#Dubai #Office: Twitter in the Middle East
The top social media platforms are buzzing about a tweet that just came out.
A Wall Street Journal article states that Shailesh Rao, Vice President of Asia Pacific, Latin America and Emerging Markets at Twitter, just announced, “Twitter is coming to Dubai.”
The popular social media platform, which was designed for users who like to say more with less words regarding news, updates and trends, finally announced Dubai as the location of their Middle East office.
Along with Dubai being the biggest media city in the MENA region, Twitter chose the location specifically because it’s a regional hub for many brands and advertising agencies.
Factors contributing to Twitter’s success in the MENA region are:
- 30% of the region’s population between the ages of 15 and 29 years old are active on social media daily.
- 88% of the region’s online population use social networking platforms, including twitter, daily.
- 5.8 million Twitter users in the region as of March 2014, stated by the Arab Social Media Report.
Roa further states that the upcoming Dubai office is the latest move in Twitter’s efforts to reinforce their presence in the MENA region, adding:
“Our vision is to make Twitter relevant for everyone, everywhere. 77 percent of our monthly active users are outside of the US. Our expansion and decision to set up an office in Dubai is a natural step in being closer to our customers and partners, and provides a great opportunity for us to continue our growth. We will also continue to work with our ads partner Connect Ads in the region.”
This strategic move by Twitter could have a huge, immediate impact not only on the number of active users, but also for ad spending.Ā Although ad spending in the Middle East is not as high as other parts of the world, the creation of a regional office could begin to transform that trend, creating an exciting opportunity for companies looking to break into that market.
Resources for Social Media Localization
Whether native authoring in a language or localization from a chosen global source language, it is important you have a team of in-country social media practitioners and localization specialists to help your company apply best practices in social media communication around the world.
When planning your country (locale)-specific social media strategy you should think about:
- Social Media Optimization for your in-country websites
- Social Media development for Facebook applications and/or WordPress blogs
- Which Social Media analytics and monitoring tools you should use
- Social Media training (country and language: locale-specific)
- Social media/online research by locale: landscape, competition, keywords
- Online target segmentations research and report
- Locale-specific social media channels and networks creation and design
- Localization for blogs, newsfeeds and PR
- Copywriting, transcreation and content development for local languages
To learn more about global digital marketing and Social Media Localization, feel free to visit:
https://www.globalizationpartners.com/services/global-digital-marketing/
For more information on issues specific to search engine marketing and international social media, you may wish to review our blog posts:
