The Social Clinic is a social media and business consultancy firm based in Jeddah, supporting brands and organizations, public and private, into defining, developing, and implementing their social media strategies to ultimately becoming success stories on their own.
Arab News sat down with The Social Clinic’s General Manager and Head of Social Business Strategy, Bilal Hallab.
“The Social Clinic was named by my wife actually, I give her all the credit. We were brainstorming one night about the most adequate name, what defines the company, what are the objectives and where do I see it growing in a few years. We came up with “Communicology” which then converted into our strategic methodology and training course. Being a consultancy and not an agency, we diagnose companies, we study brands and we audit organizations and processes before anything. We wanted also to showcase our therapeutic skills. Many Saudi and regional organizations are on social media, but most of them are doing it wrong. They are thinking about channels before thinking strategy, they are thinking about return on investment (ROI) before establishing their key performance indicators (KPIs). These organizations have a presence on social media but most of them need retouching, a bit of therapy. Hence the name “The Social Clinic.” We help brands, on a strategic level, to integrate their social media strategy along with their marketing, HR, and finance strategies to achieve the best ROI through defining proper KPIs.”
The Social Clinic stands out from all other social media agencies. Unlike others in Saudi Arabia, The Social Clinic does not think tactical at all. Its role with clients is played at a more strategic level.
“The Social Clinic was established because there is a need for social media and social business in Saudi Arabia and in the region,” said Hallab. “Many agencies, if not all of them, offer to handle the client’s social media accounts… We don’t ever do that!”
The toughest challenge the company faces is education. Social media is relatively new globally, let alone locally and regionally.
“Many brands and organizations perceive social media as being Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and they are wrong. Facebook and Twitter are just channels, platforms. If a few newspapers shut down tomorrow, the “journalism” industry will not die, same thing for social media. Facebook and Twitter are here today, no ones knows what tomorrow.”
Hallab conceded that these social media channels helped start the communication revolution, but said this doesn’t mean that they will always stay on top.
“If organizations and brands do not think holistic and strategically, they will drown easily. Social Media is about people, about engagement, and about content. Our client strategies ensure that we define the right target audience (people), the most effective engagement techniques (engagement) and identify what content the people want to hear content,” he added.
The company became globally known for its “State of Social Media in Saudi Arabia 2012” infographic, which was the first ever infographic that published credible social media statistics about the usage of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Linkedin in Saudi Arabia. The Social Clinic is promising much more engaging, informative, and much-needed infographics in the near future.
Among the many services The Social Clinic offers is strategy development. The Social Clinic bases all their strategic plans and recommendations on research, audits and assessments. It has helped numerous Saudi and regional brands — in the automotive sector, FMCG, retail, NGOs and tech — to develop their marketing plans to be social media-friendly.
Many clients refer to The Social Clinic to audit and assess their online presence. From their website, to the blog and social media accounts, The Social Clinic’s consultants review and share with their clients a full assessment of what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong and recommendations. To keep an eye on what the competition does, organizations ask The Social Clinic sometimes for benchmarking audits.
Their social media governance and human resources service defines The Social Clinic as leaders among social media consultants in Saudi Arabia. The company does not only draft internal and external policies and guidelines for organizations, but it also helps recruit and train the best social media team members in the country. The Social Clinic develops a social media human resources plan for an organization and then implements it by employing the best candidates out there, training them, supervising and managing them, and then transferring them off to the client to manage their social media landscape .
The Social Clinic has several public and private social media trainings and workshops all under their pioneered social media course “Communicology”.
Whether it is content development, monitoring, reporting, listening, crisis management, engagement, or any other social media related training, the company tailors its training to each organization and brand according to their needs.
Two new services that The Social Clinic has been developing for a while are personal branding and social media events.
The Social Clinic gives advice to many celebrities, CEOs and governmental figures in the region. They help their clients through training, personal branding tone-of-voice development and much more.
The social media events started off as a hobby and evolved into an official service. The Social Clinic helps organizations broadcast their events and build the required hype about any public event on social media through the latest technology and digital integration.
The Social Clinic shares the latest social media news from around the world and Saudi Arabia on their blog http://blog.thesocialclinic.com and you can check out their website for their full services, more about them and Communicology at www.thesocialclinic.com. Of course don’t forget to follow them all over the social media landscape. Whether on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, Instagram, or Pinterest, they are everywhere under the same name: thesocialclinic.
Social Clinic has formula to hone your social media skills
Social Clinic has formula to hone your social media skills
