Instagram algorithms have been updated, and now, posting time has become very important because your content needs to receive engagement in the first few hours to be featured.

As content preferences have changed, engagement with video content and live streaming has drastically grown, and non-video content performance is continuously declining. This has encouraged brands to be more creative and to produce more engaging content.

With the constant evolving of social media, as a brand, it is critical to stay up to date with the changes in the digital world trends, to ensure marketing is done right and you are reaching your target audience.

FinTech (a portmanteau of ‘financial technology’) is surging ahead in the Middle East, and Bahrain is set to become the centre of this innovation within the next few years with the launch of Bahrain FinTech Bay in the Arcapita Building.

Far from the Terminator-esque foreshadowing of the future, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is paving the way for automation and customer service in a multitude of industries. According to a report from Narrative Science, around 38% of companies surveyed used artificial intelligence in 2016, but this is set to increase to 62% by this year.

Globally, over 95% of businesses are small to medium enterprises (SME’s) and they are often the ones responsible for pushing for innovation and creating competition in many economic sectors. In the Middle East you’re more likely to be working for or with these kinds of enterprises, so knowing how to use social media effectively is invaluable.

In the Gulf region, in particularly in Bahrain, one of the most popular social media marketing avenues for businesses to take nowadays is influencer collaborations. Some influencers have upwards of a million followers, but increasingly in 2018, micro-influencers, with far smaller audiences, are becoming the real game-changers.

The psychology of colours in marketing has long been harnessed by designers to improve the appeal of brands. For millennials, an appearance-driven generation, colour can be a powerful motivator. The difficulty with today’s discussion on colour in advertising is that it relies heavily on anecdotal evidence, so we should take certain colour ‘facts’ with a pinch of salt.

Arab millennials have become the majority of the MENA region’s consumer base, increasingly taking on leadership positions. With this generation gearing up to take charge of the future, we’ve decided to take a look at the anatomy of an Arab millennial, and how they differ from their global counterparts.

Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter are essential tools for use in the challenge to market your brand effectively to millennials. With the oversaturation of advertising in the digital world, however, it’s no longer enough to simply post a photo and #goodvibes.