Egypt summer is usually hot and dry. Many companies working in Egypt utilized this fact on social media to communicate with customers. Many companies, such as Nescafe’, Lactel Yoghurt, KitKat, Nestlé Egypt, Schweppes Egypt, Makani, CBC TV, McDonalds, Vodafone Egypt, and Sunny, tweeted with various message, employing the technique of ‘newsjacking’. The simple definition of newsjacking is inserting an idea into news. From a business point of view, and according to Hubspot Blogs, newsjacking would help you amplify your sales and marketing success by capitalizing on the popularity of news story. David Meerman Soctt’s video on YouTube explains more about Newsjacking; you can watch the video by clicking here.
My analysis of social media content that the companies indicates that companies employ social media to suggest that their customers should use one of their products. This technique attempts to ‘sell’ rather than just to remind the customer about the brand name of the company. McDonalds Egypt, for instance, tweeted about the hot weather saying that ‘this weather needs a Sunday ice cream. Kitkat was funnier by making the chocolate bars something to rest on. Schweppes Egypt dig their soft drinks in the beach sand. Nestlé Egypt illustrated how hot their coffee is by showing the sun coming out of the Nestlé cup. Nestlé aslo asked customers to keep a Nestlé water bottle to help them in hot weather. Only one company offered an advice for customers without trying to sell their product, but it was funny though. Vatika Styling Gel tweeted to advise their customers to “Stay Home”.
Companies in Egypt embraced social media to remind their customers with their brand and often to sell some of their products. It is hard to tell how successful Egyptian companies are in employing social media. The last study was conducted in 2012 by Bayt.com, which one of the largest employment agencies in North Africa, and examined the use of social media platforms by companies. A least 46.8% of surveyed people think social media are not effectively employed by companies. Eight in every ten respondents believe that social media could harm reputation of a company, and they believe that companies should use social media platforms carefully. The study found that companies have three challenges when using social media platforms: (1) Making profits online, (2) delivering the right message in the right tone, and (3) responding to all comments and feedback.
Do you think that companies would have other challenges when using social media platforms? And, do you think that companies, special big brand names, can successfully respond to all comments?
Social Gaze 