International brands boycotting Facebook
Hundreds of companies have started to halt advertising on Facebook and Instagram as part of month-long boycott which began on Wednesday 1st of July, according to the civil rights groups behind the protest.
The boycott is over the social network’s handling of hate speech and misinformation.
Based on market research, 3 of the 25 largest spenders on Facebook ads have publicly confirmed their plans to pause marketing on Facebook for the month of July.
Research revealed that these top 25 businesses account for an estimated $2 billion of Facebook ad spending, or nearly 3% of Facebook’s 2019 revenues.
Don't buy fake likes and comments for your social media page!
💡 Why pages with 20k+ likes don’t even have more than 2k+ likes?
💡 Is your DM spammed with Influencer accounts?
💡 Ever wondered why Accounts with more than 200k likes votes for your stories?
🔍 Well, these are the aftermath of users who try to artificially inflate their stats! Fake Likes and comments are all over the place and it’s beyond annoying!
💯 Facebook’s latest legal action is great! They will be taking down the Spam account, Fake likes, and comments!
👎🏼 This may help you short term but it’s always advisable to stay away from fake engagements! Create & Curate potential audiences with good strategy!
✔️ Stay away from the risk and start building your online presence authentically with Mirrors LLC for amazing social media strategies and campaigns!
Social Media Marketing
Yes, you need Social Media Marketing.
It might be an obvious statement in a few years, but for now it is a period of transition, in which the old internet generation and new internet generation still discuss how were things before and how they are now. In fact, for renowned brands the Social Media marketing is growing with a little help of the struggles of the past.
The free access to promote the brands made those names reach every corner of the world, but also increased their efforts to renew their products/services constantly, considering that their competitors got the same benefits.
It isn’t only about the free accessibility, the reason to be on Social Media is that “everyone is there”, looking for something. You are able to target your audience, guide them to your website and boost your content among other tools available.
The Social Media channels aren’t only good for renowned brands, it can also be an effective tool for new companies, because of the interaction with the customers that can provide them with valuable information such as, what products they are buying, what are their hobbies, what kind of content they share etc. That allows the companies to customize their products and services to the trends, therefore gaining visibility in this new world.
Within the last 5 years people in Oman have been using Social Media for business matters as much as for their personal use.
Advertising Agencies had a sudden switch from their previous majority of press media jobs to Social Media due to the rapid growth of this market.
How to Find the Best Social Media Marketing Agency in Oman?
Nowadays the companies in Oman showing more interest in hiring a specialized social media marketing company for their social media efforts.
Social media marketing agencies can really boost your businesses. If you hire the right agency they will lift your brand’s social media presence and could bring you great ROI.
A good social media marketing agency will bring a lot of expertise to the table. Their highly-trained team members could provide the knowledge that hard to combine within an in-house team.
While the agencies can help the businesses to grow, it’s very important to choose the right fit for your company culture and budget point.
Following are a very few points which will help you to identify the right agency for your business;
- Determine your requirement carefully
- List down some important and right questions
- Look into some referrals
- Good fit is a high priority
Determine your requirement carefully
You should decide what exactly you are expecting from your agency. Do you need them to form a strategy, implement a strategy or do some tweaks to the current strategy? Maybe you are looking for an agency who will help you to boost your visibility on digital space. Once you decided to look for an agency who could help you to achieve your business goals.
List down some important and right questions
You know your business better than anyone else. So, you should list down some questions which will help to find the best fit for you. Following are some of the general question you can present;
- What is your research and analysis methods?
- What is your content development process?
- What is your response time?
- How do you measure reach? Growth? Engagement?
- Do you outsource any work?
- Who is the focal point of contact?
- How do you do your reporting?
Look into some for referrals
It is well known that Oman’s best medium is word of mouth.
Third-party recommendations will always help you to find the best social media marketing or adverting agency for your brand.
A good fit is a high priority
You got to be confident and comfortable with the team you are hiring. Before hiring an agency, you should always check whether I can work with this team/person, Can I count them on my company’s reputation?
You should sense from the beginning whether the chemistry is working or not.
Everything You Need to Know About Facebook's New Upcoming Cryptocurrency
June 25, 2019
Facebook has just revealed that they are working on releasing a new cryptocurrency to the market of digital currencies. This cryptocurrency is known to be as Libra and is expected to launch publicly to the market sometime in the beginning of 2020. To confirm this, Facebook has already created their own White Paper on Libra, which speculates everything that the public needs to know about this currency. Once it’s published on the White Paper the information in there cannot be undone.
Click here for the link to Libra’s White Paper
Facebook’s new cryptocurrency will be having partnerships with many of the big known companies such as Visa, PayPal and Uber so this will help boost their currency out to the market very effectively. What’s great about Libra is it will let you purchase things or transfer funds to people with nearly no fees at all! Libra will also be available at local exchange points such as grocery stores to be able to cash out your Libra online. Facebook has confirmed that it will have its own Calibra wallet that will be built into Facebook messenger and WhatsApp as well. With this, it will increase its awareness of the currency drastically through international countries like Oman. Majority of the population in Oman use WhatsApp as a source of communication, and by having Libra be built into WhatsApp can be quite effective for the sake of awareness. Not only that, Libra will also be used to spend using other third-party wallet apps which will help increase flexibility when using the currency and to be used in the most efficient way without any complication. Facebook did not confirm if whether Libra will be available in the United States only or whether it would be available for use internationally. Cryptocurrencies are seen as the future of currencies and since many are not yet aware of the idea of digital currencies, by having safe online transactions between corporates and individuals here in Oman and other international countries can help push the awareness of cryptocurrencies out there. We are hoping to get more news of that sometime soon.
Sources:
Instagram update will appear influencers in your feed even if you DON’T follow them
With the new Instagram update, influencers and will be forced to appear in your feed even if you don’t follow them. This is because Instagram is now updating so advertisers can pay them to promote their branded content.
Instagram is having this update so that advertisers can promote their content and products to the users feed and will be displayed in both the users posts and stories as shown above. Previously, influencers had to use hashtags to ensure that they were being paid by their sponsorship, and they were of course many ways to do this but this was one of the known methods of doing this. With this new update, Instagram wants this content to be specialized so it can be easier for both the influencer and the sponsor to push their way through out to most users as possible. What has been causing the huge fuss about this new update is that if users only follow friends and family, influencers can still be able to appear on your feed even if you don’t follow these users. For instance, a brand could pay to show you a sponsored post by Will Smith for instance whether you follow him or not and whether the users account is private or not. This could be a huge win situation for Omani influencers and company corporates in Oman to have their awareness be spread to a much broader audience, but can be quite bothersome for users who choose to keep their circle limited to just family and friends. As Instagram explained in a post announcing the new format, “With branded content ads, businesses have an opportunity to tell their brand stories through creators’ voices, reach new audiences and measure impact. Using the tools available on the Facebook ads platform, businesses can reach targeted audiences beyond the people who follow the brand and creator accounts. And by running ads, they’ll have access to measurement and can optimize and test their campaigns against their set goals for more effective marketing campaigns.”
Production of A'Saffa Foods Athan Al Maghrib Ramadan Video
May 14, 2019
We started working with A’Saffa Foods – one of the major food providers in Oman. The task assigned to us was to create a 10-second spot ad for Ramadan.
During the month of Ramadan, it is the most time of the year that Oman TV is viewed, and the reason behind that is to keep track of the Athan Al Maghrib where Muslims break their fast and Oman TV tends to be their great reliance for announcing that.
Because of that, this tends to be the best, most crucial time to work on an awareness ad. Having to place an ad during this time of the month, especially in that time is by far one of the most expensive and effective approach for food companies such as A’Saffa so we wanted to be creative with this ad.
During this time, viewers would be waiting to break their fast as they watch the commercials to hear the “Athan” which is the best opportunity to show the products of A’Saffa chicken is the best quality of food and chicken you can get. You may think do people still watch TV? Well, in Oman, it’s almost like a tradition here that every household during Ramadan has Oman TV channel on especially before “Maghrib” Since all eyes are on TV during that moment, it is important that we consider making this commercial appealing to our audience, we had to make sure we would be creative with this and fast!
- The first 3 seconds of the ad spot, we had Mutrah one of the most well-known areas in Muscat display as the background to have the touch of the Omani culture. Alongside we had a voice over of: “We wish you an acceptable fast and a delicious Iftar meal”
- From 3-6 second of our ad spot, we created a nice transition twist to our plot, as we display the Mutrah Corniche as the viewer being there, we then zoom out of Mutrah, which then transitions, to being a painting of Mutrah instead. So as the viewer first sees the ad he/she would not know it’s a painting until they watch the next 3-6 seconds of the ad. As it zooms out, we then have delicious visuals of special dishes presented alongside with the Mutrah painting being as the background. We thought this would be a great technique to have our viewers ready for their meals and as a way to increase the viewers appetite before their first meal, at the same time this gives credit to A’Saffa for providing the best quality of food and best source of chicken.
- Finally, from second 6-10 we display the credits of A’saffa foods as the concluding of our ad spot.
Check out of our ad spot below!
How not to get scammed with fake social media influencers/accounts?
How not to get scammed with fake social media influencers/accounts?
Fake social media accounts and influencers are increasing in numbers and for companies, it’s very difficult to identify who’s fake and who’s genuine. These fake accounts and influencers could cost brands a lot of money.
How to avoid getting scammed?
It’s very important for brands to discover how to always pair up with the right influencers and generate great results from marketing campaigns.
Who are the fake social media influencers?
These people or accounts build a large following base by buying followers from different sources. Buying followers is actually not hard and also, it’s cheaper than you might think. For example, you can use websites like BuzzDayz to buy 15,000 Instagram followers for $55 with minimum efforts.
Using such services, someone could become a micro fake Instagram influencer or to create an account with 40,000 followers and 300 likes for each first ten posts for just around $140.
During the last couple of years, this trend has increased in Oman. Even some marketing companies are fooling brands with fake followers and likes. We’ve come across a few of these kinds of influencers and accounts in Oman digital space but if you know the tricks it’s not that difficult to identify them either.
7 ways for you to spot fake influencers or fake profiles:
- Monitor the engagement ratio in relation to the followers
- Check if the influencer is posting consistently
- Monitor whether the followers grow over time
- Check the influencer's strength of interests
- Check if their Instagram profile is a Business profile
- See if they engage in conversations with their followers
- Do a Google research about the influencer.
Having mentioned all of those, Influencer marketing is one of the best ways to promote or launch your business on social media space.
So let’s stop fake social media influencers ruin your marketing goals and by following simple steps like above we can make Oman social media marketing and advertising space a fraud-free place.
MIRRORS, Celebrating 5 Years of Success!
First thing first! A Huge Thank You to all our past and current clients for being with us on this success journey! A warm thank you to all our previous and current clients for being part of our success story. (I think it may be a good idea to move this sentence to the end of the story).
MIRRORS began as a conventional advertising agency with only 2 partners focused primarily on ATL & BTL advertising in Oman.
Since it started in 2015, Mirrors has produced design solutions for various companies. In 2016, MIRRORS opened a digital design department as the market started to shift towards digital space. We experienced exceptional growth and development over the past years in the digital space and today we are serving the majority of our clients with digital solutions.
Over the past five years, MIRRORS has succeeded at evolving and changing to stay ahead of the industry and has positioned itself in the most competitive way possible, enabling us to better serve our clients.
Progressing even further and expanding our services, today we work closely with our clients to assess their strategies and offer them more effective, efficient and strategic solutions.
Today, MIRRORS is made up of an experienced multicultural team that is capable of serving any organization, regardless of its type or size. MIRRORS has even bigger plans to expand its advertising, social media and strategy services in Oman as well as to the region in the coming years.
