Links and bits and bobs and tings

How Angry Birds finally did well. Keep trying is one part of the story.

Content creation online is very very important and there are hardly any good practitioners in Ireland for this. Lots of tips here.

SEO cheatsheet.

Book on social media failures. Yeah, dunno about an idea like this. Be nice to show good and bad.

Follow-up to the Katie Price and Snickers ad. Complaints about it were knocked down.

Changing your Facebook Page name. A proper process exists now.

Measuring Social Media Effectiveness.

Social Media Awards winner case studies.

If you throw enough against this blog

… it might stick.

Some things to look at:
Enterprise Ireland on their LinkedIn use.

Interesting idea. Clever in my view. Communicorp do an app for McDonald’s integrating their radio stations while helping to sell burgers. Integration, clever.

Boom. People spend more time on mobile apps than the web.

European Advertising Certificate. Interesting idea. Written exam though…

Doing SEO for Google Plus.

There is no Insight button.

Want to sponsor an Irish iPad game/story?

Katie Price Snickers “ad” on Twitter

Katie Price on Twitter started tweeting about politics and economics and got a reaction (naturally) from her 1.5M followers and then a few tweets later she tweeted that when you’re hungry you’re not yourself with a picture of a Snickers bar.

KatiePriceSnickersTwitterAd

What a clever idea but I’m sure some will react badly to it. This is already happening without it being as obvious and blatant. Irish sports stars are encouraged/pushed to join Twitter so they can tweet about their sponsors/promotions. One wonders what guidelines are needed for this though.

NaoiseReactstoKatie

Positioning

Re-reading Ogilvy on Advertising at the moment. While new at the time, Avis’s use of positioning helped them make millions. And they took a mix of honesty and good copywriting.

Their agency was Doyle, Dane and Bernbach and their line was:
Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars. So why go with us? We try harder.

The first bit is obviously true. The second bit, perhaps over time it became so. What it does though is make people assume that someone that’s not first won’t be resting on their laurels but maybe the top brand would. We like to support the underdog.

Apple in the early 80s saw the giant threat that IBM was/others say it was conformity was the threat and created the iconic 1984 ad when they launched the Macintosh with the line:
On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.”

Apple were saying they are your tool to smash conformity. A good position. Ironic given their dislike of consumers customising their Apple gear.

I’ve been trying to find a link to it and failed but there was a t-shirt company who when they launched also started creating knock-off versions of their own gear and selling them at markets. The idea was that the fake versions tell people the brand must be big enough/famous enough that they’re now having their stuff faked. Their brand is now positioned with Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike etc. and that feeds in to the “real” brand obviously being on the same ladder as all these other brands. Clever yes, sneaky yes.

Unfortunately in Ireland there’s not a lot of clever positioning. It seems to be about copying someone else and laying in the same arse dent on the sofa as everyone rather than doing your own thing. Still, this means massive opportunities for anyone that wants to take on the status quo.

QR Code survey: 65% can read them (of Twitter users)

I did a mini-survey on Twitter earlier today. 350 people answered two questions. It asked what phone type they had and if they had a QR scanner on their phone. The results:

Do you have a QR code reader on your phone?

Yes 229 – 65%
No 93 – 27%
A what now? (Don’t know) 28 – 8%

QRCodeSurveyMulleyB

What type of phone did they have?
iPhone (any type) 188 – 54%
Android based smartphone 114 – 33%
Nokia 26 – 7%
Windows Phone 6 – 2%
Blackberry 7 – 2%
Other 9 – 3%

QRCodeSurveyMulleyA

Which platform likes QR codes more?
74.5% of Android owners had QR readers, 69.6% of iPhone owners had QR readers.

The results to me were surprising, the small marketing and tech industry drenched network would not represent the general masses but I still would not have thought the amount of people with QR code readers on their smartphones were so high.

www.Facebook.ie

Ever used the Google Keyword Tool to see what people are Googling for each month? It’s fantastic for a database of intentions. This is what people search for, can you create a website or even a business around it?

I was wondering do people Google for Facebook.ie and Twitter.ie instead of the proper .com addresses and it seems yes, quite a lot of people do for Facebook.ie at least. Maybe there should be a redirect from Facebook.ie?

The below searches seem common enough:
www.Facebook.ie
ww.facebook.ie
Facebook.ie login

8000 – So here you go

Well it seems the unofficial account of Junior Vice-President Damien Mulley hit 8000 connections a short while ago. As a thank you or a “D’fuck did that happen?” style response, management has decided that he’ll give you a day of his time to consult with you or a chosen company/organisation.

You can choose a day of training on the usual suspects, a day of consultancy or a mix that you choose.

This picture of chocolate has nothing to do with this post, hello!

Few simple rules: the company does not work for telcos, political parties or alcohol companies. You can’t resell this to someone else or make this a premium event that you get payment for. Still lots of opportunities there.

What digital skills do you want for your interns?

I’ve noticed a lot of people asking me on Twitter to retweet Tweets where they are looking for intern positions with marketing or PR companies or looking for digital work in other companies.

Companies have different criteria depending on the work they do. I’d be grateful for some feedback from PR and Marketing companies in particular as to what they want interns schooled in before they start the job.

Are things like the below important?

  • How to create and run Facebook Pages
  • How to run Facebook Ads
  • How to create Facebook Tabs
  • Running Twitter accounts
  • Creation of content plans for Facebook and Twitter
  • Running Google Ad campaigns

What other digital skills are needed?