The Campaign of Importance of Reading

Lack of reading is one of the most common and truthful issues in the UAE and the Arab Regions. Cultivating an Effective Reader is equal to “raising a lifelong learner”. This group is to raise the awareness and understanding by engaging people to read and expand their knowledge. The more emphasis we give on the importance of “reading” the lesser it is. It is actually the reading that makes the person a “civilized” person.

Join the awareness group on facebook 

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_114671111950816&ap=1 

Watch the awareness campaign video on youtube 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj3arddXhMo 

Desert Dawn 2.0 project-Internet Relationships Facebook group.

The project is about Desert Dawn magazine, this magazine is written by the Applied Media Bachelor students. The magazine has different variety of topics.

Am studying Social Media course from my Corporate Communication/Applied Media major. So, we were asked for this course project to choose a topic to present it through social media platforms to discuss, and raise awareness about our topic. My topic was about Internet Relationships by Latifa Al Suwaidi.

I covered this topic because Internet relationships is popular and common topic in the UAE, seeing that people have different opinions about this topic the article and the topic of Internet relationships in the UAE in the Desert Dawn 2010 issue will be introduced and discussed to the audience Facebook. Internet Relationships have emerged like a new sort of community; with the same people, same cultures and diversity of cultures, complexities of languages, the self-same natural relationships develop in a dramatic and sometimes mysterious way. This mystery actually is the basis of the success of these relationships, as it is human nature to search for ideal. The ideal is in the mind, and the words on screen, so an unconscious attempt is made to merge ideal feelings with the text appeared.

I immediately start planning on which social media platform should I choose first I identified my goals and audiences.

Goals:

1-    Promote the Desert Dawn magazine “Internet relationships” on Facebook

2-    Discussion on facebook about Internet relationships

3-   Reaching the largest number of targeted audiences in short time.

Target Audiences:

The project of Internet relationships will target both genders. The age of the targeted audience average is 15 to 35 years old.

 I discovered that Facebook is the right place to start with, because is the third largest country in the world, and Facebook is used by a big number of UAE citizens.

1.    Inviting the largest number of targeted audiences.

2.    Keep useful discussions and conversations about Internet Relationships.

3.    Sharing an online copy of Desert Dawn and the presented article.

4.    Sharing real stories and personal experiences plus opinions.

Therefore, I created a group called Internet relationships. Then I start adding members to my group and promoting it. My promoting strategies are:

1.    Twitter

2.    BlackBerry

3.    Posting my group link on active pages like time out Dubai

After 3 weeks of intensive work I found out my challenges:

• Adding members to the group in short time
• Finding creative sticky messages
• To keep successful conversation  

Moreover, my beneficial outcomes are

•  How to raise awareness on social media platform “Facebook”
• How to promote on different social media platforms
• Be responsible about every post
•  Plan for everything – time and sticky messages

Internet Relationships

Internet relationships is popular and common topic in the UAE, seeing that people have different opinions about this topic the article and the topic of Internet relationships in the UAE in the Desert Dawn 2010 issue will be introduced and discussed to the audience Facebook.

Internet Relationships have emerged like a new sort of community; with the same people, same cultures and diversity of cultures, complexities of languages, the self-same natural relationships develop in a dramatic and sometimes mysterious way. This mystery actually is the basis of the success of these relationships, as it is human nature to search for ideal. The ideal is in the mind, and the words on screen, so an unconscious attempt is made to merge ideal feelings with the text appeared.

