Motoring Middle East: Car news, Reviews and Buying guides

This month the region’s hottest and fastest growing automotive website, MME celebrated its second anniversary

By Shahzad Sheikh

Motoring Middle East is unique, in that WE didn’t decide to create it. YOU did! Having produced the region’s best motoring magazine, CAR Middle East for its near six years we’d built up a legion of readers and fans. Upon learning of the closure of that great title, there was a ground-swell of support and demand for us to carry on doing what we do. So we left our jobs and thus MME was born!

The amazing thing is that in these 24 months we have not only reached most of the audience that knew us through CAR ME, but have grown way, way beyond that. MME is a digital-only media and we know for a fact that we reach well over twice the audience in a single day, than we did in an entire month with the printed edition of CAR ME.

But then how you consume all media (not just your automotive fix) has been changing dramatically over the last few years – I even wrote about it in this story: How’d you like your motoring Sir? Print or Digital?

In the world of online we may still be a fledgling operation, but we can be very proud of the fact that this website already attracts around 20,000 unique visitors a month giving us well over 40,000 page views. On average we have more than 1500 visitors each day, able to access 700+ great stories on these pages.

Our social media growth has been even more spectacular. Check out Facebook.com/MotoringMiddleEast and you’ll see we have around 53,000 Likes, but that’s just a headline figure. Dig deeper into our Insights and we find that we’re talking to 8000+ people in a single day, that we reached 70,000 individuals last week alone, and that that generated nearly 30,000 actions – that is click-throughs, post Likes, Comments or Shares.

When you start to think about the level of engagement and interaction that humble little two-year old MME enjoys each month, plus the ability to immediately measure and gauge what our audience is doing, it’s simply staggering.

Especially compared to the shoot-in-the-dark, stick-a-finger-in-the-air and ultimately completely self-indulgent manner in which motoring magazines are usually produced – the ability to see what ignites your spark plugs tells us what sort of content you want!

Of course we clearly were getting it right even when we were doing it in old-skool print – that’s because the team behind MME are actually professional automotive journalists and not some oiks, with decent computer skills, who are running a motoring website in order to desperately get their hands on the sort of cars they’ve always dreamed about. And then break.

I’ve seen more damaged and thrashed press and test cars, due to inexperienced hands behind the wheels, in the last couple of years, than I have in my entire near 24-year’s experience, but that’s a rant for another time.

However I will just emphasise that ‘experience’ bit – click through to our Team page and you will see that between us we have decades of experience testing and writing about cars. This is what gives us authoritativeness and credibility, and why our readers enjoy what we write, trust and respect our opinion, reference our website and seek our advice and guidance – both here online, and on the radio show we do with James Piecowye on Dubai Eye 103.8FM.

That doesn’t mean we’re closed-minded though – frankly when it comes to cars, we don’t even agree with each other half the time. And one of the reasons our engagement with you, our audience, is so strong, is because we welcome, listen to, respect and engage with you directly in a manner few other automotive websites do.

We also know that there are two types of people making up this substantial audience that MME is reaching across its media platforms – the car buyers who are looking for information to empower them to make the best car purchasing decision, and the influencers. The latter are our regular readers, who are motoring enthusiasts – you are the guys who, like us, are always accosted by whoever in your social circle needs to buy a car.

Keeping in mind the finely targeted nature of our audience, it may surprise you, as much as it does us, to learn of the shortfall in commercial support we get from the regional motor manufacturer offices and local car dealerships.

Particularly when they are still booking vast sums of dollars of advertising in magazines that barely print enough copies for the presses to get properly warmed up, can’t be found in most shops, and are pretty much only read by the people that work on them and the suckers who blew their budgets on full page adverts that no one will ever see.

They also need to question whether they like having their products and services covered by and talked about within a qualified and quality digital media that actually provides genuine exposure and propagation, or if they’re quite sated with multiple-page coverage in publications unseen, and don’t mind having their cars mishandled, misunderstood and misrepresented by newbies and upstarts?

Oh. But why so serious? This is meant to be a celebration, after all. I can’t believe you let me rant for so long! So whilst we’re here we would like to thank those that have advertised with MME, particularly one major manufacturer that has stood by us since day one – you know who you are. Yeehaw! As for the rest, well let’s just say we’re keenly awaiting epiphanies to manifest themselves across the industry.

When it comes to you lovely people – our readers – we endeavour to produce great content that is both informative and enjoyable. We hope you agree, and even if you don’t, we always welcome your feedback, both on our Facebook page and in the comments section below on the web pages.

Do take the time to tell us what you like about what we do, what you don’t and what you would like to see us do. Don’t forget, as I said in the beginning, we’re here because of YOU, so we always listen to what you have to say.

Do also browse our website, particularly our reviews and features. Here are some of my favourite stories of the last two years to kick you off.

• The best new road in the region
• Cruze down memory lane
• Farewell to the Corvette C6
• The cars that time forgot
• Dubai Police Supercars
• We go dune-bashing in Volkswagen CC
• We steal a Dodge Dart
• Fright night in a Dodge Ram
• ’Stang struck – some sci-fi from us
• Land Rover parade time-lapse
• Flying high in the Rally Fighter
• Sex with a Maserati Granturismo Sport
• Disappointed by an Aston Martin Vanquish
• We go off-road in a Ferrari
• What does your car say about you?
• Chasing the new face of Motorsports
• The best classic car show in the region
• Monster Meet 12
• My best moments of 2012