Author: Ali Dahmash

My story with entrepreneurship began with Hiba

| Ali Dahmash

My story with REACH 2.0 began 1.5 years before registering the company. It began with Hiba!

Hiba is a 12 year old cancer survivor who lost both of her eyes to the disease. Her dad was calling IT companies in Jordan to donate a laptop for his daughter where he wanted to install an educational software by Sakhr that will help Hiba with her studies. At that time, I was still working with Offtech and Hiba’s dad called the office later in the evening after all the staff left. It happened that my colleague answered the phone and I over heard the conversation. I told him, listen, let me talk to him!

5 years ago I had a blog called Under My Olive Tree which is today a registered NGO. I posted about Hiba’s case in the blog and posted about donating a laptop on Twitter in the morning. And by 8 P.M I received $800 in donations to buy the laptop!

I have to admit that the whole thing still gives me the goose bumps today but it also showed me how important social media is in our world and how we can use it for the good and of course to promote our businesses. It was a turning point for me as I discovered I love two things:

community service and social media!

I thought to my self, it’s time to follow my passion and become self employed.

That was the beginning

** Hiba got accepted to university this fall

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New York Times: Facebook reportedly working on anonymous mobile app

| Ali Dahmash

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By Roberto Baldwin – Facebook recently came under fire for its real name policy and how it enforces that policy. Now it looks like the company is exploring another way to interact on its billion-strong social network.

The New York Times is reporting that Facebook is working on a mobile app that would allow users to interact anonymously with each other. The publication’s two sources say the app should be released in the “coming weeks.”

The app will allegedly allow users to register multiple identities to discuss topics that they wouldn’t want to discuss using their real name. Helpful when a person wants to talk about a sensitive topic without sharing that curiosity with friends and family.

الاشاعات وباء يهدد أمن واستقرار الوطن والمواطن

| Ali Dahmash

 مشاركة لي في جريدة الرأي الأردنية وجريدة العرب اليوم عن ظاهرة انتشار الإشاعات في مواقع التواصل الإجتماعي

Al Rai article

المدون والخبير في مواقع التواصل الإجتماعي علي دهمش أكد أن الاشاعات توجد جواً سلبياً عاماً عند الناس وتغير من نمطهم الاجتماعي، خاصةً أن معظمها سيء وخطير أحياناً 

واشار إلى أن بإمكان شبابنا بدلا من الالتفات الى الاشاعات وتضييع اوقات فراغهم بما لا يفيد , الكتابة عن التسامح الديني والمبادرات الشبابية والجمعيات الخيرية وكذلك إنجازات الأردنيين خارج وطنهم وصور طبيعية من مناطق مختلفة مضيفاً “أن كثيرا من الناس في الاردن يعانون من نمطية سلبية وهذا خطير “, اذ يوجد في الاردن أكثر من ثلاثة ملايين و200 الف شخص على “الفيسبوك” و 75 ألفا على تويتر , وأن معظم الناس يعتمدون على مواقع التواصل الإجتماعي للحصول على الخبر حيث فشلت الوسائل التقليدية في جذب إنتباه الفئة الناشطة على المواقع

Making things simple with Twitter

| Ali Dahmash

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At first those 140 characters might seem confusing but it’s actually simpler than we think.

The average person enters into 3 phases with Twitter:

1. Exploration phase: where you are only observing what other people are posting on Twitter
2. Love and hate phase: where you start posting some content and receive little engagement, might have less than 100 followers. This is an important milestone where you either see Twitter as a confusing unnecessary platform or start liking it!
3. Addiction phase: where you start to understand how things get along with Twitter, have a decent number of followers and engagement.

Here are some tips to survive all phases:
1. Have a clear and interesting bio, clear location and profile picture. That will bring you followers.
2. Follow people whom you find have interesting content and also follow your friends.
3. Post interesting content that is not personal, we are not really interested in what you had for breakfast today.
4. Use hashtags (#) this will make your Tweets more visible. Also check the trending hashtags when posting.
5. Become a citizen journalist & post things and events happening now around you. Make your tweets genuine and interesting. If you are posting other people content, you must mention them in your tweet, it is good for your credibility.
6. Retweet and Favorite tweets you find interesting. It is a simple way to show appreciation to the content you like. And most importantly the person you Tweet can reply to you & follow you in return.
7. Don’t follow more than double the people who follow you back. That will make you look desperate for attention.

Finally, what makes you important is the content you post, simply because content is king in social media.