based American novelist who writes on Muslim themes, uses her fan page on Facebook for communicating with fans and interested readers. In just a month, her fan based on the celebrated social networking site boasts of over 760 fans. Like many others increasingly using social networking Web sites to reach marketing goals, Zakiyyah has also jumped the social media bandwagon, and in an interview with the Saudi Gazette, she claims to have achieved tangible results in terms of sales. “I market my books through sending periodic updates of interviews and events, as well as inviting people I know personally to join the page. My use of these networking tools as marketing tools has definitely resulted in actual sales, as my book sales have more than doubled since I began using it,” Zakiyyah said. Social networking Web sites are increasingly being regarded as having the potential to bring merchandise into a social environment in cyberspace. Having being around for a while now, these sites have evolved beyond being used by people just for sharing their random musings, students sharing their classroom gossip, sharing photos, or sending each other virtual gifts. These are now playing an effective role in various companies' – from global powerhouses to home-grown businesses - marketing mix. Social media marketing is not just limited to buying ads and advertising through them. These sites can also be used for conducting market researches through polls. The trend definitely seems to be complementing the scope of e-commerce in the Kingdom. Recently, a survey conducted by a website dedicated to stock market news showed that e-commerce is experiencing a definite boom in the Kingdom. The survey revealed that Internet users in the Kingdom spent more than $3.24 billion through e-commerce in 2008, and that more than 3.5 million people in Saudi Arabia make purchases via the Internet - a number representing 14.26 percent of the Kingdom's population. “Saudi Arabia, like America, is increasingly becoming a multi-cultural, multi-lingual society that is challenged with meeting the needs and desires of a variety of consumers from an array of countries and backgrounds. Through social marketing this challenge can be met. By directly interacting with customers, Saudi businesses will naturally become more sensitive to the needs and desires of customers,” said Zakiyyah, whose Facebook fan page was originally opened by a fan of her novels who invited her to become the ‘administrator' of the fan page. “Facebook offers a wealth of opportunity in the marketing industry by allowing both formal and informal solicitation of goods and services with little to no costs monetarily. For example, a person, group, or industry can open a Facebook group or fan page free of cost. The page administrators can then invite friends to join and those friends can ask other friends to join and so on. Periodically, the administrators can send out updates to members or fans. In this way, online marketing is free of charge and non-intrusive (unlike Spam e-mails),” Zakiyyah explained. The ‘personal contact' one can make with potential customers on these sites is one of the key features she said helps in ‘personifying' an otherwise ‘elusive image' that many authors and business personalities have. “Through online communication, I was no longer merely ‘Umm Zakiyyah', the name printed on the covers of my books; I became a real-life person with whom readers could communicate their feedback on current books and suggestions for future books,” she said, adding that traditional marketing tools such as magazines or newspaper ads lack, if not honesty, objectivity. “Every person who sees the ad knows that the company paid a large sum of money for it and is naturally biased towards their product.” Intisar Ammar, a netpreneur and an internet marketing consultant, uses Wordpress Blog for her Internet marketing business, Twitter exclusively for marketing purposes, a Facebook group to test-market her business and Youtube. “Youtube is your very own free infomercial on the World Wide Web. If you want to promote or market, Youtube it! After you have Youtub-ed it, make a blog about your Youtube video, ‘tweet' it (on Twitter), and link to it on Facebook. After that you have placed your business on auto-pilot,” she said, during an interview with Saudi Gazette. However, when it comes to results, Ammar is not so sure. “With blogging I can track my hits, but I have no way of knowing how many people who viewed my blog have actually joined my business. And so is the case with Twitter and Facebook,” she said. International networking and marketing Ammar opines that since almost every home has the Internet and that English is being introduced to Saudi society “like never before”, the English-speaking world should take note and have marketing campaigns that include Saudi Arabia. Al-Qur'an Wa As-Sunnah Society, also known as Albaseerah, is a New-York based Islamic Da'wah and educational organization that uses social networking Web sites such as, Facebook, Youtube, Google groups, Yahoo groups, Paltalk and basic email for marketing purposes. They also hope to use Muxlim.com, MySpace and Twitter as marketing tools. “Our goal is to provide easy access to authentic Islamic information and connect people to the scholars. Everyone is caught in the “net” of technology therefore it is imperative to dive in as well to give them access to this beneficial knowledge. While focusing on those residing in the land of the non-Muslims, our efforts also extend to those worldwide,” said Umm Mujaab, the senior moderator of Albaseerah.org. But do fans convert into sales? “We are able to convert members into active students seeking authentic knowledge. The cost of our Online Intensive Courses is only $30 and this helps us provide the best materials and service for our students,” said Mujaab. However, like everything else, marketing through social media comes with its own glitches. “The success depends heavily on a person taking the initiative to join the network and actively participate in it. This initiative-based marketing creates problems both practically and economically. Practically, marketing success depends heavily on reaching people unexpectedly. Economically, initiative-based marketing causes problems due to lack of vast exposure; naturally, consumers buy what they are most familiar with,” Zakiyyah continued, “Traditional marketing, thus, is more spontaneous than social networking. Moreover, all products do not lend themselves easily to success in social networking. Some products' success is based almost entirely on image and name recognition,” Zakiyyah explained. However, Mujaab thinks one advantage of Internet advertising is that Internet users are naturally segregated into categories “making it easy to aim and hit your targets”. She said the behavior patterns and needs of the people are more easily seen and responded to via internet.
