When it was revealed that Google would settle its EU antitrust case by making a range of concessions, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at what these concessions would actually do to promote competition and innovation in the European digital economy: State of Search: What Google’s EU Settlement Means For Search Speculating about [...]
If you are a professional in financial services, you may be using LinkedIn as part of your networking and business development plan. Investors are active in social media with research in the US undertaken by LinkedIn in 2013 identifying that investors use social media to keep up to date with financial trends and to help [...]
We hear that Pinterest is a really only used by younger females – so let me introduce you to Dan Ashbach, who is a retired airline pilot, just to provide a different perspective. You might have read my article about how many boards should we have on Pinterest where I comment that Dan has just [...]
Whether you are a new internet business or are extending your ‘bricks and mortar’ business to the net, Sage Pay’s morning seminars will demonstrate what you need to focus on to develop a successful e-commerce business.
If you were active on social media on the 4 May this year you would have noticed many updates about what is now known to be ‘Star Wars Day’. In 2011, the first organised celebration of ‘Star Wars Day’ took place in Toronto, Ontario and this year Disney’s Hollywood Studios planned to celebrate the day [...]
If you were active on social media on the 4 May this year you would have noticed many updates about what is now known to be ‘Star Wars Day’. In 2011, the first organised celebration of ‘Star Wars Day’ took place in Toronto, Ontario and this year Disney’s Hollywood Studios planned to celebrate the day [...]
If you have been using Pinterest in your content marketing you will know how powerful a platform it is for visual content curation and discovery – both for business and personal use. But perhaps you have wondered how you could turn the images you create into a PDF that you could then print and use [...]
If you have been using Pinterest in your content marketing you will know how powerful a platform it is for visual content curation and discovery – both for business and personal use. But perhaps you have wondered how you could turn the images you create into a PDF that you could then print and use [...]
Siobhan McGinty, a content marketer with Wolfgang Digital, gives an overview of who is using content marketing effectively in the Irish business landscape and where opportunities lay for companies.
Almost three quarters (74%) of Irish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and 93% of very small businesses (2- 14 employees) say that the Government does not provide them with sufficient support and advice.
In our continued efforts to support the business community in Ireland, we’ve launched our Sage Business Experts Programme to recognise and reward experts across the business landscape.
By using a verified account on boards.ie we are able to answer questions about Sage and our products that appear in boards.ie discussion forums, from an official Sage brand account.
If you are using Pinterest you will know how important great images in your blog and web pages are to encourage sharing of your content by visitors to your site. This is sometimes a challenge for those of us who are offering services rather than beautiful products. But even if you have great visual content [...]
If you are looking to attract more customers to your business, there is no question that referrals and word of mouth marketing online and offline is extremely powerful and if you do that through connecting to key influencers of your ideal clients you will increase your reach. I have to declare that I am not [...]
Holidays are always an interesting time to be inspired by other organisations who plan innovative and interesting marketing campaigns. St Valentines Day is no different. Here are four ideas that caught my attention. #O2tweetheart O2 in the UK have been hosting a Twitter Competition where they were giving the opportunity to participants to have their [...]
As it is Valentine’s Day we have the opportunity to shower affection on our nearest and dearest. And as marketer, of the dearest (and I don’t mean expensive) things to you in your business is probably your website. So how we can put a little L.O.V.E into your digital content marketing? Here are four areas [...]
To celebrate the Chinese new year, the year of the snake here is a special game of business snakes and ladders. New ventures in the Year of the Snake are reputed to be thoughtful and wise and to approach problems rationally and logically, seldom instinctively. Will you apply this cautious approach to your business in the year of the snake. Will you avoid the pitfalls and navigate the slippery road of starting a business to emerge successful?
Today is the tenth anniversary Safer Internet Day and perhaps your children have been encouraged to get involved in projects at school? Did you know that the average age for first going online in Europe is seven years of age. The UK Safer Internet Centre conducted a survey of 24,000 young people and reported 96% [...]
It has to be one of an HR Directors worse nightmares – one of your employees leaks news about your organisation to the competitors, the public or the media. Yesterday HMV the UK retailer was announcing to their staff that 190 positions were being made redundant in their head office and distribution network. What they [...]
Many business owners want to know how they can implement and measure social media for their business. Here is a free guide for those that are starting out or are already using social media but still have lots of questions.
I often get asked what conferences I recommend people attend so if you are based in Ireland or the UK here is a list of conferences and events that I recommend you consider attending if you are an executive or leader interested in content marketing, communications, social media and integrated marketing. If you have a [...]
Starting a business is not easy. I started a business a few years ago and I can definitely say it is the hardest thing I ever did. That is why I am really delighted that Sage are producing a series of ebooks packed full of tips and advice to help people start and grow their business.
How is it that this particular song made it so big, the thing that struck me is that this is all down to the power of social media, so what can we learn from Psy, that can be applied in a business context.
Even if you do have a marketing budget, why not give yourself three months to work on the “zero budget” plan and see how much you can achieve for no cost. >
Are you a Hands On Soloist that that loves the skill and craft of what your business provides or are you The Manager/CEO type, a great mentor and leader that delegates important tasks to employees, or perhaps you are The Classic Entrepreneur that thrives on the adrenaline of a start-up environment. Take our two minute quiz and see.
By Beatrice Whelan, Social Media & Content Specialist at Sage Update 15.51pm: We are delighted with the fantastic response we received on Twitter today. We have reached well in excess of 1,000 people tweeting using the hashtag #SageXmasGiving and we also had a few people tweeting using the hashtag #donateVdeP which was a great idea for [...]
For State of Search I wrote an article explaining my views behind the tension between Google and the SEO industry, highlighting the entirely different objectives each is striving towards and how these collide: State of Search: What Google Wants vs What SEOs Want Then there’s a second area of tension between SEO and Google, which [...]
Source: Uploaded by user via Krishna on Pinterest How many friends do you have on Facebook? Did you know that users joining the week Facebook hit 50 million users (October 2007) now have an average number of 321 friends (download the report from Facebook here). But having lots of friends on Facebook may not [...]
By Beatrice Whelan, Social Media & Content Specialist at Sage What an exciting year 2012 was from a social media perspective. What will 2013 hold and what should you be including in your social media strategy for 2013? A lot of these trends have already emerged in 2012 but will become more pronounced in 2013. [...]
By Beatrice Whelan, Social Media & Content Specialist at Sage Congratulations To Lorraine Carter from Persona Branding & Design on winning the Best Blog Of An SME in the recent Blog Awards Ireland 2012. The Blog Awards Ireland were held on the 13th October in the Osprey Hotel in Naas. The Best Blog Of An [...]
It's been a busy few months for us here in Sage on the social media front. We have recently been shortlisted in both the Golden Spider Awards and in the CCMA Awards for our use of social media.
Pinterest has become an essential part of many business’s social media strategies, particularly for those with visual products. Here are 14 Tips To maximise Pinterest Success For Your Business.
Adrian Moss- I am Director of a company called Focus Business Communications. We specialise in audio and video production and use social media campaigns to promote the content and help create and support online communities. I established the company in 2004 to take advantage of the emergence of Web 2.0. Since then we have worked with a variety of clients from the private and public sectors. We are also a research partner in the 3 year long EU funded www.foodrisc.org project which is looking at risk communication. Our role is to evaluate the use of social media during a food contamination incident.
A big thank you to Lillian King for sharing this really interesting and valuable infographic about the influence of Social Media in Politics, which is very timely before the US Presidential Elections. After all they reckon that Barack Obama was the first Social Media President ever! (Facebook is credited as playing such a major part [...]
With the adoption of social media by organisations continuing to accelerate unfortunately in my experience, all too few organisations have established a social media policy which puts their organisation and their people at risk. I recently delivered a workshop to fifty communications professionals representing some of the largest organisations in Ireland and there were less [...]
QED are hosting a morning session on Monday 1st October called Working in a Digital Age in the Carlton Hotel, Dublin Airport. The session will be run in the format of a round table with representatives from Apple, Realex, LinkedIn, Facebook and Sage available to answer questions to those attending. The aim of this round table workshop is to energise and invigorate SME businesses about the tools and opportunities in the online area.
By Beatrice Whelan, Social Media & Content Specialist at Sage We have just published our latest Ebook: 50 Ways To Help Improve Your Business In Sage, we have seen our business customers face the past four years with determination and a business intelligence that has seen them through some very difficult economic times. Not only [...]
By Trevor Koen, Digital Marketing Specialist at Sage Sage is proud to partner with the Start Ups 2012 Entrepreneurs and Small Business Conference taking place at the RDS on the 3rd of October. Running for the past four years, the Start Ups 2012 is Irelands leading entrepreneurs and small business event, gathering small business owners, [...]
Whenever I get confused by popular (mis)perceptions of what marketing is or is not, I return to what I learned on my first day of university in 1999:
"Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business..... it is the process of attracting and retaining customers at a profit."
First Facebook app for an Irish business that allows users to record an audio message to enter a competition. By Beatrice Whelan, Social Media & Content Specialist at Sage Today we have launched a unique app on the Sage Ireland Facebook page which will allow users to record their own voice message. We’re inviting our Facebook [...]
By Beatrice Whelan, Social Media & Content Specialist at Sage Download full size Infographic here In creating Sage 50 2013, we listened to over 4,000 Sage customers. This feedback was then used to design some great changes to the software, some big, some small, but all of which make Sage 50 Accounts a better solution. The Infographic, which [...]
Seven tips and ideas which I picked up at the mobile marketing conference. Mobile penetration in Ireland is at 107%. Yes, there are more SIM cards in Ireland than people.
