Despite the presence of many applicable ideas amongst the entrepreneurs’ society, the biggest obsession, after financing, is considered to be the extent of its suitability with the legislative environment in Jordan, which guarantees the continuity of projects to grow and join the league of successful companies.

In order to preserve the Kingdom’s achievements in the fields of entrepreneurship and developing nascent companies, particularly after Jordan acquired the tenth position internationally for the best cities to establish technological companies, we need to provide an environment that is more suitable for entrepreneurship in the information and communications technology sector.  This includes:

First:  Financing.  It is necessary to find channels and alternatives for financing nascent companies in Jordan, support venture capital funds, and provide incentives to attract regional investment funds.

Second:  Partnership between the private and public sectors.  His Majesty King Abdullah II emphasized, during the inauguration of  the “Nijm” building, that the partnership between the private and public sectors in Jordan is exceptional in the field of information and communication technology, and provides support to entrepreneurial ideas to change it into an actual reality.

Furthermore, the partnership between the two sectors is considered among the most important solutions for the local government’s receding spending on information technology, in such a way that technology becomes an incentive for the national economy through moving the wheels of specific sectors, such as health, education, industry, and others.

Third:  Activate the Electronic government.  The effect of electronic government services is still intangible to a large extent for Jordanians, whereby this impact has not transcended procedures inside the official establishments, or providing electronic services requests, but without the ability to complete all procedures.  The funding factor remains discouraging in completing the electronic government’s projects, which takes us back to the possibility of completing them through a partnership between the private and public sectors.

Fourth:  Enhance exports by the services sector.  It is possible overtake the Jordanian market’s limitations, but this requires developing work which targets the Arab and international region’s markets.  It is necessary to develop markets which motivate Jordanian exports in this field to neighboring markets through activating the promotion of the information and communication sector products and services.

Fifth:  Develop Jordan’s attraction for internal and external investments in the information and communication sector through reducing obstacles facing businesses and challenges facing sector employees in the local market first, and then moving to attracting additional investments in the sector.

Sixth:  Establish legislations and activate consultations with the private sector, by ending the paradigm of laws related to the information and communication technology, particularly as related to the communications law whose draft is still on the dialogue table between the government and the companies, to accommodate the public policy of the sector which was recently approved, in addition to the need to complete the third national strategy of the sector, concentrating on entrepreneurship, nascent companies, and encouraging venture capital, which covers the years 2013 to 2017, and is based on increasing investment and employment.

Social media networks have recently been seeing increasing numbers of Jordanian users. These networks have become an integral part of the life of many citizens, particularly the youth. This allows for direct and indirect opportunities to provide services or applications that target the users of such websites through entrepreneurial projects.

Social media networks have become a society in its own right and are gaining great importance that goes beyond users’ communication with one another. They have become an important source of news, which forced the media outlets to strengthen their presence on such networks, while companies found a new outreach tool to strengthen their relations with their clients.

These networks were not spared the involvement of politics in this new virtual world. They became the alternative to political pamphlets that had been omnipresent in the past, establishing private areas for the expression of opinions of a certain group. They have even exceeded that, as we see election candidates in many countries racing to find voters through Facebook and Twitter.

International figures revealed the increasing number of users of social media networks in Jordan, constituting 65% of the total number of internet users.

According to SocialBakers, a website that measures social media networks, the number of Facebook accounts exceeded 2.6 million users, placing Jordan in the 57th rank worldwide.

These figures reveal stable numbers for subscribers according to gender. Males registered 58%, while 42% were females. Meanwhile, users are mostly within the age group of 16-34 years, constituting 77% of the total number of users in Jordan.

As such, there are many opportunities for entrepreneurs to take advantage of social media networks, in terms of marketing their companies or products or offering services and applications that target the users of social media networks, which constitute a large part of internet users in the Kingdom.

According to press remarks by social media networks’ expert, Khaled Al-Ahmad, the social media networks help develop businesses, create jobs, and establish businesses that rely on consultative projects or nascent technology.

He said that many of the nascent companies and entrepreneurs in Jordan and outside of Jordan have established simple businesses in the area of providing consulting services and implementing strategies to deal with the outreach networks from a marketing and advertising perspective and to communicate with clients. This means that these networks have opened the door for creating job opportunities and new projects. These networks have also provided opportunities for their users to look for jobs and present their capabilities and skills to companies or specialists looking for employees. This is in addition to enabling users in a specific professional field in terms of establishing internal groups and networks within Facebook, which allows them to develop their businesses and benefit from one another.

Al-Ahmad said that “investing in social media networks, given their speed and their ability to network and overcome geographic barriers, will increase the user’s productivity and effectiveness in his business.”

