Dungarvan Enterprise Centre

Learn How to Create and Manage Your Own Wordpress Website at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre!

Need help managing and maximising your website's potential? Need help putting a website together to begin with? If so, Dungarvan Enterprise Centre has the course for you!

In conjunction with the Local Enterprise Office, Dungarvan Enterprise Centre will be hosting a Website Management and Strategy course on November 20^th.

The course, which will run for a full day at a cost of €80 per person, will be taught by industry expert Carol Faughnan.

In 2014, a website for your business is simply a necessity. If you are not online then you can bet that your competitors are! Having a website for your business gives online customers a glance into your shop window. Read here why you need a website.

This course is suitable for people who have a Wordpress website but are not sure how to make the most of it, or for people who are looking to set up a Wordpress site for the first time. Wordpress is widely recognised as the best choice for a website.

This course will provide you with the necessary skills to understand how to manage and run your company website while incorporating a marketing strategy. The extensive course outline will take you through the following areas:

Getting Started
- What are the advantages of having a Website?
- Your Marketing Strategy
- Your current online Presence?
- Discussion of Goals and Outcomes
Setting up your Website
- Logging in
- Familiarising yourself with the Dashboard
- Editing user profiles
- Adding user profiles for staff
- Configuring the Dashboard settings
Adding the right content to your Website
- About posts and pages
- Difference between pages and posts
- Creating pages
- Adding Images and thumbnails
Blogging
- Creating posts and generating titles
- Text formatting
- Adding and managing hyperlinks
- Adding Images,
- Youtube Videos
- Adding a photo gallery
- Adding post categories and tags
Customising your Website
- Installing and activating themes
- Exploring the themes option
- Installing plugins
- Info about various widgets and working with them
- Setting up custom background and header images
Launching your online presence

Submitting the site to search engines
Managing users and permission levels
Managing comments and controlling spam
Backing up your website
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Adding social media options like facebook, twitter and many more
Your website Traffic

As well as a full day training in Website Management and Strategy, one-to-one email training will be provided prior to the event. This will allow Carol to give individual attention to each participant and to their specific marketing challenges on the day, ensuring maximium benefit from attendance.

The Wordpress course will run from 10AM until 4PM with a free lunch included at the interval.

To book a place on this course, or for more information, contact Mags at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre on 058 23598 or email dungarvanec@gmail.com.

Still not convinced? Check out this short YouTube clip explaining in 3 reasons why Wordpress is the best!

Check Out the Results of our Training Needs Survey Autumn 2014!

The feedback from Dungarvan Enterprise Centre’s Training Needs Survey for autumn 2014 has been astoundingly helpful and informative. Through customer comment and feedback Dungarvan Enterprise Centre has received an abundance of constructive advice which it plans to implement into its programme immediately.

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre discovered that close to 55% of respondents had not availed of a course in our Centre during the past six months with the prevalent reason being due to a lack of relevancy. Dungarvan Enterprise Centre plans to combat this finding by striving to bring the businesses of Dungarvan and West Waterford the most relevant courses. This will be achieved by open communication with business owners and by researching and staying on top of evolving trends in business.

Encouragingly, a massive 97.87% of respondents said they would take a course at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre in the next six months if they thought it was relevant to their business.

Comments under this section also praised Dungarvan Enterprise Centre as a “Great place to learn” and an “Excellent service that is easily accessible”.

As well as that encouraging statistic, we also found that 68.88% of respondents had no difficulty applying courses held at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre to their business. As 26.67% of the respondents were inapplicable to this question, only 4.4% found our courses difficult to apply to the day-to-day running of their business.

Other areas that were suggested by respondents through the comment section indicated an interest in upskilling regarding business plans, health and safety, sourcing new clients, office administration and filing minute taking, and project management.

The comments section also revealed many business owners would appreciate the creation of a networking forum to combat the isolation of working alone. Dungarvan Enterprise Centre is currently putting together an e-commerce forum. This would allow businesses that sell online or wish to do so, the opportunity to learn from each other in a peer-to-peer environment and benefit from each other’s expertise.

We also learned some very interesting statistics on where respondents find information about Dungarvan Enterprise Centre. Email is proving our most effective tool of communication with 83.3% of respondents finding information on us here. Our website (31.25%) and Social Media (20.83%) are also proving strong sources of information.

Overall, we are delighted with the findings and feedback of our Training Needs Survey for autumn 2014. 93.75% of respondents believe Dungarvan Enterprise Centre keeps up to the date with current trends while 97.87% said they would take a course at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre in the next six months if they thought it was relevant to their business.

Further feedback to highlight that Dungarvan Enterprise Centre was meeting customer demands was also revealed in the final comment section where respondents stated: “All evidence points to best practice”, “All courses (and above) show that DEC are up to date with current trends”, and “Notices of upcoming events show the level of commitment DEC has in the business community”.

With the information gained from this survey, Dungarvan Enterprise Centre looks forward to implementing your feedback in our bid to bring you the most relevant and necessary courses and training in the business world for 2015.

If there is a specific area you would like us to help you please do not hesitate to contact us by phone or email, at 058 23598 or dungarvanec@gmail.com. Or if you know somebody who you think could benefit from what we do, don’t hesitate to send them our way.

Do You Know Someone That Wants To Learn How To Use The Internet?

Past particpants of Basic Internet Training who are now online

Do you know anyone that could benefit from a basic internet training course?

Does your Mam or Dad or grandparents know how to use Skype and email? Are they confident enough on the internet to book their own flights without your help? Do they know how to pay their motor tax online? Would they like to learn?

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre will be running a basic internet training course for beginners that will run for four weeks, starting on Wednesday, October 15th.

The course is called Benefit 4 and is a government based initiative and therefore will cost participants just €10.

After completing the course, participants will be able to use search engines, email, Skype, pay their motor tax online, and book flights online.

Unfortunately, the government scheme that provides this cost effective course is coming to an end so this is the last time Dungarvan Enterprise Centre will be hosting this course. So, if you know someone who could benefit from partaking in this course don't let them miss out on this final opportunity. We have already put 70 people through this programme!

For more information on this basic internet computer course contact Dungarvan Enterprise Centre on 058 23598 or email dungarvanec@gmail.com.

How Good are You at Digital Marketing?

In the latest Digital Marketing Institute blog post they discuss the release of their free tool to measure your Digital Marketing skills.

In 2014, businesses simply need to be online because that is now where their customer base resides.

Did you know:

The amount of time adults spend using digital media surpassed the amount of time they spent watching TV in 2013.
77% of the time we spend watching TV we are using another device simultaneously.
The average person now spends one in 12 waking minutes online.
The average person checks their Facebook page 14 times a day.
72 hours of content are updated to YouTube every minute.
There are more mobile phones in the world than there are toothbrushes.
Companies that blog more than about 15 times per month, get 5 times more traffic.
The amount of e-mail that that is opened on smartphones and tablets has increased by 80% globally in the last 6 months.
The average consumer reads 11 different reviews along the way to completing the purchase.

From these facts, it is obvious to see that businesses that refuse to adapt to digital marketing will be left behind by competitors who choose to engage with consumers online.

Now, the Digital Marketing Institute has created the Digital Diagnostic!

The free Diagnostic will test your digital skills. You can retest yourself as many times as you want and, importantly, can benchmark your progress over time as you become more adept at different marketing skills.

The Diagnostic questions are based entirely on the Digital Marketing Institute’s exam for its industry validated Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing.

Test your Digital Marketing skills today with the free Digital Marketing Institute Diagnostic.

Reinvent Your Career Through Digital Marketing

In the Digital Marketing Institute's latest blog offering, Pierce Ivory, a former participant of the Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing course, talks about how Digital Marketing can reinvent your career.

Prior to participating in the Diploma course, Ivory worked in Production Management in a print company in Dublin. However, as the economic downturn put pressure on the print industry Ivory began to see the need for an online presence.

After upskilling with the Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing, Ivory set up his own business - a Digital Marketing Consultancy, Rivelino Digital! He is now currently undertaking a Masters in Digital Marketing, again through the Digital Marketing Institute.

Here are Ivory's tips for those interested in developing Digital Marketing skills:

Educate yourself with as much reading material as possible.
Sign up for a Digital Marketing course.
Network through Google+ and LinkedIn.
Keep up to date with the industry by attending seminars.

With the starting date, September 25, fast approaching for the Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing being hosted in Dungarvan Enterprise Centre, maybe Digital Marketing can propel your career to the next level too?

How to Stay on Top of the Digital Wave

Digital marketing is one of the most exciting and innovative industries at present. It is a constantly developing field.

Therefore, the big question is: How does on stay on top of the ever rising crest of digital marketing?

In the Digital Marketing Institute's latest blog post they interviewed four of their lecturers to answer the question.

Below is a summary of what leading experts Laura Grant, Steve Dalgleish, Pete Doyle and Andy Coleman divulged.

Keep up with new software, practices and trends in the key areas that are vital to your business' digital strategy.
Be selective and be strict with your time management.
Read news articles and stories from reliable and professional sources.
Join online communities as a way of monitoring trends.
Keep learning whether it is by taking courses, reading or getting hands on practical experience.

The experts also recommended numerous sources and tools that can prove both time and cost effective in helping you stay ahead of the curve:

Trends that they expect to dominate the digital landscape throughout 2014 and 2015 include:

Mobile optimised ad campaigns.
GEO location and local SEO.
Simpler mobile payments for app purchasing.
Measured ROI in campaigns through custom analytics.

In summary, the Digital Marketing Institute's leading experts believe if you read all of the resources can and are constantly aware of what is going on in the digital world, you will be on top of your game!

Another Successful Coding Camp at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre!

Dungarvan's Coding Camp for Kids most recent graduates!

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre would once again like to congratulate the 15 young minds who recently finished a fantastic, fun filled, five day Coding Camp hosted at the Centre.

During the week long camp the kids learned how to create themes, code websites and build apps, as well as much much more; all in a fun and interactive manner.

The turnout for the camp was brilliant to witness and the calibre of youngsters involved certainly bodes well for the future. The energetic presence and buzz of excitement created from their attitude and passion to learn made it a week to remember at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre.

Each of the participants received a graduation certificate to acknowledge their hard work and achievements in developing their skills in computer coding.

A special thanks to everyone who made the five day camp possible, especially to Darock Media who were excellent educators to the kids throughout the week.

Parents are reminded that in September, the non-profit programme, DEC Coder Dojo, will be returning to Dungarvan Enterprise Centre.

Coder Dojo is a global movement that teaches children coding skills. There are over 420 Dojos in 43 countries.

The programme is free and runs on Saturday mornings throughout the school year.

For further updates stay tuned to the DEC Coder Dojo Facebook page.