Sage is sponsoring Best Blog Of An SME in the Grafton Media Blog Awards Ireland. The Blog Awards are using Sage One Accounts which is an online accounting software to manage their accounts for the blog awards, keep track of income and costs and produce invoices.
A few weeks ago I was blown away by the energy and positivity behind the #irishbizparty Twitter activity so I decided to interview one of the people behind this positive force for Irish business on Twitter, Samantha Kelly of Funky Goddess.
At the London Olympics, social media will bring the thoughts and wit (or otherwise) of the world’s greatest athletes directly to us via Twitter and Facebook. This has created great opportunities for those competing and those endorsing those competing, not to mention potential pitfalls and challenges for those who get it wrong.
While there are some fantastic advantages to social media in the workplace, there are also disadvantages, which can potentially damage your business and its reputation. One very popular and effective way of guiding how and when your employees use social media is to put a social media policy in place.
Let’s take a look at some public figures (sports stars, models, journalists, TV & radio personalities & politicians) who’ve realised the importance of building online followings and then leveraged this support to develop their ‘offline careers’ - thereby giving them a much wider audience. In particular TV and radio producers gauge online popularity when selecting sports commentators, panellists, contributors and successful politicians.
As September approaches, do your thoughts turn to your career and perhaps you start to think about exploring new opportunities? Perhaps you have even considered enhancing your online visibility using social media to help you stand out from the crowd? I was recently speaking at a conference and met two people who have just found [...]
With the Olympics almost upon us we will see a flurry of sporting activity as people are inspired by the great efforts and achievements of the sports people taking part. You may be motivated to become more active or perhaps you are having Olympics themed days in your workplace. Here are some tips on how you can apply the Olympic mind-set to your social media marketing.
Perhaps you have established a Twitter account for your start up or your small business to help you share information about your products and services – but have you considered using it for customer service? Increasingly consumers are turning to social media for customer support but have you considered what implications that has for your [...]
I recently was asked by a client how one could get more followers and rewteets on Twitter. He had an event coming up that he wanted to promote and no one was retweeting his content. I think he was a bit taken aback when I suggested he worried less about forcing his event on his Twitter followers and stopped to engage and get to know them better. I explained that just like the real world the kinder you are and more you stop to get to know people the more likely people are to trust, engage and help you.
Twitter have gone mainstream - kind of .... !
Twitter showed their first TV adverts in the US yesterday. A bunch of 15-second adverts were shown during the NASCAR race called the Ponco 400.
With more sites tracking you and most of your details just a click away for many, we've highlighted the best ways to improve your security and privacy through adjusting your privacy settings or through third-party plug-ins...
Niall Gibbons is chief executive of Tourism Ireland, the organisation responsible for marketing Ireland overseas as a premier holiday and business tourism destination. Tourism Ireland have had tremendous success with social media so I as eager to find out more about how they use social media in their marketing activities and to build brand awareness.
As always, we round up 25 of the biggest stories relating to the world of social media that you have to read, featuring a mixture of the week's news and thoughts from some of the top people from the world of social media, the web and technology...
Interesting stuff coming down the line from Microsoft.
The software giant has introduced so.cl (pronounced "Social"). They just launched this new social network for students that features many Google+ and Facebook features. So.cl is being billed as a site for student collaboration and information gathering (isn't that where Facebook started?).
For now, Microsoft is calling it just an “experimental research project” and only making it available to students studying information and design at the University of Washington, Syracuse University and New York University.
You can currently add your name to the waiting list by logging in with Facebook. Ironic? Perhaps. But remember that Microsoft is a heavy investor in Facebook so I’d actually expect even more Facebook integration. Now, the big question: is there room for another social network? While Microsoft states (many times) that so.cl is not meant to replace any social network… it’s still a crowded space.
So.cl occupies an important niche (a social learning network similar to KnowU) so I’m definitely hoping for it to work out. Only time will tell.
Here's what the folks in Microsoft say about how so.cl works:
The So.cl search experience is powered by Bing; we use the public Bing APIs to display search result data. As students work together, they often look for the same content, and discover new shared interests by sharing results. These results can be web pages, images, or videos found through Bing. We see this trend today on many social networks, such as Twitter, where shared links spread virally and amplify popular content. So.cl experiments with this concept by letting
By Beatrice Whelan, Social Media and Content Specialist at Sage Managing Your Business Accounts is the topic of our next Facebook Lunch ‘n Learn which takes place on Thursday 24th May from 12.30-2.30pm. These live chats are called ‘Lunch ‘n Learn’ as they are held from 12.30 to 2.30pm so you can pop over to [...]
As always, we round up 25 of the biggest stories relating to the world of social media that you have to read, featuring a mixture of the week's news and thoughts from some of the top people from the world of social media, the web and technology...
With numerous social media sites trying to figure out sure fire ways to monetise their site, they will find encouragement in the fact that advertisers are expected to increase social media spending over the next few years...
But You Can Have Some Fun! By Beatrice Whelan, Social Media and Content Specialist at Sage So we’re off to the Social Media Awards on Thursday 17th May (we are finalists for Best Blog Of A Business) and we thought we would add our own element of fun to the night. Sage have placed a beach [...]
When it comes to the online world, one of the groups that are often targeted the most are moms because of their huge spending power and control of the household budget. Given the fact that most of these moms now access social networks and their mobile devices, these stats show just how important social media is becoming...
With the jury still out on how much revenue Facebook's new ad formats are actually generating for the company, their effectiveness appears to be increasing for advertisers. New research from online advertising management platform Marin Software found that the introduction of these new ads has resulted in both...
The work of the army doesn't always get seen and recruiting for the various positions within the force can be a tricky task. The Swedish armed forces came up with a unique real-world social media campaign that grabbed a lot of attention and got everybody talking about their work...
Google has introduced 4 new tools to help you track your social media marketing efforts, built directly into Google Analytics.
These 4 new reports aggregate key data points to help you see the complete picture of how social marketing and media affect your business. The 4 report tools focus on:
The Social reports allow you to analyse all of this information together and see the complete picture of how Social impacts your business.
The Pages Report tells you about the visitors that engage with your social media activities and track these visitors as they increasingly engage with, share, and discuss your content on your social networks. This report tells you which pages and content are being shared, where they're being shared, and how.
The Sources Report provides information about how your content is shared and how people come to your site. The report also explains how to understand how visitors from different social sources engage with your site.
The Conversions Report helps you to understand which shared content URLs are the entry points into your site and how the social media sources drive traffic to your site. Measuring the conversion and monetary value of this traffic will help you understand the impact of Social on your business.
The Social Plugins Report: Adding Social Plugin buttons to your site allows your users share content to social networks directly from your site. Your social plugin data shows you which content is being shared, and on which networks.
What do you think of this update? Is it helpful for your business and what tools do you currently
We've talked about how valuable social media is to brands for connecting with consumers before. For all the apps, self promotion and links you include on your Facebook or Twitter page, you also have to deal with the day-to-day tasks such as dealing with queries, suggestions...
As always, we round up 25 of the biggest stories relating to the world of social media that you have to read, featuring a mixture of the week's news and thoughts from some of the top people from the world of social media, the web and technology...
Back in late March, Google Analytics introduced social reports to its services. With it, you could see how much traffic social media brought and which sites visitors came from. It's probably worth reminding people that this feature exists since it took a while for it to finally emerge, but not only has it rolled out to everyone...
As always, we round up 25 of the biggest stories relating to the world of social media that you have to read, featuring a mixture of the week's news and thoughts from some of the top people from the world of social media, the web and technology...
As social media and technology continue to change our lives around us, the valuation of companies in the space is shooting through the roof ,but the big question is are we in the middle of another tech bubble a la late 90s and are the large valuations justified?
As always, we round up 25 of the biggest stories relating to the world of social media that you have to read, featuring a mixture of the week's news and thoughts from some of the top people from the world of social media, the web and technology...
While social media has transformed the way we receive and digest news as well as the speed in which we receive it. However, the medium brings with it its own problems such as who reported what and whether it's a credible source that's doing the reporting...
With thousands of technology and social media blogs out there, it can be hard to stay on top of the constant stream of comment and analysis. I wanted to start a new feature that shares the ten must read stories of the day that I have carefully curated for you on my travels.
With thousands of technology and social media blogs out there, it can be hard to stay on top of the constant stream of comment and analysis. I wanted to start a new feature that shares the ten must read stories of the day that I have carefully curated for you on my travels.
With thousands of technology and social media blogs out there, it can be hard to stay on top of the constant stream of comment and analysis. I wanted to start a new feature that shares the ten must read stories of the day that I have carefully curated for you on my travels.
While not as illustrious as other sites, LinkedIn has quietly plugged away, becoming the main portal for businesses and professionals to establish a presence online. While it doesn't have the numbers Facebook has, its main pull is its ability to generate leads for businesses and customers...
With thousands of technology and social media blogs out there, it can be hard to stay on top of the constant stream of comment and analysis. I wanted to start a new feature that shares the ten must read stories of the day that I have carefully curated for you on my travels.
As always, we round up 25 of the biggest stories relating to the world of social media that you have to read, featuring a mixture of the week's news and thoughts from some of the top people from the world of social media, the web and technology...
With thousands of technology and social media blogs out there it can be hard to stay on top of the constant stream of comment and analysis. I wanted to start a new feature that shares the ten must read stories of the day that I have carefully curated for you on my travels.
With thousands of technology and social media blogs out there it can be hard to stay on top of the constant stream of comment and analysis. I wanted to start a new feature that shares the ten must read stories of the day that I have carefully curated for you on my travels.
