include members of various ministries and official bodies. We did however have members of the (official) press present with us like in Algiers.

Excellent Workshop with my Colleagues Laurent Vibert & Veronique Ruggirello

The Jordanian hosts' enthusiasm for the learning process was no less than their counterparts in previous workshops. Although hesitant at first, and not sure what to expect  from this workshop, they quickly got into the motion, with some taking-on leading roles among the group in various exercises, such as the simulated TV interview or the Social Media Crisis simulation.

The Civil Defense members extended their hospitality further by offering us an amazing trip into the ancient but well preserved ruins of Jarash, located roughly 45 minutes north of the capital. This trip was extremely exciting for me personally, as I am a big fan of historical sites. My previous shorter visits to the country had not left me enough time to go admire such beautiful pieces of history.

In our free time, we also managed to uncover beautiful parts of a city that is friendly, safe, vibrant and with a great potential for more achievements.
We left hoping that our visit helped bring valuable insights to the brave men and women of the civil defense and other public protection services with whom we managed to build friendship and camaraderie ties.

As for me, I can only say one thing: See you soon Jordan!!

Social Media To The Rescue For Civil Protection

Civil Protection or as we know it in Lebanon, Civil Defense, is a household name that often bring a sigh of relief for people involved in various incident or disasters; and we have had our share of those in Lebanon.

When recently approached by the organizers of the EUROMED PPRD SOUTH II PROGRAM to deliver a workshop on the effective use of social media for risk awareness and recovery I was thrilled by the opportunity to do something meaningful away from the usual freebie giveaways and brand mongering that seem to dominate the social media scene.

Set on day 2 of a two-day workshop in Cyprus, aimed at delivering added value and hands-on knowledge to select countries of the Mediterranean basin, my contribution was intended to bring the fine members of the individual civil protection societies up to speed with the latest trends and best practices for effectively managing their chosen social media channels.

Through a breakdown of the pros and cons of each channel, and its effectiveness in delivering proactive awareness messages versus its usefulness in immediate response to crisis, a real brainstorming session took place that helped shed valuable light on present practices and recalibrate the individual efforts of some countries.

The invaluable work done by "Donner Sang Compter" was featured as an example of how to do things right both on and off of social media, and the cynical yet effective application IAmAlive along with its tongue-in-cheek version for VIPs helped wrap up the session and define the influence of social media in our lives in times of crisis.

I was glad to see that the attendees took interest in the information received and voiced many of their concerns and interests in the Q&A session. [End of shameless self-promotion]

It is very exciting when age-old entities, that are often very traditional in their modus operandi, opening up to new work methodologies and striving to utilize the full potential of new tools such as social media channels. The Lebanese Civil Defense delegation assured me they were very interested in pushing their existing presence even further and fully embrace technological advances. I hope they won't have to go through too much red tape to do this.

I want to strongly thank Véronique Ruggirello and the organizers from the PPRD team and Civipol for their warm welcome and followup on every aspect of my trip and presentation and mostly for the insightful and fun time we spent in between working sessions.

You can find my presentation on Slideshare 

You Are Not A Strategist

Up until recently, I had been using "Digital Strategist" on my Linkedin headline. No more!

No, I did not lose faith in my capacity of devising a strategy for operating a business in the digital realm after 15 years in the field, nor have I done a major career shift away from this. I have just grown weary from the constant abuse of the word Strategy and its derivatives.
The amount of occurrences where these words were used to describe people who operate a certain basic, less-than-tactical function online has exponentially skyrocketed over the past three years.
Try repeating this: "Digital Strategist, Social Media Strategist, Online Sales Strategist, Digital Marketing Strategist, Senior Digital Marketing and Online Social Media Strategist...."

This has become frustratingly boring to the point where I thought to write a code snippet which would generate a title with the words: Online, Digital and Strategy in it and publish it online for companies to use when hiring someone.

What most of you out there are calling strategy barely falls under the terminology for tactics if we really want to give it any importance (a great deal I would call merely secretarial work...ehm...sorry, executive assistant work).

• Posting Status Updates with pictures of fluffy cats on a tech site is not strategy
• Putting a roller coaster picture on an ISP page is not strategy
• Asking users to like if they agree and comment if they don't is not strategy
• Buying Facebook/Google/Twitter/LinkedIn  Ads is not strategy
• ...

Strategy usually involves a solid analysis of the market forces in play be it online of offline, the use of existing data to determine trends and behaviors and then calculating the risks associated with charting a path that leads to a market position that you would like to acquire. 

I seriously doubt all of the social media gurus, namely all the fresh grads who have taken a course in their overly expensive college about social media, have even come close to grasping that. 

It is largely the fault of HR people and line managers who just replicate techno-babble without any real understanding without forgetting all the wannabe media that usually aggregates and repeats the same stories you see on The Verge, Mashable and other similar sites.

At one instance a global agency that had hired us to "devise a social media strategy" for one of their clients was confused because when we delivered them the 30 page strategy study they could not find the list of tweets they expected us to prepare for them daily for the next 90 days!

The best to summ up the point I am trying to make is if we revert back to the military root of the word Strategy.  You do not need to know about "Art of War" (Sun Tzu not Wesley Snipes) to understand that your fresh recruit cannot and should not be entrusted with deciding how you move your army on the battlefield, even if he or she (along with their posse of hip friends) decided to self-attribute the title: Major General.

The Miniature Book Version of Art of War

The Pitfalls of Social Media Powered CSR

Over the past year or so, there has been an increase in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives driven or empowered by social media. Regardless what opinions you or I might have on the motives behind companies doing CSR, the fact remains that these contributions do eventually help people.

The last two major campaigns in Lebanon that I have seen sweeping across social media and twitter more specifically have involved highly commendable contributions to The Children Cancer Center of Lebanon.

Having met the fine people behind this endeavor, I cannot stress enough how much this center is a pillar of the fight against cancer, and should be strongly supported. I encourage everyone to participate in these campaigns so that the center can profit to the max.

Having said that, I must turn to the corporations who organize these giveaways. I might be a stickler here (when am I not?), but there is something deeply wrong with a contribution being conditioned by a company in exchange for users tweeting, liking or sharing their tweets or their posts. Are you or are you not supporting the cause? Why does it have to be conditional to social actions?
if I may portray this differently, if users don't tweet or interact, does that mean you will not be contributing as much to the charity in question?
I have been faced with clients who insisted on using such tactics in Lebanon and abroad, and have always recommended against that, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. My honest opinion is that the "good deed" should not be subject to social media blackmail.

One way of doing this properly is by setting the rules ahead and making the user's interaction decisive in choosing the destination of the donation NOT the amount!
A good example of this, is what INDEVCO Group (Sanita) did, back in 2012, through a Facebook campaign for their Paper Tissue brand Dreams entitled "Deyman Bifikrna" (Always in Mind).

In this case, Sanita decided ahead of time on the sum to be spent in terms of donation, and chose to allow their brand fans to express their opinion by choosing one of  8 different NGOs as candidates to receive the amount.
While they did leverage their CSR giveaway to generate social traffic, they did not condition neither the action, nor the amount to be contributed with users generating viral reach for the brand. This might be a rare time where I am not the cynic I usually am, but I like to think that the good deed itself would be enough to drive people to talk about it, without having to twist their arm and give them a candy afterwards.

That could be one way to do things; the other? well...I don't know...But I am sure with social media gurus out there, someone's bound to strike gold!

The Battle of the Digital Kimonos

A while ago, as I started actively using Google+, I came upon a list of agencies that I could import to create a circle of digital professionals to follow. I did exactly that, and have since enjoyed a lot of posts shared by digital marketing experts from around the world.
Surprisingly enough one post caught my eye. The logo of the person sharing it looked way too familiar. The post came from a Mexican agency called "Black Belt Brands" and it only took me a few seconds to realize why their post had sparked that reaction.
Their identity is highly reminiscent of that of "COM FU" a Lebanese digital agency headed by friend and fellow blogger Ralph Aoun.

These two agencies, thought completely unrelated and thousands of miles apart had managed to reach an identical concept without any of them being a copy cat of the other and I find this delightful.
So, without further ado..here's the head-to-head visuals from their digital presence:

The Mascots

I am rooting for the home team here, but the Mexicans do walk away with the more geekish award in this round although they do loose in mascot doodle vs real design.

Facebook

• https://www.facebook.com/blackbeltbrands
• https://www.facebook.com/comfu

I would call this one a tie, especially that none of the paid any attention to the overlapping elements on their cover page.

Twitter

• https://twitter.com/BlackBeltBrands
• https://twitter.com/com_fu

BlackBeltBrands loses points for not having any cover picture but COM FU also loses because their cover picture seems broken and is not loading so it's another tie.


