Welcome to Bridgeline Digital’s daily links post on the B-Line blog named “Around The Web.” We’ll be checking in every morning with relevant (and entertaining) pieces found across the Internet about Content Management, Marketing, SEO news, and General Business News. Our hope is this will become part of your morning, a detour you enjoy as you sip on your third cup of coffee before noon. And fear not, this space is not a one-way street: We want you, dear reader, to interact with us; tell us what you like, what you hate, and what you want more of in the comments section and on Twitter.

Around The Web

Following LivingSocial‘s abrupt departure from the Middle East, a plethora of analysts thought eCommerce in the region was still years away. The New York Times, however, had an interesting report on two companies, Souq.com and Namshi.com, raising impressive capital from investors after showing excellent growth. Souq.com (think eBay) was able to attract $45 million from investors itself.

Via the New York Times:

There have been a lot of mixed messages for the regional e-commerce community over the last year. The sudden exit of LivingSocial, the global daily deals site, from the Middle East in August seemed put a nail in the coffin of the regional online retailing market.

The demise of other promising, local sites, including Joob, Nahel and Mizado, in the months preceding the abrupt closure of LivingSocial’s regional operations suggested that e-commerce business models in the Gulf were not working.

But success stories are now starting to emerge from a handful of e-commerce sites that are figuring out how to run an online business in the area.

The article goes on to discuss two pain points — shipping and bill pay — as key hurdles that were cleared to propel the recent growth of eCommerce in the Middle East.

For one thing, transporting goods ordered on the Web across the Gulf countries was not easy because currencies and legal structures varied from place to place. Often, there was the added necessity of opening new bank accounts or finding a local partner to share the business. This also made it more difficult to manage inventory.

Online payment was also a hurdle. Many customers preferred to pay with cash on delivery rather than entering credit card details online. Cash on delivery put a strain on the company’s resources as it had to ship goods first and collect, or not, the money later.

Online payments are now becoming more widely accepted and some of the shipping issues have been resolved. As part of those efforts, Namshi joined with Aramex, a global shipping firm based in Amman. The arrangement lets Namshi use Aramex’s network of warehouses to store its inventory and ship orders in 24 hours.

(True Story: Bridgeline Digital’s partnership with UPS, eCommerce Fulfilled™, has international capabilities to meet your logistics and web-store needs — covering you from click to ship.)

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Aaron Dun writes on Marketing Profs that marketers who simply recycle content are antiquated, old hat, and out-of-touch. Instead, Dun says it’s time to recycle content in an extreme way.

Extreme reuse means first understanding that EVERYTHING is content. (And I do mean everything!) Events are content, support calls are content, the storyboards that go into your new product animation are content. The brainstorming session on the whiteboard is content; the video of that brainstorming session is content. On and on it goes.

Next, it’s thinking about every possible way to take a piece of content, roll it up in different mediums, slice it based on stage in the buyer journey, and publish it in as many different ways as possible. And getting really, really creative about that content.

Everything about this is spot on. Believe it or not, there is value everywhere in your organization; figure out how to re-package content in unique ways and let consumers decide what’s interesting.

INFOGRAPHIC OF THE DAY

Today’s infographic comes courtesy of DotComInfoWay.com — and it highlights Responsive Design. As smart devices continue to tighten its grip on the market — seriously, who’s getting an iPAD Mini for Christmas? — integrating Responsive Design to allow your website to adjust to whichever device is being used to access it becomes even more significant.