Social. Local. Mobile. These are the fastest growing trends in marketing today and are likely to stay for some time. In terms of media consumption, they’ve come to dominate consumer attention. In terms of targeting and communication, they’ve opened more precise channels. In terms of data and measurement, they are reinventing marketing. And in terms of technology, they are disrupting entire industries.
The convergence of Social, Local, and Mobile is often referred to as the SoLoMo phenomenon. Remember the term; you are likely to be hearing lots about it in the foreseeable future.
[caption id="attachment_52266" align="alignleft" width="640" caption="For the first time, brands can tie social and mobile engagements directly to offline transactions"][/caption]
The fundamental driver of SoLoMo is smart phone adoption. Millions of new smart phones are being activated every day. Mobile devices like the smart phone and tablet are the beginning of a post PC era. Billions of people will now be connected by their current location and interests.
The smart phone represents an opportunity to reach consumers at key times in the purchase decision making process. Knowing a consumer's location, as well as the time they're at that location, is the best predictor of his or her intent to buy.
Location-Based Engagement: The New Channel
There are several types of Location Based Engagements. The engagements that bring together Social, Location and Mobile are the most powerful. Engagements like check-ins and tagged tweets are being shared with a consumer’s social connections via Facebook, Twitter, Google, and/or Foursquare. What most retailers do not realise is that this activity is happening
As always, we round up 25 of the biggest stories relating to the world of social media that you have to read, featuring a mixture of the week's news and thoughts from some of the top people from the world of social media, the web and technology...
Every week, we have a look at some of the biggest social media stories that are out there, sift through the thousands of articles on offer and bring you 25 stories that you simply have to read. These are never breaking news stories but rather some of the deepest thinkers and smartest minds from the [...]
While smaller businesses are slowly getting to grips with the different number of social media sites available, a new report shows that while more businesses are integrating social media into their business, other methods of communication and marketing are held in much higher regard for networking and marketing...
A survey conducted by Ipsos/Reuters has found that 85 per cent of those around the world who are connected online send and receive email, while 62 per cent communicate through social networking sites, showing that while social media has become immensely popular worldwide...
As always, we round up 25 of the biggest stories relating to the world of social media that you have to read, featuring a mixture of the week's news and thoughts from some of the top people from the world of social media, the web and technology...
Being able to measure the impact and addition of social media on your site has been the holy grail for many marketers. It's normally said that it improves the number of visits and interactions with your site, but exactly how much of an improvement it makes has been unclear. Until now, that is...
Using social media to broadcast articles is a vital part of any online strategy for media outlets. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are vital in communicating stories and spreading them, but new research suggests that while it’s important, it not (yet) the main source of news that the hype has led us to believe. [...]
It's back and with a bang. To celebrate its return, we rounded up 50 of the biggest stories relating to the world of social media that you have to read, featuring a mixture of the week's news and thoughts from some of the top people from the world of social media, the web and technology...
It's back and with a bang. To celebrate its return, we rounded up 50 of the biggest stories relating to the world of social media that you have to read, featuring a mixture of the week's news and thoughts from some of the top people from the world of social media, the web and technology...
If you have not already heard about the terrific conference that is taking place this week in Wexford for small and medium enterprises looking for guidance on how to accelerate your business using technology, you will want to check out the Techovate conference website. There is an impressive line up of speakers including Cisco, Eircom, [...]
I often get asked what conferences I recommend people attend so if you are based in Ireland or the UK I thought I would curate a list of events that I recommend you consider attending if you are an executive or leader interested in social media and integrated marketing. I will update this list during [...]
Have you ever wondered exactly how these sites generate revenue? Well USBundles.com have created an infographic depicting just that, taking into account the 30 most popular social media sites out of a potential 2,000 sites...
When people talk about how 'social tv', we usually think of tweeting during TV shows or progammes asking viewers to give their opinion on their Facebook page. It is engagement but it doesn't really shape or determine what happening on screen, instead being mostly tacked on without putting much thought behind its inclusion...
Have you ever heard of Joseph Kony? I haven't, until today a friend emailed me the half hour long video about him. Over the last 28 years Kony's rebels kidnapped 30,000 children to join their army. A despicable atrocity, however the one with not enough significance for any powerful government to intervene.
This issue, like so many others, was not addressed for long time because not enough people seemed to care about it - not because Kony's atrocities took place so far away from our homes, but simply because people didn't know about them. And this is where social media is playing a huge role - collectively, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo spread the information to thousands per second. The KONY2012 video on YouTube generated over 4.2M views since it was uploaded two days ago, and there are dozens of related tweets published every minute.
While there were multiple organisations in Uganda and abroad fighting the issue for many years, it was Invisible Children and their extensive social media campaign that made Kony so well known, shared the voice of the victims with millions of people around the world and gained their support. IC used social media to create a global movement, one community united by the same desire to take action to help people suffering somewhere on this planet.
The world in the 21st century is the connected world, and it is inspiring to see how by using available technology together people can make a difference in the history of whole nations. We have
For last year's Qixi Festival (the Chinese Valentine's Day) on August 6th, Dove wanted to find a new and innovative way to promote its chocolate gift set in China. So looking for a love story that would help inspire young people in the country and help boost sales, they encountered an artist named Ma Jin, an artist who wanted to build a love shaped carriage to impress his girlfriend...
As always, we round up 25 of the biggest stories relating to the world of social media that you have to read, featuring a mixture of the week's news and thoughts from some of the top people from the world of social media, the web and technology...
If cash is the currency of real world business, than surely information is the online equivalent. For the chance to log into Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc., we trade in our basic information such as personal details, email addresses and sometimes ev...
Every week, we have a look at some of the biggest social media stories that are out there, sift through the thousands of articles on offer and bring you 25 that you simply have to read. These are never breaking news stories but rather some of the deepe...
We all use social media to communicate with our friends and loved ones but how about as a morale booster? Turns out a study from Pew Research found that almost seven out of ten adults had experiences that made them feel good about themselves, and an al...
Social media is invading every single part of our lives but is it just becoming too much and are we all actually addicted to it? Check through the list of 50 signs that you could be addicted and if you can admit to at least ten of them then you officia...
I really hope most people weren't stupid enough to be surprised about the fact that Path were uploading address books to their servers because this is exactly the sort of thing that companies all over the world are doing at the moment as they all go ab...
With Twitter campaigns becoming more elaborate and the need to communicate between company and followers increasing in importance, social media optimisation company SocialFlow have released their Optimized Publisher, which helps users optimise what the...
Ark° is a not for profit movement encouraging Acts of Random Kindness. It began in the small town of Holywood, Co. Down just 3 years ago. The idea was that you performed ‘one Act of Random Kindness (an Ark°)’, every time their brand was worn. The clothing acted as a reminder to be kind, while allowing the wearer to look good doing it.
Each piece of clothing carried a message, ‘inspiring others to be kind and getting them to think differently about the way life should be lived. It's a symbol for a new way of life through a new kind of clothing’.
In an attempt to spread the Ark° message across the world the founder travelled to the US. This was the beginning of the end for ArkHQ.com (Ark°). They merged with the American Ark (ark.com) midsummer. However after a short time it became clear for all to see that their expectations differed greatly thus resulting in a split after 3 months.
As a result the Irish Ark° had to forfeit its website and the founder Cameron Stewart, was ‘worn thin’. Losing the website for him ‘was simply the icing on the cake that tipped me over. I do wish it hadn't ended this way but I'm sure there's a reason for it somewhere’.
Little did he know through Facebook and the dedication of his fans Ark° lived on. Its movement can be seen on the streets of Dublin and its fans, all over the world.
This story inspired us here at The Digital Marketing Institute to be original
With the aim to stimulate tourism in the country, Japan's Foreign Ministry is inviting popular bloggers and twitter users from around the world to visit areas devastated by the earthquake and tsumani which struck on March 2011...
Starting our newest regular feature today, we'll round up the ten most important social media and technology articles from the last 24 hours so you don't have to. We'll scourer the web to find the most relevant and interesting social media stories that...
Google are probably the most successful and best regarded company to emerge in the internet generation but things are changing for the company as it struggles to maintain it's pristine image. Social media is forcing their hand in terms of dominance and...
Every week, there are thousands of stories about social media and technology out there vying for your attention. With all that information out there, it can be hard to find all the best content which is why we have done all the hard work for you and cu...
Since its relaunch two months ago, the social media app Path has clearly grown in popularity after its upgrade. In the two months since it relaunched, the app has attracted a million new users, roughly the same amount it accumulated in its first year ...
If you aren't already on the visual sharing site Pinterest, then consider this another reason (among many others) to sign up to the service. It has experienced the fastest growing site in terms of referral traffic than any other social media site. It's...
Every week, there are thousands of stories about social media and technology out there vying for your attention. With all that information out there, it can be hard to find all the best content which is why we have done all the hard work for you and cu...
Every week there are thousands of stories about social media and technology, and with all that information out there, it can be hard to find all the best content. Therefore, we've done all the hard work for you and curated the top 25 stories that you s...
With various social media reports and surveys being released in recent times, a number of them have contradicted each other in determining how businesses value the role of social media in their day to day working. So is one report right and another wro...
Are you curious about what the fastest growing Facebook pages are today? What brands, sports teams, politicians are gaining the most fans? Or maybe you're interested to see what type of pages are popular with Facebook users. If the answer to any of tho...
Every week, there are thousands of stories about social media and technology posted online, and with all that information out there, it can be hard to find all the best content. So we've done all the hard work for you and curated the top 25 stories tha...
