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 [...]
So you have decided to sponsor a national sports event. But then the unthinkable happens. That is what faced brands sponsoring the Super Bowl yesterday as it came to a halt when a power surge cut electricity to a large part of the Mercedes Benz Super Dome in New Orleans stopped play. AdAge reports: During [...]
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.
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. >
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 [...]
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 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, [...]
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.
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.
If you look around the web at any blog or website these days they all seem to have social sharing buttons installed as default in a bid to drive more sharing of content and ultimately more traffic. The big question though is do they actually work? Is there any point installing these buttons or do they just advertise the biggest networks in the world?
Twitter has been making numerous changes to its main site and making it more about content discovery and bring people away from third-party apps and back to their main site. The most recent changes include updating its discover tab to and a weekly email highlighting the biggest events...
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 [...]
With over 140 million active users worldwide, Twitter has revealed that out of the 10 million active users based in the UK, 80 per cent of them access the site through mobile phones. This is significantly higher than the global average of 55 per cent, where the UK is said to be the fourth-largest country for Twitter users in the world, after the U.S., Brazil and Japan...
When Playboy Argentina wanted to increase their Twitter followers, they ran a campaign that mixed Twitter, television and their favorite subject matter...naked girls. It was a smart campaign that teased viewers while also getting them to do all the hard work about spreading the show and their brand message...
We've seen Twitter used in all sorts of creative ways by brands and agencies all over the world, but a game that just launched in Columbia allowed players with large amounts of followers to battle against each other with the winner taking all of them....
Twitter has been placing most of their focus on advertising in recent times, but their latest change is aimed towards making the site more than just a news stream and making it a place where you can discover viral stories and interesting topics...
Criticising someone because of their low Twitter follower number is never a good idea, especially if you're a top ranking executive with that person's rival team. Emmet Ryan looks at how one sports executive in the U.S. didn't get the memo.
As more brands try to make sense of all the noise surrounding social media, is there a way that they can find out their most dedicated fans and use social media more effectively. One startup that is trying to achieve this is PinkMetrics whose latest campaign, RaboScore, is discovering Rugby's biggest fans...
I've never been the biggest fan of Klout because I think it is a bullshit metric and as if to prove my point a brilliant new service called Klouchebag is getting lots of traction and buzz on Twitter today. It's very simple in that you put your Twitter user name in to it and it tells you how much of an "Asshat" you are. It's about as useful as Klout itself To be honest...
There have been a few people called out in recent times for bumping up their Twitter followers by buying fake accounts to follow them through shady services, but I wanted to look at the other side of the argument. Is there ever a case to be made for buying followers from Twitter themselves...
After rolling out promoted tweets, trends and accounts to timelines for iOS and for Android, Twitter has now extended its service to Blackberry devices, allowing businesses and brands to target RIM users alongside iPhone and Android users...
The popularity of Twitter in Japan is well known with the country being responsible for at least three of the most tweeted events in recent times. Now the company is planning to "aggressively" expand in the territory and attract more advertisers as local user growth exceeds the company's global expansion...
Twitter is used in pretty much the same way by brands and businesses all over the world but smart cars in Argentina have found an incredibly unique and original way for you to interact with their page. They've created an animated stream of tweets that move when you use two different keys and bring the car to life brilliantly...
When you analyse the amount of revenue Facebook and Twitter generate each year, there's a clear difference between the two. With an audience of over 800 million people, Facebook's advertising revenue is expected to reach $7.64 billion by 2014 while Twitter's is expected to be $540 million in the same period...
Considering it's one of the biggest complaints leveled against Twitter, spam has been a constant problem for its users. From receiving replies containing a dodgy hyperlink, to spam accounts asking you to follow as they'll improve your follower numbers, to hijacking trending...¸
In a case study published on Twitter's business site, Cadbury revealed that since it launched its Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends campaign, positive mentions of their Wispa Gold product and the brand increased by over 1,800 per cent. they also drove a 25 per cent engagement rate for their "Retweet for Sweets" promotion...
Have a look at Twitter over the last couple of days and you will have seen loads of people giving out about a major bug on the site that means many users of the iPhone app are not able to see their @ mentions. The bug is still in place today but there is a simple way in which you can fix it yourself immediately...
Of the many social media questions you've probably asked yourself in recent times, the question "what would Twitter look like if it was invented in the 80s?" probably would be at the very bottom of the list. That hasn't stopped one site creating what popular online products would have looked like in the 80s and 90s...
Shitter, boasting the tagline "Social media has never been so disposable", is a service that will take one or more feeds from your Twitter account and print them out on toilet roll. For only $35, you can get your tweets or someone else's printed out on four rolls and have it delivered straight to your door...
