A New Generation needs Old Values

August 22, 2013

Eminem - Slane Convert

Once again a social media fuelled incident has hit the headlines as a result of the #Slanegirl photos that bounced around Ireland and beyond from the Slane concert recently where the famous Detroit rapper, “the poet for a New Generation” Eminem was the headline act.

If you missed all the drama a young woman (newspaper reports claim she is 17) and an older guy were caught performing an inappropriate act in quite a public place at the gig. The incident was photographed by a bystander, pushed out on social media and before you could blink (or a hash tag was created) the photo went viral by people retweeting and sharing.

This 17 year old girl and the guy involved must now deal with the pressure of a huge media/public spotlight – too much for any young person to cope with.

At a media conference in the US in 2011 celebrity Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post, said that the popularity of Facebook, Twitter and websites like her online news site indicate that “self-expression has become the new entertainment.”

We can see in this scenario how Arianna was right at so many levels.

Once any incident occurs good or bad that has an “Oh My God, guess what I’ve just seen” element to it, you are guaranteed that it will travel like wildfire in our New Generation.

Pretty much all of us are now self publishers and with our own platforms and audiences we are armed with powerful devices that can bring something to life within seconds.

As usual after this incident social media got a huge amount of flack and all sorts of issues have been raised- the experts from the legal professions, the various authorities, organisations and social media were wheeled onto TV and radio shows to give their many and varied opinions.

Both Twitter and Facebook did react and pulled the posts down as soon as it became clear how distasteful the content and the act of sharing and commenting was. Unfortunately the damage was pretty much done at this stage – these pictures are still widely available online.

New GenerationWhat can we do to stop this happening? Can we do anything?

The police are conducting an investigation – is the young man in trouble, what about the person who took the photo and what about those who passed it quickly along the chain on the various social media channels?

Who was to blame and how can they be punished?

We will huff and puff but ultimately very little will happen – it’s virtually impossible to shut down the self publishing machine.

Besides demonstrating once again how hurtful and irresponsible people can be, the Slane incident is very frustrating for a number of reasons:

The Social Media is to blame argument

Social media is powerful and hugely beneficial but it is mostly in the media spotlight when something “bad” has happened.

You never really hear in the media about long lost relatives connecting through twitter, businesses thriving by using the platforms cleverly, people publicising causes and injustices or tricky problems being solved online – it is mostly the negative, controversial stuff that we hear about.

We find ourselves blaming the social media platforms and not the users – twitter, facebook and all the other platforms are only as good or as bad as the people using them.

The platforms do have a big responsibility to respond quickly to sensitive issues and have methods of detecting and dealing with inappropriate content. At least accounts were pulled down on this occasion, which will send a strong message to all users who use social media as a core part of their lives.

The Incident

This sort of misfortunate incident is not unique and has been happening as far back as I can remember but the difference is that now we can share it easily so the impact and consequences are much larger, which brings me to the point of New World Rules.

1. We need to be extra vigilant in our new world and be extra careful with any incident in public

2. Accept that the incident will be recorded as nearly everyone watching anything has a phone capable of taking a good photo or even filming the activity

3. Assume automatically that the photo or footage will be shared on one or more social media platforms complete with descriptions and hash tags instantly and with the capability of identifying the individuals in the picture.

4. Assume if the incident is an “Oh My God, guess what I’ve just seen” then it will be shared online and will quickly spread virally

5. Posting or sharing anything online leaves a digital footprint back to you and more importantly gives an instant impression to others about you as a person, good or bad. This impression tends to stay with you.

We can look to the authorities to legislate for such instances and we can work with the social media platforms to introduce better controls and quicker ways to respond but the real job lies with us, the users.

We, the New Generation need to understand the powerful technology that is at our fingertips and we need to use it responsibly. That simple photo, status update, share or retweet can cause untold damage to someone’s life.

We need to think about our own values and the values we pass onto our children – this applies equally offline and online. There is no difference.

We must take our own personal responsibility – if we see something not right when we are out or online we should react and play our part and instead of saying “Oh My God, guess what I’ve just seen” we should be saying “It’s not right ….stop” and report it immediately.

The sooner we realise that old values need to be applied to our New Generation the better.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and training in Ireland from offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Entertainment, Facebook, Parenting, Personal development, Publishing, Social Media, Twitter | 10 Comments »

Driving too hard a bargain

August 20, 2013

Super pub

We were thrilled when the biggest super pub in the City called us and invited us to pitch for their business – we must be doing something right I thought.

At the time I was the General Manager of  Deasy’s, a Guinness subsidiary with depots in Cork and West Cork. We were drinks wholesalers and we delivered beer and soft drinks to the pub and off licence trade in these areas.

We had been doing quite well and this pub was one of those “prize” accounts that all our competitors were chasing. The business they were doing would probably be about 20 times the size of a normal pub.

This was an account we wanted so we put a really competitive price list together. There was enough in the price to win the business but still leave enough for us to make it worth our while.

Not good enough – we had to do better.

I guess this was no surprise as the incumbent wasn’t going to lose this business easily and the buyer  (in those days no one had a buyer but this crew had!) was going to quite naturally play us off against each other.

We sharpened the pencils and ate into our margins leaving a little left for us.

Not good enough – we had to do better.

At this stage we cut our margin on products across the board effectively giving them the cheapest prices we were giving anyone – this was crazy but if we wanted this prize account its what we had to do.

The buyer rang our Sales Manager – congratulations, we had won the account and they looked forward to doing business with us. Over time with the introduction of some new products and a few substitute brands we might be able to bring it back to some level profitability.

After our first delivery the buyer rang and told us that he had some breakages left over from his previous supplier that he wanted us to uplift. We would have a look at them and decide what we could do – even with out of date alcoholic products we would be able to reclaim the duty and pass the rebate back to them.

We inspected the breakages and there was a huge quantity of all sorts that he wanted to return – clearly they had done a clear out of their stock room and expected us to take back this rubbish that had been accumulated for years. Many of the products were non-alcoholic and some were brands that we never stocked and would not be able to get credit from anyone.

We carefully assessed the breakages and informed the buyer how much credit we would be able to manage. He informed us in no uncertain terms that he would pull the whole contract if we did not give him a 100% credit at our list prices – he was being totally unreasonable but he was serious.

We reluctantly collected the “rubbish” and processed the credit.

The account continued in this vein – he wanted emergency deliveries at a moments notice whenever he ran short, often at quite unreasonable times.

He pushed us so hard and continued to do so – so much so that there was no win left for us and we were starting to feel quite abused.

All of a sudden it wasn’t our prize account, it was a thorn in our sides. We started to get strict with them – they had to order properly, we cut out emergency deliveries. We maintained a good level of service  but now it was on our terms.

From time to time our suppliers would give us beer fridges and promotional events that we could allocate where we chose – needless to say we never passed these onto our “prize” account.

After six months we got a call from their purchasing manager who wanted to do another round of “squeezing” and was inviting us to submit our best prices.

This time we did a full review of our price list, increased the prices across the board and politely let someone else be a busy fool – that was the last time we set foot in the place.

James Caan - The Real DealIn James Caan’s book “The Real Deal” he spoke about a valuable lesson his dad had taught him from his leather trading days – it was always vital that you made sure there was a “Win-Win” left for both parties in a deal.

In our case there was certainly no win for us and in truth the supplier also lost out – they pushed us to the point where we didn’t actually care about their business any more.

Be careful not to drive “too hard” a bargain and make sure you walk away before the point where the business just isn’t worth it anymore

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design firm in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Accounting, Customer Care | 13 Comments »

Petty Cash and the Red Head

August 18, 2013

Redhead

We were working to a strict budget but we knew we needed another person in the company to cover a few key areas of weakness.

The person would have to be a really organised all rounder who could help with stock control, provide some admin support and take over the credit control function.

It was a big ask finding the right person to do all of this in particular for the budget we were offering.

I was the financial controller of both Deasy & Co in Cork and Connacht Mineral Water Co in Galway, both Guinness subsidiaries.

I was in Galway early in the morning to conduct interviews with John, the General Manager. Both of us were in our early twenties, bursting a gut to drive on our careers but in reality quite inexperienced.

Applicant after applicant came through and we weren’t finding anyone that fitted the bill.

Eventually a really well dressed attractive young woman came through the door for interview. This gorgeous redhead wearing a sharp suit sat down confidently and answered all of our questions with authority.

To be honest she had taken both our breaths away –  in some way I think both of us were willing her to give us the right answers!

As the interview progressed and we were falling further under the spell of this confident, bright young woman I could hear the different voices in my head “just give her the job“, “give her the job now and forget about the other interviews” “be responsible Greg, start probing …”

“You know the job on offer would involve some credit control?” I asked

“I know, that’s no problem” she replied confidently

“A lot of people find credit control a difficult thing to do, would you be ok with it?” I probed further

“Yes, I would be totally fine with that” she responded but not as assured as earlier.

“How would you describe credit control?” my final question

She batted her eyelids, flicked her red hair and smiled at both of us “Would that have something to do with petty cash?”

We knew we would both be fired within a month if we gave our attractive redhead the job and eventually we settled for a good solid young lad, who we would have to give some training to, so he could manage all aspects of the job.

The fancy package isn’t always the one that will get the job done!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

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

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Posted in Accounting, Recruitment, Staff training | 2 Comments »

Barack Obama and his lesson in Social Media

August 11, 2013

Barack Obama and Michelle

I probably show too many slides when I give my social media courses.

I always try to communicate my points with visuals using as few words as possible. At all times I will try to avoid slides with lots of text – I get bored with them so I’m sure anyone reading will do likewise.

My usual courses run over either two or three sessions and I normally try to leave it at least a week between sessions so that students and clients can practice in between sessions and get the most from the training programme.

The big challenge is when I am asked to cut the course into one session – this is really tricky as I have to do a huge “cull” of my material to come in at the required time and still cover the ground sufficiently.

I hate losing slides as all the material is designed to make a specific point, so inevitably valuable material gets lost.

There is one slide above all in my presentations that is precious and if I had a situation whereby I had the time to show only one this would be it.

I love this particular image because for me it sums up the magic of social media and teaches a huge lesson in how to use it.

I was asked to make a presentation to Dublin Chamber about the use of Twitter for business and it happened to coincide with the results of the last US election. Due to other commitments the night before I had to travel from Cork early in the morning to get to Dublin for the 7:30am presentation.

Like the rest of world I was intrigued about the result so the first thing I did when I woke was to check twitter on my smart phone and this is the tweet I saw.

This Barack Obama tweet was the most retweeted of all time – even at 4:19 am our time, it had been retweeted 475,000 times.

Why do you think I love using this tweet so much?

  1. It demonstrates how Twitter is now the first port of call for breaking news
  2. It demonstrates the shift from Facebook to Twitter – During his first Presidential campaign he was not using Twitter, it was all about Facebook.
  3. This medium was how he chose to communicate to the outside world that he had accepted he had won the presidential race
  4. The message is really simple and concise (often the best way to use social media)
  5. The picture he chose to accompany the tweet demonstrates the biggest social media tip of all, much better than I could ever explain it

The Picture!

Four More Years

Why is this picture so powerful?

Cleverly he didn’t show a picture of himself in a suit with all of his team – he chose a picture of himself, eyes closed, without a jacket, with his sleeves rolled up hugging his wife in a loving embrace.

The President knows instinctively that showing himself as human, as a family man, even slightly vulnerable is the way to connect with the majority of people and this is a winning formula.

A great way to win on social media is by allowing yourself to be human, personal and even vulnerable at times.

People are intrigued by people and even if you are running the most boring business in the world you can bring it alive on-line by interacting and showing people who you are, what you are all about and giving them a chance to get to know you.

Social media provides you with that opportunity – grab it!

Greg Canty is a parter of Fuzion

Fuzion provide Social Media Consultancy and Training in Ireland from offices in Cork and Dublin 

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Posted in Social Media, Training, Twitter | 5 Comments »

The Single Biggest PR Tip – Never Waste a Good Story

August 7, 2013

Great Story

From all of the work we do with clients and our collective experience and expertise we can offer you one simple piece of advice about PR, one Golden Nugget that you need never look past..

“Never waste a Good Story”

This is a really simple guiding principle to apply, no books or no huge science required, just a straight forward case of Never Waste a Good Story.

Bring PR onto your business agenda, into your plans and objectives, into your management meetings – Ask the question “Do you have any good stories that should not be wasted?”

Once you realise you have a good story and you’ve decided you don’t want to waste it, that’s where the process, the science and the fun starts..

Get that story out there!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion 

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

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Posted in PR | Leave a Comment »

Go on – Personalise

August 5, 2013

I Love GregHi there!

Wouldn’t it be a lot better if “Hi Greg” had appeared on the email instead of the words “Hi there”?

Dear Customer,

Wouldn’t it be a lot better if “Dear Greg” appeared on the invitation to attend the launch event instead of “Dear Customer”?

The Manager

Wouldn’t it be a lot better if “Greg Canty” had appeared on the envelope and letter that accompanied the brochure instead of “The Manager”?

Price List

Wouldn’t it be a lot better if  “Fuzion price list” had appeared on the quote instead of a generic price list?

Reserved

Wouldn’t it be a lot better to see “Reserved for Fuzion” on the restaurant table instead of a plain “reserved” sign.

It does take time to customise and personalise, it does take a little extra effort but your communication will resonate so much more when you can avoid being generic. (Personalising has never been so easy with the tools that are now available).

Often being generic can even have a negative effect and can have your customer feeling very “not so special“.

  1. If you can’t personalise think twice about communicating
  2. If you can personalise get it right – double check the spelling of people and company names
  3. Where personalising isn’t expected …personalise!

I received a CD in the post from an Amazon affiliate supplier and the docket had “thanks Greg” marked across it in marker – Wow!

Sometimes it’s really easy to stand out by doing just a little thing.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Firm in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Brand Loyalty, Customer Care, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Retailing, Staff training | 7 Comments »

Is your credit controller losing you business?

July 29, 2013

Dirty Harry

Collecting money from customers must be one of the toughest and most awful jobs that you have to do in business.

I remember when I was in the drinks industry years ago we had a full time credit controller and I really believe that the nature of her role made her age really quickly. She was the one who had to stop deliveries to slow paying accounts (often this meant a battle with the sales reps and the sales manager) and she had to deal with irate customers.

The poor woman was sick quite a lot and I really put this down to the stressful role she had.

In particular in a small business it can be even more difficult when often the person who does the selling is the same person that does the collecting.

We received an email last week from a supplier who was looking for payment. Payment ran a few days over the standard terms because I was on leave and hadn’t left enough signed cheques. This was no bother and we sorted a cheque out immediately, a few days later than usual.

What really bothered me was the nature of the email, the tone, the lack of manners and a total lack of respect for us – after all we are a customer and to be honest a good one who gives them plenty of business and we do adhere to the payment terms.

My gut reaction was to change suppliers, which I did not do. However, a phone call from a similar supplier pitching their wares at the right moment and I would be listening actively.

I Love Credit ControlThis email was a real pity because the supplier is generally great to deal with. My crew are forever praising them and I know would kill me if I dropped them to use someone else.

I sent the credit controller an email and politely took issue with her manner and explained how it does jeopardise the business that they are doing with us and probably other customers of theirs.

I was speaking to another business owner who explained to me that they have an automated “email writing” system to deal with their credit control. He says often people get irate about the emails they receive because the language used is very blunt and to the point.

I received an automated letter from my bank recently more or less telling me to get my accounts in order as a dormant current account had run €2.50 overdrawn as a result of bank charges ..lovely!

How you collect money is an essential  part of your business reputation and while you have to get paid for the work you do it is important that you do this with courtesy and manners, never undermining your good reputation and all of your hard work.

You don’t need to give any customer an excuse to consider moving to a competitor.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

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

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Posted in Credit Control, Customer Care, PR | 16 Comments »

Looking after your own house ..

July 24, 2013

Dream House

Are you like us with the best of intentions not getting to things you had promised you would do?

One of the things I promised we would do this year was to make sure that we did not neglect our “own house“.

It’s obviously really important that all of our client work comes first but it’s also vital that we don’t neglect Fuzion. Every day we work with our clients following carefully written plans so that they can promote their business through PR, Social Media, Advertising, E-newsletters, through their website, by blogging and with their printed materials.

We stress the importance of “looking the part” ensuring that their branding is consistent, properly reflecting the quality of their business across printed and on-line platforms.

We’ve all heard the expression “the mechanics car” and I’m afraid that we are guilty of this. We are not the worst but there are things that we have been meaning to do for “our house” for quite a while but we always seem to struggle to get to them.

The guys in the design team are doing fabulous work for clients and I’ve been at them to showcase this properly on our website, through communications like this one and even within our own office. We have done some great work that we have been meaning to display on the walls of the office for the last six months. I’m waiting!

I’ve been at the PR team to start blogging more and demonstrate the expertise that we possess in-house. I’ve been at the guys to be more proactive on social media. We’ve had some huge client successes this year that we probably should have publicised. I’ve had the job of making sure we issue our e-newsletter (this one!) regularly – it’s not happening!

When you are busy it’s always the same – it’s easy to push your own work down to the bottom of the queue because there is always something to do for a client, which after all does pay the bills.

If Fuzion were our client, I’d have a strong word with them ..

Are you looking after your own house?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

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

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Posted in Blogging, Business Planning, Customer Care, Marketing, Motivation | 6 Comments »

€20 and the “too good to be true” Dream Client!

July 21, 2013

Too Good to be True

Is it ok if I show this man around your office?” Frank our landlord asked (by the way he hates if we call him that – he prefers to say we are his customer and to be fair that is always how he treats with us).

“No bother at all Frank” – he wanted to see how we had laid out the office space, which had the same footprint as the vacant unit two floors down.

Frank introduced me to this English gentleman, Mr Cooper who was starting an airline, which was to operate from Cork ..interesting!

He would be needing Marketing and PR support and he also would need the services from our graphic design team. We had a quick chat but I had another appointment to get to – he wanted to tie things down quickly so he asked us to meet with him the next day for a full briefing.

This could be a very exciting project to work on.

Just before I ran out the door I did a Google search on this guy to see if there was some evidence of his existence online ..nothing!

On the way to my meeting I rang Frank to make sure I caught the man’s name correctly – I had.

“What do you make of our English gentleman?” Frank asked. He explained to me that he also popped into the accountants on the floor below us who were also going to do work for him. The following day they were to introduce him to one of the banks.

“Frank, is he too good to be be true?”

saab airline

We both agreed that maybe it was wrong to be cynical and there was a chance that this well dressed, well spoken Englishman was the real deal after all.

He arrived the following day, a little later than organised but even more well dressed than the previous day. He apologised for being late – there were some technical financial details he was ironing out with the accountant about licences.

He took me through his project in detail – he was really looking for a marketing partner for this venture. He told us that he really liked and trusted us. He spoke to our really talented head designer, Jonathan about his brand and what he had in mind – we all agreed that while he was on a deadline, the work should be done properly.

Maybe this guy was a dream client after all?

After many years in business and knowing how hard you must work to win a new account, this guy had me suspicious. I was “on guard” for a sign, any sign that this was not going to work out.

He started telling me about the lonely childhood he had and now he was alone and did not have any attachments.. for reasons that we would understand. Hmm..where was this conversation going?

He had a request – he wanted to give us a shareholding in the business!

He wanted to embrace the true spirit of partnership – if this happened everyone would work together. He explained he would make the same offer to everyone that was involved in his project. He was doing this as he had no family and he wanted the business to have a “safe” home if anything happened to him.

While this was an outlandish tale maybe it was true? The alarm bell was ringing in my head at this stage but I was feeling a little sorry for this lonely businessman.

I politely told him that people might think he was “nuts” if he were to have that shareholding conversation with them – I advised him to keep that idea to himself and if he wanted to do something like this down the line, then maybe.

He had another request – until he had office space sorted out could he work from our offices?

He had noticed on the day that there were desks with no one working at them. A louder alarm bell started to ring!

That wouldn’t be practical I explained but maybe he should have a word with Frank who might let him use some of the available space in the building until he had a formal arrangement made.

He told me he understood ..

We had arranged to meet the next day when he wanted to introduce us to some of his team who he had already recruited..that sounds ok I reckoned.

Just as he left the office he patted his pockets ..”Damn, I’m a bit short and the bank is closed. Could I borrow €20?” Even though the alarm bell was shaking the whole building at this stage I found myself handing this guy who we hardly knew €20.

On the way home I bumped into Frank as we left the building.

“Well, what do you make of our friend?” I asked. He had told Frank that he was very impressed with Fuzion and the accountant and he just needed to finalise everything and get cracking. I told him the story (with a red face) about the €20 knowing already how the whole story was going to unfold.

What’s worse I told Dee the story about the €20 – “You big fool” ..she told me.

If this was going to end up going nowhere I’d prefer to kill it quickly. Before he was to arrive I would prepare a budget and insist on a % payment upfront before we committed any resources to the job – if he was not the real deal then this would flush him out.

20 minutes after he was scheduled to arrive I called him ..nothing.

Another 10 minutes ..nothing.

A few minutes later I received a text from him saying that Fuzion and the people in Cork were the most unprofessional and backward that he had ever come across and he was going to set up in Belfast instead.

Needless to say I haven’t heard anything about the airline but I do wonder about the “dream client, Mr Cooper” who got away.

When it seems too good to be true it probably is ..the tale alone was worth the €20.

Mr Cooper …good luck with your venture!

Greg Canty is a partner Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design firm in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Business Start Ups, Entertainment | 8 Comments »

Celebrity Twitter Etiquette/Power

July 14, 2013

Lucinda Creighton

@LCreighton “well done for standing by your principles – we need more of that and not less in govt. You will be back” 

I don’t know Lucinda Creighton, I don’t have full knowledge of her arguments but I do admire that she stood by her principles on an important, high profile piece of legislation. She didn’t fall in with her political party on a crucial vote and as a result she had to resign.

I sent the above tweet (you can do this once you have her twitter ID, which is easily found by doing a simple search on twitter) just to acknowledge the stand she took – I gave her a public compliment.

A tweet goes a long way ….. or in some cases just an acknowledgement goes an even longer way.

With twitter, when it comes to individual users I guess there are two broadly different types of users:

  • Celebrities and personalties (I would include some politicians in this category) who naturally attract a larger following than they would follow themselves
  • You and me!

You and me are the mere mortals who pick away, follow people and organisations we are interested in and if we want to build a following we need to publish interesting content, we need to be polite, engage in twitter conversations and generally apply a degree of etiquette with our activity.

This might include acknowledging people who have followed you, following people back, thanking people for positive posts and replying to people who have mentioned you in a post.

As part of your “nice guy/gal” routine you might retweet worthy posts and when someone retweets something for you then you thank them.

The actions here tend to be quite reciprocal – if you are good to someone then you tend to get the favour returned (there are always exceptions!)

Celebrity Factor

Stephen FryWhen there is some “celebrity” factor with a twitter user these normal rules do not apply.

This kicks in when this person is popular because of the role they hold (singer, actor, sportsperson, media person or even a politician) – more people will naturally follow them by nature of their “celebrity” factor and as a result popularity (size of following) does not depend on them behaving in the reciprocal way that applies to the rest of us.

A celebrity (using our broad definition) can effectively build a large follower base on twitter without following, interacting or acknowledging anyone.

However there are clever celebrities online (I’m suspecting this reflects their personality) who really get it.

They understand the huge power that they have at their disposal and they know how to utilise it – the good ones will do this naturally with no agenda and as a result they will excel and achieve something most of  the other “celebrities” will waste and over the long run actually do themselves possible reputational damage.

If a celebrity has a huge number of followers who are posting incessantly it is very difficult for them to engage but with smaller numbers of followers they can accelerate their popularity and like-ability by doing a few simple things:

  • Reply to positive posts – “thank you for the kind words” or even “thank you for all the kind words of support I received tonight” . The acknowledgment can be done directly to the individual (this is the best) or a general one – “Guess who came back to me on my post?” you can imagine the person saying to pals when their favourite celebrity replied to them
  • Favourite positive posts – simply click that “favourite” button to acknowledge that the post meant a lot
  • Retweet the positive post – hit that RT button and in a sweep highlight the positive post and deliver a huge acknowledgement to the person who posted it
  • Follow the person –  this is the ultimate compliment to the person who posted positive things
  • Surprise tweet – keep an eye on favourable tweets about you (just do a simple search on your name) and if you have the time thank them or make some comment – this tip is compliments of my son who says it works great with some of the bands he works with

By doing a few simple things the “celebrity” could accelerate their popularity and positive reputation and very easily win a loyal fan for life (most will not do this, which presents an even bigger opportunity for those who do)

Rachel AllenI have noticed online that a few celebrities in particular are quite good.

Rachel Allen @rachelallen1 has been good to come back on a compliment. Brian Kennedy @kennedysinger came back on a positive post after a gig as well as Mundy @mundyirl, Mark Geary @MG212 (better on Facebook) and Richie Egan (Jape)  @richiejape.

All of these by being respectful and clever are high in my estimation.

I have noticed a few that have been quite poor including the fabulous musician Gemma Hayes @gemma_hayes and the Newstalk breakfast team Chris Donoghue @chrisdonoghue and Norah Casey @norahcasey (this is strange as they always make a big deal of their twitter presence).

I listen to their show every morning and instead of giving themselves the opportunity of building their brand loyalty they are undermining it by ignoring listeners who tweet them. I’m sure if they realised the negative effect and the opportunity missed by not being more proactive they would be more responsive.

Lucinda Creighton had a busy day today and we can excuse her but she does have the power to considerably enhance her reputation by replying to the many people who said positive things about her and those who wished her well.

Celebrities …it’s up to you!

You and me….we have no excuse – we have to do the hard work.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Design firm in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin.

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Posted in Irish Politics, Marketing, Personal development, Politics, PR, Social Media, Twitter | 4 Comments »

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