The most famous social media networks include Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.

The online games industry has become an international phenomenon, with an estimated value of tens of billions of dollars.  It is no longer used exclusively for entertainment and enjoyment, but has rather assumed a major role in education, health, and other fields.

In Jordan, this industry started to take on a new role, with local companies excelling in this field.  This has made some young entrepreneurs give more attention to it, considering it a real business and not just an area of entertainment and recreation.

The main factors of the communication and information technology sector contribute to attracting the industry to Jordan, where communication and internet services are available with high speed and large capacity, let alone the available supporting services related to the sector, and the spread of smart phones and tablets.

A specialized study of the reality of online games’ use in the Arab region reveals that the average growth rate of digital online games in the Middle East region reached 46.6%, and that the number of search hits on the word "games" on the Google search engine in Saudi Arabia alone reached 24 million monthly.

The study, revealed by Discover Digital Arabia, a specialized company in Arab technical statistics, also showed in another study published on the same website, that the percentage of online game users in Jordan reached 46% of the total number of internet users, while it registered 65% of the total number of internet users in Saudi Arabia and 56% in Egypt.

Statistics concluded by the Arab Advisors Group show that the number of users of Arab games on Facebook reached nearly 3 million users, while the number of group internet games available in Arabic increased since the games were launched in Arabic in September 2007, registering 135 games by the end of 2011.  This figure includes 95 group games and 40 social games available in Arabic on Facebook.

The number of Jordanian companies operating in the field of electronic games on cellular phones (mobile gaming) and internet (online gaming) amounted to more than 30 companies, grouped under the umbrella of the Jordan Electronic Games Industry League, which operates under the umbrella of the Information and Communication Technology Companies Association "INTAJ," supported by the King Abdullah II Development Fund.

The League aims at building a strong base in this industry at the local, regional, and international levels, developing the capacities of the Jordanian electronic games industry, and developing group games that can be accessed at any time or place, and in many languages, with an ease of use from the technological point of view.  The League also aims at Arabizing electronic games and connecting them to the local nature of players and their preferences, in addition to managing the local infrastructure, which increases the empowerment of the electronic games industry, including payment methods, Arabization and customer service.

According to press statements by the League, the Jordanian environment is considered attractive, and a fertile ground for the establishment of a base to develop this industry in the Kingdom, in order to utilize the increasing demand for its products on the local, regional and international levels.

International studies indicate that the electronic games industry, in all its fields and types around the world, records between 70 and 80 billion dollars this year, with the mobile gaming industry expected to reach 12 billion dollars internationally, while online gaming is expected to reach about 15 billion dollars, and video gaming about 20 billion dollars, with the balance being on other media known as console gaming, amounting to 30 billion dollars.

The industry of mobile apps is experiencing increasing growth in the IT sector.  It has created new markets and opportunities for sector employees locally and internationally, especially that official figures show an increase in the numbers of mobile broadband internet subscriptions, registering 63% of the total number of subscriptions.

The spread of internet and smart phones are considered the major factors that instigate the spread of smart systems’ applications.  Locally, studies show that the rate of smart mobile systems’ spread has exceeded 45%, while the spread of internet in the Kingdom exceeded 63% with a user-base of more than 4 million users, with 875,000 subscriptions, of which 557,000 are through mobile broadband.

These figures represent an indication of the Jordanian market’s trends to increase dependence on mobile internet, known in the local market as 3G (third generation), which provides speeds reaching 42 megabytes per second at affordable prices, which requires communications companies and service providers to develop their services to accommodate market trends and requirements by providing services through smart phones.

The birth of the applications industry is attractive to entrepreneurs, providing products and applications that support the Arabic language and serve Arab users through locally produced programs.

According to a recently published study by the international Gartner Institute, the volume of apps downloaded from various international smart phone app stores in 2012 is estimated at 45.6 billion apps, which is equivalent to downloading 1500 apps every second, or an 83% increase over 2011.  The number of applications downloaded amounted to 25 billion applications.

Ziad Al-Masri, partner and marketing manager of Mays Al-Ward Company for electronic gaming content, believes that the smart phones apps industry is a new arena for entrepreneurs, allowing them to delve into adventure, to break new grounds and build their own projects.

He added that the trend to download and use smart phone apps is attributed, in essence, to two main factors.  The first is the large and increasing spread of smart phones, and the availability of broadband networks, like 3G and 4G, which allowed the development of applications that match this development, thus providing a richer and more diverse content through these applications.  As for users, their desire to download and use applications is attributed to their desire to obtain and share information.  He pointed out examples, including social network communications apps, international correspondence and telephoning apps, other apps that connect users to news websites and satellite channels, and other apps for sports, recreation and entertainment, education, and even health.

