a social strategy for dubai businesses.

a dubai social strategy usually fails before any content is made — no agreed outcome, no owner, no number to judge it by. the posting is rarely the problem.

— 01the outcome before the calendar.

start with the business outcome — leads, bookings, sales — and let it dictate the platforms, pillars and cadence. start with what the business needs, then work backwards.

write down one business outcome and one number, with its current value. enquiries a month, bookings, cost per acquisition — the figure you and anyone you hire will judge the work by.

choose one platform to be genuinely good at, plus search and an owned list. a small team spread across five channels produces five accounts nobody would follow, and an unanswered inbox on each.

pick three or four pillars, and make sure one of them answers the questions people ask before buying. an account of pure brand content will build an audience without producing enquiries.

give each pillar a repeatable format so nobody has to invent anything in a busy week. formats survive a difficult month; ideas do not.

and set the cadence at what you can hold through a busy period rather than a quiet one — then batch production into one day and bank two weeks before publishing anything.

then audit what already exists before planning anything new: how many enquiries arrive, how fast they are answered, how many go unanswered, and whether the search profile is correct. most dubai businesses find something expensive in that first week.

and describe the customer narrowly enough that it excludes people. a strategy aimed at everyone in dubai produces content aimed at nobody, and those exclusions are what make every later decision fast.

— 02platforms, pillars and cadence.

build content pillars, a few repeatable formats and a calendar your team can keep without heroics. a system means you never start from a blank page — pillars, formats and a calendar a busy team can actually keep.

— 03one number, reviewed quarterly.

track the metrics that connect the feed to revenue — enquiries, bookings and saves from the right audience. vanity metrics feel good and tell you nothing. track the numbers that connect the feed to revenue, and adjust monthly.

review the account monthly and the strategy quarterly. one month of social data in dubai is noise, particularly around ramadan and the summer, and reviewing direction monthly guarantees constant change and no compounding.

report against the number you agreed with its original baseline visible. changing which metric gets celebrated is the clearest sign that nobody is tracking anything.

and log every enquiry with its source, including whatsapp. that single habit is why some dubai businesses can prove social works and others conclude it does not.

— 04what a finished strategy fits on.

one page: the outcome and its baseline, the customer, three or four pillars with their formats, the platform, the cadence, and who approves within what turnaround.

if it needs more than that, it holds decisions nobody will remember under pressure. the test is whether someone new could produce a publishable week from it on their first afternoon.

elsewhere on this: arabic & english in the uae, when to change your strategy, how to create a social strategy.