March 11, 2010
Each week we are featuring one of the Work The Web workshops here on our blog.
This weeks featured workshop is ‘Blogging For Business’
Who is this workshop for?
Small to medium sized business owners who own a website but feel that they are not maximising it to it’s full potential. Paricipants should already have a basic knowledge of Social Media.
Each week we are featuring one of the Work The Web workshops here on our blog.
This weeks featured workshop is ‘E-Commerce & Selling Online’
Who is this workshop for?
This workshop helps participants understand what e-commerce is, the benefits of using the Internet to sell products and services and how to implement e-commerce. This workshop is for both existing online retailers and those who are in the planning stage.
What you will learn:
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What is e-commerce?
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How it works
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How it could benefit you
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What could you sell online and to whom?
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What type of e-commerce is right for you?
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How might e-commerce change your business?
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Setting up e-commerce on your website
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Setting up the facility with your bank
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Security and reliability issues
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What price to charge for products
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Pricing models
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Payment methods
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Fulfillment and distribution
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Purchasing policies
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How to let users select items to purchase (the shopping cart options)
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How to promote your e-commerce facility
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Maintaining the e-commerce facility
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Google analytics and e-commerce
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Case studies
Where & When:
We are running this one day workshop on:
Friday 14th May at Jury’s Inn, Custom House Quay, Dublin 1
and
Thursday 3rd June at The Maudlins House Hotel, Naas, Co. Kildare
A limited number of Early Bird tickets are available for €95
Full price tickets cost €145
Payment Details
If you wish to pay by Visa or Mastercard please simple pay online when booking your tickets. If you wish to pay by Laser or if you prefer to pay by Visa/Mastercard over the phone please call 091 399 939 and tell the receptionist that you wish to pay by credit card. To pay by cheque or EFT please contact Ruairi on 091 399 939 for details.
March 10, 2010
 
I was asked by a customer during the week if you could post pictures to twitter. Twitter is text based but it is possible to link to a picture externally. By using a link shortener you can post a link to the photograph on Flickr, Pix.ie, Photobucket etc.
Even simpler are the web based applications that synchronise with your twitter account allowing you to tweet a picture and caption for you. These services also give you an email address that automatically tweets photographs to your twitter stream.
I trialed two of the many applications available for doing this are Twitpic and Twitflog. Both work well. Twitpic is probaby the most common twitter photo service, it’s easy to use, the upload time is short and it is simple to view comments on your photos.
On Twitflog the interface is nicer, once you have synced your accounts the home page mimics your twitter page. I found the upload time to be slower.
Both services are very user friendly and easy to use. On upload time alone I think I prefer Twitpic so here’s a quick rundown of how it works:
- Log into Twitpic using your Twitter username and password.
- Click ‘Upload Photo’ on the top right hand side.
- Click ‘Choose File’ and find the photo you wish to upload on your computer.
- Add the tweet that you would like to accompany your picture.
- Click ‘upload’ and your message will be tweeted.
Here’s one I made earlier:
To email a picture from your phone or email app you will need to make a note of your unique email address. Click the ’settings’ menu on the top right hand side of your screen to find out what it is. Attach the photograph to your email and add your tweet into the subject line.
Remember to let us know your social media questions no matter how big or small. Leave a comment below with your question.
March 9, 2010
March 5, 2010
March 4, 2010
Each week we are featuring one of the Work The Web workshops here on our blog.
This weeks featured workshop is ‘Blogging For Business’
Each week we are featuring one of the Work The Web workshops here on our blog.
This weeks featured workshop is ‘Blogging For Business’
Who is this workshop for?
Small to medium sized business owners who own a website but feel that they are not maximising it to it’s full potential. Paricipants should already have a basic knowledge of Social Media.
What you will learn:
The perfect compliment to the Social Media for Business course. This workshop will take you through the four step process for creating a social media campaign. Aiming to help you increase; traffic to your website, brand awareness and ultimately customers and profit.
This workshop focuses on all forms of social media demonstrating how to leverage them to promote your business.
- Case studies and examples of good social media strategies.
- How to monitor your brand and your industry online.
- How to plan a social media campaign.
- How to implement your strategy.
- How to measure your results.
- Top tips to remember when planning a campaign.
Where & When:
We are running this one day workshop on:
Thursday 13th May at The Maudlins House Hotel, Naas, Co. Kildare
and
Friday 28th May at at Jury’s Inn, Custom House Quay, Dublin 1
A limited number of Early Bird tickets are available for €95
Full price tickets cost €145
Payment Details
If you wish to pay by Visa or Mastercard please simple pay online when booking your tickets. If you wish to pay by Laser or if you prefer to pay by Visa/Mastercard over the phone please call 091 399 939 and tell the receptionist that you wish to pay by credit card. To pay by cheque or EFT please contact Ruairi on 091 399 939 for details.
March 3, 2010
Another big question this week.
Bernard Goldbatch asked
When I introduce mature students to social media, they ask for health warnings. I’d like to read your thoughts on careful engagement online.
This is a good question and one we should all consider before engaging.
