Plastic ceilings
From the PR blurb:

This year Barbie is once again breaking through plastic ceilings and inspiring girls to follow their dreams. The 2014 career of the year doll is Entrepreneur Barbie. To celebrate her newest career, Barbie is honoring special women entrepreneurs to help start a conversation for girls everywhere, reminding them that — “If they can dream it, they can be it – anything is possible!

So with that, if you go on to LinkedIn now and look for Barbie, hello Barbie!

LinkedIn.com/in/Barbie

Even when you Google for “Barbie LinkedIn” you get:

This guy is going to be getting a lot of views and I’m sure some weird connection requests too.

On your Page go into Settings > Page Info and there should be a Menu option available. Click on that and upload your Menu.

This is what it looks like on a mobile:

Hat tip to someone on Twitter for this, sorry forgot who.

Limerick, February 25th:
Facebook Intermediate.

Cork:
March 20th.Full day on Social Media hosted by Cork City Enterprise Board
May 6th 4 weeks Digital Media course (one day per week).

This course is now over. If you want to attend other courses, sign up here to the Digital Courses Interest List.

If you have a Facebook Business Page but it’s not doing much for you, if you want to get a return from what you do on Facebook, if you want to know how to get seen by more people on Facebook then this course is for you. This Facebook for Business training course is for those that already have a Facebook Page and is ranked at an Intermediate level. It starts from the assumption you are comfortable with using Facebook.

What’s covered:

• The Intermediate “basics”.
• Growth Strategy – Gaining more likes on your Facebook Page.
• Edgerank – Why an algorithm can wreck your day, week and year if you get it wrong.
• Spreadable media – What content will get you the right attention.
• Updates – Targeted updates, promoted updates, timed updates.
• Facebook Insights – When is the best time to post, what content has worked.

Your trainer is Damien Mulley.

Date and Time:
1.45pm until 4.45pm on February 25th in the Absolute Hotel

Pricing:
€97 for the half day workshop if paid in advance. €127 for payment on the day with a 50% payment by February 13th. We take cheque or we can take credit card over the phone. A 50% cancelation fee applies if you cancel less than three days before the workshop.

Location
Absolute Hotel, Limerick

This course is now over but If you want to be informed of when the next Social Media Courses/Digital Marketing Courses are, please fill in this form.

Facebook can now tell of those who saw your FB ad (not just those that clicked), who purchased something in a physical store. In the store! jumping from the digital to the physical.

Facebook is also the number two ad network in the world now. Google is number 1.

Just read ALL of these.

(PDF). The Social Media Policy from the HSE is quite good and full of common sense.

Jeremy Waite’s social strategy for 2014.

P.O.S.T. People Objectives Strategy Technology.

Facebook ads, like growing crops. This guy suggests highly targeted and lots of ads. Or something.

Main takeaways:

1. If you are on Twitter already, get a Vine account
2. Practice by making lots of quick videos
3. Vine videos should be instructional not promotional and fun not boring
4. Make your Vine titles obvious/informative
5. Share them on Twitter
6. Get your public URL

Vine is an app from a company Twitter bought a while back. Vine lets you make 6 second videos. Just 6 seconds. All in one go or you can make them in smaller bits and put them together. They have to be done via your Vine mobile app. Another mobile first company. You can get the app for iPhone, Android and Windows.

Back in August about 3% of people in Ireland had a Vine account and this is growing, not rapidly but steadily. The value of Vine is that the video you record can be shared into the Twitter feed of everyone that follows your Twitter account and can be played on desktop or mobile instantly. No clicking and it popping out into a browser or anything like that. As Twitter grows and it is already massive in Ireland, your Vine videos can, in a way, be seen by more people.

Now in addition, your Vine videos can be seen on a public profile page. Which means lots of Google traffic to your videos so you don’t need just Vine traffic and Twitter traffic. So if you were dithering about Vine, now is the time to decide. All the elements are there now to use it for marketing.

And they can also be embedded, like this from Pendelton:

6 seconds can add a hell of a lot of context
Images can give more context than text only. animated images even more context, video with audio way more. The issues with video have always been the production that goes in to getting them right, even if they’re just two minutes long.

Now while you don’t need 10,000 hours to get them right, you do need some practice so playing with making really short videos means you can get your experience level up quite quickly.

A nice example is Essential French in Cork sharing 6 second French lessons.

Some guides on how to use Vine. From Convert with Content. Beginners Guide from Mashable.

Mulley Communications does training courses and consultancy around strategy. Sign up to the courses list or our mailing list.

Digital Project Management Training

Guerrilla Guide to Managing a Digital Web Project
Date: Wednesday January 22nd
Price: €157

This Guerrilla Guide to Managing a Digital Web Project course is for those who have responsibility for the delivery of web projects which, although they have technology elements, are equally concerned with the delivery of websites, services or mobile apps where design and user interface requirements are key.

What’s covered:

• The 7 stages of a digital project
• In the beginning – Business Analysis, prioritisation and the RFT/RFP document
• A beginners guide to web and software developers and agencies.
• Key approaches to web and software development builds, pro’s and con’s of each
• The Psychology of a digital project. Its the people.
• Change is great, just saying no is better. The importance of change management and scope creep.
• The Software element – BAT, UAT & unit, system and end to end testing
• Your trainer is Keith Bohanna.

Date and Time:
Wednesday January 22nd, 2pm, Dublin City Centre

Pricing:
€157 for the half day workshop. 50% payment required. We take cheque or we can take credit card over the phone. A 50% cancelation fee applies if you cancel less than three days before the workshop.

Booking

Location
Dublin City Centre

Bio
Keith has been working as a Digital PM and BA (Business Analyst) for over a decade with a client list across the public and private sectors. This includes successful engagements with Bord Gais Networks, Eircom, a large NFP in the health sector, Oglivy Dublin, Razor Communications, The Heritage Council and the Crafts Council of Ireland as well as many smaller projects.

Testimonial
Keith was our sounding board for ideas and led the way in assessing whether concepts were feasible, helped us to put early structure on our content strategy, highlighted how we could make the internet work for us (using examples), shifted our perspective away from text heavy content towards modern, light, graphics driven sites and assisted us in organising our internet strategy

Once the direction was set, Keith kept the focus on the ‘critical path’ whenever the team wandered. He skillfully directed the team through the various deliveries, ensuring that the project was delivered on time. – Cathal McCarthy, PMO Bord Gais Energy

Mulley Communications does training courses and consultancy around strategy. Sign up to the courses list or our mailing list.

12 confectionery brands featured in the Top 100 list; Cadbury Dairy Milk (5th), Galaxy (36th), Nestlé KitKat (49th), Haribo (53rd), Maltesers (55th), Kinder (56th), Nestlé Rowntree (67th), Cadbury Roses (75th), Nestlé Aero (82nd), Cadbury Snack (87th), Cadbury Twirl (95th) and Mars (100th).

With all the huge online and offline media coverage of Red Bull in the past 12 months, Red Bull has actually dropped four places in the table to 26th from 22nd last year. Coke is 1st, Red bull 26th and Pepsi is 48th. Were I an agency I’d be pitching to Pepsi this week.

And in terms of the bad for you brands: Budweiser is still the number one off-trade alcohol brand, Blossom Hill is Ireland’s leading wine brand, Smirnoff is Ireland’s top spirit, and Silk Cut holds on to its position as Ireland’s leading tobacco brand.

Responsive Design Training Course Dublin and Cork

Date and Time: Tuesday June 25th, 9.30am until 1pm
Location: Temple Bar Hotel

The web is no longer 960 pixels wide. It’s everywhere, and on everything – on mobiles, tablets, your telly, your games console. How do designers cope with this growing array of devices and screen sizes? By using Responsive Web Design to adapt to the device their visitor is viewing it on.

In this Introduction to Responsive Web Design we will:

• Tell you how RWD works, with some great examples
• Show you how to build a simple responsive homepage
• Show you tools and techniques to help you get responsive

About your trainer:
We think Stewart Curry is awesome because he makes awesome things on the web and likes to show you how to do the same. His company is Woop.ie and he’s on Twitter over there.

Pre-requisites:
You’ll need a working knowledge of HTML and CSS as that’s what we’ll be using to get things responsive. Bring a laptop.

Pricing:
€137 for this half day workshop. A 50% cancelation fee applies if you cancel 48 hours or less before the workshop.

This course is now over but If you want to be informed of when the next Social Media Courses/Digital Marketing Courses are, please fill in this form.