Social Media Marketing Laws and Benefits

                  

We are basing this blog post on two articles written by Jayson DeMers and Susan Gunelius. Both of these articles tell you a little more about Social Media Marketing  in Business and how it works to improve your business . We will introduce you  to some of the top laws and benefits taken from the articles. 

According to Susan Gunelius these are 10 laws of social media marketing,which govern what you should do with Social Media in your business. Our favorite laws are:

• Law of Listening - more listening less talking in social media marketing means you have to be sure what are they talking about and  then you can create content, that is relevant and useful for your audience.
• Law of Acknowledgment - never ever ignore a  person who tries to reach out to you always acknowledge.Even if the communication is a complaint, acknowledge it and take resolution offline.
• Law of Accessibility - always when you publish your content you can't disappear. You have to be online and ready to talk
• Law of Influence -find the influencers in your marketplace and industry, connect with them, see what they share and try to build relationships that will get your content shared with their highly qualified relevant audience 
• Law of Value - you need to give to gain - you need to be offering more than a sales pitch to be successful in social media. Put your energy and focus into building quality content and relationships 

More information about the'' Laws of Social Media Marketing'' written by the Susan Gunelius click here 

                             

The other article written  by Jayson DeMers  shows you the benefits of social media, have are our favorites: 

• Improved Brand Loyalty - you need be online for brand loyalty, brands who engage on social media channels get higher loyalty from their customers, according to Texas Tech University.  
• Better Search Engine Rankings -the fact is the most popular search positions are affected by social media, strong brands almost always use social media.  If you want your customers to find you on search your brand needs to be in the social media space, which will make your brand appear legitimate,credible, and trustworthy.
• Improved Customer Insights - remember the law of listening? You should be listening and reading comments to better understand what people think of your business .You can target your content better based on topics being spoken about and you can then see which types of content generate the most interest—and then produce more of that type of content.

If you are wondering about more benefits you can get from social media marketing click here and check out the full article 

  

Pinterest Marketing Tips for Business

  

Pinterest Marketing Tips for Business

We found this article written by Cindy King about how to get good results from Pinterest very interesting and decided to share. 

Pinterest - is a web and mobile application company that offers a visual discovery, collection, sharing, and storage tool. Users save and share pins from multiple resources onto boards based on a plethora of criteria, e.g. similar characteristics, a theme, birthday parties, planning a holiday, writing a book, interior decorating, holidays, etc. 

            

In the article there are 7 Pinterest Marketing Tips and we're going to pick our top 4: 

1. Include price Tags While users are looking for inspiration they are also good sales leads - make sure they know how to buy
2. Use Pin It For Later links  it's a helpful way to let others bookmark your content for reading later - encourage sharing 
3. Promote Your Presence let people know you are on Pinterest, cross-promote with traditional media and your other online channels 
4. Track Pins from Competitor Domains it's always wise to know what your competition is doing 

For more great tips and the full article click here 

50 must-have apps for your business

We were very excited about the article written by Adrian Weckler, Technical editor from Irish Independent, on ''50 must-have apps for your business'' and we  decided to share a little about it.

Smartphones are not just good looking gadgets, in this article Adrian Weckler  recommends the most useful apps for your business.

These are some examples of useful apps and why you need them:  

• DocuSign it's been 15 years since 'Digital signatures' were first  flagged in Ireland. But it's still not working for business most Irish institutions still look for faxed responses to signature-specific documents. DocuSign allows you to capture your signature and use it for online documents. 
• Evernote  another good app you should have on your smartphone - it works right across  most devices. On this app you can access all of your notes, memos and documents (from years back,too).
• Fiverr One of the trickiest bits of starting your own business is getting small professional services done. Fiverr is like the eBay of service-provides. From artwork to design to voiceovers to other business services, this has lots available at reasonable prices.
• mSecure app is very clever and it help you keep one password which allows you entry into an online 'safety vault ' where you store other passwords.
• Hangouts this app is probably one of Google's most underused (and underrated) free features. It lets you hold impromptu conferencing sessions, either social or professional in nature, using your phone, tablet or PC. Up to 10 people can participate on the same Hangout call.
• Wifi finder is a very handy app when you travel and you need internet, this app shows you a bucketful of public wifi hotspots in your immediate vicinity
• Viber  allows you to make calls and send  messages for free  to any of your friends who use viber as well and  all you have to have is access to wifi.  
• Dropbox allows you to upload,download or access documents, photos or other files across lots of devices. It's particularly handy if you want to give lots of people access to a  collection of large files without having to email them.

For more information and the rest of the top 50 apps click here 
This article is available  also on our Facebook page

Action Plan for Jobs 2015-Whats It Means for Enterprise

‘’Action Plan for Jobs 2015 – What It Means for Enterprise ‘’

The Action Plan for Jobs 2015 was launched a Thursday 30.01.2015 but what does it mean for Enterprise ?

