Why Social Media Is A Lot Like Sex…
March 29, 2010 at 1:33 pm
… As a teenager!
There’s no disputing that social media is sexy. But a client recently made a very astute remark that social media is a lot like sex when you’re a teenager.
- Everyone’s talking about doing it – but nobody’s too sure who’s really doing it right
- We’ve all heard it’s great – but we’re not sure how to get started
- There are a lot of people giving talks about it (think of these like Sex Education in school) – but they’re all talking about the what and none of them get into the sticky details of the how!
Brightspark’s Approach To Sex Social Media
- Consider us your coach. We’re doing it alright and we are happy to share our expertise with you!
- There are so many positions one can take – think of us as your partner on the sidelines urging you on, recommending on how you might change your position and alter your strategy to get best results.
- And this year we’re seeing big demand for advice on how to make a process of it. People are enjoying what they’re getting from it so much, they want to do it every day and not just for specific campaigns. We’ve got some great programmes available so you embed your social strategy as part of your everyday marketing activity and not just something you get lucky with on special occasions!
Tags: social media strategy
Dublin Airport Car Parking Shite
March 22, 2010 at 4:51 pm
UPDATE on 27 October 2010: happy to report I’ve just used this site to successfully book parking. They’ve fixed it up and it’s now working as it should. Carry on….
I’ve been experiencing problems with this site for a year now, and now I’ve lost my patience waiting for them to fix their piece of shit site. It’s a simple booking engine but it never works.
It never works for me on Firefox 3 – I encounter this sometimes with .asp sites.
When I shimmy on over to Safari – it takes ages to download and at least 2 or 3 tries to get the booking page to display so I can key in my days.
Don’t whatever you do choose the calendar if you’re trying to book for a weekend because the big security badge obscures it:
But when you select the dates and hit the quote button, all you get for your troubles is a database error message.
Is this site developed by the same shower who did the eflow one? And how long more do we have to wait until Dublin Airport get their asses into gear and fix the site? It’s been broken for a year now.
If they are serious about making money from parking, it’s a bit of a no-brainer to have a site that’s not shite.
Top Tip For Dublin Airport Parking
Park your car in the free IKEA car park which has loads of spaces and is about as near to the airport as the long term blue and considerably closer than some of the hotels who are offering themselves up as airport car parking.
A taxi from IKEA to the airport is about €8. 
Tags: dublin airport car parking
WordPress Person Of The Day
March 19, 2010 at 10:54 am
is Me! Yes I’m extremely honoured and delighted to be number 23 person of the day.
Tags: wordpress person of the day
Flashmob Friday | Galway
March 19, 2010 at 7:21 am
Good on Galway – they had a flashmob on Shop Street last Saturday. I love hearing the excitement from onlookers:
Tags: flashmob galway
testing testing
March 15, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Laugh Out Loud Funny
March 12, 2010 at 9:40 pm
I have another little business called Simple Assembly Me Hole. We provide an important social service helping people to assemble flatpack furniture they buy (mainly from IKEA).
Sometimes people query how we can charge the large amount of €40 to assemble stuff – well this video – which is laugh out loud funny – should answer that. Poor Max in this video takes 5 hours and a lot of grief to assemble a chest of drawers. We do the same for you, in about an hour, without the bad language and no stress!
Enjoy – but remember, this could be you!
Tags: IKEA furniture assembly
About Cyberpsychology, Cyberchondria, & iPhone Addiction
March 11, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Gareth O’Callaghan breakfast show on 4FM this morning, having a chat about the Masters I’m doing in Cyberpsychology. Listen to the (4 mins) podcast here.
Apologies to all psychologists and cyberpsychologists everywhere if I let you down! And I think I stand corrected – the body that decides what’s an illness last met in 2008 not 1998.
Tags: cyberchondria, Cyberpsychology, mobile phone separation anxiety
Wordcamp Review
March 8, 2010 at 6:54 pm
I was there for Saturday’s Wordcamp and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Big congrats to Sabrina and Katherine who made it happen – I believe they may be persuaded to do it all again next year. Despite being in charge, the lovely ladies did not come over all Nazi like and bossy, dinging bells to mark end of time, etc. And yet, every talk I went to started and ended on time. This proved to me that Wordcamp was about sharing and learning and not egos. I like that.
