Today I’ll be going to HummingTree (a coworking space for creatives in Jeddah) to speak to someone from Growth Velocity Academy, an organization that helps people up their visibility on social media.
Let’s see how it goes!
Update:
So I met Omar Labdedi, a British-Syrian, and we had an interesting chat about social media, art and digital marketing. He was extremely knowledgeable when it came to leveraging the digital environment to become an influencer or to kickstart your business. Growth Velocity Academy generally operate out of London but, with the changing landscape of Jeddah, they thought to host bootcamps for rising entrepreneurs here.
In his view, promotions to acquire more followers was essentially a ‘vanity metric’. Paying to promote and engage followers only made real sense if there was a low cost per lead and they contributed to the bottomline.
He introduced me to the online gallery TheUnitLondon which I will explore further in a few days. Apparently they revolutionized the presentation of online art in London. There was also mention of the affordable art fair, so must look that up.
He mentioned Facebook Pixel, a handy downloadable software most websites harbor which detects you once you click a Facebook ad and access a website. Thereafter, the webpage can follow you around on the internet, sharing the correct ads. Which explains ALOT about why we keep seeing ads relevant to our needs.
According to him, to market yourself successfully on digital platforms one must have a good know-how of:
- SEM – Search Engine Marketing
- SEO – Search Engine Optimization
- Understanding of G0ogle/Facebook analytics
- Content marketing on various websites (Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin)
- Repurposing content into podcasts, vlogs, blogs etc to minimize work and maximize exposure
He recommended the book, “The Earth is Hiring” by Peta Kelly which talks about the ‘bullshit detector’ millennial possess, perhaps because of the amount of information they are bombarded with. So yes, authenticity, the P for product in marketing, is a crucial beginning.