Shut Up LinkedIn – How to stop LinkedIn Notifications on the timeline

LinkedIn has become really noisy in the past few months. Much more than before. It’s just like Facebook now in terms of updates. You can quieten down your LinkedIn feed though. There are lots of settings that allow you to do that. In fact there are 100s of different ways LinkedIn pushes things into your feed and you can turn all of these off or just some of them. LinkedIn will become a lot more peaceful as a result.

To start with you can go into your Settings by clicking on Me at the top right.

Then click on Communications on the left

Then click On LinkedIn or go here: https://www.linkedin.com/mypreferences/d/notification-channels/on-linkedin

Then you have all these settings to play with

There are literally 100s of options across each of these. Disable most for a better LinkedIn life.
Luckily you can just turn all of them off in one go

And this makes life a lot easier. Some of those you might like to keep on some settings so then you’ll have to turn off each one in that section instead but not that much extra work really. The Network category to me is the worst offender. Direct link.

You can unfollow the really noisy people in your timeline too. This means you are still a connection but you don’t see their constant activity liking and commenting on anything and everything. You know the types. The performative “Bert likes this” “Ernie celebrates this” and Bert is commenting on every update from everyone. You can do that right in the timeline by clicking on the dots next to their name. The person is not notified you unfollowed them. It can be bliss.

This should actually save a lot of time on a daily basis.

Today I learned, Today I shared, Today I got back.

My rule for doing well on social networks is: Hit at least 2 of the above points on a daily/weekly basis. Give value, get value. Today I learned, Today I shared, Today I got back.

Today I Learned

If you’re on social media and you’re mostly just browsing, what are you getting back from it? What have you learned? What have you done as a result of learning something on a social network? Have you found new links to tools that make your life easier? Have you found articles or even tweets from founders that actually give you a better perspective? Things like how you should be running your business? Has your business become more efficient after discovering something on social media?

If you’re just browsing on social media, but you’re learning lots of stuff, then that’s a good use of it. Stay on social media. If you’re just seeing lots of dances and funny videos, well, how does that help you? One way is it can make you smile and the world is shit right now, so that can be good for your mental health. In moderation. Ask yourself: Are you being entertained and channel hopping at the expense of your business? So we’ve asked what you learned today, now switch this question around. Are you the person that someone finds is of use to them on social networks?

Today I shared

Are you adding value to a social network? It doesn’t matter which social network it is. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram. Are you putting information out there that shows that you’re an expert? And if you’re putting information out there, do people know what your business does? Are you putting content out there that entertains people, but it’s good for brand recognition? Enough that they recognize your name?

An example: You could be an upholstery business. On social media you can be educational and entertaining. You could do videos on how upholstery is done, this is showing your skill and talent in upholstery. This is you sharing useful and entertaining content and maybe it’s spreading and more people know what you do now. If you’re just sharing nonsense and silly little things or if you’re trying to be funny and you really aren’t funny, what does that get you? So you might have learned something today on social media, you might have shared something useful on social media, did you get anything back from these things on social media? What did you get back today?

Today I got back

Are you getting leads back as a result of you sharing things and as a result of you being seen as an expert. Are people who contact you going “Hi expert person. I’d like to talk to you. Can we have a call?” Be careful obviously that you don’t want to have these tyre kickers that just want to drain you of information without paying for it. Know your value, look at Fuck you, pay me.

Realistically are you getting something back? Are you getting new contacts? Are you building a database such as a mailing list? Are people joining that mailing list? Are people directly buying your product as a result of your updates? Are people recommending you to other people? Are you being asked to speak at a conference or speak on a podcast or give your expert opinion on something?

The holy trinity

Those three things as a result of blog posts, or your mailing lists or social network usage on a regular basis, is probably what you need. If you get all three of those, that’s absolutely fantastic. If that’s not the case, then should you be on those social networks?

What the flip happened to Damien Mulley?

TLDR;
I’m back
I was off doing a health course in UCC
I miss events (speaking at them) and in-person training
Comedy circuit here I come (you’ll see)
Sure I’ll speak on your podcast, at your event

A good couple of years ago I took an interest in death and dying. This was as a result of me researching how to break bad news for corporate clients (mostly about hacks/data breaches). Then I started looking at health communications and the way bad news is broken to people. Dozens of books later including Being Mortal and I thought I’d like to do something in the area of End of Life care and Ageing. I did a short course for carers on End of Life care and thought I’d like something more formal. All the detailed courses were postgrads though and you needed a medical or nursing degree to do them.

