Tom Roychoudhary from chief innovations officer, MCN Middle East Communications, presentation from Tribal Fusion Big Digital Landscape Event in Dubai, May 2012.

1. Social vs Website.
Is the facebook page enough as a digital
channel for a brand?

2. Forget the old website.
It’s traditional. One way.

3. The website usually is like the
news on tv or radio.
It's a one way communication.

4. Social media is a powerful tool for consumer dialog
and for building online reach for a business.
It’s a dialog, a conversation.

5. It's like the news on tv or radio...It's more fun to talk about
the news, to share the highlights of a game over a beer, or
discuss an event at the office (similar to social networks)

6. =
For a fair part of the population in our region,
Facebook is now = the internet.
They don’t step outside the walled garden.
But who are they? What are they doing?

7. They are on Facebook 2+ hours.
Usually in multiple sessions.
They like (and Like):
friends posts & updates
fun posts,information
breaking news (in small chunks)
comment and chat
watch photos/videos
play games
interact with brands
SELF PRESENT
mostly NOT purpose driven

8. for them,
in more ways than one...
a STATUS UPDATE!

9. Facebook is a huge channel in the region.
UAE: 3 million active users (1m+ on mobile)
KSA: 6 million users (2+m on mobile)
Over 55% users return Daily! (50% in KSA)
Average number of friends: 147 (115 in KSA)
Demographics:
67% male. 33% female (69% male in KSA)
47% are 25-34 (38% in KSA)
22% are 18-24 (31% in KSA)
18% are 35-44 (13% in KSA)

10. What do people do online, after SN
Neilsen & Pew Internet

11. With your own website
it’s your game.
And you have the controllers.

20. With a website that you own, you control the
communications – the why, when, how,
what and more

21. You can gather data, send emails, add
sections, choose design formats, choose build
platforms, control what you say and the
design.

22. With a website, it’s your domain.
Not facebook.com/yourname

23. With social or earned media,
it's WYSIWYG –
What You See Is What You Get.

24. Your website gives you the full power of inbound
marketing. Most social media platforms offer
limited or no data – although facebook is now
very strong on data

25. In contrast, website analytic
tools (easy one is Google
Analytics) can provide a bank of
marketing data and insights on
your communications.
Analytics allow you, as a brand
manager, to improve your online
marketing and, ultimately, grow
your business.

26. On the other hand, Facebook
tells me your age, your gender,
where you’re from, what time
you came in, and more

27. On any social media platform you have absolutely no
control of your content in any way.
Your message becomes ‘their message’.

28. They can believe it,
change it, share it,
control it even.

29. Thousands of dollars worth of campaigns have
been waylaid because they have been burnt in
social media.
And, often because the reason people turned
against the campaign or the brand had nothing to
do with marketing at all.

30. And, if you’re running a display campaign, you
really don’t want to link it to a vanilla SN page.
You want a specific landing page on your site.

31. Facebook is optimized for
small chunks of info that can
easily be shared and
discussed.
People don’t go to Facebook to
read lengthy prose,
and the kinds of things they
share are brief, educational,
humorous, or helpful in
some way.

32. There are no limitations to the way you
present information on your website,
so you can organize it however you
want, in as many different sections as
you want, linked together however
you want.

33. Your website is where all your content
ultimately lives,
Facebook is a place you can promote/discuss/
share what your website is all about.

34. Websites offer a way for search engines, and the
people who use them, to find your site based on
the keywords/phrases you use in the text
throughout

35. You can fine tune who finds you and when, based
on the kind of content you put on your site, and
you can analyze that data any time

36. From an SEM perspective, you can create
specific landing pages on your website for the
main keywords you target – making the result far
more valuable to your mission.

38. You can optimize your
Facebook page with rich
keywords and phrases,
ultimately Facebook controls
the way your page is
discovered, and they can
change it any time.
Google does not read
anything on Facebook that
you can’t see pre-logon

39. While you can add your
logo and make minor
changes in how
information appears,
you're still at the mercy of
Facebook's look.
You follow the company's
terms of service, which are
continually revised, or risk
your account being
deleted.

40. Also, Facebook pages are frequently discovered
through referrals, so there’s an implicit
recommendation and expectation of common
interests from friends.

41. Facebook is designed for people
who are connected to easily
discover common interests, so the
nature of discovery is a little
different.

42. • Website disadvantage
Your audience has to make an
effort to come to your site for
information.
With information so readily available on the Internet,
it's a challenge to get people to make that decision to
type in your web address instead of another media
outlet's.

43. • Facebook
You're taking your information directly where your
audience is spending their time connecting with
friends and family. Your updates pop into their
timelines the second they're posted, putting your
news right in front of thousands of eyes instantly.

44. • Facebook (or any Social platform)
is ideally, ALWAYS ON
But only 14% see your post in their
Facebook timeline, and shelf life is
a waking day

45. Your website's statistics are your secret. You don't have to
inform your audience how many page views, hits or unique
visitors you have coming to your site each month.
• Facebook: Everyone can see how many fans you have or
don't have. As you try to boost your brand using Facebook,
you may notice your competitors have thousands of fans
while you only have a few hundred.

46. Who is your audience? Many, many people are
already on Facebook (not all of them regular
users), but not everyone.

47. Yes, Facebook is continually being
adopted by more mature audiences
It’s still the stronghold of those savvy
enough to feel completely comfortable
with social media & the public nature of
online life – mostly: younger people.

48. Best utilization of new facebook format

49. NUMBERS AFTER THE FIRST MONTH
31,000
TOTAL NUMBER OF FANS
2.3m
ORGANIC IMPRESSIONS
3.9m
VIRAL IMPRESSIONS
98%
FEMALE FANS
72.9k
COMMENTS, LIKES & SHARES
25.5k
PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT THIS
19%
ENGAGEMENT
920.4k
REACH OF CONTENT
1863
FASTEST 24HR FAN INCREASE

51. the Facebook audience has come to
expect the ability to carry on a
conversation with those involved.
If your business is reluctant to share or
discuss things publicly, Facebook
probably isn’t right for you because a
static page on Facebook won’t get you
very far at all

52. websites are better for any
e-commerce propositions

53. Facebook has too much
clutter to fight.

54. A website is the grand central
of your online marketing
initiative.
In fact, with an ever
increasing digitally savvy
society, it is the hub of ALL
your marketing efforts – from
tv, radio and print, down to
your business card

55. PUSH BASED / MARKETING
ONLINE PRINT TV RADIO OUTDOOR MOBILE EVENTS & PROMOS BUS CARDS ETC
SPECIFIC SOCIAL DRIVEN CAMPAIGNS
WEBSITE SPECIFIC LANDING PAGE WEBSITE ON MOBILE MARKETING/
(OR MICROSITE) INFORMATION
SEO
?
PAID
SEARCH FACEBOOK YOUTUBE TWITTER PINTEREST BLOGS LBS SOCIAL
(ALWAYS ON)
NEED BASED DISCOVERY BASED
ENGAGEMENT
(HELPS INBOUND MARKETING STRATEGY)

56. It is the one single destination (which you can
totally control) to which you drive your target
audience, your business partners, your
stakeholders and your customers to.

57. Yes, today it's important to be on facebook, to have
video content that's sharable, to tweet. But you still
need a grand central, a hub – and that should be a rock
solid website.
Your dotcom.