Where the dictator and the revolutionary meet: the Internet

The internet users in the Middle East are just 3,3% of the world total users, but they represent 35% of the population, which is a higher percentage than in the average rest of the world.
If you think that in a country like Italy we have just 40% of Internet users, and that in Italy they discovered the Internet many years earlier, you understand how big the number is.
And one would believe that the interests are quite different from the rest of the Western world, but they are surprisingly similar.
Very popular are of course social websites like Facebook, tweets, Google, as well as LinkedIn, Digg and Reddit.
Some say that the Arab Spring wouldn’t have been possible without Facebook.
So, the portrait of the average internet user of the Middle East is not so far from his friend from the West.
Surprisingly, while in the beginning the Facebook users were mostly revolutionaries, lately the dictatorial governments still in power are promoting their own credo using the same social means.
Some call it a kind of "big brother", but whatever the reason can be, the winner is the internet and the new online markets.
To predict the future of internet marketing in the Middle East one has to consider how trends arise, spread, and fall out of favor, just like in the rest of the world.
That of course will allow the good marketing firm to foresee with some precision what will be the trend of the next years, what will still work and what won’t.
For example to plan the right and effective middle eastern ppc management, one must know what people are mostly looking for and where.
In the same way they must evaluate what elements of a website, ads, social media a Middle Eastern search engine will value in the near future.
Planning is everything, but planning needs knowing and knowing means also understanding.
Successful marketers must become better at foreseeing what the trends will be, may be revising what the actual trends are in the West.
A good middle eastern search engine optimization firm knows how local search engines rank any website.
Very important is also a dynamic approach to social media marketing, adding value to the growing favor of Middle East users for this kind of Internet part.