And lo my partner said on to me “then do a nursing degree”. And this is what I did. Applied to UCC, rented out my apartment to keep the mortgage paid, moved back with my very patient folks and put Mulley Comms on pause mode. This is all happening at the same time that I had been telling people that when I started Mulley Communications I was going to give it maybe 10 years and then switch to something else. Maybe it was giving it five years and switch to something else? People would be all You’re doing well. Why would you do that? And what would you go for? My whole attitude was, I don’t know what comes next but I’m sure I’ll find out in time.

For the past five years I was doing a general nursing degree in UCC and then took the non-clinical exit route, which is pretty unique, I think, to UCC and nursing. I now have a health qualification but won’t be practising as a nurse. My whole attitude while doing nursing was I wouldn’t lock myself into end of life care but see what interested me most. What I was interested in was ageing and looking after older people. Specifically then I’ve been looking at nutrition and dementia. This is where I’ve been for the past couple of years.

And what happens to a sole trader business when the owner goes back to college full time? I managed to keep it ticking over with the Social Media Awards so it’s still an entity that filed taxes and was registered for VAT but the orange standby light was on.

If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been quiet in the past couple of years, that’s why. I’ve bumped into a few of you over the years in a hospital and it was weird seeing me in a nurses uniform I’m sure.

What next for Mulley Communications?

After five years away, a total rebuild. Arnold Schwarzenegger was away from competitive bodybuilding for five years and trained hard over 8 weeks and (spoiler alert) won the Mr. Olympia for the 7th time*. Total Rebuild is the documentary covering this amazing feat. It’ll take more than 8 weeks for Mulley Comms and me to get back up to speed. I’ll be back on the road doing events and training bits and all that. Oh and more automated tweets on Twitter about business and marketing and the like.

The Summer of Yes

I’ve written a few times about Jerry Seinfeld getting back into doing standup and how he did the circuit. Did 5 min routines in comedy club after comedy club all on the same night and tried out new materials, got his timing right until he was happy with it and then he did gigs in front of 10,000 people and made millions. Now if you’ve read down this far, I’m going to do a few free ** training events to get in the hang of doing courses for people. I’d rather in person but it does seem online courses are the future. I’m going to be doing some on Twitter, LinkedIn, SEO basics, if you want to be a live audience, sign up here. My previous blog post Fuck You, Pay Me tells you to know your worth and to expect others to do the same. Don’t do things for free etc. Unless you are starting off and want the benefit of someone else’s audience. This is going to be my Summer and maybe autumn of yes. Yes to speaking at your event, yes to guest posting, yes to coming on your podcast. Meet for coffee to pick my brains? Uhmm. No? Or maybe it’ll be like improv – Yes, and?

* It was totally rigged and he was nowhere near his old form and in 5 years people had gotten way better than old him.

** Not really free, you can donate something to a charity I nominate, this values my training above zero value that free suggests

Working with each other in your own company – What is it like?

Running a business together – Our Experiences

Thanks to everyone who answered my questions on this and your patience waiting for me to set it live.

Tell me about your business

Margaret and Alec – Climatech
Refrigeration and Air Conditioning. Mostly Industrial and Pharmaceutical.

Graham and Daithí – The Cupcake Bloke
We’re a sweet Bakery and opened our retail shop in 2018. Known for Cupcakes, Tea Bracks, Soda Breads and our reworking of “retro” biscuits. In the shop we have an added focus on small Irish food producers with a selection of Cheese, Jams, Honey, Chocolate, Coffee and more from artisans.

Audrey & Abi – WeirdWatercolours
We design, illustrate, paint and print eco friendly, meme inspired greetings cards for any occasion www.weirdwatercolours.com

Joanne and Dave – Devhaus
Owner of a software development company

Anna and Orla – Valentia Island Vermouth
Our business is Valentia Island Vermouth. We are the first Irish vermouth and we launched on the 14th of July 2021!

James and Eoin – Faerly.ie
Faerly.ie is an online sustainable store and we sell products from small Irish makers and independent brands that are natural, handmade, ethical and sustainable. We’re had a rollercoaster year since we launched and were thrilled in our first year to win the Repak National Online Green Packaging Award and to be a finalist for the Retail Excellence Online Store of the Year award. You’ll find us at www.faerly.ie

Why did you decide to work together?

Anna and Orla – Valentia Island Vermouth
We had an immersive theatre events company together in the UK so by starting another business together I guess we are obvs gluttons for punishment 😉

Audrey & Abi – WeirdWatercolours
We ended up isolating together in March 2020 after going on a date and reuniting after 6 years. We are both creatives and wanted to keep busy during the first lock down. We started doing live drawing over Instagram and getting viewers to join in and after a few evenings of this WeirdWatercolours was born and people started asking if they could purchase our work.

Margaret and Alec – Climatech
Our skills complement each other and we both had a vested interest in making it a success. We work really well as a team in our personal life so extended that to our business.c

Graham and Daithí – The Cupcake Bloke
Necessity. D had been laid off in June and returned to college, Graham was made redundant the same November, we had to do something. We had been thinking of our own business so had looked at premises etc but it was researching for the future. Literally the morning after Graham was told of his redundancy we got a phone call offering a kitchen space, a second offering an industrial oven and a third offering stainless steel work benches – we hadn’t told anyone, ANYONE, our news so it floored us. We jumped at all three offers and decided to give the business a shot. Coincidence, fate, someone looking down on us, whatever, the universe was making something possible we had to go with it.

James and Eoin – Faerly.ie
I’d been working in a large multinational for 10 years. A secure job and a great company to work for but I was ready for a change. I’d an idea in my head for a business for a long time but never acted on it. The usual, never had the time…….

Well, working from home during the first lockdown and suddenly having no daily commute, as well as our social life vanishing, I suddenly had the time and space to really explore it and actually do it. I started thinking about it seriously in March of 2020 at the start of the first lockdown and by May I had decided to go for it and started setting up the business in earnest. I did a ‘Start Your Own Business Course’ online with my Local Enterprise Office.

Our whole ethos is sustainability and we wanted our business to be properly sustainable for us. So rather than going big and borrowing money, renting space etc. we decided instead to do everything ourselves and keep it small, setting it up from our home. I’m not sure if I would have definitely made the leap to do it if Eoin hadn’t literally pushed me.

Joanne and Dave – Devhaus
It was mostly circumstance, having moved from an urban to a rural environment and starting a family, it made sense to do what we could to cut out the hours long commute to the city. Dave had gone from being a sole trader to establishing a limited company with a business partner, and that relationship didn’t work out. I was a social worker in dublin and similar opportunities were not available to me locally so I stepped in as a director of Devhaus in 2013.

Do you do different tasks in the business?

James and Eoin – Faerly.ie
Very much. I work full time in the business now and I look after all the business side of things, accounts, marketing, purchasing and most of the day to day work of shipping our orders.

Eoin is already a busy man, he works full time as a Guidance Teacher in a secondary school in Dublin. When he’s not doing that he helps me with whatever needs to be done, from packing orders to making deliveries. He’s also paying all the bills now that his is the only income coming into the house. We took a major hit to our income in the short term with me giving up my job.

He’s also my main person to talk to about the business and bounce ideas off. Eoin prefers to be more behind the scenes when it comes to the business but he’s the driving force in terms of support and giving me the energy to it.

Joanne and Dave – Devhaus
Yes, Dave is the technical whiz, acting as CTO and I manage the clients, projects, staff and finances.

Anna and Orla – Valentia Island Vermouth
Anna is the maker, producer and decision maker
Orla looks after the getting it out there and does a great job of drinking it

Margaret and Alec – Climatech
Yes

Graham and Daithí – The Cupcake Bloke
Yes, Graham is baker, product development, creative. Daithi is logistics, payroll, accounts, nuts and bolts.

Audrey & Abi – WeirdWatercolours
Yes we both have several titles within the business. From bookkeeping to handmaking our own envelopes and everything in between.

How do you disconnect at home?

Joanne and Dave – Devhaus
Work inevitably spills over into our home life. As business owners, we have to handle various things outside of business hours. But when we’re done one will say ‘we’re not talking about work any more’ and we do something else. We’re lucky to be occupied by the antics of our four kids, I do a lot of campaigning and community work and Dave is a GAA coach, so it’s actually quite easy to switch into the reality of our home life. Dave also builds Lego technics, so he’ll disappear down that black hole for a couple of hours at a time!

Margaret and Alec – Climatech
We only talk business for a short time early in the evening and get on with our lives after that.

Graham and Daithí – The Cupcake Bloke
Can’t always, honestly. We get phone calls at 11 at night, 9 on Sunday morning, Christmas Day looking to place orders. The business is our livelihood so it is a constant presence. Somehow though, talking something through on a long walk or even in the middle of dinner, in a more relaxed “non work frame of mind” works. It just needs to be done.

James and Eoin – Faerly.ie
We don’t get too much down time at the moment and we’re ok with that as it’s the early days of a new business so it’s par for the course. We try to keep work out of the house as much as we can. We live in walking distance of town so we like a stroll to the pub for a pint, especially on a summer’s evening. Eoin’s involved in a lot of community work here in Kilcullen where we live and is usually at some meeting or other or working on projects in the evenings. That gives us a bit of space from each other too which is healthy!

When we’re struggling to disconnect we head to a mountain. You’ll often find us somewhere like Glendalough or Lugnaquilla early on Sunday morning so we can hike on our own before anyone else gets there and that gives us life.

Anna and Orla – Valentia Island Vermouth
Don’t talk about work! When you want to talk about work explicitly say: “can I talk about work for a sec” or if you don’t want to, say “can we talk about this another time” Leave the home environment, the being out for dinner environment or the weekend environment free to talk about unicorns or the existence of dragons. You know, the normal stuff. Defo talk about hopes and dreams for the future in your down time.

With the lockdown home is now work and work is now home. How was that for you both?

Graham and Daithí – The Cupcake Bloke
Since Covid, our business has shrunk and we have had to give up the office space we had been renting so our living/dining room is now the office. It’s more about making the most of time off to switch off and it can take an effort – we manage.

Joanne and Dave – Devhaus
We’ve always been set up to work remotely, so it wasn’t hugely new to us. We’ve had many remote staff working across the globe over the years from Berlin to Phnom penh. Having said that, I did find it extremely difficult when the kids were off school, with four different primary school lessons to get through daily and a business to run, balancing anything was completely impossible. But we’re still standing and moving forward, and that’s all that matters in the end.

James and Eoin – Faerly.ie
Eoin’s lockdown project was to build a big pond in our garden and it’s right across from my office window. Now that I work from the garden, I swapped a long daily commute to a pretty soulless business park, for a stroll down to my office where I can look out at the pond all day and watch the world and wildlife go by. It’s really hard to beat.

Going from a large corporate environment to running our own micro enterprise has also been refreshing in many ways. You do miss out on the social aspect of course but that’s not all bad to be honest. You get to miss the office politics too. I quite like the solitude sometimes and I enjoy working quietly without distractions. I was actually worried originally that I’d be lonely but I’m not at all so far. There’s too much to be done.

We built an office/workshop in our garden and the business stays down there so there’s no laptops in the house or working at the kitchen table. That helps keep work life and home life separate, even though it’s all on the same property.

It took me a while to adjust when eoin went back to work in September. We were together 24/7 in the summer and now Eoin is gone from 8-5. But it’s probably healthy for us too.

Margaret and Alec – Climatech
We are lucky that pharmaceutical companies stayed going throughout so we didn’t get under each others feet only for a few weeks. We did house projects together on our down time. We rarely stop doing stuff.

Audrey & Abi – WeirdWatercolours
At our busiest time we both found it quite stressful as space was limited. We set up the studio with all our equipment in our spare room and managed to fit two workspaces in with the bed turned on its end against the wall. During winter and in the midst of lockdown we both also found it challenging to stay motivated and not get distracted by needing to do household things as our professional work space was our home space.

Anna and Orla – Valentia Island Vermouth
We ensured to create one neutral space that neither of us were working in (which was the kitchen). So it remained a work free zone

Have you wanted to murder each other?

Audrey & Abi – WeirdWatercolours
Yes on many occasions, that is all.

Joanne and Dave – Devhaus
Yes. I won’t repeat the episodes of violence that ran through my head at my lowest times. :-/

Margaret and Alec – Climatech
Yes but mostly not over business.

Graham and Daithí – The Cupcake Bloke
Not quite…. There are stresses which working together probably brings to our relationship which otherwise we might not have BUT there’s also a very strong sense of purpose and working together which possibly also wouldn’t be there so it’s a glue that binds probably more than an abrasive.

Anna and Orla – Valentia Island Vermouth
Ara of course we have. The point to hold on to is that we haven’t

James and Eoin – Faerly.ie
Ha! I don’t think so. We don’t tend to get on each other’s nerves too much and we both enjoy a bit of craziness it our lives, we’re easily bored. I can get a bit stressed sometimes but Eoin never does and is very good at giving me space if I’m being irrible and unreasonable. It never lasts long and we’re back to having a laugh. We wouldn’t work together if we didn’t enjoy spending a lot of time together.

How do you manage to prevent business disagreement spilling into the relationship?

Margaret and Alec – Climatech
We’re lucky that we can disagree without falling out. Listening to the other perspective though helps us come to a consensus usually.

Graham and Daithí – The Cupcake Bloke
I guess that we know each other so well and work together so well that there haven’t really been any major disagreements which have threatened us personally. We are pretty much a unit and we just get on with it.

Audrey & Abi – WeirdWatercolours
As I am an Aires and Audrey is very much a Leo things get fiery. We have recently learned, as adults, to listen better and in some areas compromise. WeirdWatercolurs takes its influence from the Irish and the everyday so the lines between our professional mode and our relationship mode are quite blurred in the best way.

Joanne and Dave – Devhaus
We have just learned to draw a line under it. It does affect our relationship but we’re both committed and determined (stubborn) and luckily we don’t give up on anything easily. We are ultimately greatly for the opportunities running our own business has given us, so it’s worth holding on through the hard times.

Anna and Orla – Valentia Island Vermouth
Try and chill the feck out about whatever it is that the disagreement is about. We made loads of mistakes and had a lot of disagreements in our previous business. So learning from all of those and trying to not make the same mistakes in this business!

James and Eoin – Faerly.ie
We have very different roles in the business and that helps. We don’t really argue much to be honest. I tend to make the final call on decisions relating to the business and so far we haven’t had any major fall outs on it. But it’s early days!

What are the pluses for working together? What are the minuses?

Margaret and Alec – Climatech
A plus is we understand time commitments and don’t feel upset when a personal event may need to be cancelled for work.
A minus is that if there is a cashflow problem we are both affected and it can get stressful to not have money coming in from a different source.

Joanne and Dave – Devhaus
Pluses are that we have complimentary skills and we learn from each other and push each other to do better. We enjoy each other’s company so don’t mind being together for long periods. We get to be with our kids growing up, get them from school, take them to activities. When they’re sick, we can stay home and mind them or take them to appointments. The minuses are that it’s ‘just us’, there is nobody else for support or help, we each rely heavily on the other. That can be a big burden at times. It’s not easy, you’re really working 24/7, at least in your head. It’s near to impossible to take time off, because there is nobody to hold the business together when we’re both gone. That’s something we’re working on, to take two weeks off next year.

Graham and Daithí – The Cupcake Bloke
On the plus side is that common purpose, common drive and genuine support of each other which strengthens us.

The minus is the business is always there, we just have to work at separating work and private life.

Audrey & Abi – WeirdWatercolours
Pluses: Same drive, same sense of humour, the mutual love of a creative challenge. Minuses: Not equally as organisationally equipped, a one sided irrational fear of admin.

Anna and Orla – Valentia Island Vermouth
Pluses = work becomes life. Find something you love doing, with someone you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
Minuses = work can become life. You have to become hyper aware of your behaviour to not be a dick.

James and Eoin – Faerly.ie
Pluses are – getting to spend more time together, being closer to each other’s day to day – things like work stress are not abstract and we get to experience the highs and lows together so it’s a real shared experience. You get to be your true self at work because you don’t have anything to prove. If I feel worried or scared or whatever we can just talk about that. I don’t have to put on a work mask. We’re building this together and that feels really good. Maybe its because we don’t have any kids but it feels like we’re building something for us. Plus I don’t have to pay him any wages 🙂

Minuses – you have to work at having down time or life becomes just work, work, work. We’re not always great at that to be honest but we’re working on it. When you’re rarely away from each other you don’t get the joy of seeing each other again after a few days away.

Anything else you want to add that I forgot to ask?

Margaret and Alec – Climatech
It’s good to have someone you totally trust 100% to have your back to make decisions and bounce ideas off.

Anna and Orla – Valentia Island Vermouth
Both of us are just trying to do a thing that we have no idea how to do. Take the urgency out of stuff, so what if you don’t agree on stuff, and have a good feckin time doing the stuff

Political Party Social Media Stats 2022

January 2022 Irish Political Social Media Stats

Sinn Féin has more social media followers than any other party
Leo Varadkar is the party leader with the most followers and is bigger than all parties.
Micheál Martin gets leadership bump on Twitter
Sinn Féin has most engagement on all platforms
Sinn Féin has 18M YouTube video views
Simon Harris is the king of TikTok

A social media analysis by Mulley Communications of the social media accounts of political parties has shown that Sinn Féin has the biggest following across all social media networks while Leo Varadkar is the party leader with the most followers on social media.

More detailed analysis:

Sinn Féin has the biggest Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube numbers.
Sinn Féin also has the most YouTube views with 18.7M views. However Leo Varadkar has more Facebook, Twitter and Instagram followers than all the political parties in Ireland and would be number one if he was his own party (make of that what you will)

Party	Facebook	Twitter	Instagram	TikTok	YouTube Subs	YT Views
Sinn Fein	268.7k	153k	54.7k	58.5k	35.4k	18.7M
Fine Gael	43.4k	55k	8.7k	0	**	1.5M
Fianna Fáil	42.9k	50.3k	8k	5k	1.3k	2.2M
Labour Party	59.8k	54.5k	35.9k	841	**	956k
People Before Profit	17.8k	21.5k	9.2k	10.7k	1.9k	238k
Green Party	10.7k	41.2k	6.9k	14	780	337k
Social Democrats	42.9k	29k	3.6k	2.7k	878	255k

** Labour and Fine Gael have not shown subscriber numbers for YouTube

Party Leaders:

Leo Varadkar is the party leader with the most followers on social media with over 720,000 followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Mary Lou McDonald has the next highest number of followers with 370,00 followers and Micheál Martin has 179k followers.
Mary Lou McDonald has the greatest amount of Facebook followers. To note: Facebook has the oldest demographic where almost the majority of people are 40 or over. Instagram and TikTok have much younger demographics.