Twitter just had their 6th birthday last week, and although it has taken a long time for them to start thinking about making money from the service and turning it into a real business, it is clear that 2012 is going to be the year when that happens. This short video that they have produced shows how ads are going to work on the platform for small businesses...
Facebook timeline has changed the way that we all use the service and it now provides a visual tapestry of our lives that we will all be able to look back on in years to come. As usual Facebook have set the bar pretty high in terms of creating something that captures our imagination and now it is clearly time for Twitter to replicate it in some way and unlock the huge troves of data they have on our lives...
Following on from Twitter's unveiling of promoted tweets and stories, the company is giving brands and businesses more options to reach their target audience, in the form of targeted tweets. Having introduced Promoted Trends and Tweets three weeks ago, these have been expanded so that brands can target their campaigns specifically...
Twitter has always been a great place for brands and businesses to engage with their communities and these ten campaigns are among the most innovative marketing campaigns on the social network. You'll be able to get plenty of inspiration from this list for your own Twitter brand campaigns...
With Twitter placing an added focus on generating advertising revenue, and convincing businesses that using their sponsored stories and tweets service is of benefit to them, the company are planning to make significant changes to its brand pages over the coming months...
Everybody knows the rules of Scrabble (and Words With Friends which made it social) and this campaign from Duval Guillaume Modem is a fantastic way of promoting the new game, Scrabble Trickster. With a set of 100 randomly generated characters, you must write the highest scoring sentence you can think of before tweeting it. Every day, the highest scoring tweet wins a Scrabble Trickster game for themselves...
American Express have launched a 'Tweet Your Way To Savings' campaign and site where its members can sync their cards with Twitter and tweet special offer hashtags in exchange for savings in verified stores...
The new feature which helps you detect empty car parking spaces which has been developed by Mercedes is brilliantly smart but the campaign to promote it is even smarter. Using Twitter and a fleet of tweeting cars Mercedes helped shoppers find empty spaces by constantly driving around a city...
Twitter has incorporated both Promoted Accounts and Tweets into the native Twitter apps for iPhone and Android.Working the same way as on the main site, Promoted Tweets will appear in your timeline like any other tweet...
With Twitter announcing that they are rolling out their long awaited self service ad tool (to an initial test of 10,000 people initially) the reality is that people and businesses are about to be able to start buying Twitter followers. So the question ...
Social media analytics site Klout is expanding their service further by announcing either partnerships or acquisitions with three startups, suggesting that 2012 may be the year the company begins to focus on becoming a more attractive proposition for b...
In an attempt to broaden its revenue streams, Twitter is rolling out the self-service ad platform next month through a partnership with American Express. Over 10,000 small and medium sized businesses will be able to avail of the service,...
When the news of Whitney Huston's death made its way onto the pubic conscious, a huge deal was made about how much faster Twitter was in breaking the news ahead of all the different media outlets. Yet while we're all aware at how fast Twitter works as ...
Twitter have become the latest company to admit to the practice after revealing that they download users' entire address book once they use the 'Find Friends' feature on their smartphone app. When users access this feature, it means that the company do...
With an increasing focus on the development of brands and new and different revenue streams being explored, the big players in social media are set to cement their place online and become sustainable businesses in their own right, and ensure that they ...
To celebrate the arrival of 2012, millions of people wished each other a happy new year yet these wishes are only directed towards a specific person and not the world. So Belgium agency VVL BBDO wanted to bring all these wishes together and turn them i...
Twitter will be unveiling a series of new tools - which will include sophisticated analytical tools - over the next few months. Twitter's manager for news and journalism Erica Anderson, said that the new analytics tools will help publishers track the r...
Shortly after rumours circulated about Facebook's introduction of Timeline brand pages at the end of the month, Twitter's equivalent, which was revealed during the site's redesign back in December, is rumoured to be appearing over the next few days...
Privacy has been the hot topic online for the last couple of weeks and things have gone to the next level today with Twitter starting to censor tweets in certain countries. While many see it as a great progressive move forward I think today is a day th...
Many publishers use Twitter as a way of getting more traffic through clicks and this simple infographic from Hubspot shows some of the best times and ways to get more clicks. Not everybody will use Twitter in such a scientific way but if you do want to...
Since Hashtags were first introduced on Twitter (by the users themselves) they have grown in popularity to the point where brands and businesses are increasingly starting to use them as a marketing ploy to get attention. The question is with all the no...
A creative brand agency in the UK have launched a campaign that sees them eating sweets every time they are sent a message on Twitter. It comes with a video of the machine that feeds them the sweets but is it all copied from a similar campaign launched...
As Twitter continues to revamp the ways on which you can access the site they are annoying users who have been with the site for years. While they have made many improvements the way in which they have changed Tweetdeck in particular means that I am pr...
It's not just businesses and individuals who use and benefit from social media, whole nations are now getting in on the action, promoting themselves in new ways. Sweden's Twitter feed was widely reported on over the weekend, as it is being used as the...
When we think of retweets, we think interesting articles someone found, witty or funny comments made, links to videos and other pieces of information deemed interesting. Usually when something is retweeted we enjoy it for what it is before moving on t...
We all know that Twitter has been growing like crazy for the last year but the stats coming in for New Years Eve where the site had some downtime show the enormous scale of their growth with a record 16,000 tweets per second. It is a new record and it ...
Twitter is among the top three social networking sites today and offers a micro-blogging service that lets its users send, receive and share messages via tweets. Tweets are text messages confined to 140 characters and can include links. Twitter users currently Tweet over 110M Tweets/day, at the time of writing this article. With traffic like that, who can ignore the gold mine that is Twitter?
Twitter – no shortage of business opportunities
It is only natural for internet marketers to leverage Twitter as a lead generation tool. The beauty of Twitter is that it allows easy conversation and for someone who is looking for business opportunities. Obviously, you would not try and sell directly to anyone with the prefix “@”. Keeping your eyes open and being alert to what is going on certainly helps. For example, someone might be looking for a specific service, and if you have the solution, you could probably suggest it to them and end up making a profit.
The short cut to generating leads on Twitter
However, it is hardly practical to browse Twitter all day trying to find leads. Here is where we make use of third party tools to shorten the distance between you and the prospects. Let us take a quick look at what you can leverage:
Twitter advanced search
If you use Twitter, you are probably aware of the basic search function. This lets you save a tremendous amount of time while you run searches using your name, or your business’s name, your brands, your competition and other tags. This
Twitter have today started rolling out a complete redesign including new tools for brands and businesses in one of the biggest redesigns of the site in years. What will these new solutions mean for businesses and brands and how will advertising fit in ...
Twitter will begin rolling out their long-awaited self-serve ad platform, allowing payment through credit card, with a group of around 20 different advertisers. Reported by Adage, such a service had been planned since Twitter first introduced promoted ...
Although Twitter has always enjoyed spectacular growth there are signs out there that the service could be about to jump to an entirely new level much in the same way as Facebook did a couple of years ago. Your mum, dad, teens and regular folk could be...
While the concept of a Twitter race isn't a new one – Mercedes held a similar event a few months ago where their cars were powered by tweets - Citroën are doing things a bit differently by not having a predetermined route to travel and no cars to ra...
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 ...
Those who use Twitter site regularly, as opposed to using third-party apps, may have noticed one or two changes made to the site today. Doing away with the mentions and retweet categories at the top of you news feed, they've replaced the two with a new...
Writing tens of tweets every day can be a tough and time consuming experience, but a new app is looking to pick up where new Apple tool Siri left off. The app allows people to dictate their tweets and have all their friend's Twitter ramblings read out ...
Twitter has been the preferred medium of choice when discussing live events, the commentary often becoming more entertaining than the event itself to the point that many shows integrate the microblogging site into the shows themselves.Of course, Twitte...
Fifa are knitting the world's longest scarf with the aim of breaking the world record. To do this, fans must post a message of support either on Facebook or Twitter for the chance to have it appear on the scarf. The scarf is to reflect the passion and ...
Twitter has continued to evolve since its launch over five years ago but what exactly is it? Is it still the brilliant social tool that lets us make unique connections with total strangers, or has it morphed into some sort of link sharing tool, purely ...
It was only last year that Twitter launch 'Twitter Tales', a site designed to market and showcase the many ways users interacted with the service. Now Twitter have relaunched it as Twitter Stories which chronicles the many stories behind certain tweets...
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 the stock markets becoming of greater interest not only to investors but the general populous, we’ve compiled a list of the more useful tools and programs, some free others for a price, to help monitor any changes and keep you up to date with al...
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. ...
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...
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...
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...
A new Twitter app called Undeltweetable lets you browse through an index of all the tweets that people have deleted and turns up some very interesting results. Twitter themselves are not happy about the new service but it does show one of the biggest f...
A new Twitter app called Undeltweetable lets you browse through an index of all the tweets that people have deleted and turns up some very interesting results. Twitter themselves are not happy about the new service but it does show one of the biggest f...
While it's largely an accepted practice to 'buy' fans on Facebook via Facebook ads, the same hasn't really been true of Twitter, where acquiring fans has been viewed as much more of a dark art. As Newt Gingrich is accused of gaming his Twitter account ...
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...
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...
For the last couple of years Twitter have offered "verified" accounts which are a way of telling if celebrities and well known people are real and distinguishing them from the spam and parody accounts. Verified accounts have a certain amount of status ...
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...
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...
With a new football season approaching, the usual topics are being discussed. The transfer market and who’s going where for what price, pre-season friendlies, injury concerns and what the squad will be when they start their respective campaigns. But ...
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...
This graph that has widely been shared online today shows some startling growth for new social network Google + in the race to 10 million users but what does this growth mean when compared to Twitter and Facebook? Becoming a great social network is an ...
An innovative campaign from a creative agency is making their employees eat sweets while they work all while filmed on a live stream and directed by the public via Twitter. It's a brilliant way of showing off their own creative skills while putting a s...
When many brands open a Twitter account, they're still not really sure what to do with it. We look at effective Twitter strategies for brands and show that it's all about the links that you share. Links are an invaluable currency on Twitter as they aff...
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...
Japan's victory over USA in the Women's World Cup final not only made them the first Asian team to win the competition but also set records online. The match became the most tweeted about event in Twitter's history so far, gaining more tweets per secon...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
Paying with a tweet is a fairly new concept that allows you to get products and services for free in exchange for you tweeting about something. It means that you probably have to annoy allow your followers and friends but the flip side is you don't hav...
Right now everyone is talking about the huge explosion in photo sharing apps as new services seem to be popping up every day. But this can only go so far, before everyone turns their attention to video. Youtube seem to be only too aware of this, as the...
A new tool has launched that transforms the Twitter experience completely, filtering out the most frequent tweeters so that those who tweet less frequently have an equal chance of being heard. It's still in prototype mode, but the experience offered is...
There is no doubt that Twitter has huge traction and with over 200 million tweets per day is starting to become a crucial part of the lives of many but the burning question of how they will make money has never been easy for the company to answer. This...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
For individuals or companies who want to raise awareness of their twitter account and latest tweets this new app called Twitfoot could be for you. It's an app that connects with Twitter and pulls your latest tweets in to the bottom of your email footer...
A couple of companies have come out with services in the last couple of weeks that seek to undermine and effectively game the Twitter user experience which is a really bad idea for both themselves and the users. Twitter is one of the most useful tools ...
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 ...
Twitter's growth has been spectacular in recent months and along with a whole host of new features it looks like they could be about to achieve world domination with some even claiming that they could be in a position to challenge Facebook. There is ho...
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...
We love twitter (well, we kinda like it)! Twitter has become so popular recently that businesses are jumping on Twitter simply because they feell that they have to be there.
Unfortunately, many of these companies do not have a clear and thought-though concept of what can be accomplished using Twitter as a communication tool
They simply lash away without consideration for the relationship that they are entering into.
The folks in Harvard Business Review published a book entitled "Groundswell" in which they try to outline five objectives of such a campaign.
Here are the 5 objectives for Twitter
Listen. Use tools like Twitter Search or Radian6 to listen to what people are saying about your business. Don't get fooled — Twitter does not represent an unbiased cross-section of your customers. Shifts in Twitter sentiment are indicators that changes in sentiment are brewing.
Talk. It's absurdly easy for your company to Tweet about how great it is. It's also pretty close to worthless: no one is going to sign up to follow a Twitter account that does nothing but tweet links to your press releases, positive reviews, and product announcements. But if your tweets are actually helpful to customers, they will follow you. For example, Dell has attracted 1.5 million people to follow its tweets about deals on overstock and refurbished computers at @DellOutlet. At many media organizations, reporters Tweet about their stories and insights. These feeds are useful to customers, which is why they have so many followers: signups spread through "word of mouse."
Energize. Find people who love you or write about you and retweeting them —
It's all been plain sailing for Facebook for the last couple of years as a mixture of brilliant execution, acquiring great staff, working hard to get stuff out the door and widespread media acclaim have taken them over 700 million users. There is howev...
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...
The new Follow button on Twitter has only been out for a little over a week but already the results in terms of new followers for publishers after installing it are massive with this site seeing a 15% increase in just one week. This smart move from Twi...
Running one game changing company would be hard enough but Jack Dorsey seems to be succeeding at the impossible and building two amazing companies in Twitter and Square. So just how is the man they call @Jack doing it and what is his vision for the fut...
After being stagnant for some time Twitter have come out all guns blazing in the last couple of weeks with a series of updates that are going to shape the platform going forward. First there was the acquisition of Tweetdeck, then came their new photo s...
If there is one site that is quietly wedging itself firmly in to the social media landscape and grabbing mindshare then it is Tumblr. It's managed to wedge itself firmly in to a gap between Twitter and blogging and offer rich media content sharing for ...
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...
Twitter is not always the easiest place for brands to promote themselves but this innovative campaign from a Turkish phone company shows what can be achieved with a little bit of imagination and a few twists. The idea involved post its, live video and ...