Langtons was a lovely venue, although the greenhouse that I was giving my presentation in got hit with adverse weather… who would have expected such sun in March? A lot of light made the screen rather difficult to see. This meant that my *lovely* presentation that I spent hours of Friday on, didn’t get to be shown. Resorting to marker, memory and flipchat, I gave my talk on ‘how to write for blogs’. Lucky I knew the material because I was doing it from memory.
If you weren’t there, but you’d like get a condensed version, Jon Jacob accosted me with a video camera immediately after I’d given my talk. Here’s the 4 minute version on how to write for blogs! [Must remember to top up my lipstick next time I get a video camera on me!]
Check out Jon’s other post about building online communities - he really does write rather well. Needs no tips from me. Is a natural.
PS – here are the slides transferred from Flash to retro PPT.
Tags: how to write for blogs, wordcamp ireland
Be Afraid Be Very Afraid
March 8, 2010 at 7:48 am
Were you, like me, getting a bit tired of all the warnings about ‘social media experts’ last year? It seemed as if there was more written about beware of dodgy experts than there was about the space itself.
However this morning some folks on Twitter were talking about this guy – The Twitter King – Social Media Expert. His site is definitely written to the American market. He makes big bold claims about making $50,000 in just weeks and guess what? He’ll show you how….
I would just like to say that I have never heard of the man. Never come across him on Twitter in all the years I’ve been active there. Never met him at a single event. Never heard of any of his clients. And I would file this guy in the same camp as the dodgy dating techniques seminars of last year.
Tips For Facebook Fan Pages
March 5, 2010 at 9:48 am
A friend asked me recently for some advice on how to make her new Facebook fan page for her business go with a bang and not be crap. I thought it might be helpful to share my thoughts – if you have anything to add, please comment below:
Start off by getting the vanity URL: http://www.facebook.com/username/.
Click on that and choose your name. It’s better to have a name, eg. facebook.com/successcoaching than a numbered URL that’s hard to remember.
Then use this url when you’re promoting the page. Don’t forget to add it to your email signature, skype thought bubble, Twitter biog if you’ve got one, everywhere. Make it accessible to all.
Make a content plan for your page – decide on a frequency you’re going to give people stuff (eg 2 or 3 times a week) and make a plan of what you’re going to give them. Create a spreadsheet with months in it and fill in the slots based on seasonality and what’s going on in the business. Eg. In July you’re coming home – so you may want to write a piece on top tips to prepare for a long vacation in June.
Tone: be personal and individual not corporate.
Back to the content plan – it might seem laborious to try and fill 3 times a week with content. But images and video work really well. So spend a pleasant Friday afternoon scouring Youtube for inspirational videos that would be relevant for your page. Then all you have to do it post the video. **If you’re being really whizzy you can set up your WordPress blog to automatically update your FB page whenever a post is made. Then you can pre-load all your vids setting them to go live at dates in the future which means even less effort on your part!
People are more likely to comment on videos and images than just text. And, just like with a blog, it’s important that you acknowledge each and every one of them. Check the page daily and if someone has made a comment on your wall, in a discussion, or elsewhere, acknowledge it.
How to make your content interesting? Well the golden rule is to always write about me me me. Spin the tone of your text so it’s about the user and not the business. Keep it short – short sentences, short words, no multi-syllabic ones as our brains find it hard to process these online. Use bullets, but no more than 5 in a list. Don’t be afraid of headings, sub headings, bolding, and other formatting devices to make your text easy to read.
The big news is that no-one actually reads online: they scan. So you’ve got to present your text in easily scannable chunks. “How to…” , “The top 10 reasons for…”, “Do’s and Don’t's..” are all good styles to use to grab people’s attention. I think they work because they imply that they’re short, so people don’t mind giving you a piece of their attention.
Go off now and enjoy the insights that Facebook will give you about your business, it’s fans, and what kind of things interest them.
Tags: tips for facebook pages