I decided to create a group on Facebook to discuss the issue with my target audience. 

feel free to join the group 

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/home.php?sk=group_200943553279018&notif_t=group_activity 

Social media

Social media growth

·       48% of Americans have personal account on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and other networking web sites

·       Increasing the number of Facebook users to 487 million and they expected to reach 500 million within months

·       More than 40% (which is 7.8 million) of the population in US have Facebook account, and it rising to reach 125 million

·       In 2009 Twitter has been well-known

·       The number of Twitter users is 105 million and they tweets more than 50 tweet per day

·       MySpace have 119 million members. The number of Americans is 75 million

·       The users of LinkedIn is more than 60 million

·       The United States upload more than 32.4 million videos per month

·       Increasing the number of blogs

* Business people realized the power of social media in marketing

* Web 2.0 is the second generation of WWW, which is FB and Twitter

* Social media website where all users can communicate with each other easily

* Social media is a great tool for marketing and selling. According to ForeSee statistics many social media users do online shopping

* Social media users like to communicate with their favorite brand to know more about it

* Many users interact with retailers

* Retailers can have an advantage of the social media by having loyal costumers

* Building relationships between the brand and costumers via social media

* Retailers must beware by using this tool

* High percent of young people use social media

* Retailers are using the most popular websites

* Each social media sites has different standard of using

* Facebook is a perfect tool for selling and interact with customers

* Twitter is an excellent social media site for customer service and marketing your company

* YouTube is suitable for promotions and commercials

* Not all social media are proper for retailers

* Facebook have the largest amount of people so it’s a good start for retailers who want to communicate with customers

* 250,000 + website owners start to join Facebook

* 100 million + access Facebook from mobiles

* In 2009 the number of advertisement has quadrupled 

* Facebook is more popular than Yahoo

* 80% of costumers that shop online use Facebook

* Facebook is the favorite social media site among different ages

* Facebook females’ users are 70.6%

* Facebook males’ users are 61%

* 61% of users are 26 + year old

* Facebook is an effective tool to share product/brand preferences and purchasing decisions 

* Twitter allow users to send/read massages known as tweets, which are 140 characters

* The format of Twitter is way different from Facebook. You select users as Followers and the Follow you by that action whatever you tweet about your followers can read it, reply or retweet

* The number of registered in Twitter is more than 105 million

* 17 million in the United States

*Retailers can easily build customers loyalty

*Retailers must know how to use Twitter because it have different format than Facebook

* Retailers must know this social media plat form suits their strategy

* Twitter is a perfect tool for sellers to offer a customer service or do campaigns

* Twitter users in the US 5% in 2008 and increased to 87% in 2010

* Twitter is compared to live TV

* About 2/3 of Twitter users access to the social media by their phones

* 51% of Twitter users follow companies, brands or products

* Twitter performance in broadcasting is as good as Facebook

* 71% of Twitter in the US is older than 25 years, which makes it strong channel for brands o use in communicating with customers 

* Facebook and MySpace both of them have games and all of them under on umbrella which is play, collect points and challenge other users but it depends on the game theme

* There are many games and each game have more than 20 millions players per month

* Users have an option to increase their points by buying more points for cash

* Youtube; upload, share and view videos

* Crated in 2005-sold to Google in 2006 for 1.65$ billion

* Individual and company can create a channel on Youtube and you can receive and add comments

* Official videos channel gives the customer feeling for both the brand and the culture

* Flickr is sharing personal photos

* In 2009 Flickr host more than 4 billion images

* Buzz is a social media tool from Google it integrates with Gmail users they can share links, photos, videos, and comments

* Google Buzz is a social network website like Facebook and Twitter

* Private social-media are owned by the brand itself

* Engaging customers in feedback about it product and service

* Blogs= web log it’s a type of website/webpage. The users called bloggers

* It allows bloggers to read and write comments on a specific topic

* Retailers are using blogs to engage in:

1.    Giving them a background about their brand

2.    Bloggers who post an comment that can help to promote and spared the brand

* Location-Based- users can share their locations through GPS, mobile email or text

* Brands through these applications will have loyal costumers

DWC Debate Day

The 12th of April was a nightmare!! it was the Debate Day at Dubai Women’s College. The project was for all year 2 business and corporate communication departments for Dubai Women’s College and Dubai Men’s College. Both parties should be well prepared for the debate. My team members and me worked really hard and practice well. 

