Nominations are open for Net Visionary 2011: some new categories
The hallowed day has arrived. Actually it arrived on 27th June but I have been busy training my new colleague Vicki in advance of my departure from the IIA so apologies for not noting this sooner on the blog.
Nominations for the 13th Annual Net Visionary Awards are open!
You can go right ahead click on the image above to nominate your favourite online business in 14 different categories.
But before you dash off I thought I would draw your attention to our new categories.
We have done away with a few (sorry!), updated three (mobile app developer, social media & digital marketing) and created 4 entirely new categories:
- Best Open Data Initiative
- Best Breakthrough Brick to Click
- Best Cloud Service
- Best Rookie
We’re particularly excited about these 4 categories (yes, yes, of course, you’re all winners to us) because they reflect changing technologies, society and practices. We devised Best Breakthrough Brick to Click to recognise some of the amazing cases we’ve heard about over the last year and a half or so while running our 8 Ways series for Online Retailers (although nominees don’t have to be just retailers!). Best Rookie was devised to recognise not only graduates who are making a splash in online business but also those who have made a change to their career to get involved in any aspect of online business.
After the success of Open for Business it made perfect sense for us to celebrate Open Data Initiatives and we’re hoping the shortlist will be an inspiration to many other initiatives in the future. Best Cloud Service acknowledges some of the fabulous and innovative cloud projects that have grown up, many of them wholly Irish, in the last few years.
So now you are dismissed to go and nominate to your heart’s content. Nominations close 29 July 2011.
Review: The New Handshake: Sales Meets Social Media, by Joan Curtis and Barbara Giamanco
This review is part of a series of reviews that you can expect to see over the next while from the Social Media Working Group. This first one is by Eamonn O’Brien, Founder of The Reluctant Speakers Club. Here he reviews The New Handshake: Sales Meets Social Media, by Joan Curtis and Barbara Giamanco:
This book offers an introductory guide for people who need to figure out how to both understand and harness social media in a world where traditional sales techniques may have had their day. As such, it probably won’t serve as more than light reading for seasoned social media pros.
The authors spend the first half of the book outlining the revolution that has occurred in the way businesses and customers/consumers communicate – and why companies need to learn how to adapt to a new sales era, dubbed Sales 2.0. They argue that since customers are now more in control of what they buy, and have instant access to more information prior to when they make purchase decisions, that a modern form of consultative selling (which integrates the power of social media to develop better relationships, trust and customer collaboration) needs to be used as a replacement for traditional push based selling techniques.
While there are many nuggets to be found in the first 8 chapters, including author observations, examples of how politicians and companies are adapting to/benefiting from communication changes plus a quite interesting potted history lesson on the evolution of selling approaches from the 19th to the 21st century, much of the information provided at the outset of the book appears to be rehashing of stories and observations that have been doing the rounds for some time (online and offline). Also, many of the points made in the first half of the books seemed be endless variations of a single theme; “Embrace the new technology… move away from old sales approaches, they won’t work any longer with the 21st century buyer”.
That said, the second half of the book (when the authors get into a more ‘how to’ mode) is likely to prove both interesting and genuinely useful to anyone who needs practical suggestions on how to harness social media for sales and marketing purposes. The authors did an especially good job on how Sales meets LinkedIn and Sales meets Twitter, including really helpful ‘do’s and don’ts’ tips.
Also, their observations on how to use blogging to drive better Google site rankings together with their suggested ‘rules of engagement for bloggers’ are spot on. But the real value in this book comes at the end, with a case study style 30 day social media sales challenge. This blow by blow demonstration of how social media can be used and why – together with suggestions re goal setting and performance measuring – sold me on this book, all on its own.
My Overall Book Rating: 4 out of 5
Thanks a million Eamonn! More from the authors on their website.
Business Blogging in Ireland – Survey Results
At the start of 2009 we undertook a survey among Irish businesses that already have blogs. We asked them a number of questions to try and understand the objectives of their blogging activities, what results they were seeing and how much time and effort they put into managing their blogs.
