Colm Lyon (CEO, Realex Payments): He focused on the importance of goals and how imperative is to know what and where do you want to be in order to achieve real success. He highlighted the crucial importance of business scalability.

Trey Harvin (CEO, DotMobi): “Ireland is the first country in the EU in browsing the Internet on mobile devices.” He also shared www.ready.mobi (testing tool that evaluates mobile-readiness using industry best practices & standards). Interesting: Spanair are using already scannable ticket on mobile screens. Go to mobiforge.com and mobithinking.com for more info.

Ronan Harris (Online Sales Director, Google): Ronan focused on the importance of online measurement through Google tools, providing insights crucial for companies to increase revenue and generate business intelligence. Some highlights: “15 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute”. “It’s been a 355% increase in engagement in displayed ads”. “Time spent on site and bounce rate seem to be key metrics to stick to”. (That’s too broad since not every single business has the same KPIs, therefore, the priorities of what’s measured would differ). Social media: Covered the Obama campaign (of course). Interesting story also about Nike: by engaging in social media and making their customers feel brand-ownership they achieved success.

Colm Long (Director Online Operations, Facebook): 200 million active users. Average user spends 25 min/day, 50% return daily (yes! that’s a 100 million), 70% of users from outside the US , 35 years of age and above is now the fastest growing segment (this is crucial information since many people still believe that Facebook is only a platform for teenagers) Colm also shared a fantastic video about the way they used Facebook to localise their site. Coming up: New private setting for different “Groups”!

As ususal, Channelship produced some cool videos to share with you. Check out Trey Harvin (DotMobi) “The Internet on mobile phones”, Ronan Harris (Google) on “Free tools for companies” and Catherine from Hostelworld.com about “The power onf online video”. Enjoy!

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Want to know what people said at the event? Go to Twitter Search #cong09

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Best,

Fred

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So, we attended the SFA event at the new Eircom building yesterday where Piaras Kelly and Colin Hetherington gave a presentation on Digital Marketing. Good content and advice for companies on how to get started with online social networks, blogging and some other cool examples.

I saw plenty of jaw-drops within the audience when some basic things were discussed. As Evert Bopp wrote recently: “Think that a blog is a character from Star Trek?”

Here are a couple of videos with the speakers’ advise on how to get ready before approaching  a digital marketing agency and whether outsorucing your social media efforts is viable or not :

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There is tremendous opportunity for traditional SMEs in going online and doing it themselves. There’s only 1 accountancy firm in Ireland that has a blog!!! (???) I believe that the more events like this one, the less jaw-drops we’ll see.

The concern is: After these events, how many SMEs seriously sit down to evaluate their online strategy? How many try social networks and just quit after a few days? How many think (if they have the budget) that they can just outsource their efforts and forget about it?
According to Colin, 60% of people quit Twitter after a first few attempts. This, of course, leaves room for the consultancy and training work that companies like us provide

Consultancy and training only come in when the acknowledgement is made. I wonder what other alternatives, besides this type of “creating awareness” events, are out there to help companies understand the importance of the Internet.

Best,

Fred

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I had some very interesting converstaions with film maker, Fiona Ashe and Magda from Google (great photographer)

Follow PLAYGROUP’s Facebook page and join us next month for a cool and enjoyable night. A nice break from traditional networking events

Check out all the photos from the event at Channelship’s Flikr album
And now… what the night left us in a couple of cool videos. Enjoy!!

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All the best
Fred

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Here are some highlights and my comments for B2B and B2C marketers:

• “Search” is the barometer and the sign of the current times:  What are the latest search terms spotted by the guys at Google? Frozen food – new DVD releases – free delivery – cheap loans. Everybody is now a bargain shopper, ADAPT!!!

• “Web 3.0 is about conversations and engagement on the internet”. I thought Web 2.0 stood for that too.. Anyways: 25% of adults in Ireland are part of a social network as well as 64% of people under 24.

• Start using Google Insights for search now! Some purposes: Analise advertising messages, examine seasonality (especially towards SEO in my opinion), identify top brands, enter new markets.

• Get your act together with Google Analytics, and do it now! I mean it

• Define goals for your landing pages: generate leads, create brand awareness, build relationships or entice membership.  Track, measure and take action.

• Google Website Optimiser: Either start using it yourself and try; or get help from your webmaster/ agency to try (try really hard) on your behalf. The navigation experience means everything to your visitors.

• Give your website the value and time it deserves. Continuous improvement of your website in line with your online marketing is not a cost! It is an investment. The sooner you acknowledge it the better.

• Re-invent the online buying funnel as many times as necessary. Google’s success is based on trial and error too, but we only know about their popular products once they go mainstream.

• Keyword strategy: Depending on your industry, long tail keywords can be the core strategy. But according to the presenters, bigger brands like Mercedes believe in influencing the buying process from the beginning with broader terms (i.e. covering “luxurious car” and also “Mercedes Benz C-Class”). Of course you need budget for this. What I took in is to beware of marketers who are “religious” about long tail search.  Evaluate your own circumstances.

• Use the AdWords conversion optimiser and the Search Based Keyword Tool (recently released in Ireland).  It is not enough to just be out there advertising, refine, refine, refine.

• Contact Google if you are in trouble, they will respond (that’s what they said!)

Some figures for Ireland (better than the CSO?):

• 9 out of 10 people believe they can save money buying online.

• Broadband penetration in Ireland has reached circa 60% in 2008, the same as UK!

• There are 1.6 million Irish Internet users who on average generate 2.5 billion in online transactions.

• 1 out of 4 people say they will spend more online this year.

• Ireland is the second country in the world in terms of purchasing holidays online.

• 61% of Irish businesses do research in Google for their purchasing decisions

Ireland is still an emerging online market. Get out there and set the trend for your industry!

Sorry, no pictures nor videos were allowed

Best,
Facundo

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Last Tuesday we had a great night at the LINK! Network, at the O’Callaghan Mont Clare Hotel. The subject was “Marketing on a shoe string budget” and the speaker, Krishna De from www.bizgrowthnews.com

Loads of practical tips for SME’s to leverage their power and effectiveness by thinking outside the box, implementing online tools and complementing offline efforts without any budget!

On this occasion, not only did we enjoy the talk  but also had a chat with some of the companies in the room to find out more about their approach to social media. Thanks to: < areers Coach, LA Make-up Academy, Peak Achievements, Spear Technologies and Dialogmix.com

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Check out also Krishna’s resource centre!

All the best
Fred

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As you know, Channelship choose video as one of the main ways of communication.
Every month we test new video platforms to discover new value and explore better avenues to communicate with our audience.

Today is animoto.com‘s turn.

This is a perfect tool to create professional music videos. It’s very user-friendly and so interesting that you could spend hours creating stuff and posting it to different social media sites.

In this case I used the free version, however, for a few quid you can include your company’s logo and even implement a call to action!
I have re-cycled a Slide Share presentation. It literally took me 5 minutes to make this video   Hope you find it useful.

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All the best
Fred

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Last Wednesday was networking night again and the Channelship team landed at The Mint Bar (Westin Hotel) for the 121 Marketing event, “First Wednesday”, lead by Karina Heavey.
It was our first time joining this group “offline” and I have to say: we enjoyed it!

One of the most important things is that 90% all all the faces were new! That’s a fantastic way to meet more people and refresh the contacts.
We realised that by networking at traditional business networks like Dublin Chamber, SFA, etc, you get to see the same people too often, which is good to build long-term relationships, however Wednesday night, was great for a change

This network has been growing consistently and it’s not just for “Marketing professionals” as you may think. You will find a nice mix of people. We encourage absolutely anybody to join and explore opportunities within this networking group. You can start by adding yourself to the Linkedin group “121 Marketing” by clicking here.
No videos this time but Karina promised us one for the next event. She’s got a very interesting story….More to come.

Find below great pics from the event! (By  Laura Borlea at Level 5 Design)

All the best

Fred

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Yesterday was networking night. Channelship was at the monthly LINK! event at the O’Callaghan Mount Clare Hotel lead by Miriam Ahern.
I must say we had a FULL house, loads of business people attended the event: a very healthy a great thing to see in these times.
The guest speaker was Ken Germaine, CEO of BASE Enterprise Centre and the topic was “Trading in a slow-down”.

Since the “R” word has been abused so much by the Media and marketing agencies lately, it even seems to be a fashion sometimes.
I walked in thinking that we were going to listen to more and more of the same tips of “how to beat the recession”, but instead we discovered a dynamic and interesting presentation more focused on forward-thinking.
Ken enphasised also on how to prepare NOW and be ready for all the great things coming up once the challenging times are over.

Download Ken’s presentation by clicking HERE

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All the best

Fred

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Cheers
Facundo

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