Do you blog for your business? Tell us all about it

January 28, 2010 · Posted in Social Media Working Group · 10 Comments 

Calling all business bloggers! If you blog for your business, no matter what size, we want to hear more about your experience. We would like to gauge the effectiveness of blogging for business, start collecting data about trends, the costs involved, your target audiences and the benefits. We look forward to sharing the anonymised results of this survey and analysis of the data with you in due course.

Please take 10 minutes to complete our survey.

This is an initiative of the Irish Internet Association’s Social Media Working Group to gather information about blogging for business in Ireland. This survey was run last year (results available online) and formed part of the data for the guide “Join the Conversation: A Guide to Blogging for Business” Your response will be completely anonymous and the survey takes about 10 minutes to complete.

Did you complete the survey last year? Please take the time to complete it again; it will help us gauge developing trends in blogging for businesses in Ireland.

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International Strategy Working Group Case Study: Pigsback.com

January 19, 2010 · Posted in International Strategy Working Group · Comment 

The IIA International Strategy Working Group have created another case study. This time IIA Member Company Pigsback.com is featured. Jonathan Kyle of IIA Member Company Greenjobs.ie interviewed Michael Dwyer, CEO of Pigsback last December.

Dwyer shares some interesting insights about how having founded Pigsback in 2000 it turned out that the Dot Com Crash was not all bad for their company

as it allowed us to bring the Irish business to profitability and it also let us ensure that our product offering and business structure were strong enough for overseas expansion.

A salutary tale for the times we’re living in!

 He also talks about what the company learned from their expansion into the very different markets of the UK and Canada.

Access the Internation Strategy Working Group’s resources to download the PDF and other case studies from the group.

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Get busy with it at BizCampNewry

January 14, 2010 · Posted in events · Comment 

I’m a big fan of Bizcamps I have to say. I’ve had great experiences from a knowledge and networking point of view at the two I have attended. When Nichola Bates from  IIA Member company Grow Sales Online contacted me on LinkedIn to let me know about an upcoming Bizcamp in Newry I was immediately interested. I also love the logo. Slick!

So what can you expect at BizcampNewry? I’ll allow their own site to do the talking

BizcampNewry is a free business conference taking place in the Southern Regional College  Newry on Saturday the 6th of February 2010! There will be talks ranging from entrepreneurs actively working to professionals ready to share their knowledge and skills.

If one of your New Year Resolutions was to get out and network or to do more public speaking or facilitation this is your chance! Register now online or volunteer to give a talk.

Sadly I won’t be able to make it; common sense dictates otherwise. It’s a week before I go on maternity leave!

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Deloitte feel the power of Social Media

January 12, 2010 · Posted in social media, statistics · Comment 

Thanks to our Google alerts I just happened upon this post by Simon Murphy of Deloitte where he shares insights about the development, release, collation and results of Deloitte’s 2009 CIO Survey. It is very interesting to read that he concludes that LinkedIn proved by far the biggest pull to the survey results followed by his colleague Harry Godddard’s guest post here on the IIA blog and inclusion in the November Digital Digest. The fact that we also push these sources out to various social networks was undoubtedly helpful in spreading the word.

The survey results are well worth a read and with my nerdy social research background I am very happy to read on Simon’s blog that Deloitte plan to run the survey again next year. Nothing like the promise of some longitudinal data to get the heart racing of a cold Tuesday morning!

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Beware the scammers aka Internet Register Ireland

January 11, 2010 · Posted in Scam · 6 Comments 

<heavy sarcasm>I was delighted </heavy sarcasm>  to receive my reminder from Internet Register Ireland this morning dated Dezember 2009 [sic.] as it reminds me that it’s time for me to warn you all to beware these scammers. We’re obviously not alone as there has been an increase in trackbacks and comments on our original post on this matter. As one of our commenters points out at least it’s on Recycled Paper (you gotta love those Germans! :) ) and this is what you should do with this letter on receipt: recycle it.

If you ever receive a letter or an email inviting you to join a directory, do a link exchange or other such  activities always, always do a search about the company. Don’t just visit their site: it may look fine to you, it may even look spectacular but all that glisters is not gold. You may do a search and find mixed reviews on blogs and discussion forums or other social media. These reviews may or may not help you decide. Remember what these sites are offering you is exposure so you need to find out what kind of exposure you will be getting from them for your money and they should be prepared to use all the stats in their power to convince you. However you can also check how their site measures up on sites like Alexa.com, which is okay. (Know of other similar services? Please leave a comment below!) You can check out their Page Rank but more importantly brush up your understanding of how Search  Engine Optimization works. There are stacks and stacks of resources out there – not least from Google Webmaster Central itself. If you owned a shop in a shopping centre or were attending a tradefair you would do everything in your power to make your shop/ stand em stand out from the others around you. Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Marketing and canny use of Social Media can get you noticed too. We run training events on all of these topics and plan to roll out lots of them in 2010.

For your information I am including a scan of the letter so you know what to keep an eye out for.

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A big wave to you all

January 8, 2010 · Posted in new technology · 1 Comment 

lovewaveYou may or may not have heard of Google Wave. You may or may not think it’s the next big thing. One thing is for sure – it’s no use if you have no-one to communicate with on your wave! So I have a limited number of invitations to Google Wave and would like you to have one! I have set up a Google Wave for IIA Members and would love to add you in there too if you are a member.

If you would like an invitation email me at members@iia.ie or email me your Wave address and I will add you to the IIA Wave.

Neville Hobson originally gave me an invite so props to him. He also recommended this great guide which I have been dipping into now and then. Brian Greene also recommended this guide and his company (IIA Member Company Doop Design) have also created a repository of Wave and other cloud resources over at Wavelinks.ie. Add it to your RSS reader and never miss a trick! 

If you have seen an innovative use of Wave please share in the comments below. I wrote an article about Google Wave for my monthly column in Beo! where I wondered how this proposed email killer was going to kill the technology that is the first port of call for most. I keep forgetting about Wave because unlike all the other social media I use there is no pull via email. I would also love a way of using it on my iPhone which is another way in which I get sucked into using new apps.

Similarly the fact that there is no easy way to currently share Waves (I know, I know it’s beta!) makes it difficult to draw others’ attention to their use. See above the convuluted (and email based!) manner in which I had to ask you to join me on the IIA Wave. A link would be so much more graceful.

Personally I really liked this example (see vid below) of how to use Wave. Very pertinent to many of us working on our online offerings!

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Hello 2010! How’s it going?

January 7, 2010 · Posted in Membership · Comment 

hello2010Just a super quick post to wish you all the best in 2010! A couple of things were brought to my attention while I was on leave and I thought the quickest thing would be to share them with you all here.

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