We will be discussing the results in detail at the Business Blogging breakfast briefing on April 22nd, but in the meantime here are the high-level survey results:
Free money!
IIA Members iQContent have launched iQPrize. They want to help grow a good idea into a great business and they would like to hear from everyone and anyone. They plan to invest EUR10,000 in the idea that impresses them most. Closing date for entries is May 12th and at time of writing they had 16 entries. Not bad odds.
Find out more at iQPrize.ie or watch the video below where Morgan McKeagney, iQContent CEO explains all.
I have some great ideas for the IIA website that EUR10,000 could put a serious dent in; maybe I should have a wee chat with them… 
Podcast your business
While I’m not suggesting that you spend $695.00 on the report Podcasting: Into the Mainstream from eMarketer. (Do by all means if you like ) eMarketer does share some interesting statistics about the growth in popularity of the podcast among US internet users.
The US podcast audience is ballooning, and eMarketer projects that growth will continue at least through 2013. By then, there will be 37.6 million people who download podcasts monthly, more than double the 2008 figure of 17.4 million.
As a percentage of Internet users, podcast downloaders are expected to grow from 9% in 2008 to 17% in 2013.
Much of the time where US internet use goes, Irish internet use follows. (Though not always!) For businesses podcasting can be a very effective way to show your expertise in your area; share tips with your customers about your products and services; and to develop customer loyalty among many other benefits. The IIA Social Media Working Group are going to workshop the draft of their Guide to Business Podcasting. This is an opportunity to participate in the creation of this guide and hopefully learn something new in the process. Both newbies and old hands are welcome but please register.
If you would like to get an idea of how the workshop will shape up, appropriately enough you can listen to the podcast of the workshop of the draft Guide to Business Blogging created by Krishna De last December. Krishna will also be facilitating this workshop so expect plenty of nuggets!
New blog series starting on Tuesday
Next Tuesday will see the start of a new series of guest posts from the IIA Social Media Working Group. This series will focus on case studies of Irish businesses using Social Media in innovative or effective ways and each week will see a different member of the group deliver a case. So a lot of variety and a day off the blogging for me – a win win situation for us all
Brendan Hughes, the chair of the IIA Social Media Working Group, shares some of his thoughts on business uses of Social Media in a recent blog post. He examines in particular how the web has developed a dichotomous existence with transactional relationships on one side and social relationships on the other. Really successful internet businesses or businesses on the internet are bringing these two relationships together.
Don’t delay get your Net Visionary nominations in today
While there is no rush per se, nominations being open until 27th March, why not do it now before you forget? The next thing you know it will be Paddy’s Day and suddenly the 27th will be upon us and you will be cursing as you try and fill in 15 whole categories in one go. Do them at your leisure. Do one a day. Just do it!
Feedback Friday 2: Puddleducks take the plunge
Last week we kicked off the Feedback Friday feature with Pressieport.ie. I don’t mind telling you that the post was the most popular on this blog in the last month and the feedback Fred Schelbaum received was second to none. Not long after the post went live I got an email from Fred with the subject line, “WOW!” so he was very happy too. So well done to all the commenters and Twitterers who helped out.
This week our featured site for Feedback Friday is Puddleducks. Aedan Ryan, director of Puddleducks, sent me the following to help you fabulous feedbackers:
PuddleDucks is an online retailer of outdoor clothing clothes for children and adults. Our best selling items are the waterproof dungarees, jackets and suits for younger children.
What I would like to achieve from Feedback Friday is to get feedback and make improvements to our Home Page so we can try to reduce the bounce rate from visitors to the site.
Therefore I’d appreciate feedback on some of the following:
- initial impression of our Home Page
- layout of the Home Page
- is it easy to know how to progress from the home page to start shopping on the site?
- are there any other design improvements we could make to the home page or the product pages?