In addition, I would like to thank miss Pamella, Dr.Ghassoub, Dr. Hanan and miss Laura for their trust and support.

At the end of the debating day they announced the 2 teams who won the first place from both colleges, the surprising news was that my team won the fist place we were extremely happy by the news. I hope to do the debate again, it was challenging and tricky task. 

The Emiratweet Social Media workshop

Heba Al Samt, Hanan Huwair and Ayesha Al Janahi 3 young Emirati women’s founders of Emitatweet their goal is to encourage the society and help them by projects by using the social media they use Facebook, Twitter, Yoytube, Tumblr, Flickr and their own website. They did a great job with many events such Emirateyat and Think the unthinkable. 

Child Custody law

We are pleased to relate that this conference is one of the very special and well organized ones in the whole world as there the participants are from all over the world. This is the ninth conference in number, and after eight successful sessions, we believe this will benefit each and every person here in the full.

The purpose of this conference is to practically experience the feel of “globalization” by having a mutual talk with international people here. We have had many different sessions during all the period this conference held. There six days was not less than blessing. We spent these day with the following order and dedicating each day for specific topic and portion.

Day 1: Intercultural Intelligence

Day 2: Shari’ah (Islamic Law)

Day 3: Governance in the UAE

Day 4: Global issues: Human Trafficking

Day 5: Women Leading Change (Women Pioneers)

Day 6 Optional

One very important portion of the second day event was the session about Child Custody Law. Although it was a brief session of forty-five minutes, but the speaker, Ammar Shams, the Regional Head of Corporate Sustainability HSBC, who is also a member of Federal National Council, remarkably related the history of Islam, the importance of Holy Quran, the importance and reality of the Sunnah, The five Schools of Thought (Malaki, Shafi, Hambali, Hanafi and Jaffri). The major focus was the strength of Islam as the Deen and code of life prescribed by ALLAH.  He related:

Islam is the basis of successful life and life in the Hereafter. And the miracle of Islam is Quran, which we believe is from ALLAH, The God, The Be-All, and End-All of everything. This Quran has brought light in the lives of all the people when they were groping in darkness. It supported the orphans, the neglected, the poor man lying in the dust, the weak women, the travelers, the wayfarers etc. through the Holy Words of GOD, through the Holy Prophet.

The Sunnah is the deeds of Holy Prophet as practical examples of Quran shown to us to follow. We feel peace in doing the good deeds in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Prophet Muhammad.

He related about the “Ejm’a”, that is, e.g. a group of some scholars who must be agreed on any final decision to set a law. All of them must be agreed on law. If any, even, one of them disagrees, the law is not set. For example, the issue of “women drivers” was to be decided. Five out of six agreed that there is no issue if a woman drives a car, but only one disagreed. So, the was went in favor of the one who disagreed.

Also was discussed the “Qiyas”, that is comparing or judging the situations and the objects with the Quran so as to be rightly guided. For example, if the wine is unlawful according to Quran, the drugs are also unlawful because they have the same effect on human mind, that is, loss of senses.

He threw light on a very important point, the custody, the moral guardianship and the legal guardianship of children especially after the divorce. According to UAE law, if the divorce occurs, the children are supposed to live with their mother – the girl till the age of 13 years, and the boy till the age of 11. Later they are free to decide with whom to live.

There was a question raised by one of the international ladies that reads “ What is moral guardianship?” The answer was it is “the set values to raise a child by any moral character be he man or woman”. At this she replied that why not “only woman” when she can do it better? He replied, it is because of the fact “males are more involved in the life and life situations, work and work situations and have a better exposure than that of women”.

Thus, this session ended with a very hopeful and harmonious and enlightening spirits. And it was observed that all the people, Muslims and non-Muslims took deep interest and were eager to know more about it. Many students, local and international, stepped forward and asked many questions. This was in short a very successful and fruitful session.