He added that among the most famous smart phone apps stores that provide applications to smart phone subscribers around the world is Apple Store for Apple Phones, AppWorld for Blackberry Phones, Android Marketplace for many companies and phones, including Samsung, Motorola and others, Ovi Nokia, Microsoft Market.

A study published by the Arab Advisors Group, a specialized company in the communications sector shows that 61% of total smart phones user in Jordan use its applications.

“Internet” was the ‘word’ everyone was talking about during the early years of 2000. It was new, fresh, fun and interesting to deal with. In addition to this, a new concept called ‘social media‘ emerged in the year 2006. Initially there were few popular social media sites like FaceBook, Twitter, Orkut and LinkedIn. However, sites like FourSquare, Pinterest, Tumblr and Burpp recently joined the limelight. In spite of a very tough competition, Facebook managed to retain its position as the most preferred site for social networking.

What is so special about Facebook?

Facebook’s marketing strategy was unique in attracting the younger generation through social networking, games, video and photo sharing. Having a Facebook account is becoming a social status among friends and relatives. Facebook initially started with the intention of social networking with friends. Now it is turning into a source of market place for advertising and marketing. Businesses use Facebook to advertise about a company’s product and/or to increase the sales turnover. With millions of users in Facebook and with rapidly growing new users, the ads display percentage of Facebook has far exceeded the share of display of Google, with factor of cost per click.

The customer base of Facebook – a boon to businesses and startups!

FaceBook is now having around 800 million customers and is a Gold mine for the companies to place ads and thereby increase their sales turnover. Facebook has retained its top position among the other social networking sites and had the business community use its fantastic marketing opportunities. Most of the companies have started using the network, as it is easy to use and a good marketplace to start any business campaign. One good reason for using ads in Facebook is that companies have found that while the customer base increases, their cost of e-mail marketing and print media marketing becomes almost ZERO, which means more profit and less expenses for the company.

Helpful tips about using Facebook for your business!

• It is not that business will automatically just bloom once advertised in Facebook, but it is the care one takes before actually placing ads and that eventually will bring in more customers.
• A lot of thinking has to go into selecting target groups/audience to whom your ad will appeal and into the content of the ad.
• Follow the rules & regulations of Facebook very strictly in order to get the best results.
• While posting, an image with full resolution will give the desired effect.
• As a word of caution, instead of boasting what the company can do for the customers, try to project a solution to the existing / prospective customer and it will go a long way in bonding with your customers.

Will a Facebook page help to kick-start my startup?

The answer is a definite YES. Creating a Facebook page is a free form of advertising and an incredible way of increasing your fan base. It is applicable for both startups and for established businesses. Below are few steps of creating your own Facebook page.

Step1: Create a valid Facebook account with correct credentials
Step2: Create a Page and upload the cover photo. Keep it simple, yet attractive
Step3: Give a name to your page and write a few lines in the specified area for “Description”
Step4: give daily status updates, upload photos/videos, invite people on Facebook, and request them to hit the LIKE button
Step5: Manage comments, likes and be active on the page
Step6: Respond to any query that your fans might have and manage the page

An impeccable tool to measure Facebook page effectiveness

“Facebook Insights” help a business owner keep track of page analytics describing page traffic volume, number of page views, number of likes, external references, number of shares and the demographic profile of your fans. Almost everyone believes that Facebook Pages and campaigns are all about posting content. However, it is the other way around. Social Media in general is about managing content and engaging your fans, customers and prospects actively.

Startups and businesses can measure the following using Facebook Insights.

• Footfall traffic
• Maximum reach
• How many engaged users?
• How many taking about your product/service?
• Percentage of virality

It is equally important to manage the content online and respond promptly to queries/comments of your fans. It helps you to actively engage in a conversation with them and promote your product/service with ease.

Significance of creating Facebook Apps and LIKE buttons. An innovative way to promote your business

Facebook is playing a very vital role in lifting up the market share of many small companies. When someone likes your page, their activity shows up in their friends’ news feed, which gives your business visibility without having to spend a dime.

Facebook Apps are also a great way for your business to gain visibility. The more your app gets, the more business you get.

Go Viral!

Respond to your customer’s queries, create questions and polls, conduct a quiz or do any activity, which will just increase your product’s familiarity online. Prior to embarking on the fabulous ride to Facebook, do remember to define your business needs, goals, target audience, and facebook strategy.

Top 5 reasons to use Facebook!

• To acquire new customers and build a strong customer base online
• To let your customers engage and actively participate in events you host
• To create brand awareness and sustain a decent market share
• To monitor brand performance
• To inspire the younger generation and go viral

Simply put, Facebook is your one-stop destination to grow your audience and engage it.