Twitter today has finally announced the purchase of one of the most popular Twitter clients...Tweetdeck. It's a purchase that has been talked about for weeks but with it being official today we wanted to ask if this was a good move for both companies a...
We have a couple of tickets to give away for the Heineken Cup. All you have to do is complete the following sentence in less that 140 characters (Twitter style)!
I deserve to go to the Heineken Cup Final in Cardiff on Saturday 21st May because....
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.
Our top tips on improving the SEO of your social media profiles. These tips cover Google search as well as internal search on social networks. These are our recommendations of best practice to follow, which can help the SEO value, but not gurantee top ...
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...
A useful collection of lesser-known tips and apps for Twitter that can help you get more out of your Twitter profile and activity., whether you're using it for business or personal.
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...
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...
Twitter and RSS are often described as different technologies but they are essentially very similar with Twitter just meaning that anybody anywhere can benefit from the flow of information coming to them rather than them going looking for it and missin...
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...
It can be hard at times to understand all the data that flows through Twitter but this handy tool brings all your Twitter profile data to life in a very visual way within a couple of seconds. It is a brilliant data visualization tool and it will really...
Mobile devices and apps have been changing at a massive pace over the last 18 months bringing us to a point now where we are seeing a huge fragmentation of apps and services with users scattered between them all. So how are we going to see consolidatio...
We take a look at an advertising campaign on Twitter and see if it is able to provide real results for brands, with the Wrigley's promoted trend for the Coachella Festival. The numbers might surprise you!
LinkedIn have been growing slowly but impressively. Over the past few months they have seriously ramped up their activity and improved their offering. So what have they been doing right, and what can other web services learn from this?
Tweetdeck has been around for years but their most recent update which brings it to the Google Chrome app store is a stunning client that is by far the best way of using Twitter. Simple clean design and a mix of the best old features and new additions ...
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...
Twitter and Colour have both announced geotargeting ad platforms in recent days, but who can really develop the most attractive model for advertisers? Colour may be on the backfoot in terms of their userbase as they're such a new application, but they ...
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...
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...
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...
The recent announcement from Twitter has come as a bit of a surprise both to developers and users, and isn't the kind of action you would normally expect from them. We take a look at the possible reasons behind their decision, and the impact it could h...
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...
I wanted to test out a case study to prove the value of Twitter to Google ranking to see if I could recreate the results. The experiment could show the real effect Twitter has on SEO which shows how close social and search are moving together.
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...
This week I was asked to give a lecture to lecturers keen to know the basics of social media. With so many different trends, services and features to condense one question I got asked was "if you had 1 hour to teach students 5 things about social media...
UPDATE – 3 MARCH 2011 – Thank you to those of you who have contributed to the project and to those of you who passed on the details to your network. We successfully attracted over 100 contributions and will be reviewing them to include the ...
When Facebook pages and the like button came along it totally revolutionized Facebook and it's ability to generate huge revenues. I wanted to look at Twitter and see how they are in a similar position to where Facebook were and ask if they could find t...
We've covered Facebook case studies in some detail here on the blog so we decided it was time to move on to Twitter and dig up some of the best case studies, videos and campaign ideas from the micro blogging service. You can use these for your Twitter ...
Some words I have been hearing a lot in recent times in social media…acquiring, owning, recruiting and retaining. All words I’ve heard from brands, agencies and...
One of the world's biggest bands U2 have just launched a campaign using Twitter and Facebook that allows users at their concerts to tag themselves in a huge photo and share it with their friends. It's a great marketing campaign and will help U2 to spre...
I've put together a list of some of the best (and free!) tools for measuring social media. Monitoring and measuring social media is certainly a fine art and the tools on the list are selected for use either by individuals or larger organisations, to gi...
There is just too much social media content online to consume every week so I wanted to pick some of the best content I have been consuming this week and share it here on the blog. This will be a weekly feature that looks to go behind the latest social...
For those of you not familiar with PageRank it is the tool that Google uses to rank websites and has been the biggest reason for their success over the last 10+ years. It helps sort billions of websites returning results so as you can find the best ava...
The political parties have opened the digital doors in a meaningful way and we're encouraging you to step through and engage to make your voice heard. Below are the websites, social media pages, email addresses and phone numbers of all the major parties. Take 3 minutes and email, text, phone, face book, tweet tour local candidate and demand that they reverse the government guarantee of bank debt.
"Fiddling around the edges" is the best way to describe the plans from the various election candidates I've bumped into on my doorstep and at the dart stations in the past few days. These plans are minuscule irrelevancies in comparison to the debt crisis that faces this country.
A decision was made 18 months ago to absorb the debts of the banks into the debts of the state. This travesty best described recently as "capitalism for the masses and socialism for the banks" has virtually bankrupted our country. Right now the major European powers are deciding the fate of the country at a series of sessions in Europe. We are represented at these talks by Brian Cowen, the man with no mandate to lead or represent this country.