         According to OECD  "the achievement of 100,000 additional jobs by 2016 will be an important milestone and we are confident that this will be achieved. Beyond this, we need to set an even more challenging goal for the country – we want to replace all of the jobs lost during the economic crisis and bring employment to 2.1 million in 2018."

 They say that  Action Plan for Jobs 2015 will be a further step along the way in meeting this medium-term goal for Ireland.

The themes in this year’s Action Plan for Jobs build on the reforms of previous years in the areas of competitiveness, innovation and entrepreneurship and in fostering new sources of growth for the economy.

A significant regional fund of up to €25 million in competitive funding will be announced to support regional initiatives through Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland and the LEOs, in particular.

The key target contained in the plan is to double the jobs impact of start-ups in Ireland over the next five years, from the current level of 93,000.

• ·         Increase the number of starts –ups by  25 per cent – representing 3,000 more start-ups per annum;
• ·         Increase the survival rate in the first five years by 25 per cent – 1,800 more survivors per annum; and
• ·         Improve the capacity of start-ups to grow to scale by 25 per cent

To achieve the ambition, the Government will improve the key interlocking elements that impact on entrepreneurship and make up the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Ireland like a business environment and supports. In addition over the coming year, the Government will bring forward a new Enterprise Policy and Strategy Statement for the period to 2025, setting out the vision for enterprise development over that period to secure full employment, and the key supports and business environment measures to be taken to ensure Irish based enterprises are among the most innovative, productive, competitive and entrepreneurial in the world.

Very good news for Small Business 

The digital economy represents 5 per cent of GDP, is growing at approximately 20 per cent per year and supports almost 100,000 direct and indirect jobs. Irish consumers spend around €700,000 per hour, 24 hours a day online. With up to 70 per cent of Ireland's annual online spend currently going overseas, targeting Irish businesses for online trading is a key jobs and economic imperative. In Ireland today, however, less than 1 in 4 small businesses are selling to customers online.

 European Commission research suggests that companies which develop a meaningful online trading presence grow twice as fast, export twice as much and employ twice as many people.

The Trading Online Voucher Scheme was introduced and piloted under the 2013 Action Plan for Jobs and rolled out nationally under the 2014 Action Plan. The Scheme is a key action under the National Digital Strategy (NDS) which was published in July 2013. It aims to get 2,000 more small businesses trading online by end 2015 and offers a financial incentive of up to €2,500 to small and micro businesses to develop their online trading capability. It is an example of an effective partnership between DCENR, DJEI, Enterprise Ireland and the Local Enterprise Office (LEO) network.
More information on the Scheme can be found at www.dcenr.gov.ie/nds and on the website of each LEO.

Other Supports  

•  The development of an innovative SME State Support On-line tool (www.localenterprise.ie/smeonlinetool) to provide an individual with a list of the possible government business supports available to their particular business;
• Government agreement to amend the Credit Guarantee Act 2012 and introduce a new more flexible Credit Guarantee Scheme;
• The commitment by EI of €99.5 million to a number of funds under its Seed and Venture Capital Scheme (2013-2018);

Each LEO will identify how it can facilitate hubs where start-ups can be established in a supportive network before moving on to accommodate for the next cohort of emerging enterprises. A key approach will be to build on the 100+ Community Enterprise Centres across the country by implementing local protocols to ensure the LEOs are fully integrated into the enterprise development plans of each county.

A national week of events promoting entrepreneurship and showcasing Ireland’s start-up sector to entrepreneurs from all over the globe including the Irish diaspora, with the message ‘Start, Scale, Succeed from Ireland’.

• ‘The Start-up Gathering’ is a new initiative which will be led by the not-for-profit organisation Start-up Ireland as a key building block towards making Ireland a global start-up hub by 2020.
• The Start-up Gathering is an ambitious project which at its heart is ‘of the start-up sector, by the start-up sector and for the start-up sector in Ireland’.

 It builds on the success of initiatives such as ‘The Gathering’ and ‘The Wild Atlantic Way’ in a sustainable, regionally balanced way. To help make Ireland the best place in the world to establish/locate a high impact start-up, five days of events will take place annually in the second week of October (from October 5th to 10th in 2015) in each of Ireland’s cities (Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford) with a focus on the industry strengths present in each city. Using the successful model of ‘The Gathering’ the week will leverage and augment many existing events and projects that are themed around entrepreneurship, start-ups and existing industry clusters present in each city.

 The five industries will be those ‘strength in depth’ sectors currently located in Ireland namely ICT, Medical Devices, BioPharma, Agri/Food and Business Services.

 The goal for the Start-up Gathering 2015 is to facilitate in excess of 50 events and networking opportunities nationally during the week for at least 15,000 members of the Irish public and international visitors thereby creating the conditions for the creation of at least 2,500 new jobs in the following 12 months.

It seems that the Government will support small business but whether it meets its lofty targets remains to be seen. 

