ICT Business Connect - A Disappointment

After the excellent ICT Media Connect, I found the ICT E-Marketing conference a bit of a disappointment.

In the Keynote address, the speaker, who was supposed to be promoting the concept of e-marketing to the audience, failed to mention:

• Google/Yahoo advertising
• You Tube
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Qatar Living
• Any other form of social media/bookmarking
• Search Engine Optimisation

The main point of his address urged businessmen to set up a website, without any information on how to promote a website, and then cautioned them that they would be unlikely to get many visitors without promotion. However, no information was given about how to promote a website.

It was interesting that they mentioned our site Qatcom, although they said you could only find minimal details on the site.

Again they did not mention our interactive map, enabling businesses to show customers their exact location. They did not mention our power pages, company profile, website links, email marketing or any of our other services.

They obviously have no idea about the thousands of hits we get - or that 70% of those hits results in the user connecting with a business.

The reason for the conference, and for the negative feedback on our service, was to market a business directory. How disappointing that they could not provide other information on e-marketing other than listing on their own business directory.