Call to avail of social media benefits

Organisations in Qatar can benefit tremendously from the ubiquitous potential of host of available social media tools to win greater audiences, Supreme Council of Information & Communication Technology (ictQATAR) said yesterday.

The tools, from Facebook to YouTube to Twitter, can be used to increase an organisation’s responsiveness and interaction with users, officials said, while releasing a white paper, “ictQATAR: Creating a Strategic Presence in Social Media,” which outlines the effective strategy on how the organisation won the ‘war of the clicks’.

While outlining the social media journey for ictQATAR — one of the first Qatari organisations to have a strong social media representation on the web — the paper also enlists 12 tips for creating an effective social media strategy, as well as specific case studies on social media usage by ictQATAR.

“Our social media traffic (Facebook, YouTube) now often exceeds that of our corporate website. This paper is the first in our series of outreach efforts to urge the adoption by organisations as key engagement tools with their constituents and integral part of their communication strategies,” ictQATAR social media specialist Mina Nagy Takla said while giving a detailed presentation.

“You (organisations) just have to be patient… be ready for criticism. And anticipate change,” Takla said.

The social media landscape in Qatar currently can be described as robust as it enjoys the third highest ranking for an Arab country in terms of Facebook penetration (33.95%), websites like qatarliving.com, and forums such as Qatar Shares, QatarU are home to millions of posts.

Understandably, the age-group of 20-24 is the most frequent user of social media, with 83% logging in at least once a day. English remains the dominant language.

Takla explained that ictQATAR, is following an eight-step effort starting from establishing a ‘share of voice’ or in other words creating an online presence on social media.

“Next is developing clear social media goals, followed by identifying key sites and focusing on them,” he said.

Once past that, a content strategy is set, right tools selected, conversations are facilitated and engaged, and progress monitored, followed by establishment of a growth strategy.

“Leadership support is critical, and so is a response system, as well as a tailored content. You can’t simply copy and paste the same content from press releases on social media,” Takla maintained.

The official also pointed out about how important it is for measuring the impact with goals, of why an organisation exerted so much effort on the social media.

“The goals (brand awareness, visibility, message penetration etc.) can be measured against such impacts as ‘likes’, re-tweets, stats, comments, user-generated threads,” Takla said.

ictQATAR now plans to present the white paper to numerous government and non-governmental organisations, as well as numerous universities in Qatar, officials said.

ictQATAR communications executive director Howaida Nadim said: “We hope this white paper will encourage more organisations in Qatar to integrate social media into their outreach plans and tap into the powerful two-way communications it enables.”

The white paper is available at ictQATAR.qa. A hard copy can be obtained via [email protected]

Photocaption: Takla: ‘organisations not on social media are missing out’