Social Media Networking at the Clarion: bringing the conversation online
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.
Puddleducks case study: FEEDBACK
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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Best,
Ian, Eoin and Fred.
Follow Up & Connected on:
TWITTER, YOU TUBE, FACEBOOK, FLICKR, SLIDESHARE
Thanks for a great evening and great post.
Hi everyone,
Thanks for having us at PuddleDucks as a case study at the workshop and all the great ideas you have provided.
Among my favourites and ones we will definitely try are name the duck competition (brilliant idea – thinking of using a Wildfire promotion to do this), linking somehow with the weather forecast (maybe a Facebook app.?), Tubemogul (must check that out), camping/caravan parks (that would have been good this year!) and competitions for kids.
RollerCoaster.ie is a good suggestion – we already advertise and run competitions there.
Regarding testimonials – we have replaced them recently with the LouderVoice.com reviews which are really working well for us.
I’d also be interested in hearing about Bebo – I would have thought that the demographic was too young for us. Facebook is working really well at the moment with the ads and fan page and with a perfect demographic.
As with a lot of social media – as always, it is a matter of time. I would love to spend more time on social media but we can’t forget that we also have a day job of running the business and providing great customer service!
Thanks again to everyone for your contributions and to Fred for inviting us to be put before the spotlight.
Aedan
Thanks very much Colin and Aedan for your comments.
Glad to be of help 
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