Mulley Communications

On the back of the Social Media for Business course in Cork, a 9 week evening course will take place each Monday evening from January 24th until March 21st. Details:

Price: €550
Location: Camden Court Hotel, Dublin
How to book: Email Damien ( at ) mulley.ie
Experience level: Experienced web usage, basic understanding of some online marketing would be beneficial.

Call it social media/digital marketing/online marketing or something else, more and more businesses want their staff up to speed on social media. The course has been designed based on feedback from businesses that have attended previous courses I have done (both day-long and weekly courses) and is quite practical in nature. Bring a laptop if you can, we’ll have desks, power and wifi for you. Detailed documentation will also be provided.

• Overview of current social media trends
• Search Optimisation and Website Structure
• Targeted Advertising (Google and Facebook)
• Blogging and Content Creation
• Facebook for Business
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Mobile marketing, location services, mobile apps
• Devising a Marketing Plan

After feedback, the Social Media for Business 9 week evening course will take place each Wednesday evening from January 12th until March 9th. Details:

Price: €550
Location: Cork Airport Hotel
How to book: Email Damien ( at ) mulley.ie
Experience level: Experienced web usage, basic understanding of some online marketing would be beneficial.

Call it social media/digital marketing/online marketing or something else, more and more businesses want their staff up to speed on social media. The course has been designed based on feedback from businesses that have attended previous courses I have done (both day-long and weekly courses) and is quite practical in nature. Bring a laptop if you can, we’ll have desks, power and wifi for you. Detailed documentation will also be provided.

• Overview of current social media trends
• Search Optimisation and Website Structure
• Targeted Advertising (Google and Facebook)
• Blogging and Content Creation
• Facebook for Business
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Mobile marketing, location services, mobile apps
• Devising a Marketing Plan

I’ve been teaching an 8 week social media course split into 3 hour sessions both in Cork and Galway since the start of November. It’s a format that people seem to be liking and I’m getting requests to do another in Galway in the new year. At the same time I’ve been asked to do something along the same lines in Dublin and Cork too.

What each module in the course offers right now is:

• SEO and Website Structure
• Targeted Advertising (Google and Facebook)
• Blogging and Content Creation
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Devising a Marketing Plan

Other Potential other modules:
Email Marketing
Video and Mobile Marketing
Location Marketing – Facebook Places, Foursquare
Online PR/Comms

These modules are based on feedback from some of my clients I work with as well as the hundreds of companies I interact with via training sessions throughout the year.

Price for an 8 week course would be around €600, I don’t see it being much more than that. Group discount if a company sends a few staff. Max class size is 12 people too.

What I’d like though is feedback on what you want from a social media evening course, more topics than above, focusing on certain elements etc.  The more feedback I get from companies, the more focused this course can be.

This course is not confirmed yet as I’m waiting on your feedback

There’s a very good post on Buzzfeed about the use of infographics (Diagrams displaying information in a useful and understandable way) to help rig Google results. It’s the new gray hat SEO manipulation technique.

Simple idea: Create an infographic. Make the content tabloid enough/interesting enough to get linked to and offer code for people to embed it on their site with of course a link back to the site with your golden key words.

Already we’re seeing website and blog owners being emailed and asked for links to these infographics and to use certain keywords with the links. Nefarious to say the least especially when there isn’t any thought on who might be interested in the content. “We thought you might like this health insurance graphic since you er blog about food and please link with the text: cheap health insurance Ireland”

Photo owned by PV KS (cc)

It’s common for a client and an agency to want a quick win. Good traffic and lots of links. That’s the goal, right? Social media/online marketing is simple to set up, free to do and so people seem to think that there’ll be instant success as a result. The case studies we show and are shown make it seem that way too. Organic growth by creating content, interacting, getting feedback and moving on again is much more stable. But traditionally the marketing industry bought volume. Buy an ad on the Late Late, stick something in every paper and you’ll reach everyone with your very bland ad.

Quantity is still the catnip for many. That’s why you see so many company blogs mentioning celebrities and trying to shoehorn their offerings into some scandal. Good luck with aligning nipple slips into recruitment news lads. There was an old Irish Politics blog that started getting into mentioning all kinds of celebrity sex drivel. Traffic exploded but so did respect for the blog’s political analysis. This here blog for Mulley Comms gets 1/10th of the traffic as my personal blog and something blogged over there will do very well in Google but talking online marketing or online PR here means it won’t get first position on Google. That’s ok though as the blog here is new enough and still finding the way.

You see it too with Facebook campaigns that push for people to become fans. Win an iPad or iPhone for anyone that’s a fan of your Facebook Page. How many of your new Facebook fans genuinely care about what you do and how many clicked Like to enter the iPad draw?

Now counter that with what Sabrina Dent highlights for newsletter list building. She talks about Ciara Crossan going to Wedding Fairs. That’s where Ciara’s constituents are. Those who subscribe to her newsletter are the right demographic, not any old sod joining to get to the prize. Good leads at targeted events. There would be plenty of ways for Ciara to get 1000s of randomers on her mailing list but how many will take the content seriously then? A polluted database costs you more in the end.

So as clients, consultants and agencies should we keep pushing for the slow and more intelligent game instead of cheap tactics like link rigging and begging friends and strangers to Like client status updates? Should part of a company’s social media policy to ban staff from clicking on that Like button and leaving comments? The same way for competitions staff, their families and suppliers are banned from taking part? Should you train your own thoughts into thinking longterm?

Bank holiday or not, here are some links for you to munch through.

Brendan has a good post on generating leads from social media.

Lots of opportunities in using Google sets for research and insight.

Forrester tells marketers to stay away from the likes of Foursquare and other location services for now. Sure there’s only a few million highly influential people using it. Am sure the wait and see applied to the web in the early days too. It’s what you make of the medium that matters, be it 10, 1000 or a billion people on it.

Meanwhile PlacePop takes the location idea and applies it to vouchers.

I like this idea. Test drive a new Mazda via a Facebook game/app.

If you’re into PR then follow the PR Page from Facebook. Lots of tools and ideas for PR professionals.

SEO tips for YouTube.

How IBM does social media.

Clear concise guide from Facebook on running ads with them.

Two social media analytics tools to check out. Trendrr and Kurrently.

Nice Facebook app allowing you to create printed photo albums.

Good post on Online Reputation management.

What marks out good engagement in social media? Some of the Cs of social media are in the title of this post. A while back at the EU NGO event we were asked about methods of engaging online and I thought that these were relevant.

Creative
There are only so many flash mobs, viral videos, blogger launches, hashtag polluting tweets and phototagging campaigns you can take and that can be cloned and redone again and again before people become sick of them and starting generating negative sentiment towards them. Do a Princess Bride night, do a Tweasure hunt.

Consistent
Update your Facebook Page on a regular occassion. Update your blog. Respond to questions and replies. Be around on Twitter and if you are interacting, answer questions even if they make you uncomfortable. Don’t selectively answer positive questions or broadcast out happy clappy stuff while people are tweeting you and having issues with your service.

Constructive
Add to a conversation. Earned media. If you know the answer to something, share it, share your experiences and insight. If you are worried about giving away knowledge and your IP, just how empty is your playbook? A few blog posts, tweets or Facebook updates shouldn’t make the smallest of impact on your body of earned knowledge. If it does, worry more about why, not about hiding it away.

Community-minded
Do stuff to make the overall community better. Do you necessarily need to wait to be asked? The more you partake, the more you are part of the community and the more you’re respected and loved.

Use case studies
Case studies are stories. We like stories. We put ourselves in stories, we make things up and wrap them around the words in the case studies. Telling a good story is important for any product/brand but having someone retell that story and add their own personal bit of magic to it is more powerful.

The above are a bit like the “Be” Tweet I sent out months ago on how to use Twitter well: Be useful , Be interesting, Be first , Be around, Be supportive

Nice idea. To promote media uses of xbox instead of just the gaming aspects, they’ve been putting on free concerts with bands that will appeal to the teen demographic. Earned media.

Social media people in Ireland on Twitter. At least according to their bios.

Google allowing businesses to post context sensitive promotions on Google search results. Lovely idea.

Nike iPhone App takes colours from your photos and then designs a shoe with them.

Duarte’s blog posts are always insightful. When given an excel file full of numbers, how do you present it? Here they show you.

*tap tap, is this still on?*

Some links worth checking out:

A blog post from Drew gives some foundations on how another blog post of his with some interesting numbers got trending on Twitter.

Employers using social media to recruit. Sidestepping recruitment companies.

Facebook and local Governments. Some good examples.

A webcam and software and you can model anything in 3D.

A list of Social Media Agencies around the world. Rockstars there. Real genuine agencies. Be good to see more agencies out there like that.

Boingo working with local businesses with their hotspots. Free access in return for watching a video.

Last weekend Donncha hosted a photowalk with photobloggers. Pat O’Neill of D4 hotels fame brought Donncha and Montenotte Hotels together for this. (I helped slightly)

Photo owned by M. Burrows (cc)

This is a nice example of earned media: Bring photobloggers to your hotel, give them content (this time a view) and enable them to do what they like doing (taking photos). Lots and lots and lots of photos and good sentiment and blog posts circling around your hotel. When SEO and Google Ads start to fail or become more expensive than the cost of a room, you need to up a gear or do something different. Course if you have a speedboat that some photobloggers can hop on, even better!

We’re a while yet from the idea of earned media in Ireland as extolled by Graham Brown, Helge Tennø and others but we’re getting there.