If you are embarking on a social media campaign to promote your business it is important to remember that this is ‘Social’ media, simply broadcasting rarely works, you must be willing to become a part of the conversation, to encourage people to actively engage with your brand. This can be quite a scary prospect, by allowing people to participate you are to a certain extent outsourcing the building of your brand. You cannot have complete control of how your audience promotes your business, for this reason I think it is important to spend time in advance of launching your campaign assessing your target market and deciding exactly what sort of message you want to send out via social networks. It is always worth consulting with your marketing department (if you have one) to make sure that your social media strategy fits with the overall marketing strategy for your business. Social media should be part of your marketing mix not separate from it.
I would suggest that you ask yourself 3 questions before you start a campaign, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter or any other online network.
- Who is your target market? Once you have considered this you can keep your posts on message. For example, Spiderworking.com targets micro & small to medium enterprises so we tweet links and information that we believe will benefit this audience.
- How personal do you want to be? Although engagement and conversation is an important part of social media I believe it’s important to keep business pages business orientated. The level of your personality that you want to allow into your Tweets and posts should be decided in advance.
- How will you react if someone attacks your brand? Although we all hope this will not happen to us, engagement through social media means that there is always the potential that a disgruntled customer could voice their complaints online. This doesn’t happen because you use social media, this happens because your customers do. The good news is that because you are already using social media you can react swiftly to rectify the situation. Having a plan on how you will deal with complaints, even if you never need to implement it is very important.
If you have a social media question that you would like us to tackle, leave a comment below.
February 26, 2010
February 25, 2010
Each week we are featuring one of the Work The Web workshops here on our blog.
This week it is ‘Blogging For Business’
Who is this workshop for?
Small to medium sized business owners who own a website but feel that they are not maximising it to it’s full potential.
What you will learn:
Each week we are featuring one of the Work The Web workshops here on our blog.
This weeks featured workshop is ‘Blogging For Business’
Who is this workshop for?
Small to medium sized business owners who own a website but feel that they are not maximising it to it’s full potential.
What you will learn:
If you would like to start a blog for business but aren’t sure where to start, we can show you how to do it from the ground up. We will show you everything you need to know in order to set up a blog easily and quickly and to maximise both SEO and branding potential.
This is ideal for small businesses who want to be hands-on about their online marketing and web presence.
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Choosing hosting and domain name
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Wordpress vs Blogger
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Creating your blog online
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Configuring basic blog settings
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Changing the look of your blog
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Creating your first post
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Formatting and editing posts
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Using hyperlinks
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Embedding video and images
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Managing comments
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Tags, Keywords, and SEO
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Case studies – Blogs that work
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Setting a blogging schedule
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Different types of blogs
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Targeting your market
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What to write
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Goals and calls to action
Where & When:
We are running this one day workshop on:
Friday 7th May at at Jury’s Inn, Dublin 1
and
Thursday 27th May at The Maudlins House Hotel, Naas, Co. Kildare
A limited number of Early Bird tickets are available for €95
Full price tickets cost €145
Payment Details
If you wish to pay by Visa or Mastercard please simple pay online when booking your tickets. If you wish to pay by Laser or if you prefer to pay by Visa/Mastercard over the phone please call 091 399 939 and tell the receptionist that you wish to pay by credit card. To pay by cheque or EFT please contact Ruairi on 091 399 939 for details.
February 24, 2010
I’ve been asking for your social media question small or large and this weeks one is a biggy!
John Abbot from Abbot Consulting asked:
“would you agree with Gartner’s predictions about Facebook becoming the hub for social network integation by 2012.”
Lets have a closer look at what Gartner predicted:
“By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and Web socialization. Through Facebook Connect and other similar mechanisms, Facebook will support and take a leading role in developing the distributed, interoperable social Web. As Facebook continues to grow and outnumber other social networks, this interoperability will become critical to the success and survival of other social networks, communication channels and media sites.”
There is no doubt that by 2012 Facebook will have continued it’s massive growth, maybe even reaching a billion users worldwide. However there is a danger that more users may result in less interaction with the site. It is possible that with so many friends to keep up with that users will be overwhelmed with the information coming in. There is also the danger that people will begin to feel that Facebook is too commercial, they will become fans of too many pages and find their news feeds full of marketing messages. For this reason it is important that page owners keep their posts interesting and relevant to their target audience.
Certainly Facebook are aware of the possible downside of growth and have been quite innovative in the way that they allow their content to be shared. Facebook Connect for example and the opening up of Facebook chat that puts them in strong competiton with other IM solutions. Mobile apps such as ‘Urban Spoon‘ will make the way we interact with our facebook friends very different and it is this move forward, creating a Facebook Profile allowing you to easily share experiences across both the mobile and standard internet, that could give Facebook the ability to become the ‘hub’ Gartner predicts.
In some ways Google Buzz is already attempting to make use of your Google profile in a similar way. By buying into several platforms such as YouTube and Blogger and by allowing you to syndicate these to your email contacts using Buzz there is the potential for Google to become stiff competition to become the ‘hub’ in the future. Whether Buzz succeeds as a social network will not be clear for quite some time. It may even be beyond 2012 before we see it take off in the way Twitter and Facebook has, but I would imagine that Facebook will be keeping a close eye on it’s progress in order to stay one step ahead.
February 19, 2010
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