Christmas Instagram Marketing Tips

Christmas Instagram Marketing Tips

1# Highlight Holiday Sales and Discounts,

With many more people willing to spend money during Christmas time,

promoting sales and discounts could be beneficial.

2# Run Instagram Ads,

Carousel ads and video ads perform well on Instagram, Carousel ads allow you to add multiple images, normally showing off products or creating short stories. Video ads are the more popular choice to promote.

3# Partner with a charity,

Giving back is always good for both your community and your reputation.

With focus on giving to others, customers will not only take more notice of 

your charitable work or donations, but may participate alongside you.

                                         

 4# Ask your followers to choose their favourite,

It's always a good idea to engage with your followers/community but you can take that strategy one step further by asking them to choose between items.

To read more into this go to this article 

How to Grow Your Pinterest Marketing Results

6 Tips to Grow Your Pinterest Marketing Results

Pinterest is an online service that allows you to share images through social networking. Pinterest is the website where you have a "pin board" that allows you to post ideas that you want to remember and then share them with your friends through Facebook.

Here we have six smart tips to teach you how to grow your Pinterest marketing results. The article by Mitt Ray who is the author of the book White Paper Marketing and the founder of Social Marketing Writing. If you wonder what is wrong with your Pinterest because you have no marketing results this article is exactly what you looking for.

Is your Pinterest account working for you?

Want to take your Pinterest marketing to the next level?

1: Optimize Your Page- You have to fill your profile very exactly with a town where you are but don’t write a book about you and your business. Match your nick name with a business name to make easy for everyone to find you.

Make sure that your page has at least 10 boards. Place your most important or popular boards in the top row. That way they’re displayed above the fold, and people will see them immediately when they visit your brand page. To apply this tactic to your boards, use similar cover images for all of your boards but choose a unique image for your most popular board (or the one you want to drive followers to).

2: Design Content to Support Goals- Before you can determine what to pin, think about your goals. They might be to drive engagement and build an audience or to drive traffic. Most businesses choose a primary goal (such as driving traffic) and a secondary goal that complements the primary goal (like gaining more followers).

3: Be Strategic with Your Pinning Schedule- on Pinterest, people can follow you or follow one or more of your boards. So posting only to your most popular boards won’t keep all of your followers engaged. It’s important to post to your less popular boards, too. If you have boards for various categories, you can pin specific images for different days of the week.

4: Design Skinny Images- About photos on Pinterest you have to know are some rules. The Pinterest team did some research and the results are suggest that you should put photos with red and orange colours and that photos with no faces are better than photos with faces, it’s funny but that is confirmed by a detailed examinationJ.

5: Write Detailed Descriptions- Accompany your pins with good descriptions. According to Dan Zarrella, pins with descriptions of around 200 characters get the most repines. End the description with a call to action that’s relevant to your goal.

6: Test Various Pin Times- Schedule your most important updates from 2 pm to 4 pm and 8 pm to 1 am. These are the best times to pin, according to this infographic from Social Marketing Writing. The best day to pin is Saturday.

 

Pinterest recently hit 100 million monthly active users. The platform is driving high amounts of traffic and engagement for websites and blogs. The most productive way to reach your goals on Pinterest is to create and follow a plan.

As you become more active on Pinterest and optimize your website, your audience will expand, and new people will follow you and pin from your website. To keep up with new platform features and design changes, regularly check your analytics and modify your Pinterest plan. Do this every one to three months at minimum.

If you are interested to learn more click here and read whole article. 

Video Marketing Masterclass

Video Marketing Master-class

Who are VideoTree :

Video Tree is an innovative video marketing business run by digital marketing and video production experts providing solutions for businesses who wish to incorporate a video strategy into their existing marketing strategy. 

Video Tree work with a range of SMEs's including jewellery companies, sculptors, fashion, food and more.

Click here to see sample video made for Sean Egan Art glass. 

Benefits of Video Marketing:

A company website now has just 8 -10 seconds to convince the visitor that they are worth browsing through. Content is king and presenting

your business with effective moving visuals is proven to be the most impactful method of engagement over text and photo content.

Benefits of video marketing include:

• Developing a powerful presence on YouTube, the second largest search engine on the web,
• Video content will add value to your social media strategy.
• Google love video so by having video on your website you will boost your rankings on   Google search results
• With just one video you can drive more engagement on your website.
• Video creates an emotional connection with your audience encouraging more trust in your products and services.

Video Marketing is for business big and small:

Regardless of the size of your business, you must have a video strategy of some level to succeed on line into the future. Video Tree will show you how you can apply a video strategy that fits with your budget. By 2018 it is estimated that 80% of internet traffic will be video and as consumer demands rise for video content, the cost of video content creation has become more affordable meaning that all sizes of businesses can integrate a video strategy to their business to connect with their visitors, develop trust and showcase themselves, their products and their services to increase the likelihood of conversion.

Workshop

This workshop will give you tips, tricks and techniques for marketing your videos on line.

 

Exclusive Offer

All participants in the workshop will get an exclusive discounted rate on a Video package to include recording, editing and promotion. If you think you might like to promote your business through video I would strongly urge you to attend so you can learn more 

Video Marketing Master class start on Wednesday 11th November 2015 from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm, cost €15.

For more information call (058)23598 or  e- mail info@dungarvanec.com 

New Facility!! Green Screen for Hire

Green Screen at Dungarvan Enterprise  Centre

We are delighted to announce that we have a new facility available at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre – we have a green screen and professional lighting available for hire. We will explain how it works, why you need a green screen, and we also will try to help you to find the best programme to edit your video with here in this article.

The green screen allows you to make video advertising for your business, which is proven to help with SEO, to engage customers better and to have high share value. With some very easy and simple techniques your promotional video can and will look like a professional video. What are you waiting for? Try it out today.

What is Keying?

Keying is the process of isolating a single colour or brightness value in an electronic image and using software to make that value transparent, allowing another image to show through the affected areas. Luminance keying, or luma keying, is the process of keying out a brightness value or range, like black or white. Luminance keys are often used for applying mattes. Colour keying, or chroma keying, identifies a specific colour to remove – hence the green screen.

Why Green?

Many people use the terms chroma keying and green screening interchangeably, but the principle that powers chrominance keying is not limited to the green parts of the spectrum. In the visual effects world of Hollywood, blue screens are far more common than green. In fact, you can key out any colour; red, yellow, purple or pink, blue and yes, green. So why is it that an ugly shade of green is the hue of choice for television and video? The biggest factor is contrast. In order to isolate one area from the rest, the background colour must be distinctly different. Bright green beats blue partially because it is not a colour commonly worn by people. Any clothing that matches the background too closely will also key out, punching a hole in your subject’s body, or making him invisible altogether. The likelihood of someone rocking up in green screen green is fairly low!!

Here is a short video that explains how a green screen works, it’s short and it simplifies the process. Click here to watch and learn how easy it is to work with a green screen.

What do I Need?

You can erect a simple chromakey setup almost anywhere with just a few basic tools. In order to shoot footage that will key cleanly, you will need a green background, a source of bright, even lighting, and a tripod to lock your camcorder in place.

You can find all these things at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre, so all you need is to find a video editor that works for you.

We can also recommend a few video editors that have great reviews, the decision about what you use is yours:

1.      The guy in our video uses Adobe Premiere The fastest and most efficient nonlinear video editor is now also the first to offer an intuitive, dedicated Lumetri Color panel for manipulating colour and light, plus a Morph Cut transition that lets you quickly create the most seamless talking-head scenes imaginable. The app also delivers dozens of features designed to help you make the switch from Final Cut or Avid, including common commands, panels, and keyboard shortcuts. There are few package you can choose, the cheapest one costs just €24.99 per month.

2.      Another program is Jahshaka  this application is completely free. Jahshaka is a program for editing, printing and an applicator of special effects. It uses the power of your processor to give you a real – time rendering. You can edit your videos quickly and with flexibility. Features include; Create real-time effects, animate with unlimited features, draw and tag on video playback, create background music with the tools used by the pros. Working with multiple formats on any resolution you can share your projects, your files, music with all internet users around the world.

3.      Movavi Video Editor  looks really nice and easy to use. Cut and join video clips with zero quality loss, apply stylish video effects and filters, add music, titles, and much more!!! Movavi’s video editing software is very easy to work with, it has a simple and user-friendly interface: take a pinch of imagination, mix it with some free time and some professional shots of your business/product, and you will have a Hollywood – like video with a lot less effort. Cost of this application is €35.87 but you can do a free trial before you pay

4.      Pinnacle Studio Plus  is considered one of the most powerful video editors by multimedia users, Pinnacle Studio Plus enables you to create videos, to organize, edit and enhance their quality and also share them with other people. Once imported you can edit your video and start to increase the quality of your video file simply and with ease. The cost is €89.75 for the full version of Pinnacle Studio Plus, there is also Pinnacle Studio 18.5 for €53.62 or Pinnacle Studio 18.5 Ultimate which is more expensive but has more professional features and costs €116.24. .

5.      Muvee Reveal  is a complete mounting software. It has features allowing you to split your video into several parts; it can also be merged with others, helping you to make video montages of your choice. This software also has features that allow you to customize the image being edited, such as adding captions and voiceover. Moreover, with a special system detecting facial movements, the videos can be perfectly synchronized with the rhythm of your chosen background music. You also have the ability to customize your creation. There is a library of pre-defined templates which include styles, animations and transitions. With Muvee Reveal, you can also export your finished works on Youtube, Facebook and other video sharing websites. This application costs €71.83 to buy

These are our top picks but there are lots of options for video editing, shop around and find the best for you.  

 

For more information please contact Dungarvan Enterprise Centre at (058) 23598 or dungarvanec@gmail.com .

Getting the Most from Facebook Ads

Facebook Advertising 101: How to Get Started With Facebook Ads

This article is for everyone who has tried Facebook ads but has had little success. We found this an article on social media examiner.

Why use Facebook ads?

If you've built up a Facebook business page and have a few thousand fans, you might find that your engagement is slipping. So start with targeting your fans. It’s the cheapest way to target on Facebook, since you don’t pay as much when you target your own fans versus a cold audience. Then create a lookalike audience of your own fan base. You tell Facebook that you have these fans, and you want to target people who are similar in likes, interests, activities and behaviour. Then upload your email list to Facebook. Facebook will compare it to their database, and when they find a match, they put the contact in a bucket. Simple when you know how.

Graphics for Facebook ads - If you’re really new and people don’t know you or your brand yet, run with content. Let the ad graphic speak for itself. Since you can only have 20% text in an ad graphic, use the Facebook grid tool to test your images before uploading them.

There are three types of Facebook ads: sidebar, news feed and mobile. When you set up your ad, if you have a really small budget, start with a news feed ad. When you set up the ad in the dashboard, you’ll see a preview of your ad both ways. Remember, if you’re doing a mobile ad that promotes a webinar or other event, make sure the registration page is mobile-responsive.

Facebook ad text - For Facebook ads, create a headline below the image and add a description. However, the most important text for your ad is right above the image. Try this text format: Start with your question. Then write two sentences to tell your audience what to do. Also, include either the link in the text or write “click below” to lead your readers to the link in the ad. Boost a post if you want to get something out quickly.

Your ad budget- Start by spending €4 for each ad set. To set up an ad, you create a campaign, then an ad set and finally an ad. If you want to set up two ad sets, put €4 to both of those per day. Try to get up to €16 per day for a period of time. A week would be great.

When it’s time to change your ads- Before you change anything about the ad itself, start with your targeting. Do a lot of homework and make sure you get in front of the right people. This will lower your cost per lead considerably.

Discovery of the Week- Raindrop, which functions as an archive and collection system, is a cloud-based web, desktop and mobile app that syncs across all your devices. Use it as a collecting, organizing, sharing and collaborating tool. To use Raindrop for collaboration, sign up (it’s free), log in and set up a shared folder or two. Then, allow access just as you do with services like Drop-box.

If you want to learn more, please read the full article on Social Media Examiner.

Please click here to read more

'' Playground and Creativity'' workshop

As part of the Start Up Gathering, Waterford City Enterprise Centre and Dungarvan Enterprise Centre, in association with Waterford LEO, have come together to present a unique creativity accelerator called ‘The Playground’ on Tue 6^th October.

