masthead_blog

Four Valentine’s Day Campaigns To Inspire Your Digital Marketing

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 [...]

Four Valentine’s Day Campaigns To Inspire Your Digital Marketing is an article post from: Biz Growth News - please do share the article with your network if you found it of value. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.

The post Four Valentine’s Day Campaigns To Inspire Your Digital Marketing appeared first on Krishna De: Content Marketing, Social Media And Social Business Strategy, Education And Mentoring.

Continue reading

Real time content marketing case study – Oreo and the Super Bowl

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 [...]

Real time content marketing case study – Oreo and the Super Bowl is an article post from: Biz Growth News - please do share the article with your network if you found it of value. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.

The post Real time content marketing case study – Oreo and the Super Bowl appeared first on Krishna De: Content Marketing, Social Media And Social Business Strategy, Education And Mentoring.

Continue reading




Get Involved In Our Twitter Charity Giveaway

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 [...]

Continue reading

Social Media Trends for 2013 – Part 1

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. [...]

Continue reading

Sage Sponsors Start Ups 2012 – Win Free Tickets on Twitter

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, [...]

Continue reading

Have You Joined The Irish Twitter Party?

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.

Continue reading

How Do You Behave On Twitter?

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.

Continue reading

Twitter Airs Adverts on US TV

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.

Continue reading


Twitter To Roll Out Tailored Suggestions For Users

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...

Continue reading

You Can Never Take A Holiday From Social Media…

  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 [...]

Continue reading

80% Of Twitter UK’s Active Users Access Site Via Mobile

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...

Continue reading

When Playboy And Twitter Collide – Playboy Tweetgrid

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...

Continue reading





When Twitter Meets Klout – Are You A Klouchebag?

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...

Continue reading

Would You Buy Twitter Followers?

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...

Continue reading



Car Brand Uses Twitter To Create Stunning Animation Using Tweets

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...

Continue reading

Twitter Ads Outperform Facebook Ads In Cost Per Impressions

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...

Continue reading



Twitter @ Mentions Not Working? How To Fix The Bug Yourself Now

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...

Continue reading


Funny Friday: Turning Your Tweets Into Toilet Roll

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...

Continue reading

New Twitter Ads For Small Businesses Explained [Video]

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...

Continue reading

Why Twitter Needs To Copy Facebook Timeline

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...

Continue reading


10 Inspiring Twitter Campaigns With Video Case Studies

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...

Continue reading


Introducing The Newest Addiction: Twitter Scrabble

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...

Continue reading


Tweeting Cars Help You Find Empty Car Parking Spaces

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...

Continue reading


Will You Pay For More Twitter Followers?

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 ...

Continue reading










How To Get More Clicks On Twitter

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...

Continue reading

#Hashtag Marketing – Does It Actually Work?

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...

Continue reading


How Twitter Alienated Me With New Tweetdeck

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...

Continue reading




How to use Twitter as a lead generation tool

[article via creativelipi.com]

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

Continue reading



The “Normal” People Are Starting To Tweet

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...

Continue reading















Social search has arrived with Wajam

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...

Continue reading










Ten unique examples of twitter brand campaigns

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...

Continue reading






Top 10 most tweeted about events ever (so far)

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...

Continue reading

A plea for a clutter-free social media life

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...

Continue reading



Social Media Workshops Galway July 18th

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 ...

Continue reading

Paying With A Tweet Case Study

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...

Continue reading










Are Facebook And Twitter Too Big To Be Cool?

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...

Continue reading





Just How Strange Are Our Social Media Habits?

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...

Continue reading

What is twitter all about, then?

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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."
  3. Energize. Find people who love you or write about you and retweeting them —

Continue reading

Facebook’s Big Problem – Mobile

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...

Continue reading

How To Get 1000 Blog Subscribers Within 3 Months

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...

Continue reading


Is Jack Dorsey The New Steve Jobs?

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...

Continue reading





The Sunday Times Social Media Rich List

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...

Continue reading



Brilliant Twitter Campaign Case Study

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 ...

Continue reading


Free Tickets for the Heineken Cup in Cardiff

Fancy 2 tickets to the Heineken Cup Final?

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....

Answers only accepted on Twitter to @dmigroup

 

 

Continue reading

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn for Business Training Course

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

  1. already manage Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn accounts and who have some basic knowledge of the site and want to expand their knowledge, or
  2. 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.

The class will be taught by Niall Harbison, Lauren Fisher and Sarah Kavanagh of Simply Zesty and will be run on Thursday 26th May, 2011 from 9.30 to 16.30 and will include a full lunch.

Cost for the 1 Day Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn course is €197.00.  As we expect this event to be a sell-out, please book early.

Note that that there is an Early Bird reduced price of €147.00 (use the code DMI50EB when booking)

Summary:

 

  • Venue: Radisson Blu Hotel, Golden Lane, Dublin 8 (map)
  • Time: 1 Day, 09.30 - 16.30 (lunch included)
  • Cost: €197.00 (early bird 147.00, before Monday 23rd) (book now)
    • Early Bird discount code DMI50EB

Questions?  Call 01 271 1888

Continue reading

SEO for your social media profiles top 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 ...

Continue reading






QR Codes And Print Media – Finger In The Dam?

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...

Continue reading


Is Twitter Just RSS For Idiots

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...

Continue reading




The Fragmentation Of Communication Apps

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...

Continue reading




Is There A Lack Of Innovation At Twitter?

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...

Continue reading


Twitter vs Colour. Who will win geotargeting?

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 ...

Continue reading




Did Twitter just kill its developer community?

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...

Continue reading

How To Put Twitter On Steroids

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...

Continue reading


Case study shows the SEO benefit of Twitter

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.

Continue reading

Would You Invest In Social Media? Video Stats

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...

Continue reading




Some Of The Best Twitter Marketing Case Studies

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 ...

Continue reading







#Iquit

The CEO of Sun Microsystems has become the first CEO of a large company to resign via tweet. Is there anything we won't tweet now?...

Continue reading

Vote with your tweet

With Ireland in the midst of full scale campaigning for a General Election later this month, the power of social media is really coming to the fore...

Continue reading


The political parties have opened the digital door. Let them hear your voice!

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.

Continue reading

Make this election about more than the arrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

"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.

Continue reading






Advanced Social Media Marketing Training Course - Dublin

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!

Clik on the image to the right to download the brochure for 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

Continue reading

Input into the Next Prof Diploma in Social Media Marketing?

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).

Continue reading

Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Marketing Commencing January 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.”

Continue reading

Myspace Redesign to Appeal to Generation Y

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...

Continue reading




Start Following Me!

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 [...]

Continue reading



Email, Facebook and Twitter Audiences Are Different

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.

Continue reading

Oxegen 2010 harnesses the power of the oh-so-social-web

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 [...]

Continue reading


Hootsuite and Tweetdeck a review

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 [...]

Continue reading

Twitter to Update Services

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.

Continue reading


Facebook Updates Privacy

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.

 CEO Mark Zuckerberg's blogged about this and Facebook has updated their Facebook Privacy Page.



Continue reading

Connector’s 1st Social Media Survey Results

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% [...]

Continue reading

The YouTube Phenomenon

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 ...

Continue reading

Number of Followers actually doesn't matter on Twitter! So what does? (Social Media Training Course)

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.

New York Times reports on a Max Planck Institute survey of what really counts on twitter

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.

 





Continue reading


First hands on iPad review in Ireland? (iPad and Digital Marketing)

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

Continue reading

What's blocking the growth of digital marketing in Ireland?

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....

Continue reading

Social Media Training Course

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?”

Click here to Book

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.

Book this course

Continue reading


Have a Twitterful Christmas from Digital Marketing Institute

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

Have a Twitterful Christmas, y'all!!

Continue reading

Social Media Training Dublin

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.

Click for more details

Continue reading

Social Networking Training Course

We are running a Social Networking Training Course on Thursday 3rd December in Dublin, Ireland.

  • Date: Thursday 3rd December
  • Duration: 1 Day
  • Venue: Dublin
  • Cost: €495.00
  • Details: See Below

This social networking training course will include topics on the main Social Networking sites, including

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.

Book this course now.


Email us for more information





Continue reading

Employers Using Facebook to Research New Candidates

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.

Digital Marketing Institute is running a 1 Day Social Marketing Workshop on Wednesday 14th October.

Find out more ....

Further reading ...

Continue reading

We are Hiring: Web Project Manager

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.

Continue reading

Facebook, Twitter and Social Media in the Workplace

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.”

Continue reading