Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

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A Train Journey and My Top 10 LinkedIn Tips

November 21, 2012
Train Journey

Anyone I know here?

Imagine sitting on a 3 hour train journey and across from you and next to you there are other business people that you don’t know. Other than some pleasantries you arrive at your destination and there has been virtually no communication between any of you.

It happens to all of us and for me this reminds me of how most of us are using LinkedIn – we are there but not really communicating with anyone!

LinkedIn is probably the most powerful business social media platform. If used correctly it is a terrific way to make good quality connections and it can be the best and quickest of all the social media platforms to generate awareness for you and your business.

My Top 10 Tips for getting the most from LinkedIn are:

  1. Use a great photo that captures what you are all about
  2. Complete your profile properly, taking care that you write an inviting bio for readers and use the standard industry terms to describe your areas of speciality (e.g. Social Media Consultant)
  3. Request personal recommendations from satisfied clients and co-workers (even better write some for others – it will earn you lots of brownie points!)
  4. Maximise your contacts by using the using the facility whereby LinkedIn will check your own email database against those in its database
  5. Only invite people to connect that you know, have interacted with or have a good reason for justifying a connection request
  6. Try not to ignore a connection request – as long as it is not a competitor accept requests as it can help to boost your awareness
  7. Always peep at the “people who you may know” suggestions – LinkedIn is very clever and often the suggested connections can be very relevant
  8. Try to post a status update at least once a day
  9. Join relevant groups and participate proactively – comment on posts of interest to you and the very best way to boost your awareness is to start your own discussions. Using your own blog posts as discussion “starters” is very powerful
  10. THANK & be nice is my very biggest tip – It’s really important that you respect who you interact with on LinkedIn. Thank people who connect with you, personalise your invitations to connect and think about being helpful before you try to start selling. Try and stay as positive as possible.

If people like and trust you and understand what you do, they will be more likely to want to do business with you or recommend you to someone else.

The train is pulling in ..hope you made a few new connections!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion with offices in Dublin and Cork offer Social Media Consultancy and Training Services

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Posted in LinkedIn, Marketing, Social Media | 14 Comments »

Undoing the good …. the over sell.

October 31, 2012
Pushy salesman

How about it?

Another phone call ..

Last week I attended a really good seminar that was hosted by a company from Dublin that we had never had dealings with before – I’m not really sure how I ended up on their invitation list but somehow I did.

They were obviously touting for business in the Cork area and looking for new leads.

The seminar was “free” for all attendees and I must admit that it was very useful and it was run in a very professional manner. It was well attended and judging by the level of interaction during the session the topic was of huge interest.

The two speakers on the day represented the company well and went a long way to convincing the attendees that they had considerable expertise on the subject matter – it turned out to be a really strong “showcase” for their talents and sitting there I reckoned they would definitely pick up business as a result.

I left the enjoyable session with some promotional literature and a really strong impression of the company who presented.

When people registered for the event we were asked for various contact details, which I guess is fair enough if they want to send out further literature or even add me to a newsletter. I was interested in the topic after all.

Since the event I have received a few emails and a few phone calls from the company. The calls have come directly to my mobile and also through to the office phone. After one of the calls I received an email and I politely responded thanking them for the useful session and explaining clearly that if we needed their services I would definitely consider them.

A few days later I am still getting calls and emails ….enough!

Do the seminar, showcase your talents, leave me with an information pack and maybe a polite follow up call/email a week later.

Instead you’ve turned me off and now all I want to do is avoid you!!

We all need to be careful not to undo the good by pushing too hard for the sale ..

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

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Posted in Direct Marketing, Marketing, Sales | 28 Comments »

The Influence of Social Media in Politics

October 26, 2012
Romney and Obama - Presidential Debate

I must remember to tweet that !

A big thank you to Lillian King for sharing this really interesting and valuable infographic about the influence of Social Media in Politics, which is very timely before the US Presidential Elections.

After all they reckon that Barack Obama was the first Social Media President ever! (Facebook is credited as playing such a major part in his campaign four years ago)

Have a peep through the very interesting stats and tables shown at the bottom of this post.

The one number that grabs me from the stats is that “In Senate races the candidate with the most fans gets elected 81% of the time”.

Does this mean they were the most popular anyway, or does it mean they connected with more people by using social media effectively helping them to get  elected – not sure?

Ireland

For me in the Irish scenario it really bugged me that so many politicians wanted to be “my friend” before the election and now they are nowhere to be scene.

Social Media isn’t a trick – it isn’t a one off opportunity to achieve a specific goal  (however this may occur as a once off).

Social Media, for politicians (or businesses for that matter) is an opportunity to build a following, an opportunity to communicate genuine messages, values and beliefs – in this crazy world of ours an opportunity to cut through the BS, show where you are on key issues and let people see what you really stand for.

When the election (Christmas!) is over ….grab that opportunity

Social Media Election

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Training and Social Media Consultancy from our offices in Cork and Dublin.

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Posted in Irish Politics, Marketing, Politics, PR, Social Media | 7 Comments »

Facebook – Targeting your posts

October 21, 2012
Bra fitting service

It won’t fit everyone!

Maybe you don’t want every post from your Facebook business page reach every single viewer.

A great feature has just come on stream with Facebook which gives you the ability to control exactly this scenario.

Why might you do this?

With a particular post you might want to limit it to fans of your page who live locally or who are in a particular age group. Sometimes you may want to just target your post at members of a particular sex or with a particular personal status.

A department store who are running a special promotion on bra fitting may not want to interrupt their male audience with such a message, running the risk of them deciding to unlike the page.

A restaurant may not want to annoy viewers who are single when they are promoting specials on Valentines day – it might just annoy them!

How does it work?

Target post on Facebook

Who do you want to see this post?

When you are writing your post before you publish it you can choose to target the audience for this post be clicking on the “target” button, which can be seen on the bottom left corner of the post window alongside the timing button. (you must first enable this feature in your page settings – see below)

From here you can make your audience selection, which gives you a wide range of choices enabling you to limit the reach of your post.  Once you decide to publish, the post will only appear in the newsfeed of those fans that match your selected criteria.

The criteria includes gender, location, age, relationship status, education and interests.

If your fans choose to share that post it will only appear in the newsfeed of their friends that match that criteria.

The post will appear on your wall as normal visible to everyone who visits your page.

Enabling the Post Targeting feature

If your want to use this feature you must first enable the post privacy gating feature for your Facebook page – what a terrible name for the feature!

To do this you must go to the edit page menu that appears at the top of your admin panel. From here click into the manage permissions menu and you will see the “post privacy gating” option towards the end of the page, which you enable by just clicking the box.

Once you have done this the “target” feature\icon will appear as an option in the post comment window as already described.

Well done Facebook !! – its a great new feature.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training from our offices in Cork and Dublin.

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Posted in Direct Marketing, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media | 5 Comments »

Missing the low hanging fruit!

October 7, 2012
Low Lying Fruit!

Will the penny drop ?

“If I do a search for what we do online we’re nowhere to be found” barked my client down the phone. This was obviously a big deal to him as well it should be!

After all this was the low hanging fruit – the potential customers out there who have already decided that they want what you are offering and are searching online to find it.

“We didn’t do your website for you, it hasn’t been optimised properly which is part of the problem and if you make a few simple changes it will make a big difference” I explained.

“Ok, ok, I must get onto the website crew” he eventually calmed down, “Is there anything we can do for now?” he asked.

I suggested a Google Adwords campaign to ensure he had a web presence (in adverts) where key search terms were used – at least until his website would start performing organically.

“Perfect, it’s vital that our website always comes up first” he explained, “Can you do it ASAP?”

He was right – for his sector a strong web presence was an absolute priority.

We quickly put the Adwords campaign in place and this corrected his lack of web presence immediately. For a reasonable daily budget we ensured that all relevant web traffic found his website and this was done on a pay per click basis – you only pay when a user clicks on your advert and comes onto your website.

A few weeks later we had a review meeting with our client – we covered the PR coverage and we also discussed the effectiveness of his advertising spend, which he was looking after himself.

As I had set up the Google Adwords campaign for him I gave him a detailed report showing how many times his adverts were shown, how many times the adverts were clicked upon and the traffic that came onto his website as a result.

We could see in detail the keywords and search terms that had generated the most traffic and the cost of each of these.

Budgets were a little tight he explained because he had committed to a long term advertising plan (obviously to a good salesman – or woman as it turned out to be) with a particular publication (no problem there) and a local radio station (totally wrong demographic ….but he got a cracking deal!).

“I want to stop my Google Advertising” he declared.

Hmmm, “No problem, but you do know when we stop that advertising when anyone searches for you online, they just won’t be able to find your website? ” I explained.

“I want to stop it” he repeated.

His sudden stance staggered me – despite the previous declaration of intent by this fairly clued in operator he still opted for an advert that he could see in the paper and hear on the radio rather than pay for this online Adwords “stuff” that absolutely guaranteed a web presence for hot leads, the low lying fruit!

I had nothing to gain from the argument, I had explained the “risk” as clearly as possible and he had just made up his mind.

Ah well … that penny will drop all by itself when the low lying fruit drops somewhere else! (I’m waiting for the call ..)

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

(I did help him with the optimisation of his website, which will take a while to fully kick in – he is now appearing on page two for relevant Google searches instead of page 8!)

Fuzion offer Web Marketing services including Google Adwords campaigns for clients

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Posted in Google Adwords, Marketing, Online Advertising, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

Kate Middleton – Will I or won’t I?

September 18, 2012
Kate Middleton

Those guys should put a shirt on !

I’m sitting by the pool with my husband William, it’s roasting – I wouldn’t mind taking the opportunity to relax and top up my tan.

Maybe I will take off my top and get a proper tan so I can avoid those awful white lines. Is it proper, is it appropriate – where are the security guys? I don’t really fancy them gawping at me!!

What should I do? Will William mind? What if I get spotted, who’s going to spot me?

Will I or won’t I?  To hell with it – that top is coming off …. Bliss!

Paparazzi - Kate Middleton

Woohoo!!

I’ve been waiting here for hours…. For God’s sake will one of ye stand up and at least give me a decent picture so I can get out of here and get on with my day and pitch these pictures to someone and make a few bob.

That’s right Kate, stand up, please stand up – oh my god, I wasn’t expecting that! Click, click, click …. These pictures are like gold dust.

Am I the first person ever to get a picture of Kate Middleton topless? Woohoo!! These must be worth a fortune, how much will I charge for them? Where will I go on holidays!

Will I get in trouble, what about all that privacy stuff!

Will I or won’t I? Damn right I will …who do I call first?

Closer Magazine - Kate Middleton edition

Payday !

I’m getting ready for this weeks magazine, it’s not that juicy – wouldn’t it be great if I had something decent for the front cover and some content that would really make a difference instead of recycling all the usual celebs.

Victoria at a fashion show, has Katie Holmes been pictured chatting to some good looking guy at a coffee shop and poor Cheryl ….how much more time can we squeeze out of that one?

You really have pictures of Kate Middleton topless! Are you kidding me? How much do you want for them? And you will give those to us first … this is huge, I’ll have to check with my boss.

Oh my God, there will be uproar about this but what a coup! The poor girl on holidays, she had no idea that photographer had her in his sights, god bless technology! Imagine if it was me on holidays, how would I feel? Our readers would definitely love it and my circulation figures will be colossal – we can be the first to ever carry pictures of Kate topless!

Will I or won’t I? Hmmm … Go for it, call that photographer, try to bargain him down but get the deal done.

Irish Daily Star

But we’re Irish?

That rule doesn’t really apply to us, surely it can’t ? It’s ok for them over the pond to be sensitive about the Royal family but to us they’re just like another celebrity, isn’t Kate just like Sheryl or Rhianna after all?

I know there is a big storm and the Royal family are threatening to sue the French and Italian magazine group – surely that is just talk? It’ll probably go nowhere.

Privacy laws – in fairness, this is no worse than a lot of the stuff we do on an ongoing basis. It probably won’t come to much, other than a little slap on the back of the hand. They’ve printed them anyway so why not give our readers what they want ? It won’t do our circulation figures any harm either!

Will I or won’t I? Ok lads, extra copies to be printed for Saturday, it’s going to be a big one!!

Kate – look what you have done!

Thank you for changing the conversation and for sparing us a few days of property tax, budget talk, austerity and EU misery …

Will I or won’t I?.. glad you did!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Glossy magazines Closer in France and Chi Chi in Italy were the first to publish topless pictures of Kate Middleton snapped relaxing on holidays in a private villa. The Irish Daily Star published these pictures the following Saturday.

Fuzion are a Marketing and PR firm with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Crisis PR, Entertainment, Marketing, Publishing | 10 Comments »

Making your street my route

September 9, 2012
shop front

Love your shop !

I love my coffee!

On a typical work day at some point I will pop out of the office for my daily fix – there are one or two coffee shops that I normally go to, each a few streets or blocks (for the American readers!) away.

To get there I can take a number of different routes with a choice of side streets to pop down along the way. I normally work out of our Cork office which is located on the main business street, which backs onto a city centre retail area.

When I think about the route I normally take, the choice of streets that I walk down is totally dictated by those that are the nicest, the most colourful, the most interesting and the most inviting.

On my route I pass shops with colourful windows, pubs with attractive frontage, flower shops with colourful displays, book stores with interesting books in the window, clothes shops with fashionable displays, sweet shops with enticing treats, buildings that are bright, and streets that are clean and welcoming.

There are always alternative routes – make sure you and your street work together to merchandise those windows, paint up those buildings and make customers choose your street as their route to wherever they are going.

Eventually they’ll pop in and buy something!

Greg Canty is a partner in Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing and PR firm with offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Customer Care, Marketing, Positivity, Retailing, Staff training | 4 Comments »

13 Tips About Blogging & making some noise!

August 23, 2012
Blogging Tips by Greg Canty, Fuzion PR

What’s it to be?

Blogging is a great way to demonstrate your expertise and get your message out there and I find more and more we are encouraging our clients to jump in and let the world hear what they have to say ….make some noise!

Once your blog post is written it makes great raw material to feed your social media activity or even to pitch to the media if it is in relation to some issue that is quite topical. Interested readers (hopefully some of these are potential customers) can subscribe to your blog and will then get automatic updates whenever you post something new.

This all sounds fabulous and it really is once you are up and running but the tough part is starting!

Often I find a client will put a week’s thought, deliberation and work into a single blog post and the monumental effort will ensure that it will be their first and last – writing isn’t easy, it is a skill that needs to be practised the same as anything else and I guess it comes easier to some than to others.

What I can promise is that once you are up and running it will get easier and easier, but you have to allow yourself  a learning curve and you will soon discover a style that you are comfortable with.

Get it right and not only will you enjoy it, but it will help to bring you and your business visibility, which should help to bring you business.

Blooging Tips by Greg Canty, Fuzion PR

Power blog!

I have put together a few tips about blogging that might help you along the way!

  1. Keep the blog post as short as possible (just enough to make your point)
  2. Try to write in the “first person” if possible
  3. Avoid using technical/industry jargon (unless it is for a very technical audience)
  4. Keep it topical (where possible try making your point using some issue that is current)
  5. If the blog post is taking more than half an hour to write then you are probably thinking about it too much!
  6. Always try to include a relevant visual – people love pictures!
  7. Blog as frequently as possible (at least once a week is a good target)
  8. Mix your topics and don’t be afraid to let your personality shine through
  9. Keep a note book (your smart phone might help) to jot down ideas for blog posts – they will come to you at the strangest of times, believe me!
  10. Optimise your keywords – if you want your blog post to be found try to work the important keywords (the ones that a typical user might use if they were searching on the topic) into the blog heading, the first paragraph and your keyword tags. Make sure you categorise and tag your blog post once it is done.
  11. Include hyperlinks (simply the web addresses of other relevant content) – links to your website, links to the writers LinkedIn Account, links to other resources on the web.
  12. Blogging is just the start – make sure you push it out through your social media channels to get value for all of your hard work
  13. Unlucky for some but not for you – Go on …..www.wordpress.com , what are you waiting for?

Looking forward to reading what you have to say

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Blogging, Marketing, Personal development, SEO, Social Media, Web Marketing | 15 Comments »

Sometimes are you better off not saying the right thing?

August 19, 2012
terrible names for a business

Must be a great shop!

At this stage between the initial briefing meeting and the time spent researching and working on the plan we have spent well over a day’s work before we meet with the prospect and present our Marketing\PR plan for his business.

This is always a tricky stage for us – if you want to have a chance of winning the new account you have to punch in the time, put in the research, brainstorm and put all your best ideas and thinking into the plan.

We don’t get paid for this but we do obviously hope that the client likes what we are proposing and then engages us to execute the plan for them – Put your best foot forward if you are serious about winning the business.

We are two hours into our presentation and the prospect seems to be embracing the plan and it is all looking very positive. Our plans are always quite comprehensive and cover everything from being found on-line, a review of marketing collateral and website, a PR plan including ideas that should generate the right media coverage and a social media plan to accelerate all of these efforts.

At the end of the presentation, while everything seems to be going well there is one huge, risky issue that we wish to discuss.

“We feel your business name isn’t right” we gently explain to the prospect. This could be as delicate as telling someone you don’t like their child’s name!

“But what about my website, my branding, the money I’ve invested to date in advertising, pushing the name out there?” he asks.

“It is saying the wrong thing about your business, it is giving the wrong impression of what you are about” … he seems to be digesting and contemplating what we are saying , so we continue “we feel strongly that we would be doing a huge disservice to you if we drove on with a plan without first addressing the issue of your business name“.

After a few minutes he admitted that he always had some concerns about the name “fit” and we were the only (maybe foolish?) ones he met that had raised the issue.

We presented him with some alternative names that we felt more accurately captured the essence of the business offering and he seemed genuinely interested in them.

In truth we could have made life easier for ourselves and probably for him by just ignoring the business name issue and presenting a plan that was in keeping exactly to the brief.

He asked us to leave the plan with him to mull over while he went on leave and we are still waiting to hear…

Sometimes are you better off not saying the right thing?

(p.s. – We’ll let you know how this one turns out!)

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a PR firm with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Advertising, Business Planning, Marketing, PR, Social Media | 19 Comments »

Grabbing the “Say Something” Opportunity

July 29, 2012
Say Something - Social Media Training

Accept, Ignore or Say Something?

I just opened my LinkedIn inbox and as always I am delighted to see that there were two invitations sitting there – one from Jim and the other from John. I don’t think I know either of them but that’s not too unusual with connection requests.

For me the big issue isn’t whether I “Accept” or “Ignore” the request but it is what am I going to do with that opportunity that presents itself?

Click, click and I have accepted both these invitations, two more onto my LinkedIn Connections scorecard! – another job well done?

If I do that I have just blown my opportunity to connect ..

If you are serious about using LinkedIn as a platform for boosting awareness and generating meaningful connections then you need to start using the opportunity properly.

There is lots that you can do on LinkedIn but the first way that you can really start making a difference is by “saying something” when someone connects with you.

How about after you hit that accept button you send a simple message… “Thanks for connecting, how is business with you?”

I always thank whoever has gone to the bother of connecting with me and I always ask them some sort of question. I find 99% of the time they come back with a response and before you know it, you are actually building a “connection” – do this right and you get to learn something about them and you get a chance to tell them something about you and your business.

Last week I connected with over 100 new contacts that I had on my email database that were using LinkedIn – nearly everyone accepted the connection request.

Just one took the time to say something.

Are you collecting numbers or making connections?

Go on..  say something

(for those readers that are not using LinkedIn it is a great way to make connections and generate awareness for you and your business – jump in!)

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing and PR firm with offices in Dublin and Cork 

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Posted in LinkedIn, Marketing, Social Media | 17 Comments »

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