Abdullah’s Ideas for Local Industry Blogs

Photography, Gadgets, Gaming, Lifestyle and others..

Facts

     Working in the Gadgets and consumer electronics industry, blogs and bloggers are important elements in the equation and that is a reality today. Part of that interesting holy mission I am after, is to check the blog’s Brand, community, content and the way it works. As we always highlight that Saudi Arabia has 70% of its population are under 30 years old, which means a new generation that is digitally oriented and internet connected minds. Purchase decisions and buying habits are influenced by the power of blogs, online content and peers recommendations.

     Three months ago I have registered myself in different local gaming, photography and gadget newsletters through their websites and surprisingly, nothing happened. I was waiting to see if I was going to get an email in the first week, but nothing

 happened – seriously nothing happened! I waited a month, but still nothing. While most of the blogs are engaged and updated regularly, still in one way or another they are similar in most of what they post and publish as content.

Brand

For people to be able to differentiate, it is clearly important that a blog builds its own brand and lives it to the bone in everything it presents for their community to consume. Personality, tonality, and other branding suitable aspects, need to be covered, to be able to rise above the noise. That includes the way the topics are discussed or reported, as readers expect to see some Arabic independent authorship that is unique not mere translations!

Power of the crowds

Many of the visited blogs have big community base (fans -followers -subscribers) and that is very amazing thing for any blog or a media website, because this means more opportunities for making business. Yet this is not utilized in an optimal way, because what i have noticed from the 1st flirting attempt in registering in their newsletter is – just nothing – so where is the sense of community, No user database! The power of the crowds is essential for any business that is online today. Since communities are already built so what is the strategy to engage with them and keep the conversation going. Why not send them greetings on their anniversaries, birthdays, and any other relevant events. Because engaging and getting closer to the community means a shorter way to monetize that and make business through different ways like gamifications, partnerships, branded content, advertorials, etc…

Content

Content plays an important role here as it is the fuel that keeps the engine running, but what type of content the community likes! Do the bloggers build their content based on insights and trends or based on what industry news has? While these are crucial to pause and think of deeply, it is also important to review and scan whatever was published before through any analytical tool to see what works what doesn’t and optimize accordingly. Sometimes it is helpful to repurpose the already published content in different types and channels to utilize it the most. one of the amazing insights that i have noticed after doing some basic analysis for the Blogs Headlines and topics that the copy text is not all the time optimized for search and not based on any human simple search patterns not to mention consumption through mobile.

Sustainability

While I am so happy to see the diversity in the topics and the emerging specialized blogs coming every now and then, but still feel not sure how are they going to continue in business and what are their sustainability plans. Because it is a fast changing landscape, it is also a challenging environment to play in.