Last but not least, as a startup owner, keep in mind that you might get negative reactions from time to time so don’t let that put you down. the internet is an open platform and everyone is now used to expressing their thoughts and feelings without restriction. Learn to make use of constructive criticism and to ignore negative, vandalizing behavior.

Increases in broadband penetration provide a fertile environment for the establishment of digital content and e-commerce companies and guarantee the creation of thousands of job opportunities

High-speed broadband Internet – whether mobile or cable – is no longer a luxury or an extravagant service. It has become a part of the daily lives of individuals, corporations, and institutions.

This 40 year old service has been one of the most influential and world-changing inventions of history, and it is no longer looked at as a supplementary cost by individuals, businesses, governments, and other organizations. On the contrary, global and local experts alike confirm the positive relationship between broadband services and economic development in establishing new projects that generate various direct and indirect job opportunities.

Experts believe that Internet penetration in developing countries is considered a significant element of development in these countries and a driver of economic progress. They also believe high-speed broadband networks have become a crucial infrastructural asset across all economic sectors. Broadband Internet is especially important for companies in industries with a heavy focus on digital content, applications, e-commerce and government transaction projects.

In a report issued last year, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) pointed out the significant and positive economic effect for the dissemination of high-speed Broadband Internet all over the world, especially in supporting different economic sectors, energizing the economy and increasing job opportunities and consequently the GDP of countries’ economies.

According to an ITU report the impact of broadband is positive on creating job opportunities It is estimated that an increase in its penetration of 1% would generate 5.32% more jobs. However, researchers believe that the greatest increase in job opportunities due to broadband’s penetration would be in the service sectors, mainly finance, education and health among others.

The Union stated that investment in broadband Internet is increasing constantly in all markets throughout the world, presenting examples such as the United States which invested more than $97.7 billion in broadband penetration in the period between 2004 -2010.

It also pointed out that since 2009, Chinese companies invested $7.44 billion in broadband while the Malaysian operators invested $1.6 billion.

According to the Union’s report, a number of the developed countries are working on promoting broadband as part of the economic recovery to ensure the spread of Internet networks and to stimulate job growth.

Moreover, international figures show that the percentage of the Internet’s penetration around the world surpassed 34% at the end of last year with estimated 2.4 billion users; 100 million out of them are located in the Arab world. Similarly, the local figures show an increase in the number of the Internet users to 4 million users by the end of last year.

Additionally, the ITU expects high-speed broadband penetration growth all around the world, estimating that that penetration will increase to 60% globally by the year 2015 (after two years).

In its latest report, issued last year, entitled “Measuring the Information Society 2012″, the Union added that reaching this percentage of Internet penetration around the world requires Internet penetration of 50% in developing countries and 15% in the least developed countries by the year 2015; these are the areas with the lowest percentage of Internet penetration.

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, chairman of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization, has told the Al Ghad newspaper earlier last year that information technology and the Internet will lead the global economy in the coming era with the introduction of these technologies in all economic sectors. Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh also stated that “digitalism” will be the “nervous system” of the global economy of the future.

Abu-Ghazaleh told Al Ghad that no one expected this leap and evolution in the Internet network and the succeeding development in the services, locations and related devices and equipment saying that the near and distant future will bring about more development in this field with the merging and introduction of digitalism and information technology and the Internet.

“I believe that digitalism will be similar to the nervous system for economies and societies as we will be controlling things through digital means, and we will learn and trade by depending on its solutions and its different systems. We will communicate, write, inform and search for information and news through multi-digital systems and the Internet. In brief, we will do everything and deal with individuals and things through the Internet and through digital methods.”

He added “In this context, we can call the user the term ‘Knowledge Human’ as an expression of the individual or human being who operates all aspects of his life through a convergence of digital means and technologies.”

Commenting on the sector’s trends and tendencies, Abu-Ghazaleh said that telecommunications services are moving towards mobility and the age of fixed telecommunications is coming to an end. This will be witnessed in the future presenting users with more ease and flexibility their daily lives. In another word, it will keep them in constant contact with their work, acquaintances, the external world and the search for information.”

In addition to mergers, Abu-Ghazaleh believes that “we will reach a time in the future where most of the telecommunication services would be free of charge and high-speed broadband – and I am talking here about really high speeds – and this will be a primary right for humans in their societies or countries.”

“I know what was earlier mentioned seems to be about talking of a different world, yet, I truly believe that some of these things have started to emerge,” Abu-Ghazaleh concluded.

For his part, CEO of Information Technology Association of Jordan (Int@j) Abed Shamlawi reiterated the importance of disseminating the broadband services on the economy.

“Internet has become an essential tool for economic development and the service is increasingly growing in Jordan and the region, as it’s currently considered one of the fastest growing regions worldwide,” he said.

“Competition in the communications and Internet sector in particular has tremendously contributed to the rise of these services in addition to the rise of smartphones. I believe that the percentage of the Internet penetration in the Kingdom is acceptable.” However, he underlined the significance of the need to thoroughly and appropriately utilize this service in all the economic sectors to boost its productivity and efficiency and for faster performance with lower expenses.”

He noted that broadband networks are the most important infrastructure to support entrepreneurship in areas such as e-content projects, e-commerce, finance, banking and governmental transactions. These are the fields,which will not only develop the status of their sectors but also create additional job opportunities.

He stated that many entrepreneurial projects in this sector are prospering due to broadband Internet. These are enabled and accelerated by technologies like social networks and smartphone applications that did not exist ten years ago.

Shamlawi expected that the coming years will witness more pioneering ideas and projects in the services sector that offer content and services, based on broadband Internet. He called for looking for new ideas to employ information technology to serve sectors such as health and education, which he believes will open the door for the development of technical projects based on unique and new ideas that meet the daily demands of the users.

Shamlawi also stated that there are big opportunities awaiting the e-commerce sector in the region with the penetration of the Internet, something, which according to Shamlawi will stimulate other sectors associated with trade and consequently generate thousands of job opportunities in the future.

Meanwhile, Ala Alsallal, Founder and CEO of jamalon.com– which is one of the entrepreneurial companies that benefited from the Oasis 500 fund that supports such projects in the ICT field, said he believes that increases in Internet penetration have encouraged him to turn his idea into a pioneering project on the Internet that seeks to create the largest e-store to sell Arabic books in the region and to become the “Amazon” of the Arabic region.

He revealed that his idea existed in 2008; however, work started in 2010 when he officially launched his website. “The increasing growth of the Internet in the Kingdom and the Arab region along with the changes in the local ICT sector and the acceptance of the Internet users and the willingness of investors to invest in internet-based projects encouraged me to start my own project,” Alsallal noted.

“It’s inappropriate to establish a project similar to international projects in your local environment and Arab society mainly as our societies haven’t yet benefited from the Internet as much as they could or from the economic and commercial applications of cyberspace in comparison to the west where e-commerce constitutes around one third of its economies.” He concluded by saying that foreign ideas in this regard or any other context should be adapted to the context of the Arab world and the local community.

The international statistics reveal that Africa and the Middle East, where most of the Arab countries are located, were the fastest growing parts of the world in terms of Internet usage. Africa ranked first among all other continents and regions in a special indicator for the growth in using the Internet in the period (2000-2011) with a growth percentage that reached 2527%. The Middle East region ranked second with a percentage that reached 1987% in the last decade.

For almost all startups and businesses, Twitter is an essential free marketing tool. A marketing tool that, if used correctly, will become a crucial asset in lead generation, brand visibility, and customer engagement.

I would urge any business to see how many of their competitors are using Twitter immediately. If the answer is a few of them, or all of them, I would suggest using Twitter to gain your share of the Twitter market.

If the answer is none of them, congratulations, you are immediately the market leader in the ‘Twittersphere’ in your field. But only if you use Twitter correctly!

But how do you use Twitter Correctly?

Well here are a few tips that will get you started.

First of all you have to understand the language of Twitter, then the correct way to start tweeting, then finally, how to build a following!

The Language of Twitter:

As I’m sure you already know, when you address your followers on twitter, it’s called a ‘Tweet’. All Tweets must contain no more than 140 characters. This gives you very limited space to get your message across, so the key to this is succinct, punchy, informative writing. Writing that engages your target audience.

Hashtags

The hash symbol ‘#’ can be used in your tweets to highlight key words for other Twitter users. This is a clever way of highlighting the most important words in your post; hashtagging was designed by Twitter as a way of grouping important search terms.

Still with me? Good! Here’s an example of a tweet with some great hashtagging!

‘I’ve just read a great #Blog about the use of #Twitter for #Businesses’

Notice that I’ve hashtagged three key words. If anybody searches for these words on Twitter, my Tweet will show up higher in the search results than those who haven’t placed hashtags in their tweets that correspond to the same words.

(Please note that the # must be placed right before the keywords that you wish to #highlight with no spaces in between)

Here’s one more example of hashtagging, let’s pretend you’re selling Twitter training courses:

‘We’re offering unique #discount for our #Twitter #training to all our followers’

The most important words are the words you want your tweet to rank with when a user searches! So #Hashtag them!

@ Mentions

Mentions are an important Twitter tool for talking directly to other Twitter users. First you must find the unique Twitter username that you would like to mention (also known as the person’s twitter handle). Let’s say its oasis_500 for instance. If you would like to speak directly to oasis_500 you simply add a ‘@’ sign before this username when you tweet.

For Example:

‘@oasis_500 thanks for following me, hope you have a busy and prosperous week!’

The ‘@’ sign before oasis_500 name means that as soon as you publish this tweet, he will receive a notification informing him that he has been mentioned on Twitter.

If you’re a business/startup and you want to highlight your latest success or blog-post to a journalist or a publication, I would suggest @mentioning them in your tweets. Journalists are constantly taking to Twitter for leads these days, as it’s a real-time social space. Everything is up to the minute!

How Many Tweets, How Often, and What to Say?

Initially I would suggest tweeting once a day maybe three or four days a week. As you build your following, increase the amount of tweets that you publish. However, make sure the content is relevant and engaging to your followers.

Twitter isn’t an advertising platform; it’s a conversation between a global community. Therefore shouting above the rest of the room isn’t going to get you heard, engaging the masses is the key to Twitter success for any business or startup!

If you’re a business, tweet links to news in your industry, new appointments in your team, bloggers in your niche, and retweet your customers. Between these tweets you can thread in information directly related to your products and services, but there is a fine art to keeping the balance.

Just remember to engage, stimulate conversation, and thank anyone that follows or mentions your company.

Building a Following:

To build a following you must work out your audience segmentation (Market Segmentaion) and then find key people to follow within your industry. These may be any of the following:

• Affiliates
• Followers of Affiliates
• Thought Leaders
• Customers
• Competitors
• Journalists
• Publications

Tools to help you

Hootsuite:

Hootsuite is a free tool that can be downloaded online and can be used to schedule your tweets for anytime that suits you. This means you can spend an hour or two at the start of the week scheduling your whole week’s Twitter presence! Perhaps you could brainstorm in the boardroom and let your team have an input in your tweet plan.

Hootsuite also includes analytics to track your tweets, a link shortening service to save room in your 140 characters, keyword tools to help you reach your competitors, and much more.

TweetAdder

TweetAdder costs $55 per year but is well worth investing in if you want to rapidly increase your following. It allows you to follow the followers of key Twitter users automatically, and unfollow them after a day or two if they don’t follow you back. It will save a lot of time compared to manually doing these tasks. TweetAdder has a host of other tools that will help your business master Twitter too.

Twitter will help your business to gain online presence and engage with key audiences, like all Social Media, the key to success is conversation and content.

You’ll get out what you put in, so don’t give up.

WHAT IS MARKET SEGMENTATION?

Market segmentation is dividing your target market into multiple parts so that you can tailor your marketing to address each segment individually. This approach to marketing has been used for many years in print, TV, radio, and now the Internet. Why? Because it works.

B2C OR B2B?

Depending on your desired outcome, there are two areas of market segmentation: consumer and business-to-business. Web entrepreneurs need only to concern themselves with their consumer base unless they’re of the few that serve B2B..

STRUCTURE OF CONSUMER MARKET SEGMENTATION

Overall, there are four categories of consumer market segmentation: Geographic Segmentation, Demographic Segmentation, Psychographic Segmentation, and Behavioral Segmentation. Let’s take a closer look at these:

GEOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION

The geography of your customer’s residence or business plays a huge role in determining the profitability of your products. Therefore, geographic segmentation is crucial to most businesses. Under this geography umbrella, businesses request multiple metrics, such as which country the consumers reside, which city/state within that country, the population of that city/state, and even the climate of that area.

From within the geographic segmentation of a company, you can sometimes “drill down” to serve isolated sub-markets. Note: refrain from developing a segmentation six-shooter attitude. Sometimes a business loses revenue because their business is too segmented to attract a decent amount of loyal customers. This is where the gap between experience and inexperience make or break a business.

A company called Proctor & Gamble is one of the largest household products. Proctor and Gamble divided their products into three segments: Beauty, Health and Well‐Being, and Household Care. Each of the three segments has two or more sub-segments (drill down, sub-segments, and niche segments mean virtually the same thing). P&G took full advantage of those segments by providing real value to each of the niche sub-segments. P&G did that by

building hugely successful brands for their customers. In doing this, they became an extremely stable company and remains so to this day.

DEMOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION

Demographic segmentation divides a company into individual parts by using existing customer information. These segments can include age, gender, income level, occupation, and marital status. Nearly all businesses, especially big businesses, incorporate demographic metrics into their decisions on products, research, and marketing. Age is an important factor in certain businesses. Would you market adult diapers to teenagers? Of course not, the majority of customers who purchase that product are the elderly population (with some exceptions). Segmenting your business via demographics might sound clinical, but it really benefits you and your customers by offering something they need and want. It is just good business.

PSYCHOGRAPHIC (BEHAVIORAL) SEGMENTATION

Psychographic Segmentation divides a business according to customer lifestyles, dreams, desires, and behavior. Surprisingly, even if they lack in other areas, consumers will often follow their hearts when they want something bad enough. This type of consumer is easy to market to, depending on your product. Think about it, some people owe thousands of dollars in back child-support, but have a new luxury car in the driveway. That is psychographics at work, because the overall message from the manufacturer’s marketing is essentially “Do what you want, as long as you are happy, to heck with everyone else.” Of course, that message cannot be delivered on a silver platter to the consumer, only indirectly implied. Luxury car manufacturers are masters of this segmentation.

SEGMENTS USED IN EMAIL MARKETING

If you own an online business, then you would surely know that acquiring, cultivating, and selling to your customers on a regular basis requires the use of an email subscriber list. When you have a couple hundred thousand subscribers, then segmentation will help you get more out of your list. You can use almost all of the segment types and create a hybrid segment unique to your business. The best way to do that is to simply ask them. You can send them an email survey listing a set of questions aimed at the relationship between them and your business. Once you analyze the overall data, you can create new segments, and develop a marketing plan for each one.

THE FUNDAMENTAL STEPS FOR FINDING YOUR IDEAL MARKET SEGMENT

1. Define your “perfect customer.” Write a short report that identifies the characteristics of your ideal customer. As the saying goes, “20% of your customers buy 80% of your volume.” That 20% is what you are after. You can do this using market research; you have the option of doing research yourself or paying a third party to do it for you.
   Working capital may not permit you to heavy research at first; but even a simple email survey can give you valuable information.
2. Narrow your segment prospects to a few ideas only. (i.e. If you sell jewelry, some of your segment ideas might be a) Divorced women under 40 or b) Married men under 40 or c) retired women under 75. This is just hypothetical, but you get the idea.)
3. Develop tailored content or product for each individual segment idea. Do not mix them with one another AT ALL. Treat them each as a separate business entirely. Remember the main objectives are narrow and specific.
4. Market to each one using tailored products or ads.
5. Collect data from your customer base for each of the prospective market segments. Identify leading segments in terms of volume, follow-up sales, upgrades, or whatever proves crucial to your business.
6. Isolate the winning segment. Rinse and repeat using new segment ideas against your current one.
   Like it or not, today’s businesses use cutting-edge technology to determine a plethora of information about their customers. It is only logical to assume that these technologies will grow more and more sophisticated, thus shortening the distance between you and your customer. Netflix, for example, uses liquid technology to allow members to watch their content on a multitude of different devices. Coupled with Netflix’s ability to determine what programs you will like based on previous program choices, played a big role in their rapid growth as a business. To implement any “smart” technology today, segmentation will be at the forefront.

Simply put, the mobile advertising market is still in its infancy, and has brilliant growth prospects. This is exactly why many advertisers are currently planning to venture into this form of advertising. Here are some more reasons why a business should invest in mobile advertising:

• According to a 2012 statistic from Search Engine Land, a news website for search engine marketing, 90% of mobile searches lead to action, and 50% lead to purchase.
• Mobile advertising rates are five times lower than desktop advertising prices.
• According to the 2012 statistics from Google, 60% of all local searches on a mobile phone lead to a phone call.
• According to statistics from StatCounter Inc, smartphone and tablets users together account for more than 10% of the total internet traffic.

So, if you want to promote your business and its offerings, there are sufficient reasons to invest in mobile advertising. But before you take the plunge, here are some important facts and upcoming trends that you should know.

Types of Mobile Advertising

The five major types of mobile advertising currently being used by most advertisers, along with some suggestions and future prospects, are provided below.

• Search advertising – This is a method of displaying ads on web pages that show search results. According to statistics from eMarketer, search advertising accounts for around 50% of the total spending for mobile ads in the US. Statistics from eMarketer also reveal that Google holds a 95% share of the revenues currently being earned via mobile search advertising. Mobile device users are likely to continue using Google Search in 2013 and beyond, and no change is expected in this trend.
• Rich Media and Video ads – This is an advertising technique that uses video, animation, photo galleries and interactive elements. These types of mobile ads create similar effects as TV commercials, and are more expensive than other modes of mobile advertising. Some market leaders in this form of advertising are Apple iAd, Crisp, Medialets and Celtra. Advertisers who want to target a niche market are expected to use these ads for best results.
• Banner Display ads – Banner ads appear on a webpage in many forms, such as texts, images and animation. They are the second most popular type of mobile ads being used today. According to eMarketer estimates, advertisers spent $457.5 million in 2012 for banners display ads. However, according to some experts, the popularity of banners ads may decrease in the coming years. Some banner ads that are displayed along the side of a web page occupy a large percentage of the screen, while others that pop up on the screen often irritate users. Some companies that have a major share of the revenue earned through mobile banner ads include Facebook, Twitter, Google, Pandora and Apple.
• Location-based Advertising – This mobile advertising technique aims to ensure that only location specific ads are displayed on a mobile device. A mobile phone user’s current location is spotted with the use of technology, so that location based ads can be displayed in the user’s mobile device. This type of advertising has been specifically designed for smartphone and tablet users, and has huge growth potential in the context of mobile advertising. Some market leaders for this kind of advertising include JiWire, WHERE and Sense Networks.
• Native Advertising – This is a mobile advertising technique where advertisers can create content specific to the platform on which it will be published. Some popular platforms for native advertising are Facebook and Twitter. This form of mobile advertising is already very popular, and is expected to attract more advertisers in the near future.

Privacy and Legal Concerns

Mobile advertising enables advertisers to tailor their ads to users’ interests. For this, however, advertisers need to collect and manipulate customers’ information, which may raise privacy concerns among some users. An advertiser can collect information in many ways, such as:

• Asking users to fill up ad participation form and provide information
• Collecting demographic information from operating network
• Using technology to spot location of users
• Using tools to gather information about keywords, most visited sites, and other web activity of users

When collecting information using one or more of these techniques, ensure that you don’t infringe privacy laws of your state or region. For best results, keep yourself informed about these laws, or consult with a privacy advocate before you start mobile advertising.

My story started after I had to struggle to run my business in Syria due to the current circumstances. At that point, it was clear to me that I need to start a new business aimed for the Middle East and it was impossible to start in Syria. I started my quest to find the best options out there for entrepreneurs in the region. I have looked at incubators in Lebanon, Dubai and the gulf but unfortunately, I didn’t find one that can cater to all my needs at that point. I was looking for an entity that will assist me in launching a company from scratch and have a whole supportive environment enabling me to leverage my company in a short period of time.

After 2 months of searching and a couple of failed attempts at starting my company with regional incubators, I came to Oasis500 in March of 2012. The first requirement they asked is to attend their training, a pre-requirement for their investment program; something they call a bootcamp. With all the experience I have under belt, I was skeptic that this training was targeted at me, but then and there I decided to enroll, and believe me I realized that I had been living in a different world. They were talking about startups, raising funds, pitching to investors, acceleration programs and many other things that I never practiced or heard of. I took it seriously and wanted to learn everything that was being taught. It was clear that I must learn and execute if I want to get the funding and start my business.

After the bootcamp, we were all asked to prepare a 10 minute pitch, the stage where Oasis500 filters their candidates and selects the top companies to get investments. You might think that doing a 10 minute presentation in-front of investors is easy, after all its only 10 minutes! But after the training, you realize that each and every word you say in your pitch has a major role in securing your round of funding. The day the results came out and I got my investment was one of the best days in my life. They gave me seed fund, the first amount of money that will enable me to achieve milestones to pursue bigger investments from Angel Investors and venture capital funds. They also gave me mentorship from seasoned international entrepreneurs, hands-on coaching from their experts and office space in their high-tech accelerator to start my business. And not just that, they even helped me in arranging for my accommodation!

Now, it’s been 10 months since I joined Oasis500. I have become a totally different person. My company (ShopGo) was able to secure funds from Wamda Ventures and 500 Startups (Silicon Valley), and I have a team of 13 professionals working with me to serve clients from all around the region. Oasis500 introduced me to market leaders: Aramex, Wamda, Zein and many others.

All I can say is that joining Oasis500 has been an exceptional experience in my life. My advice: “If you have a dream, passion, and dedication; join Oasis500 and make an impact in your life.”

Oasis500 partnership program for Syrian entrepreneurs:

We believe in the experience and technological ability of Syrian entrepreneurs, and in order to give them a unique opportunity to start their ICT companies, Oasis500 has initiated a program supporting those entrepreneurs by contributing in the costs of travel, accommodation and training.

This campaign was launched in cooperation with the Mr. Abdulsalam Haykal, It is specifically structured for Syrian entrepreneurs who are looking for an opportunity to create their company or are seeking investment to grow their existing ICT companies.

This is an opportunity that every passionate Syrian entrepreneur should take advantage of. Don’t miss it! Apply Now