Round two ding ding
More salubrious company for the IIA blog in the longlist of the Irish Blog Awards. Do you know, while I’m thrilled that the IIA is featuring, I am even more thrilled that so many members of the IIA are listed amongst these business blogs too. The IIA is all about the business of the internet and business on the internet so it’s great to see so many members getting this kind of recognition. Congrats to all longlisted in this category and in all the others too!
Best Blog of a Business – Sponsored by RedCardinal.ie
- Keith Bohanna
- IIA Blog
- Puddle Ducks
- Icecream Ireland
- Krishna De
- Tast.ie
- iFoods.tv
- Sabrina Dent
- Peter Donegan Landscaping
- Robin Blandford
- Curious Wines
- Worldwide Cycles
- eWrite Cork
- Fortify Your Oasis
- Brian Honan Consulting
- Blacknight Blog
- Niceday Designs
- Brightspark Consulting
- Nononsense Blog
- Argolon
- Cybercom
How to do Business Online – Securely: Review by Puddleducks
Aedan Ryan of Puddleducks recently attended the IIA event “How to do Business Online – Securely” and even though he was completely exhausted after taking in all that information he wrote this summary of all he heard on the day. Thanks Aedan – we’re glad it was a worthwhile trip for you.
How to do Business Online – Securely « PuddleDucks Blog.
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!
Guest Post: The Benefits of having a Web Site in a Recession
The following guest post is written by Leon Quinn of Reverb Studios Multimedia & Web Design. Reverb Studios recently rejoined the IIA which I was really glad to see. Leon Quinn, the company owner, had been on my radar through twitter and had made some valuable input to the Social Media Working Group’s recent blogging workshop through the live twittering (You’ll hear me passing on his inputs in the podcast where I mistakenly say that he is based in Co. Clare when he’s actually in lovely Leitrim – my bad!)
I ask all new members what prompted them to join the IIA. Leon told me that “Good key worded anchor links from a site like the IIA’s with a Google page rank of 6/10 and Alexa rank of 135,562 should help promote my web site so I guess you could say I’m mainly using the IIA site for link backs but in return you should get some useful content via my 2 blogs through your excellent RSS feature.”
Over to Leon:
The dominant mood in the current economic climate amongst the general public and businesses especially is to cut costs, save money and look for deals. Bearing this in mind, and if you run a business looking to increase your sales leads, now might be a good time to look at your marketing methods and spend.
‘Old fashioned’ marketing methods such as Print, Radio, TV, Brochures, etc.. remain effective at least in a local context but they also remain very expensive. If you are a business manager who has managed to avoid going down the online route to find leads until now then you should realise that according to recent statistics more and more people are using the internet to find services and purchase products online and you may not be able to afford to ignore this fact for much longer.
Web Design companies, if they have morals! will realise that companies may turn to the net in the current crisis to service their sales needs and therefore will hopefully lower their prices in the face of greater competition so hiring a web development company should no longer break the bank like it used to.
So what are the benefits of having a web presence over traditional marketing means?
-
- The web has a much greater reach, anyone with a PC and internet connection, anywhere in the world can find your site and potentially do business with you.
- The web never sleeps. Your website will not keep normal business hours but will continue to sell your services 24/7.
- It’s easier and quicker to find a product or service on the web thanks to excellent search engines such as Google therefore people will use this method to find companies much more.
- You can say more and sell yourself better on a web site than any other media. Consider the cost of an ad in something like the yellow pages and what you get for that price as opposed to a web site on which you can have text, photos, audio, video, news and as many pages as you like!
- The ongoing cost of a web site is quite small compared to other media. If you are managing the site yourself then the only repetitive costs will be your domain name and hosting and these should be reasonable.
- Spending money on something like Google Adwords to get people to your site is a much more efficient way of spending your marketing budget and you can monitor the effects of a campaign much more closely.