- any other ideas on how to make shopping easier or encourage visitors to purchase
We’d also like to offer a 10% discount to all readers for any purchases until Sunday 8th Feb. Just use the discount coupon “iia12″. Please note that you need to be registered as a user on the site before you can redeem the coupon.
Thanks very much in advance for your feedback.
Again please keep the guidelines in mind when giving feedback and most of all, thanks very much!
BizCamp Dublin 7th March & Limerick March 21st
BizCamp is a user generated business conference with open, participatory workshop-events, where content is provided by the participants. It is a new feature on the Irish business events calendar and is based on principles of interaction, engagement and conversation. It’s a free event and therefore sponsors are very welcome
I had my first experience of a camp-style conference last September which focussed on one of my main interests: social media. At that camp, I learnt lots of interest in that arena. So I didn’t hesitate to sign up for Bizcamp either – I figured if I learnt half as much as I did at Podcamp Ireland and met half as many people who have been a boon to my work with the IIA it would be a day well spent. Bizcamp Dublin is being organised by, among others, Keith Bohanna, who is on the IIA Board, and Alan O’Rourke of Spoiltchild, an IIA member. In the video below Keith explains a bit more about what to expect at Bizcamp. Watch it and then go register!
Would you like feedback? Get it on Feedback Friday!
A lot of companies join the IIA after launching their new, improved or indeed very first website. Many of the new members ask me for feedback on their site. Generally I try, as is my wont, to be helpful and offer constructive advice based on my experience. But I always feel uneasy doing this because I am just one person with only so much experience of the web. I have my own likes and dislikes and although, yes, I might have more exposure to business websites than most, I do not feel that my opinion should be granted any extra weight because of this.
However, I also know how difficult it can be to get good, qualified feedback on your site that you have spent hours breaking your heart over one way or the other. With this in mind, I thought we might try a little crowdsourcing. If you are a member of the IIA and you would like some feedback on your site with a view to making it look, feel and work better then please email members at iia dot ie with your URL. Please include notes about any particular aspect to which you want to draw visitors attention and a 100 word blurb about what your company wants to do/ is doing with the site. I will then blog about it here and we will invite feedback from all comers via the comments and trackbacks.
We’ll call it Feedback Friday and I’ll publish the sites looking for feedback on, yep you guessed it folks, Friday!
IIA on FB
Subscribe to the IIA Blog
What’s the IIA (t)wittering on about today?- iia: IIA Events: Diploma in Digital Marketing - Evening 13th March 2012: The 13 week part time Diploma in Digital Mar... http://t.co/TSxKEtzL February 7, 2012
- iia: Nokia DMA Finalists http://t.co/evAqYpPY via @AddThis Congrats to all our IIA members shortlisted!! :) February 7, 2012
- iia: The IIA Members TWeekly is out! http://t.co/tnFa8fwJ ▸ Top stories today via @rabodirectie @thedigitalhub @colmhanratty @iqcontent February 7, 2012
- IIA News
- The Irish Times and InterTradeIreland Inovation Awards 2012
- Serious Games Potential & Opportunities seminar
- Press Release: Jerry Kennelly announced as Overall Net Visionary 2011 by Irish Internet Association
- Press Release: Accreate Rocks the Rookies
- EUR 1,600,000 available in 2011 under theBenefIT 3 Grant scheme.
- IIA Upcoming Events
- IIA Member News
- Letsoperate.com launches campaign promoting benefits of Hosted Desktop to Irish business.
- New Irish website www.birthdaycufflinks.ie
- Vitalograph Selects Keeper Solutions to Support Clinical Trials
- SEO Training Dublin, February 2012
- 264% growth in online sales for The Corkscrew
- New Internet Extensions Are Coming. What Does This Mean For You? Blacknight Breaks Down The Who, How and Why
- Dmac Media to Launch new website
- Food & Drink Dynamics
- Hosting Ireland extends FREE trial offer for 2012
- Irish Web HQ Welcomes new Employees