Have you noticed members of your community posting customer service related questions on your Facebook Page? Or perhaps you have now revised your customer service and customer relationship management processes to integrate Twitter as part of your progr...
If you looking for creative applications for Facebook and Twitter, then you might want to take a look at Offerpop – especially for small communities online as their service is free for Facebook Pages with less than 500 members and less than 500 Twitt...
As we escape (somewhat) from the catastrophy that was 2010, I'm gazing into my crystal ball and highlighting 3 things that are going to significantly improve, influence and shape our lives for 2011.
1. WOMEN 2. WOMEN 3. WOMEN.
So what's the story with the Social Media Marketing stuff? If you are responsible for the marketing (or sales) for your business, then you need this course!
We have developed, with our industry partners including Krishna De of Biz Growth News and Conor Lynch of SocialMedia.ie, the most in-depth course on Social Media Marketing in available in Ireland today (official name of the course is the Professional Diploma in Social Media Marketing). This course includes a detailed, hands-on & workshop appraoch to cover all aspects of how to use social marketing tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIN, how to develop a social media marketing campaign and how to then implement and manage this plan.
This course takes place over 8 evenings and then a further 1 Day workshop, therefore very focused on the working professional. (Note that we also deliver a 1 Day Overview of Social Media Marketing course which is a subset of this longer Diploma course)
What will you get from this course?
This Professional Diploma in Social Media Marketing provides you with the best foundation available in all of the main theories, concepts, techniques and application expertise required to effectively develop plan and implement your social media campaign.
During this course you will learn the following:
Listening is one of the most important skills available to the social media practitioner – you will be introduced to some of the most important listening and monitoring tools and applications that
Digital Marketing Institute has recently launched Ireland's ONLY Professional Diploma in Social Media Marketing. While the syllabus, topics and schedule is confirmed, we would be delighted to get feedback from people on how we might enhance the next run of the course (due to start in Spring 2011).
The Digital Marketing Institute has announced a January intake for Ireland’s leading Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Marketing.
“Digital skills are a crucial element of the knowledge economy and Irish marketing professionals cannot be held hostage to the academic calendar” commented Ian Dodson, Course Director of the Digital Marketing Institute’s Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Marketing. “The postgraduate Diploma was over-subscribed when we launched it last September and we have been inundated with requests for the next intake.”
As we know Generation Y is the term used for the elusive 13 – 35 year old market. This group was known to be notoriously difficult to market to until a little thing called social media came along to help out. Now Myspace has realised...
Are you someone who likes to follow people back on Twitter to enable them to direct message you but have now reached the stage that you want to clean up your account?
Here is a quick video to show you how you can quickly an easily clean up your Twitt...
Over the last few weeks and months there have been a lot of new developments within the social web. Things are moving at such a fast pace that it seems pretty hard keep up at times. For this blog post I’m going to focus on Twitter a...
Tweet Worried that you have to spend all day playing with Twitter and Facebook to get results from a quality Social Media Marketing Strategy ? According to this Marketing Profs report, studies show that quality content creates significantly more influe...
By now we all know what Twitter is and why there is such a buzz around it. It can be a bit daunting figuring out how to get started and who to follow. In the last year there have been a number of lists released by various people and institutions about who the most influential [...]
With 721 days to go to the 2012 Olympics, did you know that Cadbury is the “official treat” of the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics through it’s sponsorship?
Well they have just launched a two-year campaign, Spots v. Stripes – it’s an integrated campaign across TV, print, digital and social media encouraging the UK population to [...]
Today RTE announced it’s new Fall schedule of programmes and one of the casualties was The Afternoon Show (it’s going to be replaced with a lifestyle programme comments The Irish Times).
I was a very infrequent viewer of The Afternoon Show but I do recall when they came back on air after the Summer break in [...]
With multiple channels springing up across the digital dashboard, messages must be tailored to resonate with audiences on email and social sites. Research suggests a look at simple demographics does not give a clear indication of how audiences differ; engagement in these channels is personal and depends more on psychographic characteristics.
Oxegen 2010 harnesses the power of the oh-so-social-web
With Oxegen 2010 fever about to take over the Radical office we decided to take a look at what Europe’s favourite rock and roll weekend is doing to keep in contact with fans online. When is comes to social media and all things digital it appears Oxegen could [...]
I recently had the opportunity to talk with Brian Kitson the Marketing Manager of Kildare Village about their integrated marketing plan.
Kildare Village (opened in 2006) is home to over 55 designer outlet boutiques (Bally, Anya Hindmarch, Polo, Karen Millen, Reiss, Coast, Molton Brown, Clarks, All Saints, Designers Guild, Cath Kidson, Le Creuset, Kenneth Turner, [...]