- You can use Google Analytics on your web site for free and gain very useful information about the type of people visiting your site and what they looked at most while there. This information can allow you to optimise your site to maximise the amount of people who actually contact you and give you a valuable sales lead.
Article by Leon Quinn
Reverb Studios Multimedia Design, Leitrim
What about your videos?
We have a new video widget on the IIA homepage to which we invite members to submit YouTube videos. I created this video just before Christmas in order to show off the space. Happily it has been replaced since! I’d love to update this on a regular basis so please do email your YouTube URLs to members@iia.ie and we’d be happy to showcase yours.
FYI nothing fancy involved in creating the above video either: some stock photographs from IStockphoto.com, some podsafe music from PodShow.com all mushed together in Windows Movie Maker which comes with Windows Vista. See comments on previous post to read more about what other people use for quick and dirty videos or please add your own comments about software and hardware you use for video creation.
Give us our goodies!
Due to a slight technical hitch on today’s Digital Digest one of the links was broken. A cardinal sin online! Mea culpa!
So in order to redress this I am now republishing the link to the Goodiesthat were included in the “Next year it will be annual IIA Virtual Hamper” which included a delectable selection of gifts from IIA Members Enterprise Ireland, BlueMetrix, Applied Signs & Display, AllGifts.ie, SureSkills.com, DoneDeal.ie, 4GiftsDirect.ie, FlowersMadeEasy.ie and IGoPeople.com.
Merry Christmas!
Cadamedia remind us about increased VAT rates
Generally I try to keep things upbeat but there’s no getting away from that budget, is there? Cadamedia, a web design company based in Wexford and IIA member, have posted a timely reminder on their blog about how one aspect of this budget could seriously affect companies who aren’t quick off the mark. They remind their clients with online shops that the VAT rate has increased so changes will need to be made on their sites. All members who have online shops should ensure these changes are made as well.
And you may be wondering what brought Cadamedia to my attention? Their RSS feed is included in their profile in the IIA website. If you are a member you should add your RSS feed to your profile on the IIA extranet as well. If you need help mail me at members at iia dot ie.
Grabbing RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and adding them to your RSS Reader from other sites of interest to you is a great way to keep up to date at a glance with what’s going on in your sector. If you don’t already use a reader try Google Reader or I know the latest versions of Outlook and Thunderbird have RSS readers too. (Please feel free to suggest others you like in the comments below.) If you write a business (or any other kind of) blog it will supply you with endless inspiration for blog posts and will allow you to join in the online conversations in the blogosphere with ease. Just like Cadamedia’s RSS feed did for me here!
Moving pictures speak two thousand words
One of the IIA member companies, Prosperity, recently ran an event featuring Martin Bailie from Glue in London. As a picture speaks a thousand words and a moving picture twice that I will allow their four and half minute video to tell you all about it.
Winning Style: Dos and Don’ts for the Net Visionary Awards
I asked Elizabeth Greehy, Editor of www.stylebible.ie, and IIA member, for a few tips for those of us racking our brains about what to wear at the upcoming IIA & Enterprise Ireland NetVisionary Awards 2008. I look forward to seeing you all looking fabulous on the big night!
Winning Style:
The countdown has begun for the IIA & Enterprise Ireland NetVisionary Awards 2008, (30th Oct) with next week (the 29th of Sept to be precise) seeing the announcement of the short-listed nominees. If you are one of the ‘Chosen Ones’ then you might be in need of a few style tips to ensure that you are, most definitely, ‘Dressed to Win’ on the big night!
Well, winning is a state of mind (so a seasoned winner once told me) and as we all know, style is also a state of mind with ‘subtle confidence’ being the ultimate common denominator in both. So it goes without saying really, that a winner will not only be confident in his or her approach to their career but also in their approach to dressing… but be careful, this doesn’t give you free reign to be over-confident!. You want to stand out, of course, but for all the right reasons.
The Awards Ceremony is a Black Tie event. So what exactly is Black Tie? Well, simply put, it’s formal! So guys, you have it relatively easy – basically, a black tux (although I will go into more detail later for the boys) and ladies, well, you are now faced with the predicament of ‘finding the perfect dress’. This, as all ladies will know, is no mean feat. There are so many choices and decisions to be made.
Here are a few things to take into consideration before embarking on your shopping trip.
- Be aware of what you like. By this I mean, flick through magazines and try to determine which style of dress really appeals to you as it helps bring your mind in a certain direction.
- Be aware of what suits you. Do you know what styles best suit your body shape? For instance, if you are very top heavy, a dress with a sweetheart neckline or a V neck is very flattering on a full bust and so on. Knowing what does, or more importantly, what doesn’t, suit your body shape, will eliminate certain styles and help you to focus on the style you need.
- Being Black-Tie, the occasion is strictly formal. For ladies this generally means a floor length gown. It was definitely the case that dresses which come to the knee, were once seen as ‘semi-formal’ however, over the years, cocktail dresses have become much more prevalent and acceptable now at Black Tie affairs. But this can still sometimes depend on the occasion in question and indeed where it is being held.
- Shopping for the dress. Although most ladies will enjoy the experience of trawling the shops and trying on dresses and granted, it’s the best way of determining look and feel, it’s also worth considering the other options available i.e. getting a dress tailor made for the evening… yes, sounds pricy but there are lots of accessible Irish designers and the feeling of having something tailor made that fits you like a glove is priceless. Marion Murphy Cooney, (www.marionmurphycooney.com) is a hip young designer, renowned for making Irish celebs such as Lorraine Keane and Karen Koster etc, look fabulous on the red carpet. She is well known and reasonably priced.
- Considering you are all involved in the online world, then we certainly can’t over look all the excellent online shopping websites at our fingertips (literally).
www.netaporter.com for all you label obsessed girls – pricy yes, but definitely a little slice of luxury.- www.click-2-couture.com for more amazing labels (Gucci, Miu Miu, Prada etc), but at much more accessible prices (and it’s an Irish website)
- www.estyleme.ie for unique dresses and exciting American and European labels; this website will certainly help you find the perfect evening gown. (inset: long satin fishtail dress, with sweetheart beaded neckline and chiffon bodice €399 from www.estyleme.ie )
- www.asos.com everything from high street to high glamour
- Or if you fancy the exclusivity of one of Ireland’s many boutiques, check out www.irishboutiques.com or indeed www.mybeautifulboutique.com for online listings of our amazing boutiques countrywide.
- Have your hair done. Treat yourself to a sexy up do or some gorgeous GHD curls for the big night.
- Get your nails done. If you normally have manicures and or acrylic / gel nails, treat yourself and get some delicate nail art done – perhaps a diamante or two?
- Find the perfect pair of shoes. The shoes, especially if you are wearing a knee-length dress, are vital. Getting a pair that co-ordinates with your look but has that extra special ‘stand out’ feature, will certainly help you look and feel like a ‘winner’.
- Jewellery. Well, ladies, the old adage ‘less is more’ really rings true in such an occasion. Whatever jewellery you decide to wear, don’t over do it. You definitely DON’T want to be upstaged by fussy jewellery. If you do have an extra special piece that you want to wear, just make sure it compliments the neckline and colour of your dress – the same goes for your bag – a small and delicate clutch purse that compliments your look is ideal.
- At all times, think style over high fashion. Fashionable quirks won’t always translate into flawless elegance.
- Although confidence is, as I mentioned, important in all winners, over-confidence is not an attractive trait. Remember to watch your decorum on the night. Demureness and modesty will go a long way towards winning the hearts of those around you. Style and elegance has a lot to do with how you conduct yourself.
THINGS TO AVOID:
Over tanning: This is very important; the streaky orange look is NOT good.
Too much make up: If you don’t trust your own skills, get your make up done professionally for the night – go for a nice smoky eye, perfect for night time looks.
Showing too much flesh: There is a fine line between subtle sexiness and just ‘too much’. Avoid any dress that might facilitate body parts popping out at inopportune moments!
Getting Drunk: This is acceptable at the ‘after party’ in an awards ceremony, especially if you are celebrating, but no matter how nervous you are over dinner, avoid using ‘Dutch Courage’ as a means of preparing yourself. There is nothing worse than a winner who is slurring over their acceptance speech.
And for the gentlemen!
So you might not have as much to think about as the ladies do, but sometimes ‘dressing to win’ can take a bit more than lashings of Brut and a self boosting ‘Go Get ‘Em’ wink in the mirror before you leave the house. Flawless sophistication doesn’t come easy you know!
- Perhaps you already own a Tuxedo, but if you don’t, remember that you can simply rent one from any good tailors for the night.
- It is important to get fitted properly before either renting or purchasing your Tux so make sure all the relevant measurements are taken including sleeve lengths and inside leg.
- Chose your style of shirt carefully as there are many different types – plain, ruffled, ivory buttoned etc. and remember to consider your partners outfit when doing so.
- Choose a cummerbund that compliments either your suit (black satin) or your dates outfit.
- Don’t forget the all important black bow tie.
- Accessorise with a nicely chosen pair of cufflinks.
- …..then do your self boosting ‘Go Get ‘Em’ wink in the mirror and you’re good to go!
Hi ho hi ho it’s off to co-work we go
I’ve just finished a really interesting conversation with the director of one of our newer member companies, EchoLibre*. Eamon Leonard, the company director, is looking for some people to join him in a coworking space. If you don’t know what coworking is there’s a wikipedia entry on it which will explain all.
As Eamon himself explained to me:
“Basically, it’s office sharing with a community element to it. By that I mean that participants are open to the sharing of knowledge and ideas with the people they share the space with. Typically, a coworking space is made up of freelancers from varying backgrounds and technologies.”
He had been participating in a co-working arrangement for the last year, but it’s recently been wound down and he’s since started up EchoLibre, and they are planning to move into new office space in early October.
Eamon really feels that coworking benefitted him and as he feels that it can foster creativity and innovation, he is going to make some of the office space available to freelancers – designers, developers: he’ll consider all types!
The office is on South William Street and consists of two rooms – one will be for EchoLibre, the other for coworking. Already one coworker is on board (“Web Standards legend, Ken Stanley” as Eamon describes him!), and there is space for two more.
Coworking isn’t for everyone, but if you think it’s something you’d be interested in, and you want an office in a nice part of town for a very affordable price, then drop Eamon a line at eamon @ echolibre dot com.
*EchoLibre are very new indeed and will launch their own site soon in case you are wondering why they don’t get a link!
IIA on FB
Subscribe to the IIA Blog
What’s the IIA (t)wittering on about today?- iia: Promoting Science and Innovation in Ireland - The Walton Bridge petition: http://t.co/Jy45swmV May 16, 2012
- iia: The IIA Members TWeekly is out! http://t.co/tnFa8fwJ ▸ Top stories today via @rbconsulting @iqcontent @piercecomms @donnaatdonedeal May 15, 2012
- iia: Internet industry key to Ireland’s resurgence says Taoiseach (video) #IIA #Internet #openirl http://t.co/lFhikbU6 via @siliconrepublic May 14, 2012
- IIA News
- Reserve your place at Techovate!
- Irish Internet Association statement on Copyright Review Consultation Paper Process
- 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
- IIA Upcoming Events
- IIA Member News
- Roomex.com 48hrs Sale Now On!
- New Diploma in Digital Marketing for Hospitality Industry
- WorldNet develops free payment plug-in for WordPress
- Independent Digital and Independent.ie has recorded yet another record year
- IT Conference
- Win a FREE Facebook Fan Page Design for Your Business!
- Bookassist Releases Major Mobile Webapp Upgrade for Hotels
- Summer Wine Fair, Westbury Hotel, 27th May
- Malbec offers for May
- Hosting Ireland Domain Services
