Burson-Marsteller Fortune Global 100 Social Media Study

by Connector on June 14th, 2010

This is an interesting  article from the Burson Marsteller Blog….

‘Following in the footsteps of consumers, large international companies are now becoming active participants in social media. A recent Burson-Marsteller study found that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using at least one of the most popular social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs.’

Read more about Innovation_and_insights on Burson-Marsteller’s Blog:

Connector 2.0

by Sarai Fernandez on May 24th, 2010

At Connector we’re celebrating the blog’s second birthday this week. Yes, it has been two years since Conor started writing the Connector blog about all the interesting people and communities he met in Dublin. After that, the networking events came and some time later we started with the consulting and training services.

As a result of being so busy we’ve not being blogging so much, but with our 2nd birthday we want to commit to publish relevant content to share our knowledge of social media besides the new connections with people and communities. We are planning to start publishing webinars, videos and other training material that we hope you find useful.

We’ll give you more info later this week.

Connecting Italian flavours with a dollop of DCU & Media 2020 …

by Connector on April 30th, 2010

This week I connected with a bunch of great people and somethat I have not mentioned yet are here for you to check out.  The first photos is the Flavour of Italy team in Pinocchios Ranelagh who treated me to a fantastic Italian meal while we chatted about their great Italian food and travel businesses … grazie! ciao! grazie!

Then I was interviewed by Sheena O’Dowd & Damien O’Ceallaigh as part of their Masters project in New Media in DCU.  And finally at the bottom, I was at the Media 2020 conference at Croke Park where my housemate Ronan Higgins had his head beamed onto the big screen while answering questions about mobile apps.  Coincidentally, speaking about mobiles, apologies for the grainy photos which are a bit iPixelated.

Lots of new connections and lots of new ideas cos you can’t beat having your finger of the pulse! ;-0

Re-connecting with RaboDirect

by Connector on April 18th, 2010

On Tuesday 22nd April I get the chance to re-connect with my ex-RaboDirect colleagues @ the iia Social Media event in the Clarion Hotel.  As I was saying last week this is a great opportunity to see the multi-award winning RaboDirect team who rarely have the time to share the secrets to their success.  I particularly am looking forward to the presentation from Aoife Mahon who was Offline Marketing Manager  while I was Online Marketing Manager for 18 months.

On top of all that emotional interchange, there are also top speakers from RTE & YouTube so if you are into digital video, this is an event you must not miss!

For discounts, contact events [@] iia.ie and then go to the booking page.

Connector Training – Course No.1!!

by Sarai Fernandez on April 1st, 2010

Connector has gathered together a diverse group of people keen to learn the basics of social media marketing and how to get the most of it.  Today Connector is running its first training course, called “Introduction to Social Media Marketing” at Cassidy’s Hotel in Dublin 1.

We are looking at the Connector blog,  Conor’s Facebook profile, the Connector Facebook Fan Page, and friends of the Facebook Group; Conor’s LinkedIn profile, where we joined the Connector LinkedIn Group, Connector Twitter and Wordpress.

Two of the attendees, Nessa O’Hara and David Curry, were the lucky winners of 2 free seats. Connector is still giving your the opportunity to win 2 free seats in the next 3 courses which are being held in April. To find out more about the contest, click here.

Vodafone 360 connections

by Conor on March 21st, 2010

A few months ago I was at the launch of the Vodafone 360 with guest star Dita Von Teese and given a Vodafone 360 phone to test.  I would like to express my thanks to Vodafone for the opportunity to test drive the phone which was supported by TV advertising in late 2009.

As I am lucky enough to have used all the top smart phones in recent months, I thought this phone was ‘ok’.  This Samsung phone which has a completely different operating system which takes a while to get used to I could not give it the time it needed to be mastered.  Furthermore the selection & presentation of Apps definitely will have to improve. 

I think with Vodafone starting to sell the iPhone which has 140,000 Apps, I wonder will the Vodafone 360 will be relegated to a mid-range phone?  What did you thinkofthe Vodafone 360?

Connect with Sasha Chau, The Shy Connector

by Conor on January 17th, 2010

It was nice to find this  presentation on Slideshare by Sasha Chau called ‘The Shy Connector’.  With an unusual handwritten style, this has some nice ideas in it if you’d like to check it out … it is great to be able to connect with her ideas through the super useful Slideshare web site.

Fashion blogger's new year resolutions

by connector on January 11th, 2010

By Laura Dunne

Hello all! I hope your Christmas was filled with over-indulgence and friends and family galore as mine was. As the year (and decade for that matter) draws to a close, our focus inevitably shifts to the future and what next year will hold both personally in our careers and private lives to the emerging trends that will define the next decade.

Over the holidays, I’ve had the great pleasure of catching up with all of my favourite blogs and have even discovered a few more gems. One of the most interesting things I’ve read all year was by Yuli Ziv “On Fast Fashion Content and The Importance of Being Earnest”

Following a piece written by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Yuli felt compelled to address an issue facing all bloggers- the originality of content. Particularly in the fashion blogging realm, writers often succumb to simply re-hashing content from numerous sources in place of actually contributing to the global discourse.

While sharing content is arguably one of the most essential roles blogs play today, I can’t help but agree with Yuli that we are merely pandering to a culture which favours quantity above quality- where our sole motivation is slotting ourselves into a pop-culture driven machine where fashion bloggers the world-over are “creating” trends seemingly free of influence from the corporate retailers who have controlled what our perception of “fashionable” is for decades.

I would argue that these corporations have more control than ever before through “sponsoring” certain blogger events and “donating” products to fashion bloggers to review on their blogs- how is it that the majority of popular bloggers just so happen to be wearing basically the same clothes no matter how off-kilter they are with mainstream trends?

Yuli argues that bloggers don’t write as such but rather create content as fast as we can to capture the publics interest before others do. While I’m not from any type of creative writing background myself nor have I ever claimed to be, I myself am guilty of posting blogs just because.

What Matters Now

My hope for 2010 is that bloggers will consider more carefully what they choose to write about and find their own voice amongst the masses. The internet should help to create social tribes and friendships which are not dependant on location but rather on mutual passions and interests- this can never occur in any real sense if we are blogging to fit in with a clique of successful bloggers who have honed their craft after years of practicing and hard work. I send you forward to consider the eBook “What Matters Now” as a template for how to face the coming year and to help remind us the power the internet can play in spreading positive messages- each of the 60 featured authors shares a thought on what should matter moving into 2010.

Here’s hoping that the next decade will be a good deal better than the last!

Connecting With Consumers

by Sarai Fernandez on December 1st, 2009

Several days ago I found this article/ad in a spanish newspaper.

Short translation: “Blogger wanted, reward: 3.000 euros monthly and a the use of a new car, the new Citröen DS3, for a whole year and totally free of charges”. Maybe the salary doesn’t seem too high in Ireland, but in Spain, where the minimum wage is 624 € per month, and the average salary doesn’t reach 1,500 €, this job is a huge deal. Actually, it’s is being promoted as the best job of the year.

Citröen said they wanted to get the impressions of their targeted costumer directly before the launch of the car. And publicity as well, because now, for good or for bad everybody knows about the Citröen car that is not in the market yet. And this is a good example of how companies are choosing new ways of advertising, they’re not showing the car’s features, they’re just creating awareness. Blogs, twitter, facebook… social media are the new marketing tools, as the promotion in this area is cheap and allows for a much more targeted approach.

The idea is original, but not new, Ben Southall got what was considered as the “best job in the world” this year when he won the contest organised by the Tourism Department of Queensland (Australia).

And a closer example, Rob Cumiskey, one of our Connectors, won a new Toyota iQ in June. The agreement is that, in return for writing regularly on his blog and on Twitter about the iQ, he will be given the car for 6 months to drive and review. Rob has been writing regularly about his adventures around Ireland in his iQ and will surely be very sad to be giving the car back in January.

Culch.ie – Connector 'Tribe of the Year 2009' (Shortlisted)

by Conor on November 30th, 2009

As part of Tribes Week, we are featuring all of our shortlisted Tribes on the Connector Blog today. Each of these Tribes have been shortlisted for the Connector Tribe of the Year award. The winner will be announced at Christmas Connector.

Culch.ie is a new and growing group blog, the main  theme being pop culture. The site also features information about different events around the country as well as features on gossip, movies, newspapers, photography, radio, politics, etc.

Connector would like to recognise the fantastic work that Darren Byrne has put in over the last year in creating a fantastic Pop Culture resource and community.

As Darren and Rick say themselves:

The idea was a simple one – a few months ago we thought it’d be fun to start a group blog project (well, everyone seems to have one these days), the theme took a little bit longer. To be fair, pop culture is one of the few common threads that runs through almost all of us and Ireland doesn’t have a  huge, enormous pop culture review site/aggregator/news place (can’t you see we’ve researched the lingo here?) so we decided to give it a go.

Check out Culch.ie’s presentation at Connector Tribes event in May: