On Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending the Mayo Open Coffee Club in my alma mater, GMIT, in Castlebar. It was an interesting experience and deserving of a write up in my all too infrequent blog :)
Pearce Flannery
I arrived a couple of minutes late, so I dont know how the event kicked off, but when I arrived Pearce Flannery was in full flow. If you don’t know Pearce, he’s an entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker extraordinaire, and I can attest to that last. [click to continue…]
My plan is to look at some great plugins, and list some particularly valuable ones, and also to touch on some fantastic alternatives like using themes with built-in features, and if we have enough geeks in the audience, maybe take a quick look at coding some of the simpler plugin functionality yourself.
I would like the talk to be useful and interesting for you guys, so what I’d like to find out is if you have any particular topics you’d like to cover, and if you would like me to show you some basic PHP code, or keep it at a higher non-technical level.
Please leave a comment below or tweet a message including the hashtag #amdtalk
I’ll also be watching that hashtag during the talk and will take any questions or comments from there (as well as any asked in person, of course)!
Background: Dublin City Enterprise Board’s LINK! network is a network for startup business to meet up and share experiences, business tips, and sometimes just to talk to someone who is going through the joys and pains of starting a business. The network has been running for about 2.5 years now and meets from 6-8.30pm the last Tuesday of the month. It costs EUR100/yr per member, and has a membership of around 120 of business owners from around the Dublin City area. Attendance figures range from 25 on a quiet evening to 65+ on busy evenings, as well as co-hosting 2 large events per year with other DCEB networks (Women in Business and Plato IIRC).
The network manager announced to us at the last meeting that DCEB are withdrawing support for the network and that the next meeting will be the last.
The members are very disappointed to hear of this and we have contacted the board of DCEB to show our support for the network and to ask them to reconsider.
In this time of recession and financial turmoil, particularly in the Small and Medium Enterprise sector, now is NOT the time to be withdrawing support for startup businesses.
Below is the text of my letter to the DCEB board members. If you would like to learn more, please see the Bring Back LINK! Facebook page.
Re: DCEB LINK! Network planned closure
Dear DCEB Board Member,
I’m saddened to hear of the planned closure of the DCEB LINK! network for startup businesses. I’d like to express my support for the network and any plans to keep it open.
I want to let you know how valuable a resource the LINK! network has been for me and my business. I have made many friends, business contacts and learned massive amounts from the LINK network events. The chance to learn from and talk to inspirational people like Adrian Birrell, Ireland’s hugely successful cricket manager, Brody Sweeney, amongst many others.
I’ve also learned about the many valuable DCEB resources including training courses and particularly the mentor programme which I found invaluable (In fact I found this so useful that I started a business with my mentor – there’s networking for you!).
But the most important part of LINK for me has been to have a network of like-minded peers going through the same issues of starting a business. This is a huge asset to any small business owner, particularly one like me who is not coming from a traditional business background (I was a software engineer working in a large corporation). The peer support from the LINK network is invaluable.
I believe that the network should remain open so that the current members can continue to benefit from its existance BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY so that new businesses and entrepreneurs who are just now starting out for whatever reason, so that they have peer support and gain from it as I have been lucky to do so. As you can see from the messages of support and subscribers to the Facebook page, there is large support from the existing members to keep the network intact.
I understand the fiscal realities facing DCEB but if there is anything I can do to help the network remain open and in place, please let me know.
Niall over at SimplyZesty asked Erik Qualman and I to write up some thoughts on SEO and social media in 2010. Here’s what I wrote.
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My brief here is to talk about the importance of search engine optimisation (SEO) vs social media, and where I see the industry going over the next year. SEO here meaning “organic search”, or more simply: the results you get when you search Google, etc.
SEO and organic search is very important in 2010 – as is social media. Most organisations are significantly increasing their social media spend compared with last year – mainly because it was so far behind other marketing spend. SEO spend continues to increase, though at a smaller pace since larger organisations released the importance of SEO in 2007-2009 and started to invest heavily then.
SEO itself has undergone huge changes in 2009, mainly focused on the areas of real-time (e.g. incorporation of Twitter results and news), personalisation (based on your browsing history), and the related local results (geographical based). This trend will continue as Google drives to improve in particular their real-time results which are still at an early stage currently. There is a general shift of consumers moving from their reliance on search to peers for news, recommendations and answers – Twitter and Facebook are capitalising on that, and Google are working hard to combat it by the partnership with Twitter, amongst other strategies.
The first port of call for most people looking to answer a question online is still Google search. Why? This is Google’s stated goal in search:
“Our goal is very simple: We want to return to the user the answer that they need. It’s about getting people what they need, and about getting the results to be as accurate and fast as possible. We’re innovating, and concentrating just on the relevancy of results. Last year we made over 450 improvements to the algorithm.”
Even in 2010, SEO basics are still the same as before: if you focus on creating good, relevant, link-worthy content then your authority and relevancy will build and you will rank highly in results. Unfortunately there is no quick fix or silver bullet for SEO, and as your competition invests in creating content so the bar rises.
If Google made 450 changes to their search algorithm (the formula which they use to rank results) in 2007, how many tweaks and changes do you think they made in 2008 and 2009? Google are continuously tweaking their algorithm on a daily basis – so instead of trying to cheat on this exam, it’s time to knuckle down and put in the effort!
What’s to come in 2010? More real-time stuff: more focus on Twitter, news headlines and maybe even Facebook integration in either Google or Bing. Social media will continue to grow, though not at the breakneck pace of 2009. My advice – sign up for whatever social media you prefer, e.g. Twitter & YouTube, and start blogging: high quality posts infrequently are more useful than poor quality posts frequently!
Back to the original question of the importance of SEO vs social media – ultimately choosing the right tool for the job is as important as ever. SEO, social media, and all of the other facets of online marketing (don’t forget email marketing) will continue to be relevant for some time to come.
Thanks, Niall, for the interesting question, and helping me get my blogging muscles warmed up for the new year!
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Last night, Twitter removed your ability to see @replies from people you follow to people you don’t follow. This is a massive change, because this is one of the primary methods for Twitter users to find other interesting people to follow.
If your friends are talking to someone you don’t know, it’s very possible that you would be interested in tallking to that person too. Twitter have removed your ability to see that conversation happening, even though it’s in public.
I’m on my way back to Dublin from my trip to the Think Visibility search/web conference in Leeds, and wanted to get some thoughts down.
Think Visibility is an interesting departure from the usual massive corporate search marketing conferences. The smaller scale made it feel more like a Barcamp atmosphere. One of the great things about a conference this size is that you have the opportunity to get to know lots of the attendees quite well. [click to continue…]
The purpose of this is to find out what attitude and experience people from different perspectives have on outsourcing, and to get some basic statistics on it. The results will be published, if you enter your email address on the survey form I’ll inform you when that happens (entering email is entirely optional, and I guarantee no spam).
The surveys are very short – so please take 60-90 seconds to complete either (or both if both apply to you!).
The results of this survey will help please take a moment to fill one of them out.
Here are my thoughts and suggestions for PR people should pitch stories to bloggers. Oftentimes when PR folks send a story to a blogger they’ll get a nasty reply giving out about spam, one saying “I am not a journalist”, or worse still, complaining about the PR person or their client publically.
How to prevent that happening
I think the primary thing for PR people is to understand that most bloggers really, really hate spam, and when approaching them you should avoid at all costs appearing like spam. That means not sending unsolicited form emails, press releases etc.
Some bloggers tolerance levels for spam can be quite low: after after receiving just a single unsolicited email they might decide to name & shame you (or your client!) as a spammer, vow never to purchase from your client again, etc etc.
Of course all bloggers are not alike; the blogosphere is very diverse. For example my spam-tolerance level is quite high – if I get spam I don’t like, I’ll usually just delete it and move on.
How can a PR person approach the blogger without setting off these sensitivities?
There’s a few options. If the blogger has their email address listed publicly on the site, see do they mention what kind of emails they want to receive. Send them a short initial email introducing yourself and asking if they mind if you send them on something for consideration. Maybe tell them why you picked them to contact.
If they don’t have email, you could leave a comment on one of their blog posts, saying you’d like to get in touch, and leave your email address for them to contact you.
You could call them if there’s a number listed- your mileage may vary. Speaking for myself here, I prefer contact by email 100 times over a phone call because I can deal with the email whenever I want.
Even better, but time consuming, is to genuinely develop relationships with the blogging community. Online social networking like Twitter is great for getting to know people better too. And possibly the best, but most time consuming, is to actually start blogging yourself.
Happy New Year to all! Best of luck with 2009 #
Security warning for Twitter users: be careful about links sent to you via DM. Do not login to Twitter after following links (more …) #
(Security warning cont). Only login by typing “twitter.com” into your browser address bar. More from http://is.gd/ez9v and http://is.gd/eAp1 #
“Could VC be a Casualty of the Recession?” asks Paul Graham. His new article is about Venture Capitalists losing out when technology startups decide they don’t need investment.
The reason startups no longer depend so much on VCs is one that everyone in the startup business knows by now: it has gotten much cheaper to start [...]
There was an interesting discussion on LinkedIn in the Twitter stream today.
Given the stateful state (!) of LinkedIn I thought it would be useful to have a LinkedIn group for Irish Twitter Users, so I have created the “Irish Twitter Users Group“.
If you’re Irish and use Twitter and LinkedIn, please join in here!
WebsiteDoctor now has its own twitter account at twitter.com/WebsiteDoctor
The WebsiteDoctor account is slow burn – i.e. infrequently updated – but will be very highly on topic for business and internet marketing topics, and WebsiteDoctor news.
My personal twitter stream is updated more frequently but contains more off-topic items.
- Alastair.
There have been a lot of changes around here so I want to explain what’s been happening with the business, particularly for my friends and peers online. You may have noticed that the LogOn.ie blog now redirects to WebsiteDoctor.com, that we have a new brand and great domain, and that we’re now offering training services! [...]
WebsiteDoctor is consultancy and training business focused on internet marketing, particularly search engine optimisation. We are experts in all aspects of online marketing and websites. We can help your businesses increase sales and profitablity by reaching more customers through internet marketing. We can help you save money through increased knowledge of online technologies. Are you looking to upskill and become more valuable on the job marketplace? Sign up for one of our online marketing training courses like search engine optimisation or social media marketing!
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