Google have been in a bit of hot water online since the launch of their new social search results after deciding to use their own Google + data rather than publicly available data from Facebook or Twitter. With so much being written and so much mud bei...
With the biggest social media players fighting among themselves to reign supreme, it's easy to forget that there are many apps out there which appeal to a specific interests and topics. With more and more people being put off by the battle between Face...
Every week there are thousands of stories about social media and technology and with all that information out there it can be hard to find all the best content which is why we have done all the hard work for you and curated the top 25 stories that you ...
As most companies have now embraced the benefits of utilising social media sites in order to engage with consumers and clients, the challenge for many may be how to maintain and manage a constant interactive online presence. Smaller businesses have muc...
With more and more employers looking a employees social media profiles and Google results for their names one company has launched an app on Facebook that flips the whole model on it's head. In a bid to find the best social media interns one company as...
Every week there are thousands of stories about social media and technology and with all that information out there it can be hard to find all the best content which is why we have done all the hard work for you and curated the top 25 stories that you ...
As more people embrace social media and the the amount of apps and new services also surges there is a battle on between millions of people aiming to become early adopters on the hottest new platforms. Everybody from business and brands to celebrities ...
Social media is a two way street, there has to be reasons for both marketers and consumers to engage with each other. But what either side is looking for can be two completely different things and if marketers don't realise this, then they will greatly...
Danish agency, Konstellation set up a bull ride in their agency except that this one has been given a social media twist. Wired up to image recognition cameras and devices, when anyone fell off the bull, each moment was captured on camera with each (un...
It's obvious that social networking sites are immensely popular around the world, but you mightn't realise just how ingrained it is among online users.A annual report from ComScore has found that...
You probably remember a few days ago, we wrote about Heineken's social media tree currently up in Singapore which displays and plays messages from Facebook on the tree itself. Well, retail store Canadian Tire have gone a step further and has harnessed ...
With social media, interaction is vital to develop and promote brand loyalty among consumers yet a new study by New York marketing agency Mr Youth have found that brands with a social media presence only respond to half of all brand page posts made by ...
Mobile social networks have been growing at a huge rate in the last year and with 15 million users Instagram is the platform that is putting all the rest of them to shame. How far can the photo sharing site grow though and can it keep up the superb sta...
Every week there are thousands of stories about social media and technology and with all that information out there it can be hard to find all the best content which is why we have done all the hard work for you and curated the top 25 stories that you ...
Inforgraphics are becoming more and more popular as a way of displaying findings, facts and figures in a fun, creative and engaging way. And why not! If people are greeted by a list of data, they're unlikely to either pay attention...
Le Web is one of the biggest tech conferences of the year and web firms Salesforce and their newly acquired partner Radian 6 have produced an infographic that captures the conversation around the event. The big takeaway is that social media got the mos...
All the big social networks bring out new features on a near daily basis and along with new apps and start ups popping up in the space all the time it can feel like there is always something new and exciting to try out. Here are 5 of the things that we...
A survey compiled by email and social media marketing company StrongMail have found that the majority of B2B marketers are planning to increase their marketing budgets for 2012. Email and social media channels are the areas that will be focused on and ...
In Singapore, Heineken have turned the traditional Christmas tree into a social tree, an installation which consists of 48 LED screens and is eleven meters high. The social tree will allow people to turn the tree into a social hub where they can expres...
Two girls in America have come up with a really smart way of getting hired by putting the pressure back on creative agencies and saying "hire us or we will get married". It is all about getting a visa and the campaign was superbly executed and worked a...
Every week there are thousands of stories about social media and technology and with all that information out there it can be hard to find all the best content which is why we have done all the hard work for you and curated the top 25 stories that you ...
Among the numerous launches at LeWeb '11, one particular site to note was social media site Webdoc, a site that has been in beta for months before being officially launched today. Webdoc is a site that allows you to mix different factions of the web to...
A new wave of technology companies are coming along that are launching on mobile devices only with an app being seen as a like for like replacement for a website. Apps like Oink, Instagram and Path are getting good early traction but will they be able ...
Every week there are thousands of stories about social media and technology and with all that information out there it can be hard to find all the best content which is why we have done all the hard work for you and curated the top 35 stories that you ...
One of the most compromising features on Facebook is the ability for other users to tag you in photos as you can turn up in all sorts of places doing all sorts of things. A beer company called Norte have come up with a genius new campaign that helps bl...
For all marketing efforts made by a brand or company, the consumer is always at the heart of it. Figuring out a method to reach out to them and allow them to engage with your product is the purpose behind it...
The growth of social media has been spectacular over the last couple of years but with more and more companies and brands embracing it as a medium it is important to know that it can only help you achieve so much and that other marketing channels still...
Of the many companies using social media, Walmart have become one of the most proactive, their last imitative was launching 3,500 different Facebook pages two months ago. Now tehy’ve launched a new Facebook app which helps people navigate the awk...
Over on Simply Viral we share the best social media videos on a daily basis as we sift through the billions of videos on Youtube to find one amazing piece of content. We have a mixture of videos that have been a massive hit on Youtube as well as some marketing case studies from some of the world’s biggest brands. The videos cover everything from cats, Facebook timeline, Christmas ads, iPads and a classic piece of marketing from Coca Cola. Sit back and enjoy some of these brilliant pieces of marketing from the month of November this year…
Dominos Brings Pizza Making To The iPad
A brilliant new campaign has just launched from Dominos in the USA which allows users make a pizza and then order what they’ve made in the game. It’s a super interactive promotion that is effectively turning ordering dinner into a fun game allowing you to compete against others. This is the perfect promotional tool for kids and adults alike.
Hilarious People Of Walmart Video
If you haven’t seen The People Of Walmart video then you have been missing out but this video has just been released that sets music to some of the best photos from the site. It’s essentially a series of real photos taken in American store Walmart showing people who really shouldn’t ever have been let out of the house. Hilarious.
Facebook Hacked By Israeli Agency
An agency an Israel have come up with a brilliant hack for the brand new version of Facebook. The timeline, which has yet to launch
It is time to sit back and take a high level view of where social media is as an industry and to look at some of the big trends that will emerge over the next year. The big guys like Twitter, Facebook and Google are well placed to continue their domina...
It's been another busy week in the world of social media and as always we round up the top 25 stories of the week that simply need your attention. These are not news focused stories but more a selection of deep thinkers, thought provokers and great gui...
It's obvious that businesses recognise the potential of social media as well as how it affects their company. Yet a new study from SocialStrategy1 and OfficeArrow state that the majority of small businesses are overwhelmed by the concept and are unsure...
It is widely accepted that 2012 will be the year where we start to see real commerce on Facebook and money flowing through the platform between consumers and Paypal are kick starting that trend with the launch of a new app that allows people to send mo...
As the big four social networks of Google +, Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook continue to fight it out they have got in to a habit of copying each other on every new feature they each launch and it is really not going to do any of them any favors in the ...
Every week we round up 25 of the biggest social media stories of the week by sifting through the thousands of articles out there on the subject. This week has been a big week for Google with lots of updates to their platform while Facebook have been ma...
Barry Hurd of 123 Social Media is a social media guru. He helps businesses use the increasing power of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to grow their business and acquire new customers.
Could you give us a brief overview of your site and what you do?
123SocialMedia.com is the training arm of our corporate services group. We work with executive staff to identify areas of opportunity and risks across multiple business silos and career levels. Our methodology reviews “social media” in terms of new trends, market opportunities, and technology advancements that affect business processes ranging from marketing to employee recruiting.
Once the executive team understands the direction, we implement changes within the organizational departments that make sense.
The end result of our work includes training and management processes that enable organizations to lead successful new media initiatives. This roadmap and process allows companies to learn from other competitors in the marketplace, create engagement strategies that utilize competitive education points, communicate with both internal and external audiences more effectively, and launch metric-driven new media initiatives. In many cases, the marketing channel is a logical first step.
What percentage of traffic do you see your clients getting from social media before you work with them, and where does that percentage go after you work with them?
As someone with an extensive background in search optimization and overlapping social areas, many of our clients see a *decrease* in general traffic and a very substantial increase in relevant
Google have today taken the long expected move of opening up their new social network to brands and businesses. This move is obviously targeted at Facebook and trying to copy the huge success they've had with their pages, as well as trying to grab some...
There's a certain level of customisation with our social media profiles, we create and decide what content goes into them. However, when we see content from an outside source and take issue with it, are we within our rights to complain about it, consid...
A new tool called Reach.ly aims to help hotels all over the world by searching through 200 million tweets sent every day and providing a dashboard that is searchable by city and shows who is traveling there. Although this sort of functionality has been...
Twitter hasn't really changed that much since it's launch with the simple core features being at the heart of it's success but in the last couple of weeks they have started making a series of bold moves that could change the very core of the service. S...
With what has to be some of the worst timing the world of advertising has ever seen Levi's have just launched an ad campaign around Europe aimed at a youth audience and showing scenes of rioting. The ad features youngsters and encourages them to rise u...
Very few advertising campaigns now, don't include a social media element in some shape or form. Yet it is still largely an unknown. While brands are more comfortable with organic social media activity, there are still lots of learnings to be made for a...
New Balance have just launched a new campaign that will have users running around the city following an iPhone app game in the hope of winning a new pair of shoes and a gold baton worth $20,000. It's all part of a game to help promote a new range of sh...
A mathematician in Canada has recently received a grant to begin a 5 year project into researching influence of social networks and connections. The research could blow the social media industry wide open, as for the first time we could have concrete e...
A mathematician in Canada has recently received a grant to begin a 5 year project into researching influence of social networks and connections. The research could blow the social media industry wide open, as for the first time we could have concrete e...