In order to review and compare effectively it is important to understand what both Hootsuite and Tweetdeck do.
Hootsuite helps organizations use the social web to launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audiences and distribute targeted messages across multiple channels, Hootsuite is aimed at small to medium businesses.
Tweetdeck is a personal browser for staying in touch [...]
Twitter is making some changes to allow users to see who else is following everyone else and also the ability to add metadata. Twitter claims that these updates will add richness to the Twitter experience and could "fundamentally change how people use the service". However, they should also allow the company increased leverage to compete with other social media marketing sites like Facebook and even LinkedIn.
Last year I was delighted to have the opportunity to deliver a workshop for the Institute of Management Consultants and Advisors (IMCA) in Ireland and next week we have a follow up event exploring three popular social networks for business: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
In this interactive workshop, participants will learn how professional services practices, consultants [...]
Facebook has rolled out changes that will make it easier for Facebook users to understand and control their own privacy settings.
With immediate impact, Facebook is doing the following:
Providing an easy-to-use "master" control that enables users to set who can see the content they share through Facebook. This enables users to choose, with just one click, the overall privacy level they're comfortable with for the content they share on Facebook. Of course, users can still use all of the granular controls we've always offered, if they want.
Facebook is significantly reducing the amount of information that must be visible to everyone on Facebook. Facebook will no longer require that users' friends and connections are visible to everyone. Only Name, Profile Picture, Networks and Gender must be publicly available. Users can opt to make all other connections private.
Facebook is also making it simpler to control whether other applications and websites access any user information.
As you know, last week we were running an online survey to find out about social media use. Some of the results have been really surprising, for example 77% of those polled says they use social media to find out about events and organise their social life, and 67% access social media from their mobile.
66% [...]
Its official, we’ve all gone YouTube crazy. This Monday Mashable reported that YouTube now exceeds two billion video views everyday and is still growing. This means that almost one third of the world’s population are uploading and ...
Does your number of followers actually matter? A new piece of research by the Max Planck Institute found that Twitter follower counts are a poor indicator of influence. The research found two quite different forms of engagement on Twitter. First, retweet influence — when a user’s content is likely to be passed along — and second, mention influence — in which users engage one another in conversation by mentioning each other by Twitter handle.
Digital Marketing Institute Diploma and Short training courses in Social Media Marketing cover a combination of the prominent as well as the upcoming social netrworks including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as well as examples of best practice social media marketing. Course attendees will be able to understand, plan and manage their communications in an age of social media Networks.
So just what is the point of Twitter? In my seminars, consulting and mentoring I often find many business leaders still wondering if Twitter is of value to their online marketing.
One metric I came across recently was research by Irish web analytics company Stat Counter who reported that Twitter generated almost one in ten Social [...]
We got hold of the iPad approx 3 days after launch (via apple, via ebay, via Sanfrancisco, via UPS) (If you can beat that send me an email and claim my crown!!!)
Who cares? What will it mean for Digital Marketing?
If the web has untethered us from the broadcast and publishing schedules of tv channels and newspapers, then mobile computing frees us from the desk and the pc. Remember while there are 2 billion tvs in the world there are 5 billion mobile phone contracts. As a means to access and consume media, mobile devices are leading the party.
The iPad averaged .03% all web traffic for the first ten days after launch.
Think about it. That’s 03% of ALL web traffic, for a NEW device that only just launched. These numbers match the March numbers for all BlackBerry devices. See Usage Trends Here. Mobile is a crucial and integral part of Digital marketing and features as a key lecture in our Digital Marketing Diploma Course (Shamefaced Plug!)
Review
Firstly, Ignore all the tech websites, they're coming at the iPad from the point of view of the tech obsessed geek mob. i.e. "I cant open it up with a screw driver and connect it to my ford capri or my zx81 emulator so its no good". I'm looking at this tool purely from the point of usability. i.e. does it allow me to do what I need to do.
1. What apple does best.
Apple has conquered the most important aspect of any technology and that's the user interface. What do
It was startling last November to read that spending on online advertising in the UK had for the first time surpassed spending on TV advertising. This watershed was more incredible given how far behind Ireland is in terms of adoption of Digital Marketing. Spend is the ultimate litmus test of where an industry is in terms of its embrace of a particular channel. And while we await propper figures from the IAB I would like to gaze into my crystal ball and predict that spend on digital marketing in Ireland as a percentage of advertising budgets still won’t pass 10%. Why do I make this prediction? For digital marketing to spend in Ireland to come anywhere near UK levels we must overcome 3 hurdles....
Today it is no longer enough to have a website to have an online presence. Nor is it enough to just build several social media pages like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. There must be method to your approach. You have to ask, “Why am I building this, where are my customers and will this help me get closer to my customers?”
Social media became the buzz word in 2009 and this continues well into 2010. The corporate world (with a number of RARE exceptions) tend to make little if any money out of social media simply because they view social media as a channel in isolation. For example, the process of optimising your website can be significantly enhanced by the use of social media platforms.
Directing the right customer (or prospect) to your business can be significantly enhanced by the right combination of channels, only one of which is social media. This is what you will learn at the 1 day seminar on social media. The digital marketing training course in Dublin offers the latest approaches, thinking and techniques from Europe and the US.
It is also important to note that across all of our digital marketing training courses, we spend considerable time explaining what the digital channels are and are not. It is critical that candidates understand that a digital marketing training course is simply a process where we teach candidates what each of the key channels are and how these channels can be integrated into your business model or brand plan.
Have a Twitterful Christmas from the Digital Marketing Institute.
What???
This is a little experiment that we thought we would try - can we get to the #1 position in Google for the term "Have a Twitterful Christmas"? Why would we do this?
Well, if you have attended any of the Digital Marketing Institute courses, then you will know that, with the right approach, you can get your chosen term to the top of Google. But it takes effort and smarts.
Why Have a Twitterful Christmas? Well, we reckon that Have a Twitterful Christmas is specific enough NOT to be a highly competitive term and therefore we reckon that we can get to the opt of Google with ease. And if you are reading this, then it might just have worked. And we might just have done all the right things ... blog, video, images, content, tags, etc
The Digital Marketing Institute Diploma course has always included Social Media Training modules, wherever we have run the online marketing training course.
Now, as a result of student feedback, we are now offering Social Media Training in Dublin as a stand alone course. The first of these courses takes place in the Radisson Blu Hotel in Dublin on December.
Details for this course are as follows:
Date: Thursday 3rd December
Duration: 1 Day
Venue: Dublin
Cost: €495.00
Details: See Below
This 1 Day course introduces attendees to the various social media marketing platforms that are currently available. We also introduce attendees to the various Blogging platforms available. During the course of the day, we will set up a blog and also set up various social media accounts and steer the attendees through how to set up their own accounts online.
This 1 Day course introduces attendees to the various social media marketing platforms that are currently available. We also introduce attendees to the various Blogging platforms available. During the course of the day, we will set up a blog and also set up various social media accounts and steer the attendees through how to set up their own accounts online.
Overview of the Social Networking Training
Introduction to Social Media for businesses in Ireland, including Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and IGO People
We will help to identify the correct mix of social media platforms to suit your business
The course will show you how to set up your various social media applications, from initially signing up to linking to colleagues
We will show you how you can use Social Networking to develop and grow your business online
We will also include a module on Business Blogging - how to choose a blogging platform and implement a blog for your business
How to integrate your blog into your social network applications
We will include various case studies throughout the course.
As the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn continue to grow in popularity, employers are increasingly using these sites to screen potential employees. Forty-five percent of employers reported in a recent CareerBuilder survey that they use social networking sites to research job candidates. This is a significant increase on the figure of 22 percent this time last year. It is worth noting that another 11 percent say that they plan to start using social networking sites for job screening.
In the survey, more than 2,600 hiring managers participated in the survey, which was completed in June 2009.
WebKitchen.ie & the Digital Marketing Institute.ie currently have a position available for a motivated project manager with the ability to manage multiple clients, programmers and projects simultaneously. As project manager you will handle all client relations for the project. You will develop timelines and manage programmers to see projects from start to completion and ensure client satisfaction.
A recent study by Deloitte found that nearly one-third of all business executives said social networking is a part of their business and operations strategy.
A smaller number of respondents to the Deloitte survey reported that they were "leveraging the Web 2.0 tools to build their brand, communicate internally, recruit employees and engage the workforce."
Over half of the companies admitted that they did not have an official policy on the use or otherwise of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks.
However, one of the major findings of this study was that three quarters of the respondents agree that it was easy to damage a company's reputation on social media networks.
[caption id="attachment_1447" align="alignnone" width="324" caption="Facebook, Twitter and other Social Networks"][/caption]
Other interesting stuff to come out of the survey is that
53% of employees felt that their online profiles are none of their employers' business.
More than one-third never consider what their bosses, clients or colleagues think before posting.
and interestingly ....
61% have made significant adjustments to their social network pages to reflect their public nature—without the prompting of their superiors.
“While the decision to post videos, pictures, thoughts, experiences, and observations to social networking sites is personal, a single act can create far-reaching ethical consequences for individuals as well as organizations,” said Sharon Allen of Deloitte. “Therefore it is important for executives to be mindful of the implications and to elevate the discussion about the risks associated with it to the highest levels of leadership.”
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