How to utilize Search Engine Marketing to boost site visit?

Posted on May 31, 2016 by admin

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising and organic ranking. SEM is the wider discipline that incorporates the Search Engine Optimization; it includes both paid search results (using tools like Google Adwords or Bing Ads and organic search results (SEO).

Another part of SEM is social media marketing (SMM). SMM is a type of marketing that involves exploiting social media to influence consumers that one company’s products and/or services are valuable.

Remember that your customers search for you online, using words – even for visual content. That means that you will need to use words to describe your posts, images, videos and those words need to make sense to the people searching. In other words, banish industry lingo! Look for relevant #hashtags, too, to associate with your content. You may notice different themes depending on the day of the week.

Be specific when using hashtags, come up with relevant, unbranded hashtags. Don’t go too long or too clever, don’t have more hashtags than words, don’t hashtag everything. We may suggest to have no more than 10 / 20 hashtags.

In the field of search engine optimization, one of the most effective strategy is the link building; it describes actions aimed at increasing the number and quality of inbound links to a webpage with the goal of increasing the search engine rankings of that page or website.

Download the PDF presentation

Social Media in the Photography industry

Posted on May 7, 2016May 7, 2016 by admin

LIVE PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW, Dubai, Dubai World Trade Center
is running on 7/9 May 2016

Center Stage Agenda
Social Media in the Photography Industry
7 May 2016. 18:50 – 19:20

This session will demonstrate how to use social media to spread awareness about your profile and photographs, and how you can make the best with the resources available to you, and eventually capitalise from it.

Nico de Corato – Owner and Founder of DubaiBlog network, professional speaker and contributor of many magazines.

Abstract. Although the usefulness of any social media platform will depend on the individual goals of the photographer, social media doesn’t have to be worthless time suck. There’s a reason why professionals in the photography industry invest so many man-hours and so much money into ‘new media’ – it can help to grow your business. Create valuable page content.

Choose your social networks.

Ask questions and include calls to action to boost the amount of feedback you receive and therefore the amount of exposure your content gets. Get engagement from your users. That’s why is also useless to buy followers, cause in such a case you get numbers but no engagement..

Post at the right time. If you post according to when your fans are active, then more users—especially those on mobile devices—will see your content and be driven to your page.

Photography has always been fundamental to social media. Let’s take Facebook for a start, where in the beginning your profile picture was everything. ‘Here’s what I look like. Whaddya think?’ exclaimed a proud user’s carefully chosen avatar. (Although in most cases most people’s profile pictures should come with a disclaimer which says: Here’s what I DON’T look like. This photo took me ages to do).

Download the tutorial: Social Media in the Photography Industry

Promote community involvement to push your social media

Posted on December 17, 2015December 17, 2015 by admin

Does your company sponsor a Little League team? Do you participate in Adopt-a-Highway or volunteer for Make-a-Wish? These are the kinds of things that helps your brand awareness within the network.

Whatever type of business you’re in, sponsorship is a great way to push your social media strategies and get the attention of clients and prospects. More and more companies use to promote not only their brand, but also a specific hash tag or social media page during some sponsorship.

But choose wisely – what you choose to sponsor should be relevant to your target market and ‘on message’. Be sure to steer clear of any PR disasters – Nestlé’s sponsorship of a health conference in 2014 led to the event being cancelled after senior NHS figures urged a boycott over the food and beverage company’s promotion of infant formula in the developing world.

To help you make the right sponsorship choice visit also our page about Sponsorship opportunities.

Integration between sponsorship & Social Media is fundamental. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and WordPress offer companies a great free-of-charge platform to promote themselves, build their brand and their audience.

Finding the time to feed your profiles and blog can be a challenge but if you’re going to do it you need to be active, which means posting and interacting several times a day. But what to say? Expertise in a particular area can make for a large following. Stay relevant and on-topic and you will garner a valuable and engaged audience.

Don’t forget you need to talk to others to grow your following, which means responding to comments on your Facebook page or blog in a timely manner and engaging fellow Twitter users in conversation. A great way to do this is via Twitter Chat. Twitter chats are focused on a topic that is decided in advance and use a specific hashtag to help users follow along.

According to research carried out by Hootsuite in December, Starbucks is the best performing brand on social media, closely followed by Chanel, Friskies and Urban Outfitters. So be sure to check out their activity for inspiration.

In the GCC market we can mention Monviso Water as perfect example of integration between Social Media & Sponsorship.

Social Media Training

Posted on June 27, 2015July 27, 2015 by admin

Goal: how to build a comprehensive, strategic social media plan that will help you achieve incredible results with a customized social media boot camp.

Why Organize a Training with us?

You need social media, but don’t know where to start…

Are you tired of outsourcing your social media marketing? You can do a better job

Not understanding how to get real results?

Are you on social networks but lost and without any direction?

Duration: We can start from a 1 hr lecture to a single day course (6 or 8 hrs – in one day or split in 2 sessions), to a complete boot camp (2 full days) or a full course (more than 16 hrs)

Certification for all participants: included for courses of 8 hrs or more

Contact us for more information

Social Media Marketing in the Mobile field

Posted on June 10, 2015December 17, 2015 by admin

Why Mobile? Mobile is unavoidable — that much is clear.

Mobile is getting more and more important in social media. Over half of the population has a smartphone, and they are using their smartphones to search for products and services, and make purchases, often in the downtimes (while waiting for the metro, before boarding on a flight, and so on..)

Get in front of your customers by taking your business mobile.

Mobile is no more an option!

Some general tips:

Create valuable page content.

Choose your social networks.

Ask questions and include calls to action to boost the amount of feedback you receive and therefore the amount of exposure your content gets. Get engagement from your users. That’s why is also useless to buy followers, cause in such a case you get numbers but no engagement..