The New York Times has recently launched a new project - beta 620 - that opens up new projects in development to public feedback, as well as allowing people to make their own suggestions for projects. It shows that the future of news lies in collaborat...
Instagram is the hot new photo sharing app that is only available on iPhones but already has close to 8 million users and a new service is allowing you to create a hard copy coffee table book featuring all your photos. Instagram photos are the perfect ...
Twitter has broken down a lot of the walls associated with how we access and consume media. The micro-blogging site has allowed, among other things, instant reports on the news, sports and other topics of interest, making updates almost instantaneous. ...
Everybody tries to take on Twitter and Facebook with their own social networks and they all fail but when somebody like Amazon enters the fray with a social network for books you sit up and take notice. This has hardly been reported anywhere but Amazon...
Twitter has always been slow to work with brands, and recent threats from other social networks could see them getting left behind unless they get on board and start facilitating businesses on the site. While they are investing in new advertising produ...
A smart marketing campaign from a traditional Belgian agency who wanted to move in to the digital space has used Foursquare and targeted staff in other agencies around the country. This is one of the first times that we have ever seen Foursquare being ...
Beer companies are not always innovative with their advertising but the following ads feature a couple of great innovative social media campaigns for Heineken. This is the work of students from the Miami school of advertising who took the well known be...
Turntable.fm is one of the most talked about and game changing music start ups to launch in recent times but nearly as soon as it launched it was banned for non USA users. As you would expect with any such start up the clones have been quick to emerge ...
Social media, mobile and apps are changing plenty of industries right in front of our eyes but probably none more so than the restaurant industry which is entering a new phase of complete and utter transparency which will only benefit consumer. Here ar...
Many are asking the question of whether in the future, privacy will be a privilege or a right, but I want to look at it further and question whether int he future, privacy will even be a concept at all. As social technologies develop and change, the no...
The Godfather is recognized as one of the best films of all time and a new version featuring Super Mario and some of the other biggest gaming characters of all time has just been released. The plot of the video is around the rise of mobile social gamin...
Wajam is a search plugin that shows how social search can be done well. By activating your personal social network connections, it offers a cohesive search experience across various platforms, bringing the social experience with you wherever you go. We...
I've put together a collection of stats on LinkedIn that show you the types of people that are using the site and how it is being used for business. Stats covered include industry breakdown of LinkedIn members and
As people move from print magazines to the online world one area that is booming is media consumption on tablet devices and the iPad in particular. Since the launch of the market leader Flipboard there have been copycats and it is a market that is star...
The Wall Street Journal is today reporting that Facebook could be about to make a substantial update to it's newsfeed functionality that would help developers and advertisers engage with users. As brands and advertisers start to wake up to the fact tha...
The cleaning brand Mrs Meyers experimented with a unique ad format that pulled in realtime content and online conversation from social platforms. It's a glimpse at the future of social advertising and the increasing convergence between social media and...
The announcement that Google+ gained 25 million users in less than a month makes it the fastest growing social network in web history. In comparison, it took both Facebook and Twitter the good part of three years to reach that mark putting further weig...
Blink 182 have released the video for their first single in 8 years and it's made up entirely of their fans. The only thing is, the fans don't know about it! They rewarded people who had uploaded clips with 'borrowed' tracks from Blink 182 by featuring...
As Facebook gear up for their IPO in 2012 we have stripped away all the hype around the business and look just where and how they are going to justify their 100 billion valuation. The business model is actually incredibly simple and focused on advertis...
For web publishers and small businesses who want to get their own professional video set up there have always been lots of choices but one of the most beautiful players out there Vimeo have just launched a businesses package that is worth checking out....
While social media sites are still relatively young, there have been many attempts to recreate the success experienced by the more popular sites. But for every Facebook and Twitter that become a massive success, there are other sites like iYomu that fa...
The growth of Twitter and social media in general has made the need to measure and analyse accounts and their progress even greater for businesses. There are many analytical tools such as Optify and CoTweet which aim to help businesses drive more traff...
Coca Cola have just launched a new summer campaign in Israel that shows that they are well ahead of the game when it comes to social media marketing in the real world. It's a Facebook application that allows users to log in using nothing but their face...
Human beings get a bad reputation for not helping each other out and being mean but a new advertising campaign for a credit card in Australia shows off humans at their very best. A series of videos shows a man losing money and people returning his wall...
Twitter has had a difficult time with advertising, first holding off for an incredibly long time before starting to monetise the site, then annoying users when they started to, as they had enjoyed an ad-free experience for such a long time. As they inv...
Getting a marketing message across when you are talking about the world's biggest dictators in never an easy challenge but this innovative new magazine campaign using QR codes really gets you thinking. This hugely visual and thought provoking campaign ...
Though there is no shortage of excellent books on social media across many different sides of the industry, there are some essential reads that have nothing to do with social media, yet still apply to social communication today. I take a look at some o...
As journalists and media organizations become more and more reliant on Twitter a case where the BBC have lost 60,000 Twitter followers overnight to ITV has got people talking about who owns individual Twitter accounts. Laura Kuenssberg was the politica...
A recent article claims that social media is turning us into a generation of self-obsessed 'children' with a constant need for feedback and to waste time sharing the minutiae of our day to day lives. Is there any truth in the article? (Teaser - there's...
As more and more web companies emerge, maybe it's finally time to admit that this is only sustainable for so long, and that collaboration is the key to success. The recent collaboration between Foursquare and Groupon, just announced today, shows that m...
Google have always been known for their innovative and creative streak and ever since Larry Page returned to Google as its CEO, the company has wasted little time in introducing new products to stay ahead of the pack...
Tumblr has been gaining massively in popularity in the last couple of years as a platform where people can share their content in lots of creative ways. It sites somewhere between the short bursts of Twitter and the more complicated blogging platforms ...
It can be very hard to keep up with all the latest trends in social media and with new platforms, tools and services being released daily the temptation is always there to jump to the latest and greatest new thing. With this in mind I wanted to explain...
As the amount of information that we share online increases it seems that very few of us are aware of just how much information is getting logged and tracked regarding our daily lives. This short video uses a typical lunch time break period of one hour...
A new social media measurement tool launched by Comscore, aims to tell marketers more about how their social media activity is working for them, beyond looking at basic metrics. But when a tool like this only works if you have more than 500,000 followe...
Youtube has paved the way for budding film makers and anyone with a camera or webcam to post videos and post it onto the internet. Yet when posting onto youtube, you don't just post for your friends but leave your handiwork available for a global audie...
It's not that long ago since Dominos were involved in a huge social media scandal involving video clips on Youtube of their staff messing with food but they have come full circle and launched what must be the most public customer reviews ever seen. The...
When one of the world's biggest brands Nike sit down and make a video about what works for them on Facebook that is something that you should probably take the time to watch. This short case study explains how they see it as a medium to engage with hum...
There has been no shortage of coverage for Google + since it's launch 3 weeks ago on tech and social media blogs but this short video does a great job of explaining the difference between the 2 social networks to the average man or women in the street...
As the world of journalism changes right in front of our eyes it's important for people in the media business to embrace social media and the change that is happening within the industry. Social media is becoming such an integral part of journalism th...
A new series of videos from social media marketing firm North Social make fun of the brands and businesses who use desperate attempts to attract likes at all costs to their Facebook page. It's a smart way of getting attention for their own services onl...
More and more companies are subjecting candidates to social media 'background checks' whereby the job seekers social data and profiles are analysed to determine their suitability. A new startup is offering this as a service, but are we ready for it?
In recent times some of the biggest social media and technology blogs have turned in to content farms producing content simply to achieve better SEO results and to tap in to large public news events. It's forcing myself and others to stop reading these...
Although Google + has only been up and running for 3 weeks there has been huge demand for business pages that brands, charities and large corporations could use to help engage with the general public. For the moment though Google is limited to personal...
With the number of people reached social media sites increasing, brands and companies are learning how to create campaigns that use the platform effectively. While sites like Facebook can utilitize the visual, advertising on Twitter is a greater challe...
Cars are one area that are clearly starting to attract great innovation when it comes to technology and the gadgets that are built in to them. A new concept video released by Toyota Ireland shows just what the touch screen passenger windows of the futu...
For every site that requires a user account, they tend to follow the same process. Fill in the details, create a password and username, verify the account through a confirmation email and then log in with your email/username and password. The idea of a...
Float, a new app for iPhone, allows you to read articles on a smartphone with ease and integrate all your reading material into one area. Available for free on the Apple App store, the idea behind the app is that articles that are designed for web page...
I've purposely taken a step back from forming an opinion on Google + and it's chances of success in the 2 weeks since it's launch amid all the hysteria but I wanted to finally get off the fence and smart my thoughts. There is plenty of online buzz and ...
President Barack Obama pushed this week for Visa reform for the retention of highly educated students. At present students must return to their country of origin once education is completed, this is seen as an extreme deficit to the US economy. This ne...
As more companies use daily deals and the market reaches near-saturation, how are they actually working for businesses? Some interesting findings have been publishes that show the ROI driven from a daily deal offering both for small and large businesse...
As social networks are becoming more and more complex, I'm calling for a clutter-free social media life. There are so many excellent tools out there that simply focus on one niche subject or facet, that we can get infinitely more out of than jumping on...
A new site is using the millions of Facebook likes that are clicked on a daily basis to surface the best content on the world's biggest social network. Fmeme is very similar to Tweetmeme of Digg in that it ranks stories, videos and photos on the amount...
Social search is emerging as one of the most valuable, and untapped areas, of social technologies. It's clear that right now there is a lot of movement here by both the search and social giants, but with no-one staking their claim in this space. Moveme...
Social commerce has been threatening to really take off for some time now and this infographic about all the brands and businesses engaging on Facebook makes for some interesting reading. Although it is still early days for commerce on Facebook the ear...
Following the news that Twitter will be introducing ads into the newstream more and more, through a self-service ad platform, there has been a fair amount of outcry. These ads will not be Twitter's downfall however and it seems like a natural next step...
With so many marketers and brands struggling to understand the real value of social media, with simple metrics often not providing the full answers, we've put together 10 case studies that prove the ROI of social media. The case studies provided are gi...
For a couple of years Facebook's march to world domination seemed more like a walk in the part but in the last month the tide seems to have turned somewhat and the world's biggest social network faces some major hurdles. We look at their biggest challe...
Al Gore is well known for his campaigning to save the world from impending climate meltdown and his latest effort will aim to use social media channels to drive a grassroots campaign online on the 14th September. IN a round the world streaming event th...
The next Social Bits workshop will be held at The Ardilaun Hotel in Galway on the 18th of July.The workshops will run from from 9:30 am until 1pm and costs €150 for the half day.Each of the workshops can be considered a boot-camp in social media for ...
As social media campaigns become more popular brands and businesses are always keen to turn them in to a case study because often the video will get even more attention online and get shared with a larger audience. The following list brings together so...
A file has been discovered this week on the Ipad, Iphone and Android that tracks users movements using CellId. Although not as accurate as GPS this can log users movements without their knowledge. This could spell legal issues for these brands in count...
As more brands look to gamification as an emerging social strategy to engage their fans, we offer 5 great case studies to provide inspiration to other brands and show how gamification concepts can directly benefit your business. Examples covered includ...
With the social media wars hotting up between Facebook and Google + we wanted to create a simple page that summed the battle up daily and allowed users to vote on who they thought was winning. With both sides set to release features over the coming wee...
Speaking on topical issues such as US economy, health care and also taxes President Obama’s visit also recognised the importance of Facebook as an information source for the next generation.
Linkedin launched its IPO today at a valuation of $45 which then rocketed to over a $114.00 before dropping back below $100.00 as traders took early earnings. There is a clear desire for investors to put their money into social media companies and make...
Dr Elizabeth Churchill is a Principal Research Scientist and manager of the Internet Experiences group at Yahoo! Research.
What makes this Social Media Day event special?
Historic event: The City of San Jose will officially proclaim June 30th as ...
The Lord Mayor issued a proclamation declaring June 30 as Social Media Day for the City of Dublin making it the first city in Europe to do so.
At the Irish Innovation Center over 200 people are gathering to celebrate the proclamation of Social Media...
From an early age, Keith Killilea realised that he wanted to build software and create games as a creator instead of an end user. He began his career in tech with a Commodore 64 at the age of 12. Since then he has worked on more than 30 different gamin...
This case study shows how Microsoft's search engine Bing used rapper Jay Z to help tap in to a new audience and raise awareness about their search engine to such an extent that their traffic rose by 11% in one month. It's an award winning case study fr...
The war is well and truly on between Facebook and Google + and instead of looking at the new Google offering I wanted to have a look at what Facebook needs to do to gain the momentum back. It's hard to forget that despite all the buzz on tech blogs abo...
As brands and businesses have embraced Facebook over the last couple of years it's been interesting to watch the biggest most well known global brands rise to the top. This is the list of the 20 biggest Facebook pages in the world at the moment and it'...
While the main currency of the web was once links between websites and publishers would be happy to be credited with a link back to their site that is no longer the case. Social sharing is affecting rankings and when copying and pasting content there n...
One super creative Twitter user has come up with what has to be the most creative job application in the history of the world. Using a simple hack he was able to attract the attention of some of the best creative directors around, have them view his po...
Social media has changed many businesses over the last couple of years but despite the pace of change there have been many doubters that it could just be a fad that passed before we returned to the old way of doing business. If anything though the last...
The next Social Bits workshop will be held at The Ardilaun Hotel in Galway on the 18th of July.The workshops will run from from 9:30 am until 1pm and costs €150 for the half day.Each of the workshops can be considered a boot-camp in social media for ...
Linkedin launched its IPO today at a valuation of $45 which then rocketed to over a $114.00 before dropping back below $100.00 as traders took early earnings.
There is a clear desire for investors to put their money into Social Media companies and m...
Most of the early feedback around Google + has been pretty positive and for the purpose of this article we are going to say it does well and take a look at how the big competitors like Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter would fare if this did take off. Do ...
The campaigns that brands are running on Facebook are getting more and more creative but in terms of literally putting a huge smile on people's faces this campaign from an orange juice company has to be the best one yet. Over 40,000 fresh oranges were ...
A FREE live and online (Mashable.com/MeetUp.com) event with panel discussion to celebrate media becoming social. June, 30th, 4:00 p.m. PST
Informative social media discussion, high quality networking with leaders in business & technology.
Iri...
The Apple iPhone has always been prone to throwing up the odd random predictive text now and again and car brand Volkswagen have tapped in to that popular internet meme to create a series of hilarious ads promoting their cars. Its a genius, low cost an...
Every once in a while we like to bring together some of the best social media blog posts from around the web featuring some of the best thinkers and smartest minds in the industry. The following 50 blog posts are some of the best in 2011 so far and are...
Tech giant are best known for their online ads but this billboard campaign in London is pure genius and is creating quite a stir. It's all to do with promoting their new mobile voice searches and getting people to search more on their mobiles and in te...
This is a brilliant campaign case study from Tesco in Korea who have been trying to crack the market for some time and decided to use an innovative strategy using mobile and QR codes to bring virtual shopping to public places. It's yet another example ...
Linkedin has continued to grow as a platform since going public and in many ways they are mirroring Facebook's every move and making the most of their own social connections on their site. Launching today are the new Linkedin social ads which bring you...
The UK phone company Orange have come up with some incredibly smart marketing ahead of the Glastonbury music festival this weekend which will allow users to charge their mobile phones using their custom T Shirts and sound technology. It solves one of t...
The UK phone company Orange have come up with some incredibly smart marketing ahead of the Glastonbury music festival this weekend which will allow users to charge their mobile phones using their custom T Shirts and sound technology. It solves one of t...
With an explosion in online video relating to social media we thought it would be an idea to bring together 7 of the best videos from the last couple of months that you simply have to watch. You might not get through all of these videos in one sitting ...
Twitter and Facebook have had a spectacular rise to the top of people's attention over the last couple of years but both are growing so big that they are starting to attract the first signs of negative publicity. So what happens from here on in now tha...
With the entire social media industry obsessed with trying to find a tool that measure influence I wanted to take a closer look at Klout and point out the very obvious flaws that a service like this has. You just can't expect to have a service that cal...
Coca Cola one of the biggest brands in the world are using Facebook places in Isreal in a marketing campaign that encourages users around the country to recycle their old plastic bottles by checking in online. It's a great example of a campaign that mi...
SocialMedia.ie is a specialist social media marketing agency with services including consulting, training and creating digital content. We have worked [...]
The +1 button which is Google's latest move in to social got off to a spectacular start with widespread media coverage and a whole host of publishers across the web embracing the social button but weeks after launch there seems little point to the butt...
Nike in Amsterdam thought that running was getting boring and that the key youth market were just not interested in it any more so they came up with an innovative Facebook campaign that changed all that. The following case study shows a strong online/o...
With news breaking today that Facebook are about to launch a massive update to their photo sharing app and possibly "borrow" some of the features of apps like Instagram and Path it's a big day for online photo sharing. Just like they did when Foursquar...
New social browser Rockmelt has been busy adding lots of new features over the last couple of months including announcing a deep integration with Facebook today that makes this by far the most social web browser. Is this something that we all need and ...
Before anybody goes on a summer holiday one of the first places they usually stop and look for information is online and with an explosion of social media sites catering to the holiday crowd we wanted to compile the ultimate list of social media tools ...
As our online lives become more and more public just how much information are we sharing with people and how strange are some of the things that we do on social media sites? This funny little video shows a man walking around doing some of the things th...
Tracking your social media stats across all the different sites you use on a daily basis can be a very painful experience but luckily the new tool Twenty Feet allows you to manage all your stats in one simple dashboard. Pull your stats in from Twitter,...
With more and more brands on Facebook the campaigns being run through the platform are more innovative than ever and this is a great example of that called Xperia Social Xperiments. It locks a comedian in a room for 8 hours and allows fans of the Faceb...
A good subscriber base (Email, RSS, Twitter etc) is crucial to building a serious blog and will help you massively with your overall traffic numbers. The following tips will give you insight in how to get to 1000 subscribers within the first 3 months o...
{lang: 'en-GB'}Have you started selling your products or services on Facebook and started to explore the realms of F-commerce? It’s great to see a number of organisations here in Ireland doing so, and over the forthcoming months I hope we will learn ...
As Youtube turns 6 years old and with over three billion videos watched daily we wanted to compile a list of the twenty best ways in which you can get more out of the world's biggest video sharing website. The tips and tricks on this list are especiall...
{lang: 'en-GB'}Are you hosting live events, workshops, conferences, teleseminars or even webinars? Perhaps you have found that in today’s market place there is increased competition so how can you attract more people to attend your live event? In...
{lang: 'en-GB'}Are you looking for ways to enhance the effectiveness of your online copy? If you missed the webinar that Ann Donnelly and I hosted in early May you can now listen to the recording. Your online copy is critical in your blog posts, sales ...
