Social Media Tips for the Consumer

I have seen many Twitter HOWTO's and Guides, but I have yet to come across one that shows consumers how they can get the attention of brands/products. We have all been busy talking about how we can talk to consumers, how we can engage with them.. which is all great, but we seem to forget that just like marketers, a lot of these social media tools are new to consumers as well. After all, we are all consumers.

Being on the monitoring end of things, I hope that I can give some insights to how brands see the world and how you, the consumer, can make your voice better heard. The most important thing you need to know is this: good brands are really trying to listen.

Give your opinion weight

Simplify your sentiments

Engage with the top

You can read more in my Social Media Tips for the Consumer post.

Twestival

Dubai's Twestival event, one of the world-wide Twestivals being held in over 200 countries between the 10th-13th September, takes place at Jam Jar, the funky gallery space thingy in Al Quoz, this coming Saturday (the 12th September) from 8pm. There's a map to Jam Jar here, BTW.

This is the second Twestival - a meet-up of people interested in social media in general and Twitter in particular - the first was at Barasti back at the start of the year and drew an interesting and diverse crowd.

Like the first Dubai Twestival, this event will have charitable fund-raising in mind, although this time the global events are being dubbed 'Twestival Local' and are raising money for local charities. In this case, funds raised from the event will go to the Dubai Autism Centre.

Pre-registration is a must as the event is almost certainly going to be full. Registration opened yesteday, so I'd get in early while you can. You can get more information and register for the event on the official Twestival website here.

Building collapse in Dubai

Twitter user MaliZomg is posting some on-the-scene updates of a building collapse in the UAE (around Abu Hail area)

Click here (http://twitter.com/MaliZomg) to follow the updates.

Credit: http://twitter.com/MaliZomg

Khaleej Times: Ten cars destroyed in Deira building collapse

"An eight storey building under construction in Deira, Dubai has collapsed destroying more than ten cars, a police officer said.The building, on Galadari Road next to Ramada Continental Hotel, collapsed at about 4pm and the officer was not able to confirm whether anybody had been hurt in the building collapse but said no workers were believed to be on-site at the time."

The National: Building collapses in Dubai

Gulf News: Building collapses near Al Ittihad Road in Deira

Dubai Hero Protestor let Down by Twitter Users

Activist and Hero Dubai Protestor Jean Von Blanc arrived at the Workers Rights protest in Dubai only to find known else bothered to show up. 

When asked about the reasons Jean replied “It is really disappointing, after months and months of preparation and coordination the whole thing ends with a whimper”, he added “I blame twitter and twitter users for the low – Non Existent – turnout, laborers and workers that want to improve their living and working conditions in Dubai should take their tweets and retweets seriously before expecting me, or other human rights organizations to take them seriously again.”

Another Twitter feed!

This Twitter feed aims to tweet updates from all UAE blogs:

#uaebloggers

If you'd like to be included, just let me know. I'll add a few for starters: if yours gets added and you really object just let me know, and I'll remove it. Also bear in mind it can take a while for a new entry to get going on Twitterfeed, so if you post very soon after I add you, it might miss that first post.

The only requirement is that your blog publishes some kind of RSS feed. Often this can be enabled or disabled in your settings, so make sure it's enabled if you want your blog on it.

Basically it will tweet all new blog entries by any blog listed in it.

And as an experiment, I have put a Twitter widget in the sidebar. However I don't think it looks that great: what I think would work better would be a plainer one (no border) but I couldn't find one that seemed just right. Please do suggest alternatives.

Dubai news Twitter feed

I have created a Twitter account that will publish Twitter searches on "Dubai" "Abu Dhabi" and "UAE". Basically what happen is if anyone anywhere mentions Dubai or the UAE in a tweet, it will be retweeted on dubaifeed.

If you want to Follow the feed, it's Twitter.com/dubaifeed

Also, if you have an interesting Twitter account yourself, feel free to mention it below. I'm publishing my blog to Twitter - #secretdubai - as well as UAE Community blog - #uaecommunity

It should actually be possible to feed everyone's blogs into a single Twitter account, it would be an interesting and useful alternative to a regular RSS reader to keep up to date with everything. Anyone can set this up via Twitterfeed.

***EDIT*** #dubaifeed no longer loops back its own tweets. The search code in the RSS that feeds it is now fixed.

UAE Community blog on Twitter

I have set up a Twitter feed of UAE Community blog, so it's one more way to get alerted of new posts here.

Twitter users can just start following Twitter.com/uaecommunity:



You can also get Secret Dubai diary via Twitter.com/secretdubai