I think this give you an idea on this Asian/Latin-American/Middle-Eastern digital martial showdown.
I really enjoyed checking both brands back and forth and watching how they both evolved separately but along the same lines. Who knows, maybe one day one or both brands will be big enough to compete on a common turf and then we'll really get to enjoy a Battle of the Digital Kimonos.

Meanwhile, all I can say to them is:  好工作

Facebook Launches Instagram Connect for Select Pages

I am sure many of you are already familiar with the twitter connect inside Facebook which allows you to connect your business page to a corresponding twitter account by visiting this page: facebook.com/twitter

With the rise in Instagram's popularity and after it was acquired by Facebook a question lingered on on whether deeper integration was going to happen. This question is still hanging although we saw several areas where the knowledge exchange took place. Brand, however, were still obliged to jump through several hoops inside the Instagram app to connect and share to the brand with no equivalent to the Twitter connect page (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iiq43A0v6-s) .

A few days ago, while accessing one of the page that we manage, I was surprised by a prompt that appeared on top of the page inviting me to click to link the client's Instagram to the Business Page.

I followed the link and landed on this page:

The Connect Page with the client's page name hidden

The page is accessible via the following link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/instagram/
At the very bottom was the client's page name listed next to the "Connect to Instagram" button but I have chosen to obscure that name for the time being.

Interestingly enough the link is not generally accessible and other pages could not be connected to Instagram using this technique. When asking a friend who shares no common pages with me to try the link out he obtained the standard Facebook 404 page not found.

My best guess is that Facebook is rolling out this feature as part of an A/B test or for select high profile pages. I should mention that this specific client has well over one million fans with a very high engagement rate.

We have reached out asking some more info from a Facebook representative, no answer has been received yet.

Have you also encountered this? Did you connect your Instagram? Let me know in the comments.

The Rise and Fall of MonotStreet.com

The Backdrop
 
The year was 2002, I was four years into my career as a web developer and I saw everything in HTML markup and Hexadecimal color codes.
I had springboarded myself from working at OGERO the local state-run fixed-telephony operator towards Cellis, France Telecom's burgeoning mobile operator in Lebanon (currently rebranded as Alfa). I was the first web developer to join the company.
Although my job offered me the chance to work on various challenging projects, it was just not enough to satisfy my hunger for more challenges. On top of that, my employment conditions had taken an unexpected turn to the worse and this incited me towards wanting to build something independently from my day job. An idea that would potentially allow me to run my own show without having to report to individuals who were, at the time, much less informed about the business of the web.

The Idea

At that same period, a tiny street in Beirut was becoming the hottest spot in town, where all the club, pubs and cafes were opening up. Monot Street was where nightlife happened. Unlike myself, Chris, a childhood friend of mine was an aficionado of the Beirut night life and It only took us one discussion and the idea was born: www.monotstreet.com a website/portal dedicated to Beirut's nightlife.
We were going to go all digital on a city that still lacked DSL internet, in a country where in many houses echoed still the distinct whizzing of the dial-up modem handshake; but we did not care.
Chris would be in charge of the field operations and I would handle all the digital aspects of the projects.

The Rise

In March 2003 we went live with a unique nightlife-inspired branding and full arsenal of gimmicks:

Our nightlife portal was armed to the teeth and ready to take on the scene with features such as:

• An exhaustive Directory of all the hot spots with detailed listing on venue style, music genres, opening hours, price range, location and popularity
   
• A regularly updated list of all the major Events happening in the street
   
• A news section ironically called @Monot way before twitter came into existence
   
• The Party Planner service which would suggest venues based on criteria of date, price, style and number of attendees provided by the user
   
• The Music section contained a directory of DJs who worked in Monot along with a weekly top 10 of the tracks being requested the most by clients of the establishments on the street.
   
• The Photos section contained picture galleries of people enjoying their outing in Monot - For the geeks reading this, I had implemented a JavaScript hack that worked like AJAX (the term was not coined yet) for viewing pictures without reloading the entire page and even added server-side code that would watermark the images on the fly -
   
• The interactive section contained a Chat Room and a Forum where people would be welcome to interact and exchange ideas. It also contained a poll that was intended to help us enhance our features further. At one point we had also partnered with Vibe Lebanon, the first Lebanese online radio.
    
• Daily Horoscopes were provided and updated automatically through a provider in Italy.