Apple launch their iCloud event today and with everybody focused on the music and movies side of things Apple could make an unexpected move and launch something impressive in the photo sharing space. Our online photos are completely fragmented at the m...
With the music industry suffering badly the Kaiser chiefs and their record label have come up with a super new way of launching an album that allows fans to get involved in the creative process and make money from suggesting the album to other friends....
Google this week unveiled the +1 button for publishers and with billions of them already on the web we wanted to have a look and see what this means for publishers and consumers alike. Will people embrace the latest sharing button and does this have th...
{lang: 'en-GB'}Are you using LinkedIn to extend your network through participating in LinkedIn Groups? With a well thought out and executed LinkedIn strategy, LinkedIn Groups can help you extend your network across the globe and attract new investors, ...
Social Bits will be running workshops at the end of June. There will be three workshops to choose from:
Beginners
Intermediate
Seasoned Marketers
Each of the workshops can be considered a boot-camp in social media for any business wanting to lear...
Facebook have always been accused of copying features from other sites but now the boot seems to be on the other foot with Linkedin clearly mimicking things it sees being a success for Facebook. It's all about opening up the platform for Linkedin and p...
When Corona wanted to tap in to the youth market to sell the lucrative light beer brand they had huge competition from Coors and Miller but they turned to Facebook and created this interactive campaign that allowed users to engage with an interactive b...
The last 6 months have seen some of the world's biggest blogs move from a niche audience in to fully fledged businesses with large teams of writers and in many cases small media empires. Social media has helped this transition and with most blogging so...
The Sunday Times are well known for their Rich List which calculates the wealth of individuals in the UK and Ireland but they have launched something far more interesting which is the Sunday Times Social List. It pulls in information from Foursquare, F...
The worlds of technology and social media are moving at an incredible rate at the moment fueled by plenty of capital and incredible innovation so after a visit to Techcrunch Disrupt in New York I wanted to take a look at some of the biggest trends arou...
The worlds of technology and social media are moving at an incredible rate at the moment fueled by plenty of capital and incredible innovation so after a visit to Techcrunch Disrupt in New York I wanted to take a look at some of the biggest trends arou...
Matt Galligan, CEO and founder of SimpleGeo recently spoke with Social Bits about his new technology. SimpleGeo is about making it easy for developers to create location aware software, it provides developers with the understanding of the coordinates ...
Techcrunch Disrupt is a brilliant place to see start ups and some of the technology that is coming in the future and with 100s of great demos I wanted to pick out the 3 that I thought were the strongest over the couple of days. In terms of innovation, ...
A quick synopsis of the the 2011 Digital Salary & Employment Survey from Prosperity.ie confirms our worst fears at Digital Marketing Institute about the quality of graduates that our universities are producing in this country. For some time anecdotal evidence has pointed towards the lack of digital education at third level. I recently spoke witheven s marketing graduates (Class of 2011) who are starting the Digital Marketing Institute Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing in the past 3 weeks. When asked what percentage of their marketing degrees covered digital? the unanimous response was ZERO!!
Google came to prominence because of it's efforts in the field of search but increasingly they are spreading their wings and challenging some of the other huge tech companies out there. With large scale battles looming against the likes of Apple, Micro...
The world is obsessed with social media stock at the moment and a new product from Zecco allows you for the first time to buy or sell stock with the Facebook platform. It's a space that is going to be heating up in the future but the fact is that as of...
Foursquare founder Denis Crowley speaking at the Techcrunch Disrupt conference has announced a series of big numbers around the service and the growth that it is seeing. Also announced today was the fact that Foursquare is also going to be baked in to ...
{lang: 'en-GB'}If you are a small business in the US you may have been aware of the American Express OPEN and Facebook collaboration – the “Facebook Big Break for Small Business,” which is a national contest designed to help transform the way...
If you are a small business in the US you may have been aware of the American Express OPEN and Facebook collaboration – the “Facebook Big Break for Small Business,” which is a national contest designed to help transform the way small business...
Yesterday I downloaded the Words for Friends app from Lady Gaga's website. It's part of a special and unique way that Lady Gaga is doing her marketing online. Lady Gaga has teamed up with Zynga to release a number of unreleased songs from her upcoming ...
Digital marketers are constantly looking for the channels to engage with their audience. While the debates whether email is dead, or whether impact brands are making via social media is really that valuable are very topical, it's the top-line numbers that are still most persuasive.
The latest report from AOL and Nielsen Online, produced in April, analyzed more than 10,000 social media messages to see how consumers share content online. The study found that 93% of internet users turn to email to share content, while 89% use social networks and 82% use blogs.
Paul Adams, global brand experience manager at Facebook, said at a recent conference that the average person has four different friend or influence groups. Each has an average of 10 people and they are based around life stages, experiences or hobbies.
Analyzing the ways in which consumers communicate online with each of these groups can help marketers determine the best ways to reach reach their target audience and make an impact through suitable advertising options and/or social sites.
Additionally, the study found that 60% of shares were links to published content, such as a news or media site, while 36% of shares consisted of embedded content, such as branded experiences on a social network, enabling users to share content without leaving the platform or social network.
These numbers confirm what many digital marketers already know about social media, but also demostrates still clear popularity of email, with instant messaging not being too far behind.
Getting people's attention via email to secure online coverage is becoming increasingly competitive and with people getting hundreds of emails every day I wanted to share a short series of tips that would help make sure your email would get noticed. Th...
Have you got Klout? Everyone has. How do you measure it online though?
Reaching out and targeting influencers online is key to getting some outreach online. Fortunately tools are being developed to help us offline to gauge who is who online.
As i...
Genieo is a personalised newspaper style homepage. It’s a Facebook style application that can be installed on your PC or mac and analyses your browsing activities. From this it generates a newspaper style homepage based on your areas of interest. Unl...
If there is one area where we are always getting asked to train on it is Social Media. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn - the holy trinity of Social Media Marketing (!) are the main applications that business users are focused on right now. While we cover these products in our various Diploma in Digital Marketing courses, we have partnered with Simply Zesty to bring you a 1 Day intensive course on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
This course designed for people who either
already manage Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn accounts and who have some basic knowledge of the site and want to expand their knowledge, or
new to social media marketing and want to get up and running fast.
We’ll be covering popular topics where we always see people having questions including….terms and conditions, competition guidelines, increasing likes, building campaigns, Facebook advertising, measuring engagement and Facebook design and app tips.
As the race for Facebook likes heats up online there are a number of new tools that allow you to find the data behind the likes and Likester is one of those. This is a search engine for likes and it lets you drill down in to the data in all sorts of wa...
Facebook is the world's biggest social network and for businesses and brands it is becoming increasingly important to have a presence there. Simply Learning is our new training platform that helps individuals, small businesses, organizations and brands...
The last year has been the year of the smart phone and hand in hand with that has come the rise of the QR code. QR codes are 2D bar codes which users scan using a QR code reader on their smart phone which then takes then to a link in the online world. ...
Linkedin have been drastically improving the site in recent months and opening up as a platform and their latest partnership with Fortune 500 to create an app that helps with networking is a real revelation. The app helps you find business contacts wit...
When Facebook added the @ symbol functionality it was as a direct response to the threat posed by Twitter and the conversational nature of the website. Tagging friends is a feature that has been underused to date but in the last couple of days Facebook...
With brands and businesses embracing social media at a greater pace than ever I wanted to share some of the 10 best branded video campaigns that we have spotted since the start of the year. You can use these ten brilliant videos to draw on for inspirat...
Google seem intent on adding a social layer to email and this promotional video that they have just released for Google Chrome shows that. Google has...
{lang: 'en-GB'}Are you a non profit looking to explore the use of social media and social networking as part of your business plan? To support the Partnering for Success Conference taking place in Dublin on the 5 May 2011 which is being organised by Mi...
There has been huge buzz around Google and their social efforts for the last year and although they have made some small updates it is the IO conference next week that should see them roll out the first of the big features. Will it be one big bang rele...
A brilliant new site called Empire Avenue allows you to buy and sell shares in the people you are connected to via your social networks. Its a mixture between a game and something far more powerful that could go a long way to helping to measure influen...
Sharing content that you see on websites and blogs with your social networks has never been easier but there are now so many buttons that it is starting to feel really cluttered online. Most people go with at least the Facebook and twitter options but ...
I can't open a newspaper or magazine these days without seeing a QR code trying to entice me away to some sort of online offer or additional rich media content. Although it's a great strategy and shows that print media is willing to embrace the technol...
How good is social media at referring traffic to sites, and how engaged is that traffic once it gets there? The findings might surprise you, showing a significant shift in user journeys and the way in which we interact with sites.
{lang: 'en-GB'}Is email marketing dead? Facebook doesn’t think so! Earlier this week, Facebook announced that they have now made available the “Send button” as a social plugin that websites can use to let people send a link to a friend through Fa...
SocialMedia.ie is a specialist social media marketing agency with services including consulting, training and creating digital content. We have worked [...]
{lang: 'en-GB'}‘Are technology firms adopting social media’ is one of the areas that the recent Eurocom Worldwide 2011 Annual Technology Confidence Survey explored. The survey found that 38% of technology firms examine social media profiles to dete...
The world's biggest professional network Linkedin is incredibly useful for connecting with other professionals but it can be slightly limiting in terms of features but this list of 10 great hacks, tips and tricks will help you get much more out of it. ...
When marketing your own business you used to have a very clear and defined path that you could follow that involved push marketing and using traditional media channels but the landscape has changed completely. Using our own business as an example I wan...
The buzz around Storify has been around for months but as an invite only launch only a selct few got to see it. Today the social media curation tool goes fully public and anybody can start dragging and dropping and making their own rich media content s...
Linkedin in marketing has always been pretty one dimensional and focused very much on the individual but with the launch of their new platform this campaign from Volkswagen in Holland shows exactly what can be done to target the mass market of business...
2 Of the biggest online videos over the last couple of years have been the Evian Roller babies and the Old Spice campaign. Both started on television but created huge buzz and sharing via social media channels. Both brands have just released follow up ...
Photo sharing app Instagram has been a huge success in the 6 months since it launched but one area that it always fell down on was it's web experience but today they have launched a fantastic update that makes viewing photos online far more social and ...
This is a guest post from Alan Grainger, the Web Marketing Assistant at Solo Trading
SEO is dead, long live social! It seems that any Google algorithm change or advance by one of the social networks will breed a hundred articles along the lines of that headline, but those of us who understand a bit more about web marketing know that all things need to be considered in moderation.
There's no doubting the fact that social networks are playing more of an important role in the way the web works, with people using Facebook to track down local suppliers and Google admitting that it now uses social factors when compiling its rankings.
There's also set to be more integration between the search engines and your social networks, with Google displaying websites that your Facebook Friends have recommended in its SERPS. Google have even gone so far as to develop their own social signal, +1, which will enable people to show which websites they like by clicking a button, much in the same way the Facebook "Like" button works.
It is this cross platform integration that is causing the most excitement at the moment, with web marketers predicting it will change the entire way in which people find websites on the internet. But before we get too carried away, it is important to consider who this won't effect, as well as who it will.
Cross Platform Integration
We internet marketers are a pretty switched on bunch. We're always signed into Google, our Facebook profiles are always open and we could Tweet from
{lang: 'en-GB'}Are you looking to build more visibility about your business online through outreach and connecting to your customers? Then take a look at the Dell Trade Secrets programme that was launched earlier this year.The programme was established...
With thousands of videos being shared about social media every single day it can be hard to find the best content but this list of the 7 best social media videos around at the moment should keep you busy for a while. There are serious talks, some great...
I wanted to ask a very important question for all marketers out there and people who promote things for a living...should you love the products that you promote? It's easy to say that you should but many individuals and agencies need to take all the bu...
Facebook offers a wealth of options to tailor your Facebook page and offer great features to your fans but with many of them buried away in the small print I thought I would share a handy list of 10 of the best tips and tricks that I have spotted on Fa...
Online Viral videos are getting bigger and bigger in terms of production and the latest move from T-Mobile sees them giving a viral video it's very own trailer. The full video is getting released later today but if you really can't wait that long then ...
The battle for your photos online is really hotting up with a whole host of new start ups and apps competing with older more established photo sharing websites like Flickr and Facebook. With billions of photos shared every month online we look at the o...
Remember the Tippex ads where you had to shoot a bear last year? Well the same agency are back with a bigger and better campaign that features the rather unusual sport of human curling. In what must surely become one of the big social media campaigns o...
With mobile usage on the up and readers consuming more content on the go I wanted to ask if you had a mobile strategy for your blog or website? It's very hard to tick all the boxes when it comes to keeping your mobile readers happy but what simple step...
For one of the most innovative useful tools of all time Twitter has been slow to continue their innovation and roll out additional features or tools to improve the service for brands and businesses. After 5 years of solid growth is now the right time t...
For all the power of Twitter search it does lack in many areas and new tool Postpo.st looks to address some of the core problems with Twitter search. It not only allows you to search your own tweets from the past but also those of the people you follow...
These days it is considered essential for any consumer-oriented businesses to be involved in social media. In a highly dynamic world of superfast broadband and mobile Internet, marketeers have to follow their customers online and into the depth of social networks.
We have all been waiting with baited breath to see what Google +1 would be like and today Google have launched what is clearly a reply to the Facebook like button. This is Google's first big step in to social and surprisingly it is their core product o...
With the huge rise in "cut and paste" media and blogs all copying each other I wanted to have a look at one story doing the rounds on socia media circles and see just how much attention the orignal story was getting compared to the blogs and aggregator...
{lang: 'en-GB'}If you are in Ireland and are interested in the changing trends in media, here is an event that you may be interested in attending – The Mash Conference taking place in May called ‘Exploding Media’. You might be aware from my b...
Are you one of the 100 million business leaders who have registered an account on LinkedIn to represent your personal brand and professional profile. Are you finding LinkedIn is delivering real results to your business? Or are you unsure how a presence...
I've been talking a lot about curating recently and I thought it was time I did a little myself so I've split some of the best content that I have found in the first quarter of this year and bookmarked for myself and am sharing it here on the blog. Som...
As the amount of content online explodes the role of curation is an increasingly important one. Just how will this shape the media world of the future though and what forms of curation are going to succeed and more importantly how are the professional ...
One of the questions I always get asked is “how do we increase the number of people joining our Facebook Page”. Many people have also been frustrated that when they comment on another Facebook Page it would be their personal profile that ...
Given that it is a very special day for us all here in Ireland today we thought that we would have a look around the world online and see who is coming up with the best St Patricks day themed campaigns. Here is how brands and businesses are piggybackin...
With more and more businesses, agencies and individuals having their own Facebook pages I thought I would compile a list of some analytics and statistical resources. Facebook do of course offer their own insights but these are a few little tips that wi...
Are you looking for a way to automatically send your blog posts to Twitter? Then I highly recommend that you take a look at Twitterfeed.com. This video tutorial shows you how to set up your blog to automatically post to Twitter and provides tips on wha...
Coca Cola who are one of the world's biggest brands have teamed up with Maroon 5 and will next week invite thousands of fans in to their studio to help them record a song within 24 hours. The song will be released for charity and marks part of a big ne...
We all live under such a huge deluge of content now online these days that it can be really hard to remember where all the good stuff is at. In the past I have used Delicious myself for my bookmarks but with a whole new bunch of options on the market I...
SocialMedia.ie is a specialist social media marketing agency with services including consulting, training and creating digital content. We have worked [...]
AMAS in partnership with the Marketing Insitute of Ireland have recently published an extensive study of how online marketing is used in Ireland. Over 400 Irish marketeers participated and the results show that social media is on the move up in terms o...
It's the fourth edition of our Sunday Social, bringing you a selection of the best of the web, in bite-sized chunks, perfect for easy reading on a Sunday.
Are there Facebook Pages that you recommend people who ‘Like’ your Page would benefit from viewing? With the new Facebook Pages layout you can feature Facebook Pages that you like on your own Page. These could be other Pages for your busine...
If you look closely you can see a new trend about to burst on to the social media scene which is instant publishing video sharing. A mixture of new smart phones, increased connection speeds and a range of new apps mean that social video apps will becom...
Do you get bombarded every day by messages with irrelevant offers and pointless information? Are you frustrated at your inbox being littered with sales emails which are absolutely of no interest to you? Inbound marketing might be just the right solution to reduce informational polution online while helping marketeers gain better profits.
Inbound marketing refers to efforts that provide web users with information or tools of value to them, as opposed to outbound or interruptive marketing that pushes messages in front of them. According to research from inbound marketing solutions provider HubSpot, businesses dominated by inbound marketing have a 62% lower cost per lead than firms that do mostly outbound marketing. This result was similar to HubSpot’s findings from 2010.
Overall, respondents will spend 41% of their 2011 lead generation budgets on inbound channels and another 24% on outbound marketing, with the rest unclassified. Within the inbound portion, SEO dominated as the tactic with the greatest budget. Social media budgets increased between 2010 and 2011 to overtake paid search and the No. 2 inbound channel.
HubSpot also found that inbound channels were effective at turning leads into customers. Nearly three in five respondents had acquired a customer through a company blog or LinkedIn, while almost half had acquired one through Facebook and 42% through Twitter. Facebook proved the most effective inbound channel for customer acquisition for business-to-consumer firms, while LinkedIn performed best for B2Bs.
Everybody is after the best content on Twitter and to a certain extent it is a level playing field but there is a way that you can access better information than most and that is the tip I am sharing today. Most techies will be familiar with this tip b...
We've been hearing that comments on 3rd party sites have been coming for a while now and with them starting to pop up today on 3rd Party sites we thought it would be a good idea to share 10 quick observations on what this means for you, your business, ...
The 2011 Irish Digital Marketing Sentiment Survey was recently conducted by AMAS in partnership with the Marketing Institute of Ireland (MII) (Good to see that MII have eventually realised that there is a digital world out there!).
Risks as well as opportunities exist in how social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube are used as marketing channels.
The study also reveals that marketing budgets continue to move online and that print advertising is losing out to advertising on a range of digital channels.
Attitudes to social media, both positive and negative, proved to be revealing. Social media is an established part of the marketing armoury and is used primarily for relationship building (84%), to create brand awareness (76%) and for listening to and monitoring online conversations about companies, brands and people (66%). Asked to consider the impact of social media, Irish marketers recognised benefits such as:
The ability to understand audiences better (79%)
Delivering cost savings to the business (46%)
Providing the opportunity to make valuable connections (68%)
There is an acknowledgement, though, that social media can have downsides such as:
Increasing a marketer’s workload (64%)
Concerns about damage to a company’s reputation (51%)
The challenges of keeping up to date with what is happening in social media (52%)
A fear of making mistakes on social media sites that cannot be corrected (39%)
Everybody knows social media is a business that is booming but just how big are the valuations getting on some of the social networks? This short video looks at Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Groupon and Zynga as well as some of the headline stats and as...
The Facebook like button has always been a friend to publishers but today it has been upgraded in a way that means the social network is going to be driving even larger volumes of traffic to websites, blogs and publishers all over the world. Here is ho...