Party Leader Social Media

While we couldn’t find TikTok accounts for any party leader, Simon Harris is King of TikTok with 89k followers https://www.tiktok.com/@simon_harristd and has more followers than the political parties.Breakdown by Social network

Leader	Facebook	Twitter	Instagram	TikTok
Leo Varadkar	93.8k	432k	196.7k	0
Mary Lou McDonald	173.2k	167.1k	30.9k	0
Micheál Martin	25.8k	152.9k	18.1k	0
Eamon Ryan	8.3k	44,300	2.6k	0
Alan Kelly	9.1k	20.5k	1.6k	0

Micheal Martin saw a large bump in Twitter followers and a slight increase in Facebook followers since his election to Taoiseach:

Platform	March 2020	April 2020	June 2020	May 2021	Jan 2022
Facebook	19,400	19,700	19,961	25.3k	25.8k
Twitter	46,100	54,100	59,100	138.3k	152.9k

Fianna Fáil didn’t see the same bump though

Fianna Fáil	February 2020	April 2020	May 2020	May 2021	Jan 2022
Facebook	38k	38.9k	39.3k	41.3k	42.9k
Twitter	38k	42.2k	43.4k	49k	50.3k
Instagram	4044	4628	4950	7.2k	8k

Engagement of Political Parties

As well as having the most followers on every social network, Sinn Fein is getting more engagement on their accounts and more engagement per post.

For Facebook

And for a fairer look, you can see how wide the gap is.

Average engagement per Facebook Post:

For Twitter

Twitter Engagement per post

Instagram

Instagram Engagement per post

Facebook stats for Irish Political Parties

Sinn Fein	268.7k
Labour Party	59.8k
Fine Gael	43.4k
Social Democrats	42.9k
Fianna Fáil	42.9k
People Before Profit	17.8k
Green Party	10.7k

Twitter Stats for Irish Political Parties

Party	Twitter
Sinn Fein	153k
Fine Gael	55k
Labour Party	54.5k
Fianna Fáil	50.3k
Green Party	41.2k
Social Democrats	29k
People Before Profit	21.5k

Instagram stats for Irish Political Parties

Party	Instagram
Sinn Fein	54.7k
Labour Party	35.9k
People Before Profit	9.2k
Fine Gael	8.7k
Fianna Fáil	8k
Green Party	6.9k
Social Democrats	3.6k

TikTok stats for Irish Political Parties

Party	TikTok
Sinn Fein	58.5k
People Before Profit	10.7k
Fianna Fáil	5k
Social Democrats	2.7k
Labour Party	841
Green Party	14
Fine Gael	0

Startups and Ryanair. Ryanair, really?

854 words

I recently read Siobhán Creaton’s book on Ryanair. It was a great read. While Ryanair copied the operations aspect of South West Airlines, they didn’t copy their humanity and empathy. Ryanair and O’Leary bullied and harassed everyone. A very hateful company. Anti-union, anti-customer and literally told staff and customers to fuck off. As bad as Dunnes if you were a supplier too. South West were the most unionised, the most loved airline with happy staff and were still highly profitable. You can be a winner and be nice.

This is a good article from HBR called Building a Startup That Will Last and I’m going to summarise the article and compare it to Ryanair’s rise.

Point 1: Have a sense of purpose first and then profits will flow

Ryanair’s purpose was to be the biggest low fares airline (certainly not the most loved) and their drive was all about that. Michael O’Leary was Tony Ryan’s PA and was the bag man sent in to fix a badly in debt Ryanair. O’Leary actually suggested letting Ryanair die but Ryan pushed him to sort it and O’Leary got him to agree he’d get 25% of the profits if he did.

There seemed to be one question guiding O’Leary and Ryanair and that was “will this make us the biggest low fares airline?”. Other airlines mocked them for flying to airports in small towns that were basically sheds. Michael O’Leary’s attitude was that if they fly to an Airport 150 miles from Paris, people will fly with them if the price is low enough because a lot of their customers wanted to fly but couldn’t afford to. A whole new type of customer.

Point 2: Have a long-term vision. Plan the next steps after this step.

Europe’s biggest low fares airline was their goal after turning the business around. The next steps were that they built a playbook for an airport and a country and then replicated it. Screw airports, staff and suppliers, pick public fights that got you PR. Ryanair in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy etc. all followed this playbook. They then established hubs in these airports if they got even more concessions. It’s worth stating that Stansted was seen as a bit of a joke airport until Ryanair flew in 100s of 1000s of people. 1000s of jobs have been created all around these small airports because of Ryanair.

Point 3: Spot new opportunities based on data/experience, is there another customer need you could fulfil?

In 2020 Ryanair made €2 Billion (PDF LINK) from things like priority boarding, paying for drinks and food on board. Reserving seats. Scratch cards. Booking buses, trains, cars and hotels through them. As well as removing flight bookings (that cost them a fortune) from travel agencies, they started taking the ancillary products that travel agents sold.

Point 4: Scale up
Ryanair got the systems perfected and then added more airports and more planes. Ryanair makes money when planes are in the air so they got turnarounds down to 25 minutes and were able to do more flights per plane per day. Their profit margins were 23% when other airlines were 5%. The same planes across the fleet meant it was cheaper for training pilots and repair crews. Easier for parts etc. Boeing did a stress test on their finances and no matter the scenario, Ryanair never did worse than breaking even.

Part 5: Hold fast when the bumps happen.
Ryanair’s reaction to 9/11 was to reduce prices and increase flights. They flew their way out of the recession

Before 9/11 Ryanair cancelled an order with Boeing for new planes and put ads in Flight International looking to buy 50 7-14 year old 737s. They got 100 offers. When 9/11 happened they got 400 more offers from the ad. While they got cheap planes, they also used this as leverage for buying new planes from Boeing who were haemorrhaging money with canceled orders from everywhere. Ryanair had massive cash deposits and used that to get great deals. They knew they could weather this. Boeing allegedly gave them 30%-50% discounts to buy new planes. Much more recently they used the issues with the 737 MAX to get better deals from Boeing.

Even when they lose, they manage to win. Ryanair opened up a route to Hahn in Germany. Hahn was not Frankfurt but they called the route Frankfurt (Hahn). Lufthansa formally complained about saying they were flying from Frankfurt when Hahn was at least 120km away and Lufthansa’s complaint was upheld. This gobby startup/upstart created nonstop noise with their public fights about this that they were always in German media. They put “Auf wiedersehen Lufthansa” on their planes flying in and out of Hahn airport generating more complaints and more press coverage.

The book is worth reading and I’m sure some will admire O’Leary and you see so many (morons) say he should run the country. It would not be a good country to live in but he’d be super rich. What is good to take away from Ryanair is perfecting a system and then being highly disciplined about it.

Be Like Apple

Be like Apple.

560 words

Ignore the hype men. Sometimes it’s not worth being first.

Apple wasn’t first with the smartphone or touchscreen phones or smart watches or VR glasses or cars. They did a huge amount of research and patents first and watched how the market reacted to something. They worked on many projects and did testing and then dropped some of them. They didn’t release something to the market just because they spent so much on it. They were happy to just learn and move on. Sunk costs and all that. Sometimes Apple was too early and sometimes they decided it would never work. Apple let others be first, noted their flaws and where they could do better and then launched. Some of the original iPhone team were actually in another company building an iPhone nearly 20 years before Apple but the tech wasn’t ready. So be like Apple when it comes to the shiny.

I see all these charlatans breaking their necks being web 2.0 consultants, being Periscope experts, being Facebook Live gurus, being TikTok experts, being Clubhouse consultants (remember Clubhouse?) and now being NFT or Metaverse or something that smells of horseshit. People who are the first to grab on to the next big hype cycle and drop everything else, why do they do that? For some they run to this because in an established and stable system, you can spot they’re full of shit so they’re running away more than running to something. Don’t be fooled by these people telling you to drop your website or that you need an app or to get into VR or the Metaverse. When it fails they’ll have an excuse like being too early or that you weren’t full invested. Wait for someone like Apple to open the door and turn on the lights.

The big big social media space in 2021 was TikTok. It’s gigantic and will get bigger. It’s also a lot of work to create something and then get traction. Consider running ads on it instead. The big issue with TikTok is you can go from zero to 1000s to 10,000s to a million followers faster than any other place online ever but you will go out of fashion just as quickly. The birth, stardom, and death cycle is hyper-accelerated. The place is full of one hit wonders. If you look at the YouTube superstars of the past while, those stars used to get 10m views on a video and now some of them are barely getting 5000 views. They made their money on Youtube ads and you got more money per view if you had big numbers. They’re earning nothing now.

Oculus from Facebook did very well this Christmas but this is still a small-fry piece of tech that’s not got a lot of games or developers. While it is good to work on apps for Occulus in order that you have the IP to port to Apple, once Apple comes along it’s probably game over for other headset makers. Remember Nokia? Do you want to pour money into a Nokia app? Consider that developers that made apps for Apple devices have made $230 billion since the app store opened in 2011. That’s the company you want to hitch your wagon to.

Hold fast.
As per this clip from Master and Commander. Hold fast. Be like Apple.

How to Start a Digital Marketing Agency

You just need to know what you’re doing. You need to know, and you need to have a very good accountant. And you have to have people, or maybe it’s just yourself, but you need to be very good at what you do, especially when you’re starting, you need to make an impact is digital marketing a good job. It can be any job can be a good job. If you’re looked after, if you’re paid well. If you’re given time off, if you’re given time to be creative. What are leads in Digital Marketing Leads digital marketing or qualified leads are, for example, you create a website, and you optimize this, so it gets found in Google. Then someone does a Google search. They find your website. They look at your website and there’s a form on your website and they fill in details in the forum because they want more information. So that could be a lead. Or it could be through an Instagram ad, you’re advertising something a new product for a client or for yourself, people click on through. To find out more, or download a brochure.

Mulley Communications – Reviews made by A.I.

I used Rytr to make these. Input was company name and what it does: Digital Marketing Strategy.Freaky.

I’ve been a client of Mulley Communications for over 5 years. They’re the best digital marketing agency I have ever met. They helped us navigate through all our campaign strategy and made sure we were always up-to-date with the latest trends. They really know what they’re doing and it shows in their work!

– Damien

Mulley Communications has been the best company I’ve ever worked with! They know everything about digital marketing strategy and they are always on the cutting-edge. They care about what they do and their clients, which is why you can trust them to help your business. They are so knowledgeable, I would recommend them to anyone looking for an expert in digital marketing.

– Damien

Are Facebook Ads worth it for SMEs? Yes

Are Facebook ads, worth it for an SME/small business?

Yeah, I probably think, for an SME, where you just don’t have enough time to be constantly updating Facebook (and you do have to constantly update Facebook to keep in people’s feeds) then advertising is actually a better way to use your time and use your resources.

Updates or ads – the costs

Work it out. How much do you pay yourself or s staff member an hour, how may hours a week or a month are then tending to Facebook just to keep people seeing you are there.You could have an ad campaign that maybe just cost 40 or 50 euros and you can have that run over a week or two. When you run that campaign, you’re going to (see my other post on Facebook advertising) you want to run a campaign, you can set it to go off and we go back to the main parts of your business, so you don’t have to worry about what content to put up today, or tomorrow, how to create engaging posts, or, or anything like that.

Type of Facebook ads

You choose your audience, put up some content that you think the audience will be interested in, could be sales updates, it could be a video showing off a product could be a discount or anything like that can be just awareness, it could be a new business and a new town and you decide that the best way of getting interest is to run a Facebook ad, you can run that ad, you can run it to a certain age group, you can actually target any neighborhood, say in Cork or suburban Dublin, or just a whole county like Leitrim. You can run that ad, and it just goes out to those people. As the ad is running, you will actually see pretty much live stats on how many people have seen it so far, you can actually see what the device is whether it’s Android, whether it’s apple, whether it’s a desktop or a laptop. All that information is there for you, and you can see how many people clicked on that ad, or if you can send people to the website, or you can have the ad running so that you just get messages on Facebook or Instagram.

Facebook ads might be complicated to start with

The only thing that might actually persuade you not to run ads is the fact that setting up an ad on Facebook is slightly complex. You have to set up a campaign, and you have to put details in that, then you have to create an ad set and in that ad set you have to create an ad. So after the first couple of times you start to get used to Facebook advertising. The system is well designed pretty well. If you run an ad campaign before you can actually go into the ad system, click on that campaign, basically say duplicate that. So run it again but change the dates and change the budget.

Go for it

So for a small business with limited time, a limited amount of staff, you don’t have a full time marketer or you’re the marketer. In an SME you’re the manager you’re the accountant and everything else, then I think Facebook ads might actually work. So I advise a lot of clients to set up a Facebook page, and maybe do a bit on it to keep it ticking over, but actually to run some advertising and time them to go out. You don’t have to worry about that day’s updates and it’s just running there in the background. And hopefully you’ll get a return out of that. And I guess the beauty of all of these digital kind of ads in our systems, is you can measure it, to see, is it working or not and if it doesn’t work, you can just stop it or amended, make some changes and set it off again.

Try, fail, fail better, win!

With a newspaper ad that you commission and it runs once in a newspaper. For some say page ads in traditional Irish media you could be paying €3000 for an ad or €4000 or €10,000 for a full page ad. Once you committed to the ad, you can’t change it, if there’s a mistake or an incorrect website address, tough. With digital, you can change that straightaway. With digital you can make changes, measure what worked, make more changes and keep doing that until you get a very well tested ad.

Ads tested with real people and iterated

From that, then you have a data set, or in a way you have a crib sheet or a document or a template for future ads. So back to the question, I would actually suggest that they spend more time on ads than updates. Then maybe spend time on their website as you can get constant returns from ranking on Google.