Reaching Out – Online Networking

Hi Everyone,

This is a speech I delivered at Cairo ToastMasters club June, 23. The speech title had been “reaching out” and it was my 3rd speech at the competent communicator track, where the speech’s objective is “get to the point”.

So getting to the point here, the general purpose of the speech had been to make the audience aware of the fundamentals of networking and internet marketing. The specific purpose was to encourage the audience to effectively utilize social networks in their daily life, whether for expressing their political opinions, marketing their businesses or positioning themselves as competent professionals in their fields.

Notice that writing for a speech is different that writing an article and the style – in my case – is going according to the requirements in the project’s manual.

Introduction

Since the beginning of mankind and formation of communities, people were seeking to reach out to others. The criteria that made some people more powerful than the rest was their ability to reach out to the public and spread their ideas, winning people’s trust and taking the lead in forming the identity of their communities.

No one can deny that the internet is the largest community ever known to mankind, and these principles does apply to the internet. Let’s take a look to some practical incidents that recently proved that. The Iranian elections, wasn’t the protests first reported on Twitter before even the mainstream media know about it.

War on Gaza, when the Israeli Army denied the western media from entering Gaza during the massacres, wasn’t these massacres reported Live! on YouTube, Facebook and other social networks? Not getting so far away from Egypt, the 6th of April movement in Egypt, wasn’t it started on Facebook and created one of the most politically striking movements by the Egyptian youth?

Let me tell you something very recent and I attended it myself, the white house was managing a chat room using Acrobat Connect with average 400 participant during Obama’s speech in Cairo, and that chat room was marketed via Facebook Ads. Plus, during the speech if you were on YouTube, you’d notice that upper banner with a link to the Live! speech.

Let’s see how sxephil a 23 years old guy, was able to have more than 400,000 subscribers on YouTube, and how his content usually reach more than 1 Million viewer per week. Also, through the internet people build their full time freelancing career, and ecommerce businesses is being started everyday.

All these incidents and more prove the importance of the internet as an effective marketing tool, and does prove to us that the investment that we’ll make to explore how to effectively utilize social media for spreading our ideas is really worthy.

We’ll go through 4 main steps we should all do in order to effectively use social media to achieve our goals:

Be There

Being on social networks is free, quick and easy.  Creating an account in the networks that’s relevant to the one’s interests is the first step for anyone planning to effectively utilize the power of the internet to pursue his/her goals.

Participate

Joining doesn’t mean a lot, if you’re not planning to participate with quality content that’s relevant to your network’s interests. Since you’re there it’s an investment of time and effort you put to produce quality content, from your own ideas and inspirations.

As content is king; the quality of your content will determine how far you’ll reach within the community.

Engage

Producing your own content, will usually result in being anxious for people to read and interact with your content. That might result in spamming people with content they’re not interested in. So the solution to that is to engage with the community, read their content and interact, your content will be most likely to be noticed.

Example of that, is replying to a popular YouTube video with a relevant reply, commenting on Facebook status messages .etc

Personalize

People will always be touched by genuine individuals and content, so going all the way to marketing might result in being impersonal in communication, while in actuality, you’re supposed to maintain a personal touch in all your content and interactions as people either buy or get convinced by people who they have some kind of emotioal connection with.

Conclusion

The internet provides a valuable framework, if smartly utilized, it can enormously help you achieve your personal, professional or business goals.

Thanks everyone and happy networking.

– Abdo

Sharing Link: https://www.abdomagdy.com/pphpg8

For me, is Twitter replacing blogs?

Hey guys,

@ArabicRihanna on Twitter asked a question from a while wondering if Twitter is replacing blogs? I’ll try to give an answer to that from my own perspective and leave the judgement to you.

In the last few months I had been more active on twitter than any other online tool, my first tweet had been Nov, 11th 2007 http://twitter.com/abdome/status/404692242 the point that you can get in touch with someone in 140 character and get to know others through that, which is amazing I guess.

As they say on Twitter.com themselves the current use of Twitter hadn’t been what they had in mind when they started the web service, so its developments seems to be community-driven and user-invented as people start and idea the site adopt it and make it much more easier, such as @user and the HashTags # which is amazing.

While a lot of people mention Twitter as a great tool for mainly; wasting time, others claim knowing some amazing people, building friendships and expanding their network through it.

I’m a social media professional and I’m getting paid for my advice helping clients use the tool to get business and give a good impression about the brands or individuals I work with. I’ll leave all the professional terms and just get a bit personal about my view point about Twitter and whether I’d leave blogging  to Twitter. You can find a lot of resources about that online, that’s why I’m entitled to my own experience.

Quality vs. Quantity?

When I first joined Twitter back in 2007, I knew it through Ecademy which is a business network, so my initial view of it has been an interesting new social media marketing tool.

As a Marketing tool, that in somehow have to do with business, I joined and followed a lot of business people until I got my stream flooding with impersonal posts, in most cases marketing pitch – anyway, that didn’t really encourage me to invest that much time on it, so wasn’t that active there.

I started really being motivated to use it with the #MuslimUnity campaign during last Ramadan the idea of connecting people in a practical activity seemed to made a lot sense. Real Personalities? and Genuine individuals to befriend? there is different opinions but it’s not the position to discuss that here. I personally hope to be more cautious!

I fall into the mistake of posting lots of Tweets in specific topic then getting back to the blog to collect them and create a post out of these Tweets, which seemed not awesome to my followers because of the nature of Twitter, it makes it seem like impersonating their experience and I’m stopping that with time. The point is that you have the ideas in mind and the fastest way to get it out is to Tweet it, but it’s not the most effective way.

Briefly, twitter is a great tool, it might take over sometimes and we give more attention to it, but at the end communicating real ideas needs more space than the 140 character that Twitter offers and thus still real content should be posted on Blogs and I’m taking that path here!

Thanks

– Abdo

TweetHope – Help the depressed on Twitter by @EleniHope

Hello Everyone,


Last night, I was getting a bit depressed out of what’s going in the world, my country and my life. So, I posted on Twitter “I’m depressed .. say something uplifting” I have got various responses from people I know on Twitter but got one from someone I don’t know and it wasn’t a POT.

She was EleniHope who after reading her Twitter stream and FormSpring link there, I knew she is a 15 YO girl from Ohio who dedicated her time to searching Twitter for keyword “Depressed” and “I hate my life” and she goes into conversations with people to uplift their spirit and make them feel good again.

Example of such a conversation is here:
http://twitter.com/EleniHope/status/16179162982

Then we got into a conversation:

@EleniHope It’s okay, I’ll join you for an hour or something in picking up on the depressed people, we can start a movement too
http://twitter.com/abdome/statuses/16179483090

@EleniHope Are you on Facebook? we can make a page and a HashTag and group people to uplift the depressed when they have time.
http://twitter.com/abdome/statuses/16179531042

@EleniHope So we can utilize your idea on a larger scale, what do you think?
http://twitter.com/abdome/statuses/16179557509

So, out of that simple gesture Eleni do on Twitter, late last night I started a site to get Tweets with words “Depressed” and “I hate my life” and will get similar words and combine them in a page, for people to get there and pick up a genuine conversation with these individuals and uplift there spirit.

The website is http://TweetHope.us and HashTag #TweetHope should be used to group people around the idea. I started a Facebook page and Twitter page for it, what do you guys think about the ideas and feasibility or expanding its use?

http://TweetHope.us

Thanks

– Abdo

CLEARmen Online Campaign

CLEARmen Online Campaign

Worked on CLEARmen online campaign, the preparations and management took place during the period from mid October 2009 till the end of December 2009. Tasks included website design, database development, members registration, Flash game, different flash Ads and creating social media extension for the campaign (YouTube & Twitter specifically).

Contracted by: Lane-8.

Back on Track – A New Online Phase

Hi All,

I had to start a new phase of my online communication or – in other words – get back to the plan in which this blog and other activities started.

Getting connected to online groups for a long time or investing emotional energy within it proved to be the easiest way to waste your time, value, dignity and emotional energy.

I stood in amazement of the reactions and implications had been directed to me within an online community on Twitter after expressing who am I and even after some agrees to what I said. Giving no reactions to offenses directed to their “brother” but involving in it and making fun of him with whatever way possible; could never be an acceptable behavior – at least not for me.

While the internet provides a valuable platform to initiate valuable friendships and build interesting communities, its tools give a wide spectrum of possibilities to cover behind it and stab people from behind in an extremely unethical way and still – no one will know, we’re just having fun!

Seeing how a tiny situation can expose the substance of some people, was extremely clear to me the last few days. I must always remember the talk I had with Adel Nada about classifications of ethics: essential ethics, social ethics and religious ethics and how evaluating our relationships with people should be based on the understanding of the difference between them. Lived it and saw it in absolute details!

Religious ethics is presenting ourselves as religious individuals using some phrases, expressions and models of behavior that’s known within a community to express a religious belief/belonging/habits. Just like using “alhamdulillah”, “God bless you brother”, “Pray for me” and such.

How easily could such patterns of behavior be faked? Or not faked, but not to be a true expression of who that person truly is. While doubting people’s intentions is a red line should never be crossed at any case, we proceed in our relationships with people according to the behavior we see. Religious ethics is not the basis in which you should build your relationships offline or online.

Social ethics is adhering to the standard, acceptable behavior within a community and care about your “persona” or how you look to people, how you position yourself within a community and accordingly adhering to the community’s behavior, if people are talking about football, how much of a football fan you look, will give you more acceptance within that community.

I remember drafting some thoughts about Gomaa preachers and the idea of how hard they attack some people or pray (Make Doa’ ) against others – make them look so righteous to the audience, I remember a simple man I knew – asking me for my opinion about how great the (Khotba) had been today and how great the sheick giving it, I nodded my head and smiled, avoiding a pointless discussion about how great isn’t a matter of how hard I attack people I don’t know about or present ideas and information that I didn’t verify or even double-checked.

The social ethics that makes you acceptable within a community – isn’t what makes you a good friend or a good person. May be sometimes it’s the absolute opposite.

Looking to the life of prophets including prophet Mohamed PBUH, look how they had been regarded as socially unethical in their corrupt communities.

Even look to prophet Lot – when he expressed his refusal to people’s behavior which had been up to gay sex – they doomed him as socially unethical person! And what they said:

And the answer of his people was no other than that they said: Turn them out of your town, surely they are a people who seek to purify (themselves). [07:82 Holy Qur’an]

So, evaluating your relationships based on how socially ethical the person you’re dealing with; will put you on a great error if the acceptable behavior within that community is unacceptable itself.

But when we come down to essential ethics, it’s the true basis in which we should build our relationships, essential ethics is honesty, straightforwardness, keeping promises never to betray, back-bit, back-stab, deceive or manipulate the person you’re communicating with.

Islamically speaking, does our religion gave an extensive care to religious ethics, ignoring social and essential ethics. Absolutely the opposite.

Prophet said the best of among you in Gahiliah – before Islam – are the best among you in Islam. Why because these people do have the essential ethics very clear so as to altering their religious ethics and social ethics would be an easy process after which their goodness as human beings will keep putting them above those who just took care of their religious ethics.

The holy Qur’an put so much emphasis on the essential ethics saying in Surat Al-Hujraat:

6: O you who believe! if an evil-doer comes to you with a report, look carefully into it, lest you harm a people in ignorance, then be sorry for what you have done.

Meaning: Beautifully saying to verify, ensure and double check the information we get from others to avoid hurting some innocent people and get sorry for believing those who told us afterward.

11: O you who believe! let not (one) people laugh at (another) people perchance they may be better than they, nor let women (laugh) at (other) women, perchance they may be better than they; and do not find fault with your own people nor call one another by nicknames; evil is a bad name after faith, and whoever does not turn, these it is that are the unjust.

12: O you who believe! avoid most of suspicion, for surely suspicion in some cases is a sin, and do not spy nor let some of you backbite others. Does one of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? But you abhor it; and be careful of (your duty to) Allah, surely Allah is Oft-returning (to mercy), Merciful. [49:12 Holy Qur’an]

In this single chapter of the holy Qur’an emphasis had been put of on behavior within interpersonal relationships, that makes what we labeled as essential ethics in this post.

That had been the logic behind me leaving the online community I was happily sharing with throughout the last 3 months, starting from the #MuslimUnity campaign (Link: https://www.abdomagdy.com/unity ) and relying on them as a support group afterward, sharing personal information, worries and goals and supporting anyone might need help.

To be continued …

Sharing: https://www.abdomagdy.com/47smkv

Reaching Out – Online Networking

Hi Everyone,

This is a speech I delivered at Cairo ToastMasters club June, 23. The speech title had been “reaching out” and it was my 3rd speech at the competent communicator track, where the speech’s objective is “get to the point”.

So getting to the point here, the general purpose of the speech had been to make the audience aware of the fundamentals of networking and internet marketing. The specific purpose was to encourage the audience to effectively utilize social networks in their daily life, whether for expressing their political opinions, marketing their businesses or positioning themselves as competent professionals in their fields.

Notice that writing for a speech is different that writing an article and the style – in my case – is going according to the requirements in the project’s manual.

Introduction

Since the beginning of mankind and formation of communities, people were seeking to reach out to others. The criteria that made some people more powerful than the rest was their ability to reach out to the public and spread their ideas, winning people’s trust and taking the lead in forming the identity of their communities.

No one can deny that the internet is the largest community ever known to mankind, and these principles does apply to the internet. Let’s take a look to some practical incidents that recently proved that. The Iranian elections, wasn’t the protests first reported on Twitter before even the mainstream media know about it.

War on Gaza, when the Israeli Army denied the western media from entering Gaza during the massacres, wasn’t these massacres reported Live! on YouTube, Facebook and other social networks? Not getting so far away from Egypt, the 6th of April movement in Egypt, wasn’t it started on Facebook and created one of the most politically striking movements by the Egyptian youth?

Let me tell you something very recent and I attended it myself, the white house was managing a chat room using Acrobat Connect with average 400 participant during Obama’s speech in Cairo, and that chat room was marketed via Facebook Ads. Plus, during the speech if you were on YouTube, you’d notice that upper banner with a link to the Live! speech.

Let’s see how sxephil a 23 years old guy, was able to have more than 400,000 subscribers on YouTube, and how his content usually reach more than 1 Million viewer per week. Also, through the internet people build their full time freelancing career, and ecommerce businesses is being started everyday.

All these incidents and more prove the importance of the internet as an effective marketing tool, and does prove to us that the investment that we’ll make to explore how to effectively utilize social media for spreading our ideas is really worthy.

We’ll go through 4 main steps we should all do in order to effectively use social media to achieve our goals:

Be There

Being on social networks is free, quick and easy. Creating an account in the networks that’s relevant to the one’s interests is the first step for anyone planning to effectively utilize the power of the internet to pursue his/her goals.

Participate

Joining doesn’t mean a lot, if you’re not planning to participate with quality content that’s relevant to your network’s interests. Since you’re there it’s an investment of time and effort you put to produce quality content, from your own ideas and inspirations.

As content is king; the quality of your content will determine how far you’ll reach within the community.

Engage

Producing your own content, will usually result in being anxious for people to read and interact with your content. That might result in spamming people with content they’re not interested in. So the solution to that is to engage with the community, read their content and interact, your content will be most likely to be noticed.

Example of that, is replying to a popular YouTube video with a relevant reply, commenting on Facebook status messages .etc

Personalize

People will always be touched by genuine individuals and content, so going all the way to marketing might result in being impersonal in communication, while in actuality, you’re supposed to maintain a personal touch in all your content and interactions as people either buy or get convinced by people who they have some kind of emotioal connection with.

Conclusion

The internet provides a valuable framework, if smartly utilized, it can enormously help you achieve your personal, professional or business goals.

Thanks everyone and happy networking.

– Abdo

Sharing Link: https://www.abdomagdy.com/pphpg8