Chris at our stand during
Fete de La Musique 2003

Upon launching the website we quickly gained momentum in spite of a competitor launching shortly afterwards. Although they were quite dynamic on the field, they were outclassed by our website build quality and our premium domain names (monotstreet.com & ruemonot.com). We made sure to cover all events such as Fete De La Musique and became familiar with the Monot scene. All we needed was to start bringing in some revenue.

The Fall 

We had set out to ensure revenue by proposing premium listing subscriptions to venue owners. The premium listing offered them several perks such as increased coverage, prime location in the directory and on the homepage, newsletter and forum mentions and preferential recommendation in the Party Planner section.

We soon realized this was not going to work, as only a handful of locations opted for premium. We had omitted to analyze the profile of the average venue owner and their understanding of what we were proposing. Many of the owners had converted into this business from non-related activities and did not really understand why they would pay a subscription fee (even a small one), since, anyway, their shops were always full and money was pouring-in like crazy.

We fell back onto plan B. It involved eliminating the premium subscription fee and relying instead on making the site popular enough, so that we could sell on-site advertising and ensure some form of revenue from all the efforts being poured into this venture. This approach soon proved itself also insufficient. Neither online nor offline we could build enough momentum nor find a market for advertisers. Club owners were un-cooperative even when we gave freebies and would not help us promote the site even if this would eventually help them highlight their own businesses.
We hung on to the project for several months before eventually giving up and calling it quits effectively abandoning all efforts in maintaining the website.

Afterthought

Writing this post 11 years after MonotStreet.com went live has given me some perspective (on top of a lot of market experience). At the time, we had attributed our failure to the negative and dismissive attitude that often characterizes the Lebanese society especially when dealing with club owners. We also wondered if we needed to have built some more features into the website. We didn't!
As far as blaming other stakeholders for not being able to push the service effectively, we were only half-right. Yes, we had trouble dealing with some people, but we also had trouble marketing to the end user. Getting the word out, familiarizing people with the portal, making it a daily go-to online destination was simply not possible at the time.
A deadly mix of weak internet, market penetration, slow connection speeds and mobile internet limited to WAP had dealt the coup de grace to our project in 2004.

Today, many similar concepts exist and thrive. They do because the ecosystem has changed, a new accelerator has been added to the formula. This new ingredient that has spiced up the mix in a way that allows to compensate for many of the issues that we could not surmount 11 years ago is called (yes you guessed it):  Social Media Marketing.

The existence of Facebook, Twitter and various other channels has made users spend more online time and familiarized them with the power and convenience of digital. Website owners can now run effective targeted ads to maximize awareness on their product and can push their content into these channels for optimized viral reach.

In a world of fast changing technological landscape, we are often warned that we need to anticipate things and move fast enough, yet somehow, moving too fast and anticipating too early was exactly what caused the downfall of MonotStreet.com. The End.

Chocolate Wars: KitKat vs Toblerone

It's always a treat for us consumers when brands take jabs at each other while trying to sway us on one side or the other. A rare commodity in today's world where we feel we have become just tiny chunks of big data.
No matter how much people preach that businesses need to, have become and should remain customer-centric, we still feel too tiny in front of big brands. unless they pull off something like this on Twitter.

When I saw a glimpse of @KitKat's powerful reply to @Toblerone and @Mrugesh15, with a picture containing both chocolate bars in a surprising layout, I felt compelled to check out the entire conversation. Much to my delight, it was yet another duel of the giants. Both brands remained classy and gave it their best shot, but judging by the number of ReTweets and Favorites each reply received, it would be safe to say that KitKat walked away with this one.

In your opinion, who do you think deserved the win? Let me know in the comments section below. Personally, I think Toblerone would have won me over had they used the dark chocolate bar.

UPDATE

Shortly after I tweeted about my blog post mentioning these two amazing brands KitKat came back with a reply and I must say this has been pure enjoyment. Almost as good as having a chunk of each bar...

UPDATE 2 (2014-03-05)

The cherry on top of the beautiful social media exchange came today from the awesome people behind Toblerone. It seems that Cupid (pretty much like everybody else) is also hooked on Chocolate and thanks to these two great brands we are all love-stricken.

TV interview on Seven with Serge Zarka on MTV Lebanon

I recently had the privilege of being invited by the distinguished Serge Zarka to appear on his show "Seven" on MTV Lebanon to discuss various topics related to my work in Social Media. I had been a big fan of the show for a long time and, more specifically, of Serge's professional and courteous approach to various subjects. The show always allowed guests to offer the best they had, while keeping the entire conversation dynamic and interesting. This was exactly what I got during my interview and the professionalism in every aspect leading up to the filming and throughout the interview was felt. I must infinitely thank Serge along with all his staff from MTV for for the invitation, the gracious welcome and reception; An experience I will cherish dearly.

The Full Story: RYMCO a Social Media Implosion & Redemption

RYMCO is the local dealership for Nissan, Infinity and an array of other brands in Lebanon.
They enjoy an overall positive reputation and have actively conquered a considerable market share due to various tactics and strategic choices, supported by an increasing popularity for the Nissan brand worldwide. Since its Alliance with Renault under the Leadership of French-Lebanese businessman Carlos Ghosn, Nissan has been a brand with vision.

Our story goes back to November 22nd , 2013. RYMCO had launched a massive campaign promoting the Juke a new crossover vehicle. While the car itself is not ugly and might be even labeled as cool by a younger audience, the TV commercial that was devised and aired (way too frequently) was, in my opinion, ill-thought for the following reasons.

• The ad portrayed reckless driving, even if it was confined inside an underground parking.
• The car doesn't really show in the ad due to fast motion footage
• The car's 4x4 capabilities are praised as the driver takes it on top of a very unchallenging, well laid out, nicely painted, gradually increasing in height barrels.
• Both drivers are over-acting with exaggerated facial expressions

You might not agree with my analysis but this was my view of the ad. It simply felt lame. This opinion was behind the unfortunate series of events that would follow.

You can watch the video here.

As I watched the ad on TV for the Nth time, opinionated as I am, I decided to express my discontent via Twitter by firing up a tweet where I tagged the company in the hope they would get more interested in why their ad seemed annoying to me (and perhaps to several others who shared my opinion).

While I initially thought they would simply ignore me, their community manager, replying at 1 AM, did not take lightly to me being critical of their (his?) ad. It didn't take long for things to spiral out of control into what felt to me like an episode of The Twilight Zone  applied to social media.

The initial exchange on Twitter
RYMCO later deleted their tweets

Their initial reply would have been professional and even disarming, for any critic, had they omitted the last part where they proudly announced: "Actually, we don't care about your opinion". The sheer arrogance behind the replies implied I was either communicating with an amateur or someone who had taken my comments on the ad too personally. This would cast a doubt on whether a seasoned community manager was answering vs someone more implicated in the making of the ad itself. But I speculate...

While I personally could have simply switched off, ignored the brand altogether (even if we were considering them for a car purchase plan) and went on to take my hard earned cash to a brand that would show a bit more respect, I felt that the public and consequently the RYMCO management needed to know about this.

I used the screenshots from above to post on Facebook the following statement.

  

Post by Patrick Chemali.

Public support quickly came pouring in especially from bloggers who immediately took over the story and reported on the lack of professionalism displayed by the person behind the RYMCO account. Top bloggers covered the story by dedicating extensive or shorter posts. I mention specifically:

• Beirut/NTSC
• A Separate State of Mind
• Plus961

Several others lent their support by re-tweeting or expression their dislike of how this was handled by the brand. A small minority of popular bloggers however preferred to lay low. While I was surprised by this knowing that they normally would post about anything from a leaf blowing in the wind to a major natural disaster, I understand they might not want to antagonize brands ahead of Freebie  Holiday Season.

What was most ironic was that the same arrogant replies went on through the next morning without any apologetic behavior. It was only around noon that the tone behind the twitter account of the brand changed: a clear sign of someone else taking over and trying to mend things. The offending tweets were deleted (in vain) and someone tried to get creative by trying to spin the incident into a planned setup or mounted stunt aimed at going viral. For a while RYMCO and supporting third parties tried to imply I was in on the stunt.
I WAS NOT! I switfly replied to all tweets suggesting such a thing with a solid denial. Eventually RYMCO started issuing corporate-like statements spread out into 4 tweets

It's been a bumpy ride for Rymco today. Whether staged or not, we would like to genuinely apologize from you @chemali and from all (1)

all followers for this misstep. We believe that brands grow through constructive criticism and feedback, whether concerning (2)

advertisements, products or services. All opinions are welcome. (3)

We would love to extend this apology to a phone call with you @chemali . We would greatly appreciate a DM with your contact details (4)

Although I was still offended they were not completely assuming responsibility by hinting to it "being staged or not", I chose to accept the stretched out olive branch and exchanged it with my 8-digit contact number. Ten minutes later, to my surprise, on the other end of the line was Mr Fayez Rasamny, RYMCO's own Chairman.  (RYMCO stands for "Rasamny Younis Motor Co.").

I will naturally not disclose the details of my conversation with Mr Rasamny. But what I can share is this:
We had a very open, sincere and friendly conversation. I have always had huge respect for leaders that step up and make things right when someone in their crew messes up. It's this attitude that can make or break a company. I am glad to see that whatever behavior I was subject to did not reflect RYMCO's corporate values.
Further to this phone call I tweeted once more confirming that things were resolved. After all credit needs to be given where credit is due.

In conclusion, a few words of advice: If you are a marketing manager, a communication manager or simply a person entrusted with a brand's social presence always be aware of the following:

1. When you engage people from the brand's account, there is no room for personal ego. You represent the brand and as such are liable to portray it as the brand has chosen itself to be positioned.
    
2. Social Media became a runaway hit because it allowed a two-way communication channel between brands and customers. If you are going to tell a fan/follower that you don't care about their opinion, whether directly or indirectly, you might as well close your social channels and go back to doing billboards.
    
3. "When you're in a hole...stop digging". If you have already messed up and you know it. Don't aggravate the situation by refusing to acknowledge your mistakes and pursuing down the same path. Sometimes fans are willing to give you a break, learn how to take it.
    
4. Apologizing is essential. It says a lot about your maturity as a brand. Taking ownership of one's mistakes is the first step towards fixing them. Do NOT wait until you have been cornered to apologize. It ends up sounding so much less sincere. Make your apologies as soon as you realize your mistake and make it count.
    
5. Criticism can be harsh, opinionated and perhaps even unfounded. Use the criticism to discover the angles that you may have missed. Accepting criticism and asking about why it came to happen is a sure way to address weaknesses in your business and improving them. Social Media offers a fast and efficient means to do it. Use it!

Finally, since, I am writing this post right in the middle of the End-of-Year Holidays, I wanted to close on a positive note with a beautifully conceived card by RYMCO which I gladly re-tweeted just recently.

https://twitter.com/chemali/status/416129066027462656 

Social Media Fail by Alfa Telecom

As I sat in the auditorium watching someone present a really uninteresting piece of software, I could not help but check my twitter timeline.

It was on March 19th right before the ArabNet Beirut event. Alfa Telecommunications, one of Lebanon's two (duopole) mobile operators had been trying to boost their twitter following after their direct competitor Touch had overtaken them.

I cannot speculate whether this heightened interest in getting more followers had been instigated by me reaching out to some very high "powers that be" within Alfa pointing out how badly their social media is being run.
I had been part of the original staff that worked at Cellis which later became Alfa and I felt bad to see them trailing behind Touch after I had personally and single handedly launched them into social way ahead of their competition.

A first infographic sent on Jan 20th 2012 after Touch had debuted on Social Media

Without digressing further, Alfa was giving away valuable tickets to attend ArabNet to its follower base. A normal and fair practice that normally gets you to do something engaging in return for a prize.

What was not normal for me was to see the community manager behind the twitter account attributing the ticket to one of alfa's own employees.

I easily recognized the name based on my long period working there but I was not about to let my past relationship with Alfa cloud my sense of Right and Wrong.
Someone was taking the public for a ride. Whether it was intentional and malicious or simply oblivious it did not matter any more.
Using the most basic cognitive reasoning techniques I compiled the following image and fired a tweet at our dynamic and twitter-active Minister of  Telecommunication Mr Nicolas Sehnaoui

https://twitter.com/chemali/status/313959045935529984

The person on the left was confirmed as an employee.
The person on the right was an unfortunate coincidence and resemblance

The tweet went viral quickly and people tweeted back at Alfa expressing their discontent. Bloggers also took over the story with posts appearing on Plus961 and Blog Baladi

Alfa eventually took corrective measures in a format that suggested they were as surprised as everybody else by the fact that the winner was their own employee (even though his twitter bio pointed to linkedin where his job at alfa was prominently stated).

In retrospect, being caught with their hand in the jar could have been the best thing to have happened to Alfa as all other maneuvers were falling flat on their face. This made many people realize that the number 2 operator was on twitter and perhaps made Alfa realize that social media was serious business.
Billboards, TV commercials, brochures and the occasional sponsoring tactics were no longer enough to make themselves noticed. And this time the people could shout back their opinions.

Welcome to the era of Social Media Marketing!

At the time this post was written Alfa still had  46799 followers versus Touch with 70617 followers