Post at the right time. If you post according to when your fans are active, then more users—especially those on mobile devices—will see your content and be driven to your page. That means: try not to post where people are potentially unactive (sleeping or at work.). but it can be useful to choose a time when – for example – people are waiting for the underground or relaxing (lunch break..) according to your ideal audience.

And post regularly: be consistent, whether that means blogging 10 times a day, three times a week or once a month. Important thing is to have a regular schedule. Avoid blogging 10 times in one day and then to be inactive for a whole month. Nowadays there are also lots of tools helping you in scheduling posting and sharing times.

Another important step is so.. knowing your target! And studying its habit.

Facebook is the number-one mobile social network. In fact, it was the number-two most-used mobile app overall for the second quarter of this year, second only to Google Maps, according to GlobalWebIndex.
Facebook no longer ranks content based on assumed preference. Instead, while stories with lots of positive feedback (likes, comments and shares) are re-prioritized near the top, the order is largely chronological. This means that any page content you publish should be valuable, not just interesting.

Instagram has consistently been one of the most popular mobile apps over last 2 years, and there’s good reason for that. It’s easily integrated into Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and it provides users with the visual stimulation that Facebook and Twitter lack. It’s particularly important especially in places (as Dubai) where there is a mix of spoken languages. For an Italian, an Arab or an Indian person living Dubai, English should not be a problem, but an image can be more comfortable than reading a post in a language different from your mother tongue.

High-quality pictures are essential for Instagram success. The higher an image’s quality, the more attention it gets. And since you’re representing a brand, it’s even more imperative that you ensure that your photo content is of the highest quality possible. Use cutouts, overlays, etc., to make your content leap out from the page, but make sure everything is tasteful and aesthetically pleasing.

Use hashtags that describe what’s in the picture, not what the picture is about. Encourage your followers to use a particular hashtag that you can then monitor (and maybe even use for a promotion). Use popular hashtags that are searched for often.
Consider posting the picture with only one or two hashtags and then include any additional hashtags in a comment below.

Do not forget about videos.

Instagram videos are tough to produce, partially because of the mobile recording concept. Smartphones have yet to be truly optimized for video, but the whole web is moving towards a video mindset.

For the same reason… be a YouTuber!

What is YouTube? Try to give a definition of YouTube.. just know YouTube is the second most used search engine! Almost 80% of the people in the Arab World use YouTube as their first search engine..

Coupon and voucher services have really picked up steam in the past few years. And with global platforms like Groupon or Living Social, or local one like Souq.com or Crazydeals.ae, these savings are moving past food and household items to incorporate services and luxuries. These companies have highly successful mobile apps, and leveraging their social aspects can really help your company with sales.

Professional Speaker Web & Social Media

Posted on June 1, 2015November 14, 2016 by admin

Beside being owner and founder of the network, Nico de Corato is also a Professional Speaker and contributor of many magazines (in UAE, US and Italy).

The professional speaking industry operates on two tracks: the celebrities, like Olympic medal winners or famous politicians, who can come in and immediately command top dollar because of their name recognition; and regular people, who have “built their clientele out over years of learning how to market themselves and provide good content.

Nico has strong expertise and more than 15 years experience in the following areas:

computer science
professional blogging
social media
web marketing & web communication
web & media in general (integration online vs offline for example)

Together with the speaking opportunities, we could also support your event/s by promoting on our social and web channels.

Picture courtesy of Roshan Salim, attending one of the lecture at the Nikon School. Nov 2016, Dubai.

Small Bio: A graduate in telecommunication engineering with >10 experience in computer science teaching, web and social media marketing and IT consultancy and strong communication and organizational skills. Owner and web-administrator at DubaiBlog – a network of websites and social pages, not only about Dubai – since 2009 I’m involved in managing websites and social media pages, both for the technical aspect and the content, becoming WordPress Specialist and expert in Social Media Marketing. I’m also lifeguard & heli rescue diver, desert runner, black belt kick boxing. Since 2015 I’m teacher at the Ca’ Foscari Challenge School (by Italian University of Venice, Ca’ Foscari) for a Master Executive. Professional speaker and freelance contributor of the following magazines: OutdoorUAE, Divers for the Environment, ArabAfroTrade, The Underwater Journal. Occasional cooperation with other magazines.

Some of mine public speaking

Specialties: social media marketing, web communication, writing, teaching, public speaking.

Some video & references

Boat Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC71bpQTTYM

reference: Daniel Birkhofer <daniel@outdooruae.com>

E-Commerce Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBrD6bgN00Y

reference: Maddie Gibbs <Madelaine.Gibbs@terrapinn.com>

Middle East Com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3o_Zo2VIlI

reference: Adam Thompson <Adam.Thompson@informa.com>

Nico de Corato is an EDA member and a regular article contributor to our quarterly magazine, ‘Divers for the Environment’ since June 2013. Nico is an avid blogger who recounts his own personal experiences and interests, and those of others he interviews for his personal blog, www.dubayblog.com.

Ally Landes <magazine@emiratesdiving.com>
Events Coordinator, Graphic Designer, Editor, Photographer, Videographer at the Emirates Diving Association

Nico de Corato, owner and founder of DubaiBlog Network FZ LLE, held several workshops and lectures at the Ca’ Foscari Challenge School concerning social media and communication. The lectures were addressed to the students attending Master GES (Gulf Enterprises Studies) – and Master IGAMI (Italian Global Approach to Management in India), A.Y. 2015-2016

prof. Marco Zolli <marcozolli@unive.it>
Professor at Ca’ Foscari Challenge School

Contact Nico de Corato for more information