There are many intern groups here in Dublin this summer and the interns here at Connector have been hard at work planning an intern event for all them. We wanted to create a night that brought everyone together, is fun, educational, and for a good cause.  Check it out here on Facebook.

The intern event will be benefitting the not-for-profit Barnardos, a local Dublin charity that serves the people of Dublin. The event will be on July 28^th from 6pm – 10pm at The Church. There is a suggested donation of €4 and every cent will go towards Barnardos. The Church has kindly donated a free welcome drink and finger food to all the interns that come and show their support for Barbardos.

We will also have several speakers for the night; a representative from Barnardos to talk about the work that they do, Bobby Kerr an entrepreneur that started the largest coffee company in Ireland, and Neil Leyden from the exciting new Irish global marketing project called Gateway Ireland.

We will be raffling off great prizes as well, including but not limited to a great 3 day trip around Ireland courtesy of Shamrocker Irish Adventures, 1 Bottle of Premium 18 year old Jameson Whiskey and much more!  We hope to see all the interns that are here in Dublin out for this special night of fun, community, and excitement.

You will receive a raffle ticket for every €3 donation or two raffle tickets for €5.

Andrew and Shelsea will be the MCs of the event for the evening and can’t wait to see you all there.

The design work I have done for Connector has been an interesting experience. I am caught between the styles and branding that was developed for Connector and my own design and style.  In my design work I like to keep things clean and simple, because I think that is the most effective type of design. Simple design allows for the strongest creativity and at the same time allows for a very straightforward clean message. I guess that’s my design weak point. I need to start developing more complex and interesting design, so that way I have a lot in my design arsenal to use.

Every time I go into creating a design for Conor, I try and do two or three different designs. The first I try to create something consistent with the Connector’s current style. The second I make something I like and I think is cool, and third I make a hybrid of the design I like and the design consistent with the brand. It’s hard at times to create something I like. Time constraints often leave me feeling like there is something left to be desired out of some of my designs. I guess college has spoiled me with a plethora of time to create and refine my designs. Now I am working under short deadlines and desire for high quality. It’s been a bit of an adjustment to this kind of working environment, but I am getting used to it and I am learning where I to focus to save time but still produce decent quality.

Overall the adjustment to office life has been good and interesting. I am still getting used to the fact that my designs are actually being used for the web, proposals, etc instead of for just portfolio development. I hope by the end of this internship I will be doing work on a fast paced basis, I will be able to create a piece that is high in quality but only takes a short amount of time.

Here are a few examples of the work I have created for Connector. Please share what you think about them. Any feed back I can get would be great!

Thanks a million to everyone who came along to the Connector #Appy Hour event last night at the Nokia Pop Up Shop on Grafton Street.  Congratulations to Suzanne Sheridan and Ger Canning who were the worthy winners of our competition on the night and proud owners of two spanking new Nokia phones! (Facebook Photos)

There were some great speakers in Anthony Lawless, Device and Software Manager at Nokia, and Edward Conmy, joint owner of Digital Times and winner of the Appys Awards.

They talked about digital innovation in terms of new mobile phone applications and how useful they are to create content for the computing, media, publishing and advertising industries.

After the talks, there was a raffle with amazing prices to win from Nokia, Abbey Theatre, The New Theatre, Lighthouse Smithfield Cinema and Millets Camping.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the event and make new connections and friends. Although the guest speakers were very popular they didn’t quite go down as well as the free refreshments! Hope to see everyone at the next one!

Connector is organising another great networking event at the Nokia Pop-Up Shop in Grafton St. on Thursday, July 1st at 6.30pm.  We’re calling it ‘Connector #Appy Hour’ as our 23rd monthly event will have guest speakers, including Anthony Lawless from Nokia, and Edward Conmy from the Appy Awards.  These new awards are for the best mobile apps in Ireland & the judges will be announced at the event.

We will have a raffle to give away some great prizes amongst the attendees. There will be also some fun networking games, music entertainment, food and drink throughout the evening.

To come to this event you will need to sign up to our Facebook Event and we look forward to seeing you at Connector #Appy Hour!

This morning I had a very pleasant and interesting morning tea with Marie O’Riordan who is a self-styled international communications & media expert.  Marie has been doing really well of late and carries our speaking and consulting engagements for international clients.

She introduces herself in the video and is a serious connector who was the last interviewer of Mother Teresa.  Marie O’Riordan has also been interviewing & building instant rapport with Hollywood’s Elite & scores of Academy Award winners face to face for many years such as Paul Newman, Michael Caine, Quentin Tarantino, Charlize Theron, Cate Blanchett, Renee Zellweger & many, many more “A list” legends. Marie travels the globe as a Worldwide Communications Excellence Specialist™ & is the Author of ‘66 Secrets To Nailing Any Media Interview.’™

Her next event in Dublin is as follows called the Entrepreneur Marketing Workshop and features the thrilling trilogy of with Debbie Allen (USA), Tracy Repchuk (USA) & Marie O’Riordan (IRL) ;-0

It is on Friday, June 25, 2010 from 8:30 AM – 7:00 PM (GMT) and I hope to check it out.

Irish companies feel like they are falling increasingly behind the times in terms of advances in digital marketing. While the digital community prepares itself for advances in areas such as location based marketing, the SME community is still unsure as to whether Internet marketing actually works. We need to further establish both positions and how we can bridge the gap between the two.

