Calling All Enterprise Ireland Clients….
May 3, 2012 at 2:51 pm
If you’d like a little digital action, strong on strategy and ideas, with lots of lovely social media piled on top, know that we’re now a trusted Enterprise Ireland consultant. This means that if you are an EI client, you can get us – at a subsidised rate to what you’d normally pay.
As with anything, some terms & conditions apply – but they’re not nasty ones.
Give us a shout. Spread the word. Tell your buddies who are EI clients who’d love to open up new markets using digital marketing and social media …
Is It Just Me? Or…
April 27, 2012 at 9:29 am
Is there a lot of sloppy marketing going on?
Yesterday I saw a pay per click ad for a walking festival in Leenane with a link to Delphi Resort & Spa – which I love, so I’d find it very easy to justify a stay there due to the walking! But when I followed the link there is nowhere on the site that mentions walking, let alone a festival! So Delphi are spending money on Adwords that are generating a conversion of zero. I emailed them to let them know. 24 hours later, no reply and no additions to the website.
This morning I received an ezine from Kildare Village. Now their marketing is usually pretty good. Today had a feature on accessories and a competition to win some. I watched their video – which was really stylishly produced, and I was really engaged with it… at the end it wasn’t clear to me what to do? I went to the site and there’s the video again, but there’s no clue as to how to enter their competition.
Is it just me or is there a lot of sloppy marketing going on?
Tags: delphi resort and spa, kildare village marketing fail
A Typical Day Using Irish Corporate Websites
March 28, 2012 at 2:38 pm
Having an admin day today… I’ve spotted not 1, not 2, but 3 shocking mistakes on Irish corporate websites. Is the Irish corporate online identity in a state of disrepair or am I just unlucky? This is not the first time this has happened.
1. Chill Insurance
Try getting a household quote using the form on the home page. I tried this in 3 browsers and continue to get the “is sublet is required” box that, apart from being bad English, I am obliged but unable to select. Gave up and tried elsewhere.
2. Vodafone
Less glaringly obvious but a sign of an uncared for web page. Can you spot the typo here?
3. Magnet
And of course, MyMagnet.ie, the customer portal, still doesn’t work on Firefox. This has been the case since last year.
Such lack of attention to detail is enough to make you give up and go outdoors and enjoy the beautiful sunshine….
Saying Thank You
March 22, 2012 at 9:11 am
I was having a conversation the other day about saying thank you, and how, in many cases, I’ve introduced sometimes significant amounts of business to people, and they never even say thank you – let alone send something to show their appreciation. In all my 9 years of doing business as Brightspark I’ve only ever received a thank you card ONCE for making an introduction that turned into work. And that was from Gerrard Tannem at Islandbridge.
Apart from the example above, in my experience, it’s usually other women in business who will remember to acknowledge leads, or introductions made. It’s more of a man thing to forget…
Was discussing this with another woman the other day and she made the interesting assertion that this could be related to the fact that women can sometimes hold themselves back and don’t believe in themselves as much as men…therefore that men don’t say thank you because they have a certain inbuilt arrogance and think that they deserved the work anyway.
What do you think?
It’s also about expectation… if you try to surpass people’s expectations all the time in your work, then you’re unlikely to get a thank you. My sister has recently made a decision to stop working 12-14 hour days in her new job. We had a conversation about how, if you’re the person who always does the long hours, when you do go to work a regular 9 or 10 hour day, people often look at you as if to say “you’re knocking off early!!”. It’s just not acknowledged.
In the meantime, I also believe that you get back what you put out there, and while all this was on my mind, look what landed in my inbox yesterday! Thanks Heidi!
Tags: thank you
Dose of Good Hope
February 9, 2012 at 9:31 am
I’m just back from Australia. I got talking to some lovely young engineering graduates on the plane either on their way out, or coming back for a holiday after spending a year there. While they say they are having the craic, I can see it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Costs are rising significantly in Australia, the average weekly rent in Sydney for an average apartment is $650 – that’s $2600 a month, higher than Hannover Quay at the height of the boom! Unemployment is rearing its ugly head, especially in the financial sector, and to cap it all off – they’ve just had a wet summer, the likes of which we are used to seeing in Ireland.
I came back and I have to say I’m noticing more signs of positivity and growth. I was on Twitter the last few days and the mood seems to be more buoyant than before. In fact I thought it would make for very interesting research to track the mood of Twitter in each of the last 4 January’s since the recession began.
Then I heard about Hireland, and I have to commend all the good souls who have put their energy into that.
Hireland is an initiative by business owners to encourage others to hire just one person this year. If everyone did that, think of the fallout from all those thousands of jobs that have been created. I have to say, I am seriously considering. In the meantime, check out the video here. And you can join them on Facebook.
Tags: hireland
PublicPolicy.ie
January 9, 2012 at 11:54 pm
It’s great when a project comes along that combines a worthy cause, the smartest minds, and a blank white page to begin from.
I’ve been working with the Irish Fiscal Policy Research Centre to create a website that will house the research and thinking that is sure to become the ‘goto’ place for Irish people when they want to get information. There is a lot of noise around the key economic and political issues of the day – that affect all of us. And it’s so important that we get accurate information if we are to understand and make our own opinions.
Perhaps the best explanation of what this is all about comes from the Chairman himself, Prof. Frank Convery.
In Ibsen’s A Doll’s House , Nora says: “I can’t be satisfied any longer with what most people say, and with what’s in books. I must think out things for myself and try to understand them.”
Our job at publicpolicy.ie is to make “thinking things out” as easy as possible.
Read the Irish Times article about publicpolicy.ie.
Sign up to receive an email alert when the site launches.
Tags: publicpolicy.ie
Give This Guy A Job
August 17, 2011 at 8:47 am
I was approached in a novel way this morning by someone looking for work. His approach shows understanding and applied knowledge of how to make Twitter and Google work for you. His CV shows someone who has worked hard all his life (throughout college = always a good thing in my book), has done lots of sales/biz dev jobs… speaking to other business owners these last few years, it seems to me that the most prized skill these days is a good sales person. Even in a recession, a good salesperson can help get the cash flowing through the business again. If you’re on the lookout for a go-getting sales person with experience for your team, you’d do well to follow up with this guy!
First I got a tweet, directed to me personally (pity he didn’t have an avatar as I nearly overlooked it):
Click the link and you’re taken over to Google Docs where you can check out Martin Newell’s CV.
Nice. Some organisations block their staff from accessing Facebook, Twitter, even Gmail. That, in my opinion, is so wrong. People like Martin Newell know how to use social media, it’s in their digital DNA. Shutting down access to key tools is like stopping your staff from having access to a toilet. It’s so essential – and detrimental if you go too far!
But is your business really using social media?
July 27, 2011 at 8:51 am
There’s a lot of talk about how many businesses are using social media. There was an article in Sunday’s Business Post about it last week – claiming victory for Ireland over England and the US:
The research also reveals that there was a rise in Irish companies using social media to win new business, with 44 per cent of firms successfully winning new customers online.
Although this was below the global average of 47 per cent, Irish firms lead Britain (41 per cent) and the US (43 per cent) in their usage of social media for customer acquisition.
It goes on to list all the different types of social media tools being used by Irish businesses:
Websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the most popular forms of social media used by Irish businesses. Firms are also availing of blogs, microblogs and online forums to connect and engage with customers. Nevertheless, firms also emphasised the need for a balance of marketing media, made up of traditional and digital techniques.
I can imagine some business owner, faced with this survey from Regus, ticking the boxes of all the tools he’s ever heard of. Or ticking yes because they have a Twitter account (not touched since March 2010) and a Facebook Profile with lots of friends….
On the same weekend, over the course of being out and about, I met 3 small business owners – all very different to each other and in very different lines of work – but all were expressing worry about the same thing.
- “I know I need to use social media but I don’t know how.”
- “I have a Facebook Page because my mentor from the Enterprise Board said I should have one, but I don’t really do much with it… I don’t know how to get fans.”
- “Don’t talk to me about the other things apart from Facebook and Twitter, I haven’t even got them right.”
And now Facebook rows in with the announcement on Tuesday of its new online education centre aimed at helping small businesses use the social networking site. It’s interesting timing as it underlines Facebook’s support for businesses to be a part of the social network (provided you do it according to their rules!!) which is in contrast to Google’s controversial shut down of business accounts on Google Plus.