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre Hosts Information Session on exciting EU Grants worth up to €150,000

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre were delighted to partner with Go Dungarvan to host an information session on frontierCities on Tue 20th Jan. this  new EU fund is available for the development of smart mobility apps for cities using FIWARE technology.

Through the frontierCities grant found, €3.920.000 in grant financing has been made available for SMEs, Start-Ups and Web-Developers to develop and deploy smart mobility applications in cities. Successful applicants will get between €50.000 and €150.000 in grant funding , with no equity requested. the application process for this funding is a simple two-step online application through an open competitive Call for Proposals process. "There is approximately a 1 in 3 chance of your application being successful," said Sean J Burke, project manager for frontierCities ,who travelled from Brussels to attend the session, " You can tap into a wealth of technical and business support from our project partners at each stage of development. The initial application is just five sections covering areas such as the problem you've identified, your proposed solution, the technology and the people involved."

Technical Support will be available for successful applicants to help develop and deploy their smart mobility application. business and commercialisation support will also provided to help successful SMEs reach a critical mass of end-users and deploy their smart mobility application in other cities and countries.

Smarter Travel have already long been working toward developing Dungarvan as a smart mobility hub. Now the arrival of frontiesCities is a fantastic opportunity for local web developers and programmers to access huge funds and develop pioneering technology that will be at the forefront of European smart mobility development. Johny Brunnock of Go Dungarvan has made himself available to provide information to any applicants on the work of Smart Travel Dungarvan should they need it for their applications.

The closing date for the callis 10 th Feb, if you missed the session you can contact Mags at Dungarvan Enterprise Centre for details on how to apply by emailing:  dungarvanec@gmail.com.

How To Use Facebook Ads to Promote Your Blog Content

Facebook is no longer the dream marketing platform it was when it was first created.

As well as changing their algorithm to drastically reduce the reach of your posts, Facebook is also cracking down on like-baiting and like-gating in the New Year.

A recent post by Social Media Examiner explains how promoting blog content can help improve your Facebook reach.

Update your marketing tactics:
Focus on the results of your blog's content rather than the reach and number of engagements of your Facebook posts. If you concentrate on quality blog content, your Facebook reach will automatically see an improvement. Quality counts. Its a supply and demand mindset.

Amplify content with ads:
Facebook ads will put your content directly in front of the people you want to see it. You can precisely target your audience right down to their gender, their age, their location, even their hobbies. Given the specificity of these ads, they are extremely cost effective in content promotion and extended reach. They are an excellent way to build momentum by boosting content that is already performing well and generating further comments, likes, and shares.

Attract attention with video ads:
Native videos (videos loaded directly to Facebook rather than shared from sites such as Vimeo or YouTube) are performing extremely well on Facebook. To encourage this latest addition Facebook as incorporated video tools and feature pages to help guide users through the process of uploading directly to their site. Also, when you upload a video through Facebook you get the option to include a Call to Action which links to a URL at the end. This feature heavily increases your reach.

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre examines 2015's Marketing Trends

A recent Forbes article has earmarked 11 marketing trends to look forward to in 2015.

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre takes a look at the main talking points:

• Transparency will become the main tool of marketing
• CMOs will become Chief Simplifier Officers
• We will witness the emergence of marketing technologists
• The winners will be adept at agility marketing
• Media agencies will step up and lead
• Hispanic agencies will go mainstream
• Marketing will shift from globalisation to personalisation
• Procurement will become more powerful
• There will be a growing focus on Internal Communications
• Holding companies will start divesting assets
• The economics of marketing in a digital world will challenge marketers

Dungarvan Enterprise Centre finds the following three points the most interesting: 

There will be a growing focus on Internal Communications.

Companies will be focused on internal communications as a marketing asset. They will look at it as a key challenge and opportunity to create brand ambassadors and make sure that employees and vendors understand and live “the brand,” as well as the vision and strategy of the company. For example, we have already seen Coca Cola  re-brand their corporate website into the amazing Coca Cola Journey website. Here they promote their company through consumer friendly, first person stories and have made it their mission to eliminate press releases entirely from their marketing strategy.

Transparency will become the main tool of marketing

Consumers are going to continue to exert power and influence. Next year the best brands will be those that will give an accurate and real time picture of what they are doing in the interest of the consumer, at any given time. For example in 2014 we already saw how McDonalds combated rumours that there chicken nuggets were made from "pink slime". There behind-the-scenes video garnered over 3 million views and the company was lauded for its transparency. The McDonalds rumour showed how the internet can try and tarnish a brand. Therefore, transparency is the best form of promotion. The trend should explode in 2015.

Media agencies will step up and lead

Media agencies have been built to give strictly narrow media recommendations. But today creativity is key for effective media. Media agencies will begin to produce content that their viewers want and not what big corporations want. This will lead to the power being put back in the hands of the consumer. We already saw this cool media experiment in 2014: New media experiment allows you vote what reporters cover. 

For more insights into 2015 marketing trends why not check out this short YouTube video: