Buzzin’ man!
Okay no prizes for original titles for me when writing about Google’s new service Buzz. I’m now seeing it in my Gmail from my PC but so far I have checked it out more often on the iPhone. I fear Google may be a little late to the party on this one but the promised open-ness (“Connect sites you already use. Import your stuff from Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, and Google Reader.”) should allow people already familiar with other Google services to tap into it. I already use Friendfeed in a very lacklustre manner admittedly but it fills my lifestreaming void (Bet you didn’t even know you could have one of them eh?) Increasingly many social networks do allow this cross pollination through RSS feeds and APIs. The amount of replication as a result can be overwhelming and irritating. I know one of the things I’ll be doing next week while waiting for the arrival of Nipper 3.0 will be sorting out all my feeds, where they’re going and who’s seeing them. I know, the excitement!
However not everyone is enthralled by Buzz. Laurent Francois of Social Media Today feels that the assumption that Google make that you automatically want to be visible or see all your Gmail contacts is a big assumption and a questionable attitude to privacy.
But what’s the buzz for business? The mobile version is location specific (although it’s been having a fine time pinpointing my location so far) allowing users to “view buzz near your location” or “Post buzz tagged with your location”. This could be a great boon to businesses using Buzz and Google Maps as one of the functions allows the user to see Buzz “Nearby” and add in locations not unlike that other new-ish kid on the Irish block, Foursquare. Businesses could buzz about special offers, events, opening hours etc. and pick up passing buzzers. Despite Laurent’s fears above it will still be up to customers whether they follow the buzz on businesses or not. For customers however it’s nice to know that you can click on the nearby button when you’re thinking of a purchase and seeing if any nearby businesses are offering any specials, whether they are open and what your options are.
Connect sites you already use
Import your stuff from Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, and Google Reader.
Facebook and our eyeballs
This post started as a comment on Krishna De’s blog post about the recent enormous growth that Facebook have seen but I felt it was getting a little long-winded! In the last six months Facebook report that they have seen an extra 100 million users joining the service, bringing their total to 300 million active users. Krishna has posted a video of Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg talking about what this growth means for Facebook. This video is well worth a look as Sandberg talks about how Facebook has seen constant growth not only in users but in cash flow through a recession, partly because of their strategy for creating engaging advertising and promotional models so head back over there to check it out.
What struck me about the information in this video and in Krishna’s post was the figure of 55 million users acessing Facebook via mobile. In the most recent State of the Net (available online later today) Three Mobile report that 43% of the mobile internet usage o ntheir network is to Facebook and Bebo. While I have not accessed Bebo from my mobile I do access Facebook on my iPhone. Their newest app is a vast improvement but I notice that there is no advertising! So I fail to see what it means to businesses that 55 million users are accessing Facebook via mobile when they’re not getting any of those eyeballs!
Then I wonder if Facebook is training me to get used to their app while they perfect it (because let’s be honest the previous incarnation of the app was as good as useless). While I’m getting used to and, I admit it, mildly addicted to this app, are they, in a similar way to how they rolled out and improved the functionality of their advertising online, working out the best, most social and engaging way to display advertising to their mobile users? No doubt those of us in Apps Anonymous will be the first to know!
Whatever their plans for our eyeballs there is no doubt that there is a place for business on Facebook now and I think that Facebook’s recent changes and developments in the way organisations can get involved in Facebook has had some hand in their recent growth. I’ve certainly been using Facebook more, including advertising and promoting upcoming IIA events from the IIA’s Facebook page. I’ll keep you posted on how that works for us but I know Puddleducks, an IIA Member, have been posting their progress with Facebook ads on their blog. Let me know if you have any further information about your organisation’s experience with Facebook ads. We’d love to roll it out as a Social Media Case Study.
If you prefer reading
A while ago now myself and Damien Mulley participated in a podcast for Enterprise Ireland about blogging for business. The interview was conducted by Ralph Averbuch who was shortlisted in the Best Business Podcaster category in the Net Visionary Awards earlier this year.
However podcasts aren’t to everyone’s taste and the good people in Enterprise Ireland have transcribed the whole interview for those who prefer to read. You can access a PDF via their site here.
I hope you find it useful.
“It’s the best damn marketing tool”
Thanks to IIA Member Oracle‘s Frank Bradley for bringing my attention to the following short video.
I’ve been blogging since 2003 (not here on my personal blog) and much of that blogging was, I presumed, never read by anyone. But every once in a while someone would mention my blog to me in conversation or I would receive a comment and it would all click into place and inspire me to keep going. As more people use social media tools and more of those tools help us broadcast our content (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed) and help us collect, sort, digest and engage with others’ content there will be less blogging in the dark. Some fear that there will be just less blogging and I understand this fear. However I think that a blog should be the backbone of your social media presence, allowing you to expand on the ideas that attract people to you (and your brand if you’re representing a business) in other social media. It also allows you to develop ideas and conversations in your own space.
However reading about Disqus, “a real time comment system”, makes me realise that services like this will give commenters just as much control and ownership of their content as the bloggers who inspired the comment. This acknowledges the importance of commenting and rightly so. It’s been a while since I used a comment management system. I tried one maybe two years ago and it was very clunky but I must give this a go again.
Anyway over to Seth and Tom!
Mycharity.ie Social Media Case Study
This week’s Social Media Case Study is written by Niall Devine of MyCharity.ie. He is also a member of the IIA Social Media Working Group. In his case study he writes about some of the social media they have used and the decisions they made about how they would implement and what they learned from those decisions. He writes also about how recent change to a popular platform (Facebook) made some aspects of their social media forays difficult but happily not impossible for MyCharity.ie.
Background – what do we do.
Mycharity.ie provides online fundraising services to charities. We will enable and process more than €2.5M euro worth of charity donations to our 250+ charity customers. It is key to our business that our customer base (the charities) know that we exist and what we do. It is also key that the charities “customers” i.e. fundraisers and donors know that that we exist and what we do.
Viral Marketing – it is essential for us – how do we make it work?
We are very lucky in the way that our business works. Through email, it virally markets itself. If someone creates a fundraising page (sponsorship card) on the mycharity.ie site for a charity, they then email all their friends with the link to the fundraising page looking for sponsorship. All their friends now know about the site and what it does. Multiply 5,000 fundraisers a year x say 50 friends per fundraiser and you can see the 250,000 people viral marketing affect.
Viral Marketing – using social media
While we count ourselves as very lucky in the way that our business works from a viral marketing point of view using email, we recognise the huge contribution that social media can make.
Video
As we all know search engines and their ranking mechanisms like video. So mycharity.ie commissioned a video from Media Concepts Ltd (a video production company) and placed it front and centre on our home page www.mycharity.ie. The text about our video says “Click here to see a short promotional video about who we are and what we do, and what our customers say about us.” It does exactly what is says on the tin and saves us having to answer the phone all the time to explain what we do saving on office admin overhead. It works very well for us as an SEO ranking tool. It cost us approx €2,000 and was well worth the investment. We can’t quantify exactly in figures what is has done for the business, many of our current customers tell us they watched it and were impressed. It all helps with getting new customers on board.
Blogs
Search engines also like blogs because they create new content all the time (if maintained) and if the information is interesting and relevant it will create lots of inbound links to your site. Let’s not forget that people also like new content that is interesting to them and relevant. The search engines are just set up to reflect what people like.
So mycharity.ie has implemented WordPress Multi User on the mycharity.ie site. We have yet to upgrade the live site with it but it is coming soon. We can’t speak of what has actually happened yet, but we can tell you what we anticipate will happen.
We are giving ourselves our own blog, and we are giving all our charities their own blog for free. We will put our latest daily news, musings, funny stories etc on the blog and if people like it they will tune in. We will also use it to garner our customers thoughts and opinions on various questions that we may have, such as what services would you like to see next on the site etc.
We are also giving all our customer charities their own blog to do exactly the same as described above. But the key for us is that ALL the blogs are hosted on our site. All the inbound links and all the new and updates information will be found on our site, and hence our search and ranking, and the traffic to our site increases. It’s important to point out that we are not “stealing” traffic from our customers sites. They are of course free to implement their own blogs on their own sites. But by us doing it for them (for free remember) we get the benefit of the traffic and increased search engine ranking.
Social Networking Sites
These are very powerful if you can make them work for you, and we are doing our best to make them work for us. Lets explain what we have already done and how we did it, and then explain what new stuff we are doing now and why.
Old Facebook – Facebook changed in terms of its look and feel in October of last year (2008). Unfortunately we started to build a facebook application for the mycharity.ie site in September 2008. We ended up chasing a moving target. The application was designed to allow users of the mycharity site to post a mini version of their fundraising page to their facebook profile. The idea being their friends could see it and donate to it. We chased the ever moving facebook and eventually got there. We used a designer for cost purposes based abroad. We got the application built for approx €1,200, and it did what we asked for. However the language barrier and time zone difference proved frustrating much of the time and we had to put in many more hours into the project than we wanted to. Also their knowledge of the abilities of Facebook as a site wasn’t brilliant so we had to tell them what we wanted rather than them telling us what we could, should or might do. We soft launched the application to the charities on the mycharity.ie. It’s free at the moment because it’s not viral enough as far as we are concerned (more on that in a bit). It’s actually the users (the public) that are asking for the FB functionality to be switched on for a given charity rather than the charity themselves. The requester recognises the benefit to them to their fundraising efforts.
New Facebook – This is where it’s at. Now that FB have more or less finished messing about with their site we have a non moving target to hit. Always helps! We have engaged an Irish company to develop further FB functionality for us. No language barrier, no time zone issues, and they know so much about what FB does and is capable of, that they are able to suggest to us what we should and can do. It’s in development at the moment. We hope the new application will be far more viral. At the end of each process on the mycharity.ie site (sponsor a friend, donate to a charity, create a fundraising page) the user will have the option to “share” what they have just done on the mycharity site with their friends on facebook (and Bebo, Twitter etc). “Sharing” might be a message on the users Wall saying “I have just donated €20 to Jane Smiths Women’s Mini Marathon Fundraising page in aid of the ABC Charity”. The message is posted to the users Wall on Facebook for all their friends to see, and hopefully follow suit and donate. Many FB users would have 200+ friends in FB. So once again the viral affect of promoting mycharity.ie, the charity and the fundraiser is huge.
The cost of getting the development done is Ireland is higher but the expertise, if you find the right company, is well worth the extra cost. They will also be able to tell you if your business / business model is likely to benefit from this kind of marketing…or not as the case may be.
In summary
So mycharity.ie uses email, video, blogs, and social networking sites to good effect to promote itself. We will in the future bring the ability for users to post pictures and or videos to their fundraising pages using www.flickr.com and www.youtube.com . There are other aspects of social media such as podcasting that we may yet use. Imagine you got an email or a message on FB from a friend with an audio file of their verbal request for your donation to their fundraising effort. Personal, fun and very different. Might just get you over the line to make a donation. Our strategy is to look at everything to see if we can make it work for us. You should too!
Bloggers do Congress
Many of the delegates at IIA Congress 2009 shared their impressions, notes and photos of the Congress and now I’d like to share them with you! Please leave a comment if I have missed your review, photos or other media about the event and I would be delighted to add it.
Krishna De shares some really evocative photos of both the Congress and the Net Visionary Awards - have a gander you may see yourself there! Speaking of which you might like to check out the “official” IIA shots on Pix.ie
Keith Shirley gives a very measured review of the two days and his feedback is appreciated. He was involved in our breakout sessions as a members of the Social Media Working Group and he also stepped up as a Social Media mentor on Day 2 so big thanks to him!
Conor Lynch includes a Qik interview with a participant of the Social Media Breakout Session in his review
Eoin Kennedy’s review includes some of the content from the Social Media Breakout Session which should help you with your Twitter strategy for starters.
Gita of Agile Technologies includes reviews of the 3 breakout sessions she attended and are well worth a look.
Fred from Channelship managed to interview two of the plenary speakers from the Congress and I’m including the vids below for you. You can hear the complete speeches from Colm Lyon, Realex Payments, Trey Harvin, dotMobi, Ronan Harris, Google and Colm Long, Facebook as MP3s on the IIA site.
Social Media Case Study – PaddypowerTrader.com Blogs
Continuing the Social Media Working Group’s series of case studies is Michelle Daly from Paddypower was the second of our two case studies at the launch of “Join the Conversation: A Guide to Blogging for Business” Please find her presentation below. Thanks to Brendan Hughes, FBD.ie and chair of the IIA Social Media Working Group for recording and preparing the slide show below.
Join the conversation: The Guide to Blogging for Business
I am delighted that the IIA Social Media Working Group are launching “Join the Conversation: The Guide to Blogging for Business” today. Being a member of the working group (and we are all volunteers) I know how much work went into the guide and all the agonizing that was done over the tiniest details . I hope you find it useful and inspiring. However the whole group would love if you could share your thoughts and feedback in the comments here or via twitter, by email, by skype; whichever is your preferred medium!
I have prepared a social media press release for those of you who might like some background information on the guide and those involved. This includes links to media, images, content and a Delicious page with all manner of related content. It might be worth grabbing a feed for this as I will add to it as more content appears online. I hope you find this a useful way of sharing information and I would love any feedback you have on this approach.
The Social Media Press Release was an idea I got from IIA Member, Emily Tully PR who pointed me in the direction of this template from Shift Communications (PDF) which was very useful.
A big thank you as well to IIA Member Company Vermillion Design who developed the design of the Guide. It is designed to work best on screen but can be printed also.
Case Study: 121 Marketing Network
This week’s case study has been written by Joy Redmond, CEO of Flexitimers.
Background
Karina Heavey is no ordinary marketer but a marketer who has recently harnessed social media to affect change and create a community of pro-active people not content to sit back and wait for the recession to go away.
In August 2008, Karina formed the 121 Business Network Ireland group on LinkedIn in response to her dissatisfaction with the business networks available at the time, having identified that there wasn’t an appropriate group focussing exclusively for members based in Ireland.
Context
She didn’t actively promote or push the group until a turning point came in January 2009 when she was made redundant from a senior marketing position in SPSS. Although a highly competent and experienced marketing professional with a Masters from UCD, Karina prior to this had no online social media expertise or experience.
She felt there was both an opportunity to learn while giving something back and believed that if she brought people together, opportunities would arise for all. Soon she extended the brand to marketing with the intention of creating a community of people with an interest in marketing. Believing that the marketing associations valued the speakers at their events more than their individual members, Karina wanted her network to value and reward its members.
Tactics
First on her to-do list was to proactively build the group membership on LinkedIn. To achieve this, she joined 50 marketing groups on LinkedIn, filtered the members by region (Ireland) and keyword (marketing) and arrived at a list of 600 prospects. Again her marketing know-how allowed her to write a compelling personal invitation that resulted in 350 registrations within one week. Karina personally approves every request for membership to ensure the group ethos is not diluted.
Knowing the difficulty in engaging discussion and networking online and the importance and power of personal relationships; the next task was to organise monthly face-to-face meet-ups where members could informally build relationships (not pitch), have fun and feel valued.
Her experience of event management came into play and after researching several city centre hotels, the Mint Bar in the Weston Hotel was chosen as the preferred venue for two reasons -its central location and their promise to provide a space free of charge every first Wednesday of the month. Again her marketing training taught her that consistency was key and so the “First Wednesday” club began. There were 25 attendees the first night in February and numbers have doubled month on month since with the same people returning and bringing more people and spreading the word.
The First Wednesday club is also marketed via her website/blog which provides interviews with marketers, round-ups of the First Wednesday club and competitions to encourage more interaction both online and offline. One interesting application merging both online and offline activity is the video reel of corporate logos representing the attendees of the First Wednesday Club.
The blog also hosts links to her twitter account (@121business) and her YouTube Channel
Karina then created a Facebook page to extend the group’s reach where visitors are met with a Welcome video and members receive a welcome email that sets the rules, expectations and protocol for the group. There is a space entitled ‘Opportunities Exchange’ where members can promote/trade opportunities, jobs and business deals with the effect of minimising spam on the discussion board.
Regional Appeal
Karina is not content to limit the network to Dublin and has set up regional managers in Cork and in Limerick. The 121 Cork Network is going to launch that regions ‘First Wednesday Club’ next month and she’s seeing her memberships growing in Sligo, Kildare and Mayo.
Benefits
A sense of fun and achievement, continuously improving and progressing an idea through its ongoing successful destinations while facilitating important social and business communications is what Karina perceives to be the key benefit of all this social media activity.
Karina herself has been rewarded for her efforts and has proactively raised her profile with an RTE interview live from bizcamp, a podcast interview on The Persuaders and a feature in The Sunday Tribune. What’s more, she has created her own opportunity by being recently hired as Digital Campaign Manager with IIA Member Company TradeDoubler, no easy feat for a marketer with little or no digital expertise less than six months ago and in an extremely difficult economy.
Karina has become a role model and inspiration to many and like her 121Marketing Network, proves that there are still opportunities out there and with positive drive and enthusiasm success still awaits those who create their own luck.
Listen up: podcast your business
The IIA Social Media Working Group not content with the imminent launch of Join the Conversation: IIA Guide to 
Business Blogging in Ireland next week are forging ahead with their work on the next set of guides. Expect to see guides on social networking, podcasts and RSS in the very near future.
Last Thursday some members of the group and other interested parties came together in The Digital Hub to workshop the draft guide to podcasting for business. You can listen to the whole workshop on a set of three podcasts available from the IIA. You can grab them from our website or ITunes. (N.B. The latter link will attempt to open your iTunes)
A big thank you to Krishna and her team in Biz Growth Media for recording and editing the sound files from the workshop.
Karlin Lillington, the Irish Times technology journalist, who has recently started podcasting herself, came along and has a written a great summary of the thoughts that were shared that evening.
If you would like to read the draft of the Guide to Podcasting for Business you can check it out on our wiki. We welcome any comments or questions that you might have on the wiki itself.
And just for Friday larks you can also hear me be a total eejit in the podcast. Brian Greene, who gives some excellent guidance and tips, asks something along the lines of, “Can I make a point about the importance of silence?” and I say “Yes please do.” Nice one, Roseanne!
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