We had another fantastic social media networking night at the Clarion Hotel IFSC on the 17th of September. There was an audience of over 100 people and there was a great relaxed atmosphere which encouraged a lot of networking. On the night there were 3 presentations:
Miriam gave a very interesting presentation and as part of this presentation covered the 7 step networking strategy:
Step 1 – Determine why you need to network and set objectives
Step 2 – Audit your existing networks
Step 3 – Align your master list to your new networking objectives
Step 4 – Identify any gaps and remedy them
Step 5 – Galvanise your existing networks into action
Step 6 – Re-educate your contacts
Step 7 – Encourage your contacts to be your ambassadors and your sales reps.
The full presentation is available on Miriam’s company website – Align Management
Greg Fry – Careers Coach -Practical example of using LinkedIn to generate business.
Greg gave some practical examples on how he is using LinkedIn to build up relationships with people, establish connections and promote his business. Greg feels that online the more he contributes the more he gets back.
As part of the networking night there was a also group activity where each group came up with some good ideas on how to network effectively. Here are a summary of some of the top tips:
Make sure that you share value in order to get more followers/friends/connections
Pick relevant groups in linkedin with specifics interests to show your expertise.
Connect before you arrive: go through each person’s profile before going to an event and find out more about them!
Don’t consume, be a producer of good content
Don’t just connect online, build relationships
Share your knowledge and show your expertise
Use Google Alerts to see what people are saying about you.
Modify privacy settings as appropriate online
Be strategic with who you are connecting with
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The July’s Up and Connected workshop was a great success. We were really happy with the interaction from all the different Irish businesses in the room and the great feedback that came out of the social media case study.
This time, Fred covered blogging and video blogging (vlogging) and Facebook for business and Ian Twitter for business and LinkedIn.
Because we improved all the content based on the feedback from peovious workshops, we had more time to navigate each platform and go through real time answers, showing the audience how to actually do certain things instead of covering the topic fully with slides
The social media case study was a great success. We split the room in two groups, each had to come up with a strategy to promote their new shoe shop through a brand new line of “illuminated footwear”. Here are the results from one of the teams:
Name of Brand: “GLO”
Tools: Myspace, Bebo, YouTube and Facebook
Target audience: 16-25 years olds
Strategy: Use Skateboarders as brand ambassadors
Summary of GLO-Shoes
Name of Brand: GLO
Tools: Myspace Bebo YouTube Facebook
Target market: 16-25 years olds
Using Skateboarders as brand ambassadors
- The name glo would be printed on the side of the shoe as a ‘tag’
Skateboarders would be
- encouraged to tag their own shoes
- encouraged to upload photos of tagged shoes onto our bebo myspace and facebook pages – regular competition for best tag
- encouraged to upload video skateboarding onto our bebo myspace and facebook pages – regular competition for best video
- sponsor a series of skateboarding events – with pictures and video uploaded to our bebo myspace and facebook pages
- 5 seconds at the start of each video being a short ‘message’ from GLO
- Go onto bebo myspace and facebook, look at similar shoe shops, skateboard shops and contact fans.
- Fashion show as launch of GLO with pictures and video uploaded to our bebo myspace and facebook pages
- Have ramps in the shop!
Up and Connected social media case study
Brainstoming session:
The name “Glo” would be printed on the side of the shoe as a ‘tag’
Skateboarders would be:
Encouraged to tag their own shoes
Encouraged to upload photos of tagged shoes onto our Bebo, MySpace and Facebook pages – regular competition for best tag
Encouraged to upload video skateboarding onto our Bebo, MySpace and Facebook pages – regular competition for best video
Sponsor a series of skateboarding events – with pictures and video uploaded to our Bebo, MySpace and Facebook pages
5 seconds at the start of each video being a short ‘message’ from GLO
Go onto Bebo, Myspace and Facebook, look at similar shoe shops, skateboard shops and contact fans.
Fashion show as launch of GLO with pictures and video uploaded to our bebo myspace and facebook pages
Have ramps in the shop!
Our next Up & Connected workshop will be on Wednesday, September 23rd. We have received great feedback from the July group so we’ll keep on adding more value to the upcoming sessions. Lead generation will probably be one of the new topics.
Hope to see you soon! In the meantime, feel free to ask us any questions about the workshop or social media for business in general
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A great night! Many chose to come early to meet fellow social media users in person. As Eoin explained, the purpose of the evening was to network, educate, and take the conversation online. Carol from the ClarionIFSC kicked off the evening by explaining how it all happened – her decision to come to an Up and Connected workshop, realisation that the hotel could benefit from social media, and the decision to host the night: “It was amazing how fast the word spread, where traditionally we would spend hours on the phone taking bookings, the posts on twitter and linked in resulted in the evening being booked out within days” .
Eoin McDonnell, Precious Rings: explained some background to his business Precious.ie, designing engagement and wedding rings and promoting through word of mouth.
Fred Caballero, Channelship Web agency: He explained how social media differed from traditional media, how it has changed the speed of global communication giving the examples of the US airways flight landing on the Hudson and the recent earthquake in China, both being announced first through social media.
He then talked the group through reputation management, how the independent review sites have changed the face of consumer purchasing. Fred ended with the proposition how every business should consider the implications of not being online, examples of Eircom and Register365 shown.
Ian Cleary, Razor Coast: He started introducing Puddleducks.ie , an Irish company bringing wet weather clothes for children to the irish market. People were asked to form groups and discuss how Puddleducks could use social media. A lively discussion followed with some fantastic suggestions being provided by the groups. Ian then showed how Puddleducks were using social media and the positive impact on their business. Ian finished the presentations with some interesting tricks and tools, two of which were Google Alerts to track what is being said about your business on line and Short.ie and Irish website which offers both to reduce the size of your links but also tracks how many times it has been clicked on.
Please see below all the ideas that the audience came up with to help Aedan from Puddleducks boost their Social Media efforts. Thank you everybody for your input!!
Identify all parent, grandparent groups on linkedin, also within twitter and build up two way relationships with them
Use twitter to get new followers by giving free parental advice – use a combination of twitter and blogs
Link the timing of your updates with the weather forecast
Set up a specialist blog – parenting, child health, starting school
Leverage other specialist sites that are free e.g. www.rollercoaster.ie
Use tubemogul.com – create something funny (video) put on youtube spread through Twitter and Facebook
Rollercoaster.ie – forum
Boards.ie: monitor. Engage in conversations.
Engage/promote/sponsor Outdoor events
Competitions for kids
Give duck a name!
GAA clubs
Blogging mums
Use old school e.g. Forums
Competitions – The first person to find Puddelducks in a social network wins a
prize and the competition should be called “quack“
Summer groups/blogs
Bebo
Target Schoools (groups on facebook)
Camping sites/caravan sites build a relationship online
Photographic competition
Back to school ask questions
Testimonials from influential mothers
Bringing the conversation online!
Please click on the form below and follow every person that was at the event last Thursday. Happy networking!
social media networking
IMPORTANT: If your name is not there, you need to make a change or want to include your name, please leave a comment and we’ll update the form. Thanks!!!
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Our our last social media workshop was a great success and some good questions came up.
Regarding LinkedIn, unfortunately there aren’t “insights” available yet. I tried to make contact with @linkedin on Twitter and through their blog but no answer came back
In the meantime, watch the video below to find out about the closest you get so far to LinkedIn “Insights”.