‘The Playground’ will take place in Central Arts in Waterford and is a creativity workshop with a difference. The workshop is facilitated by three experts in the areas of creativity, idea generation and action planning. Participants will be brought through three different phases in one day; going from creative brainstorming to idea generation and acumination, and resulting in a solid ‘beermat business plan’ that can be actioned immediately.

Running from 9.30-17.00 the workshop is open to people with a business idea, people who are in early stage business and those who have been running a business for some time. We are looking for people who might have a business idea but need help honing and developing that idea. We are also looking for people who are operating a business but who might be looking at developing innovation in their business, improving efficiencies, or who might be considering diversification. We have carefully selected three facilitators from the Arts, Creativity and Business disciplines and we are excited to be able to deliver this action-focused workshop as part of the events taking place for the Start-Up Gathering.

Creativity or left brain activity is often neglected on a daily basis as people get caught up in focusing on daily tasks, operations, accounts, admin issues and generally “getting the job done”. This workshop offers an opportunity to take a step back, free your mind from its inhibitors and open yourself to lateral thinking that will ultimately benefit your bottom line. The workshop includes idea sharpening and action planning phases that will ensure you take advantage of the ideas you have generated.

The workshop is free to attend for successful applicants. Registration is via competitive call, with application forms available to anyone in business or thinking of setting up a business. 

Applications are open until Friday 25^th September at 5PM and applications are available from dungarvanec@gmail.com

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre Launches Business Needs Survey in Waterford & Dungarvan

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre

Launches Business Needs Survey in Waterford & Dungarvan

We are delighted to say that we are developing and lunching a ‘Voice of the Customer’ survey, which will help to establish the gaps in support for micro and start-up business, and determine what supports business really need in order to grow.

Why we are doing this?

We want to make sure we are providing supports and services that business need. And we want to improve our offering by filling any gaps in our services.

We are urging all involved in business in Waterford city and county to have their say in our survey, we are taking this exercise very seriously and will be taking action based on the feedback that we receive.

It is our intention to further develop our facilities and services around the needs of the business community, based on the findings of this survey. We want to hear about your issues, challenges and needs so that we can make the right decisions to support you.

You can take part in the lottery for €100 for respondents to the survey, which is a further incentive. Everybody who responds to our survey and leaves their contact details will be entered into a draw for €100 cash.

We have contracted RIKON to help develop the survey and will work closely with the leading research experts to deliver a robust and comprehensive piece of research that can offer genuine insights into the needs of the business community.

RIKON are Ireland’s leading service innovation centre located in WIT and is staffed by doctoral and post- doctoral researcher along with industry experts.

The survey is online and will take just 6 minutes to complete. 

For further information please contact Dungarvan Enterprise Centre at (058) 23598 or dungarvanec@gmail.com .

The Importance of Digital Marketing for your Business

The Importance of Digital Marketing for your Business

I found this great article that shows you how important digital marketing is for your business. There are tonnes of articles about digital marketing, but  I really like this article because it's based on research by the American businessman who is best known as the chairman and CEO of Starbucks and a former owner of the Seattle Supersonics.

Making the move towards digital technology and in particular communicating your brand through digital marketing is an important step for any business, large or small.

Digital marketing is nothing other than a conscious use of digital media for the purposes of communicating with customers 

Benefits for business:

• Increased sales
• Improved customer retention 
• Provision of more accurate information to the sales network
• Building the brand image of a company

If you are still wondering why Digital Marketing is important  for your business? 

• Potential on-line audience -  Everybody is using smartphones or tablets - according to the Eircom Household Sentiments Survey (EHHS) 61% of people in Ireland already own a smartphone and 40% have access to a tablet computer. These potential customers conduct their lives on-line and see digital technology as an integral part of their existence with 46% of 16-24 year old's capturing this attitude shift by admitting that they had been anxious about missing something on social media by not being on-line. This is where digital promotion techniques come into play – the importance of on-line marketing for businesses should not be underestimated.
• So easy to get started with digital marketing- It is very simple - you already started to use digital marketing when you created a Facebook,  Twitter, Pinterest,  Linkedin or other social media platform. The biggest trend in on-line marketing is to harness the power of social media – and this is a particularly accessible type of technology. Take some time to get familiar with the various platforms available and how to use them. 
• Content is king- Content marketing is based on establishing a dialogue between the company (institution) and the recipient of Content. In such media as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn users have the opportunity to establish a dialogue. They can like it, they can leave a comment on, and above all they can share articles, videos or topics posted on blogs, spreading them on the network. And also we get feedback, so that we know what they expect from us. In addition, we become a source of reliable knowledge, information and entertainment. The recent ALS ice bucket challenge is a perfect case study in how to do content marketing really well. This compelling concept rapidly went viral right around the globe. For those who haven’t seen it, people posted social media videos of themselves having buckets of ice cold water dumped on them with the objective of raising awareness and funds for the ALS Association. These principles could underpin any content marketing strategy and will seriously increase its chances of success.

Victor Kiam (Remington) says: 

“In business, the competition will bite you if you keep running, if you stand still, they will swallow you”

To read a whole article click here. 

We are delighted to bring DMI Professional Diploma in Dgital Marketing to Dungarvan this September. We will be hosting an open evening on Wed 2nd Sept to talk about the programme and its benefits for your business. For bookings contact dungarvanec@gmail.com 

  

Master Digital Marketing with the Best in the Business

We are delighted to announce that Digital Marketing Institute will run their globally accredited Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing in Dungarvan this September. This will be the last time that this programme is available here in Dungarvan. With a syllabus advisory council consisting of Google, Ebay and Facebook to name a few, this is genuinely the leading digital marketing programme available in Ireland.

The 10 week, part-time course offers to enhance participants with the skills to engage their customers through Search, Social, Mobile and Email Marketing. The cost of the course is €1,500 per person but as part of a special offer on the Diploma, the LEO is running a competition that will sponsor some free places on the course.
CLICK HERE TO ENTER

Closing dates for entries to the competition is August 21st

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre is also offering an early bird discount of €250 for all bookings made before August 31st. This is a significant saving on the course price, lowering the module cost from €150 to €125. To avail of this discount, payment must be made in full when booking.

The course is a global-standard qualification and is the most widely taught industry accredited course available in digital marketing – an area that is redefining the balance of power between companies and consumers, As the consumer world quickly subscribes to the digital age, businesses are afforded the chance to target an audience that devours digital content on a daily basis with faster, more practical and more versatile marketing.

There will be an information evening held for the course in early September

By learning the craft of digital marketing, business owners will be armed with an arsenal of knowledge that will enable them to increase sales, increase exposure, increase website traffic and, most importantly, reduce marketing expenses. 

People sometimes say to me "why would I need digital marketing?" It's like this we are all online every single day, if your business isn't there you are losing customers. 

Check out this video about the impact of mobile in digital marketing for 2015

These are some testimonials from people who took the course before in Dungarvan 

"I would highly recommend partaking in the ten week Digital Marketing course. The opportunity to meet and learn from some of the top digital marketers in the industry and feed off their own personal experiences
and knowledge in the business was invaluable. The insight they were able to provide on their topics by demonstrating personal examples from their own work gave me useful ideas and information that I have
been able to use to promote and expand my own online venture. As well as this the lecturers you meet are only a click of a button away afterward as you get to exchange contact information with these experts. On top of this, taking part in the course with like-minded individuals who all want to attain the same goal - to better their
business through digital marketing - creates a great atmosphere where participants can feed off each other through debate and conversation." David Prendergast, All the Young Blues 

"I took the course because I felt we were being left behind in the world of digital marketing and I needed to come up to speed.  What I found most helpful was the push it gave me to design a  digital marketing strategy and to just get out there and get posting as opposed to sitting wondering where to start". Laoise Ni Conchubhair, Predictive Maintenance 

"Having graduated from UCC almost 11 years ago, I have worked in the marketing industry through a pace of change that is challenging for marketers to stay on top of!  Like so many marketers of my time, most of my digital marketing skills and knowledge is self-taught, but I knew that in order to stay on top of the game it would be of huge benefit to get a complete understanding through gaining a formal qualification from real industry experts. The DMI Marketing Diploma provides a valuable opportunity to gain a deeper understanding about all aspects of Digital Marketing from active industry professionals who are practising everyday and are very much in tune with the everyday challenges that business and brands face. The course provided me with lots of new skills and a better understanding about how to compete and win in the digital marketing world."  Moya Verling, Flahavans