Tips for Small Business Owners in Using Social Media
- Don’t set up Pages, profiles, accounts unless you are willing and able to dedicate resource to manage them on a weekly basis
- How often? Try and commit to posting on your Facebook Page 3 times per week for starters. Use Tweetdeck to live on Twitter and it will become second nature and not something you have to count the tweets about!
- Allocate a little budget (doesn’t have to be much) to Facebook ads to reach your target audience. If they are on Facebook and it is an appropriate channel to engage with them, you should grow your fan base pretty easily.
- Once you’ve got fans you have got to engage with them. Write a Facebook editorial plan and stick to it. Try and mix it up in terms of chat, pushing product, and chat again. Images work well, so go and find beautiful images that will start conversations. Be creative.
- At the same time as you’re using Twitter to chat to your followers, start using the Advanced Search feature to find people talking about your service/product in realtime. Choose whether it’s appropriate to engage with them.
That’s what you need to do for starters. Next up is how to extend that activity beyond Facebook and Twitter. How to listen to what’s being said about you and your business across the social spaces and how to respond and engage. Consider how you can move the social activity away from just being something you or your marketing person look after, to something that is second nature to everyone in the organisation.
More on that in another post. Please leave a comment if you want to see this soon. That’ll incentivise me to write it before this season is out. 
Unsubscribe Me
July 13, 2011 at 8:21 am
I’ve just unsubscribed from all of the daily deals I had been getting; decided I didn’t want opportunities to consume hit me every day.
- The best unsubscribe process of all is our very own Rate My Area Deals. One click and they give you a one click option to resubscribe in case you did it by accident. I also like the range of their deals – they do more than just the beauty, teeth, and restaurants the others concentrate on.
- Living Social’s unsubscribe process was OK – once click, but I had to think, just a little! Their deals weren’t great.
- Pigsback.com was a one click, but one of these ones that don’t update their records for 7 days. Annoying.
- Groupon Citydeal’s is AWFUL! I had to log on to their site to unsubscribe from the daily emails, remembering my details. Then, faced with just 3 options (my orders, my credit, my data) – the only one I could think of that could stop the emails coming was ‘my data’. The only thing I could do was change my email address to something not real: bullshitprocess@unsubscribe.me is what I used. So when you next hear about the millions of people that Groupon have got signed up, think again! Maybe half of those are people like me trying to get away! Another thing I didn’t like about Citydeal is their refer a friend process. Does anyone know anyone who ever got the €6? I put loads of people on to Citydeal at the start and because I didn’t log in, on a full moon, with a special password, I never got nada!
So I’m done with the dealsters. I trust that I have enough friends on who will flick any relevant ones on to me so I don’t miss out. In the meantime, it’s hello inbox and messages from friends, and bye to teeth whitening, skin rejuvenating, cheap deals on restaurants I don’t want to eat in, all delivered by some poor overworked person who has sold 350 deals and now has to deliver to a horde of budget conscious demanding and possibly not very pleasant customers!
More Tumbleweed…
June 21, 2011 at 11:53 am
I’m putting together slides for a talk I’m giving next week. Examples permeate the web on US brands doing it with social. I want to give some good meaty Irish ones, so I decided to check out the winners of the recent Irish Social Media Awards to see what they’re up to.
Loving Dublin Zoo. And Meteor.
But Maltesers? Where are you?
You won the “Best Integrated Campaign” but obviously the integration bit stopped a long time ago. The “About” section is still referring to Winter – and yes I know we’re not having a great summer, but that is two seasons out of date. If you click on “Maltesers Ireland” to see what they have been saying, it’s obvious that their agency is on a once a month retainer to post since the end of March. Before that it was a daily post, now it’s just slipped off into nothingness.
This is another great example of how people just don’t get it that “social media is for life and not just for a campaign”. The sooner we start living in terms of conversations that are ongoing, rather than campaigns that die off, the better.
I’m off to find me some good US social media examples…
In the meantime, here’s some well meaning words from Malteser’s social representatives in Ireland… it’s so… touching.