Mr. Bill Thompson was part of an open discussion at the IIA conference in Dublin recently. In a conversation with Jim Power on the use of social media in business, he was of of the view that companies not embracing social media would cease to exist in a few years. He also added that this may not be a bad thing, as companies who do embrace it will be offering a superior service to their customers.

Mr. Jim Power, prominent economist with Friends First held a conflicting opinion. Jim also runs an economic consultancy practice and has a lot of contact with SMEs. His view was that SMEs on the ground were largely untouched by the advances in digital marketing. He added that SMEs didn’t understand many of the platforms, were wary of privacy issues and were not convinced “social media actually works, and that its not just something fluffy and useless!”

So having established these hugely different viewpoints, who can we say is correct?

Both are correct in my opinion, and bridging the gap between the two is where the way forward lies. Jim is right in terms of SMEs on the ground, they still have a large customer base which is not using social media. Among SMEs who do use social media, their is a misconception that all a company has to do is set up a Facebook and Twitter page and watch the market come flocking. These users are only moderately succesful in their attempts and a general feeling of social media marketing being ‘fluff’ has been created.

Bill Thompson’s viewpoint can be easily backed up using Internet usage statistics and how people are using social search to find products and services. Business in Ireland must follow consumers onto social media.

There are innovative online marketing solutions being devised here in Ireland. However there is a danger if SMEs are not informed and trained, revenue streams will dry up and this could impair the advancement of these solutions and Irish business in the next number of years.

Mutual dialogue must be initiated between the two groups and the government must also be involved in the roll-out of broadband. Marketing through social media is all about listening to the conversation of customers, the digital community must listen to its customers for the benefit of all Irish business in the coming years.

Video is taking over the Internet. After Google, You Tube is the second largest search engine in the world ahead of Bing and Yahoo. Last year they hit 6.6 billion streams and currently have over 73% of the online market. With this in mind, anyone who wants to seriously market themselves online needs to be doing video.

You’ve probably heard already how video is great to add to your website, how it can be great for SEO and how users love to share good  video with their friends. The reason many people are not doing video is because they think that it is either too expensive to produce or requires technical skills they don’t possess. Luckily there are a number of tools available that make it possible to edit your own video.

Microsoft Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker is the one that most people are familar with. It comes freely available with Windows software or can be downloaded for free from the Microsoft website. It has basic video editing features that allow you to make your own videos without any great technical knowledge.

It allows you to import various clips, sequence them, clip them and apply basic transitions and effects. In addition to this it allows you to record voice narration and produce and share your video on YouTube or your blog. The drag and drop interface is really easy to use and the functionality is perfect for making basic promo videos for events or customer testimonial videos. There are limitations however.

If you want to use more advanced video techniques like screen record, Movie Maker does not offer this. Nor does it offer features such as callouts, zoom and pan or cursor effects. Overall it is a great package for most of your needs and it’s ease of use makes it ideal for beginners.

Apple iMovie

If you are using a MAC then Apple iMovie pretty much gives you the same deal as Microsoft Movie Maker. It is freely available with any new MAC but unlike Movie Maker it is not freely available to download.

It offers pretty much the same functionality and ease of use as it’s Microsoft equivalent and is ideal for anyone looking to do basic promo videos without having to spend a fortune or learn how to operate complicated software.

Camtasia Studio

Camtasia offers all that the others do plus loads of nifty features, plus it is available for PC and MAC. Like Movie Maker and iMovie the interface is intuitive and easy to use although the additional features add a little extra clutter if you’re not planning on using them.

Some of the extra features include Record Screen and Record Powerpoint functionality which are great for doing video tutorials. In addition to this it offers more advanced effects such as Zoom and Pan, Callouts which allow you to write over your video or images, Cursor Effects that allow you to highlight mouse clicks, and more advanced audio editing features.

Camtasia will cost you around $300 to buy so if you’re not planning on using the extra features it’s probably not worth your while. They offer a 30 day free trail that will allow you to test the product before putting your hand in your pocket so it’s definetely worth a look in.

Conclusion

Basically if all you need to do is pop up a few video interviews or make a very basic promo, the first two options are ideal. If you would like to feature video tutorials or use more advanced editing techniques then Camtasia is the way to go. We’ll be posting some live tutorials ourselves really soon to help you get to grips with each of these products so keep in touch!

The Connector 10C’s is a strategy model to devise, implement and evaluate any digital and social media marketing plan. Aimed at businesses and organisations of all sizes and industry sectors, it can help executives and entrepreneurs to combine their website, social media and email marketing to attract and retain more customers and to gain the best return on investment possible.

The video below discusses the Connector 10C’s model in more detail.

As you know, last week we were running an online survey to find out about social media use. Some of the results have been really surprising, for example 77% of those polled says they use social media to find out about events and organise their social life, and 67% access social media from their mobile.

66% assures to be a member of online communities or groups, which reflects the importance of Community Marketing, something that Connector has been preaching for a long time.

Despite all the polled were active social media users, 71% of which used social media for both personal and business, only 14% prefer to spend their spare time with social media, the most preferred activities being hanging out (28%), sports (15%) and other (22%). Traditional forms of entertainment such as TV and reading fall down to 11% and 10% respectively.

Regarding content creation, 73% uploads photos, while 55% writes blogs and 40% creates videos. Only 11% doesn’t create any of those types of online content.

This are great results that show the increasing interest in social media, not only as consumers but also as content creators. Thanks for your time and interest doing this survey.

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.