In October 2011, IBM released a global chief marketing officer study. Over 1,700 CMOs were interviewed and the research identified four major challenges that they are facing:

-   The adoption of social media

-   The proliferation of channels and devices

-   Shifting consumer demographics

-   The explosion of data.

I am delighted that in our recent free webinar, I was joined by Elaine Fletcher Partner in the Business Analytics and Optimisation Group of IBM Global Business Services, where she leads the strategy, development and deployment of repeatable propositions across all market sectors.

We explored what the research means for marketers and practical steps they can take to adapt to the new landscape.

You can watch the replay of the event below or if you prefer you can watch the webinar on YouTube.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

You can download the MP3 of the webinar – on a PC just right click on the following link and save the audio to your hard drive. Download the audio of the customer centricity webinar here.

You can access the slides for the customer centricty webinar on SlideShare if you wish to download them.

Register for our forthcoming Biz Growth Webinars.

About Elaine Fletcher:

Elaine has 8 years of customer insights experience.  She has led the strategy and successful implementation of cross-product, multi-channel programmes to deliver double-digit sustainable growth.

Elaine joined IBM from Logica where she was UK Director of Business Intelligence for 11 years, growing the practice from its foundation to become one of the Gartner top 10 globally. In addition to running the BI Practice Elaine delivered C level assignments to drive Customer Insights, BI and Performance Management strategy to clients across all market sectors.

You can connect to Elaine on Twitter here.

Free Webinar: Customer Centricity – is it a Panacea or a Pipe-Dream? is an article post from: Biz Growth News – please do share the article with your network if you found it of value. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.

I thought I would explore how Irish Facebook Pages have celebrated St Patrick’s Day this year using their cover photo (and in two cases changing their Profile image) in the hope this may give you some inspiration for the next public holiday you celebrate wherever you are in the world.

If there are other Facebook Timelines that you think did a great job in celebrating St Patrick’s Day through their Timeline cover photo’s please do leave a comment below of over on my Facebook Page so we can all take a look at them, and watch out for a future  article in which I will be sharing some other ideas for your Facebook Cover images including a reminder of what it is important NOT to feature in your image.

Tour America made an update to their cover image ahead of St Patrick’s Day featuring St Patrick’s Day celebrations in New York – right on brand for them since their business is all about the US as a holiday destination for those of us from Ireland.

4FM a radio station showcased one of our Irish landmark buildings lit up in green

Visit Dublin the Facebook Page for Failte Ireland (he National Tourism Development Authority) updated their Facebook cover image during St Patrick’s Day to feature a photo from yesterday’s parade and they also previously changed their Profile picture to be a calendar image of 17 March to promote St Patrick’s Day ahead of the celebrations.

The RTÉ Player (a free online catch-up service to watch programmes replays of shows by our National broadcaster) have taken the opportunity to remind us that we can watch a re-play of the St Patrick’s Day celebrations on their player if we missed their live show.

I should add that RTE also changed their YouTube channel image to celebrate St Patrick’s Day too.

SpunOut the Irish non-profit youth charity shared a message wishing their Fan’s a Happy St Patrick’s Day.

Rick O’Shea, radio show broadcaster with RTE2FM used his Facebook cover image to remind people to watch his show ‘How to be Irish’ – a TV show capturing people’s thoughts on how to be Irish. You can catch the “How To Be Irish”  show on the RTE Player YouTube here.

Renault Ireland didn’t update their cover image but they did take the opportunity to change their Profile picture and added a shamrock to it.

What other Facebook Pages did you notice celebrate St Patrick’s Day in your country with their cover images? Remember to let us know.

7 Irish Facebook Timeline Cover Images Celebrating St Patricks Day is an article post from: Biz Growth News – please do share the article with your network if you found it of value. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.

If you have not already heard about the terrific conference that is taking place this week in Wexford for small and medium enterprises looking for guidance on how to accelerate your business using technology, you will want to check out the Techovate conference website.

There is an impressive line up of speakers including Cisco, Eircom, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, IBM, Microsoft and PwC.

As I reference in my recent article about recommended conferences for 2012, the event is especially relevant for small and medium enterprises who are looking for guidance on how to improve their business performance using technology. Alongside the conference there is the opportunity to meet with Google, IBM, Microsoft and Cisco to ask them your tech questions about how their products and services could help you business in their “technology experience rooms”.

I am a speaker at Techovate 2012 and will be presenting on the afternoon of the first day of the conference. My session title is “Beyond Friends, Followers & Fans: Are you ready to be a social business?” where I will be sharing my five step process that you can adopt in your business to help you integrate social media communications into your business to build visibility, attract leads, increase referrals and boost profits.

Joining me in a panel discussion will be the other speakers for the social media and online communications session including Ciaran Quilty, Head of EMEA & Gaming, Global Marketing Solution for Facebook who will talk about how the social web can transform business and Bill Liao, Founder, SOS Ventures who will provide insights into the importance social media in your business.

HOW TO WIN A TICKET TO TECHOVATE 2012

I am delighted to have three free tickets to the two day conference available for my readers.

So if you would like to won a ticket (the value is €249 if you booked under the early bird offer) here’s what to do…

1. Tell me in 150 words or less the benefit to you of attending the event and how you would be plan to share your insights with colleagues in your organisation and your professional network so that one free ticket ticket benefits many people. Leave your entry in the comments section below including the web address of your company and your personal Twitter account details if you have one.

Entries must be in to be in by midnight Ireland/UK time on Monday 19 March 2012. Winners will be advised on Tuesday 20 March by email.

2. Once you have entered if you are on Twitter do send me a Tweet by clicking the link below – you can amend the Tweet before it is sent.

Tweet to @KrishnaDe

Entry requirements: You must be over 18 years of age to enter and be the owner or a senior manager in a start up or small or medium business. You should also be able to attend BOTH days of the conference. No alternative prize to the free ticket will be available and only one person per organisation can win a ticket.

Good luck!

Win A Ticket To Attend The Techovate Conference, Wexford 21-22 March 2012 is an article post from: Biz Growth News – please do share the article with your network if you found it of value. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.

I often get asked what conferences I recommend people attend so if you are based in Ireland or the UK I thought I would curate a list of events that I recommend you consider attending if you are an executive or leader interested in social media and integrated marketing.

I will update this list during the course of the year so if you have a suggestion that you think should be added do leave a message in the comments or through our support desk. For some of the later events the speakers have not been announced so I have added Twitter profiles were they are available so you can follow them to watch out for details – including of course their early bird tickets!

Techspectations Get Started (Free Half Day Conference)

Date: 20 March 2012

Follow @techspectations

Dublin City University Techspectations team host terrific free events and the ‘Get Started’ conference is perfect if you are considering starting your own business in 2012.

Techovate – Learn How To Use Technology To Drive Your Business

Date: 21-22 March 2012

Follow @techovate2012

The conference is taking place in Wexford and is being billed as “business transformation event”.  There is an impressive line up of speakers including Cisco, Eircom, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, IBM, Microsoft and PwC.

This event is especially relevant for small and medium enterprises who is looking for guidance on how to improve your business performance using technology and as well as the conference there is the opportunity to meet with Google, IBM, Microsoft and Cisco in their “technology experience rooms”.

Disclosure – I am also a speaker at the conference and have three passes for the conference available – find out how you could win a pass to this event here (link to be posted 18 March)

Social Media World Forum Europe

Date: 27-28 March 2012

Follow @SocialMediaWF

Having attended the Social Media World Forum in 2011 the one comment I would make is that it’s best to attend with a colleague as there are so many interesting content streams covering social business, social TV social shopping, mobile marketing and marketing technology.

The event is taking place in London.

This is one event that I wish my diary allowed me to attend as amongst the speakers will be social media authorities Chris Brogan and Scott Monty of Ford both of whom rarely speak at conference in Europe. Take a look at the agenda – there is an impressive line up of brands and media companies at the event.

Public Sector IT Leaders National Forum

Date: 29 March 2012

If you are a business leader in the public sector in Ireland then I recommend that you check out this event. Topics covered will include cloud computing, social media and mobile technology and there is a unique opportunity to hear insights from the programme director for the UK Cabinet Office on their cloud computing strategy.

Disclosure – I am a speaker at this event.

Sunday Business Post National Digital Media And Marketing Summit

Date: 29 March 2012

Follow @digital_summit

This event is taking place in Dublin and features speakers from Ireland. It will provide you with an overview of key trends  in digital marketing.

Ireland and UK Moodlemot

Date: 2-4 April 2012

Follow @moodleireland

If you are interested in online learning then check out this event taking place in Dublin. Moodle is free open source software that you can use to enable online learning in your organisation and the programme has content for beginers through to those already using the platform for learning and development.

The National Cloud Computing Conference

Date: 25 April 2012, Dublin

Follow @techspectations

At this free event about cloud computing you will discover how cloud computing is relevant for your business. The conference speakers include Paul Rellis (Managing Director, Microsoft Ireland), Colm Lyon (CEO, Realex), Mark Kellett (CEO, Magnet Networks) and Sean O’Sullivan (SOS Ventures).

PRII Annual Conference 2012: Reputation Management in the Age of Digital

Date: 26 April 2012

This event is taking place in Dublin and will include case studies and discussion panels with speakers from McDonald’s Restaurants of Ireland, An Garda Síochána and the Health Service Executive

Irish Internet Annual Conference – Building Brics Enabling Business Expansion

Date: 10 May 2012

Follow @iia

This event will take place in Dublin and if you are looking to expand your business into international markets and want to learn how the Internet and mobile technologies can help you then this could be the event for you.

Media Future Conference

Date: 14-15 May 2012

Follow @mediafutureconf

This event takes place in Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin and offers both the opportunity to hear from leading authorities in the media including The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review and The Washington Post and learn how they are adapting  to the changing trends in technology.

Le Web London

Date: 19-20 June 2012

Follow @leweb

For the first time ever the well know technology conference Le Web will be taking place in London. The ticket price is significantly more than you might invest for other conferences you will find listed here – but if you are a start up they do have a heavy discount you can avail of.

Speakers include well know authorities in technology including Jeremiah Owyang and Robert Scoble.

Dublin Web Summit

Date: 17-18 October 2012

Follow @WebsummitHQ

This event grows from strength to strength and is a must attend event if you are an early stage start up in the technology sector as it’s a great place to network not just hear from others entrepreneurs who have already launched successful businesses.

Photo credit: Vanz on Flickr

Recommended Marketing And Social Media Conferences For Leaders And Entrepreneurs 2012 is an article post from: Biz Growth News – please do share the article with your network if you found it of value. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.

If you check into Google’s search engine today in some countries today including including Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Denmark, the UK, and of course Ireland you will find the Google Doodle celebrates St Patrick’s Day.

The Google Doodle was drawn by Chinese American artist Jennifer Hom who is based in New York. and is inspired by the Book of Kells.

The Washington Post reports that Hom worked on the Google St Patrick’s Day 2012 doodle for 40 hours over four days.

Hom comments that she had to zoom in by 300 percent to render the precise Celtic knots which is closer than the Doodle artists typically work given their limited canvas of 300 to 400 pixels wide and about 100 pixels tall.

The article also has a series of images showing the development of the Google doodle.

For my American friends, did you know that:

• around 35 million Americans claim Irish ancestry which is approximately 10% of the country’s population
• off the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, eight were of Irish descent; in fact, three of them — Matthew Taylor, James Smith and George Thornton were born in Ireland
• of the  44 US presidents, half of them (22) claim Irish ancestry.

The History Of The St Patrick’s Day Google Doodle

And if you are interested in a look back over the previous Google celebrations for St Patrick’s Day, here is a great YouTube video:

How To Say Happy St Patrick’s Day In Irish

If you would like to impress your friends by wishing them Happy St Patrick’s Day in Irish here is how you do so thanks to my friends over at StatCounter:

Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Duit (to one person) – pronounced: Law ale-ah paw-rig sun-ah ditch)

Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh (to more than one person) – pronounced: Law ale-ah paw-rig sun-ah deev)

Hope you have a wonderful St Patrick’s Day weekend!

The St Patrick’s Day Google Doodle 2012 Inspired By The Book Of Kells is an article post from: Biz Growth News – please do share the article with your network if you found it of value. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.

Earlier this month, LinkedIn announced that it now has more than 150 million members across 200 hundred countries with more than 34 million members in Europe. At the time of writing this article there are almost 9 million LinkedIn members in the UK and over 650,000 members in Ireland.

There has never been a more important time to ensure that your LinkedIn personal profile represents your ‘best professional self’. I’ve worked with professional services firms whose managing partner and executive team review the LinkedIn profiles of people they will be presenting a tender to. It is absolutely not just the job seeker that is using LinkedIn.

Why are people who have never met you reviewing your LinkedIn profile? Well it’s everything from reviewing your background as you may be someone that they would like to approach about a business opportunity, through to which mutual business contacts all of which can point to how to build rapport in your meeting.

You might have noticed the green coloured bar on the right hand side of your profile with a percentage noting how complete your profile is. If you do want to increase your visibility within LinkedIn search results, one of the important factors that is taken into consideration is how complete your profile is.

LinkedIn has recently changed it’s algorithm in relation to how they calculate if your profile is 100 per cent complete – this is particularly helpful for those of you who are early in your career.

Here are the factors you need to focus on to achieve 100 per cent completeness of your LinkedIn personal profile:

1. Add a professional picture

Your photograph should represent you professionally – this is not the same photograph that you may use on your personal profile on Facebook. Nor should it be a logo for your company. LinkedIn comments that  ‘adding a profile photo makes your profile seven times more likely to be found in searches’.

2. Update your profile with your career history

LinkedIn recommends that you list all the jobs or positions you have held including descriptions of the roles. I would caution against adding ALL your positions especially if you have had many intern positions, or if like me, you have a very long (in years) career history. You certainly need to include the key positions that will demonstrate your professional expertise.

LinkedIn comment that ‘having your 2 most recent positions makes your profile 12x more likely to be found’.

3. Portray your Skills

You might have noticed the area on your personal profile called ‘Skills’ – listing 5 or more skills will fast track you on your way to having a complete LinkedIn profile. Against each Skill you can also list your level of expertise and how many years you have developed that skills for.

4. Create an engaging summary

Use this area to portray your differentiation and also include how you can help people who are looking to connect with you.

5. Include your industry and postal code

You will find this area at the top of your LinkedIn profile – just click the edit function and update the area that asks for your ‘Location and Industry’.

6. Display where you went to school

In the ‘Education’ area of your profile you can add your school and also the universities or colleges you have attended.

For those of you with a lot of career  experience it’s not the primary reason people will look to work with you – this can be moved to the bottom of your personal profile on LinkedIn and does not have to appear in search results.

However, completing this feature will help you move your profile to be 100 per cent complete.

7. Grow your network

We all have different goals for being a member of LinkedIn, and equally have different personal priorities on who we want to connect with.

LinkedIn does however look for us to have more than 50 connections to get our profile to be 100 per cent complete. So look for opportunities to connect to business colleagues and re-connect to people you have worked with in the past.

But do remember good LinkedIn etiquette (a subject I will be covering in a forthcoming article) and include a personal note in your invitations to connect with people.

8. Keep your LinkedIn profile up to date

An important factor that LinkedIn recently announced is that the rating assigned to your LinkedIn profile completeness is that they also take ‘profile freshness’ into consideration. So if you update your profile frequently, that can now help with profile completeness.

So whether you are searching for a new role or want to be found in LinkedIn search results for the expertise that you have developed your complete and up to date LinkedIn profile means that you will increase your online visibility.

Eight simple steps to achieve a completed LinkedIn personal profile is an article post from: Biz Growth News – please do share the article with your network if you found it of value. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.

Google again has a great video to celebrate Valentines Day when you go to their search engine.

Here are some interesting facts about how we search on Valentines Day provided by Hitwise:

• 6.7 million UK Internet visits were made in the category ‘Flowers and Gifts’ in the week ending 11 February 2011, amounting to 830,000 hours
• Although Valentine’s Day is an important period for online florists, in 2011 there were 4% more visits to florists online on Mother’s Day than there were on Valentine’s Day
• Valentine’s cards are the most searched on item with five times as many searches as flowers every year
• While Valentine’s Day is all about love, February was one of the worst months of the year for visits to dating websites in 2011
• 3% of all Valentine’s searches are for poems
• There were 65 unique search variations in the four weeks ending 11 February 2012 relating specifically to Valentine’s chocolates and sweets.

So how could you share a little love with your Valentine online? Here are five ideas for you:

Lidl Ireland have a Facebook competition where not only can you personalise a video message for your Valentine, you also get the chance to be entered into a competition.

Innocent Smoothies have a Valentines app where you can personalise the label to print our and then pass your Valentine a healthy drink. A great idea if you could get the app to work (which unfortunately I couldn’t).

Ted Williams, the voice of KRAFT Mac and Cheese will record  your Tweet to your Valentine – you can Tweet #voiceoflove and for each one KRAFT will donate 100 boxes of mac and cheese (up to 100,000 boxes)to Feeding America a hunger relief charity. You can see the video messages on their YouTube channel.

Find out who you ‘love’ on Twitter to send them a personal Valentines day message using the Twit Amore app – I should also mention that this was developed by Irish web developer Lee Monroe. Using the Twitter API, it looks up who you follow, reviews your timeline and your favourite tweets to determine who your Twitter Valentine is.

And of you can not stretch to buying a dozen red roses, why not give your Valentine what everyone should own – a ‘dot me’ domain to help them represent their personal brand online –  the every inventive Blacknight Irish hosting and web domain provider has the solution for you at their newly launched site BeMyValentine.me promoting the .me and .eu domains.

What other examples have you seen of digital apps to help you celebrate Valentines Day?

Valentines Day digital data and digital apps to share the love is an article post from: Biz Growth News – please do share the article with your network if you found it of value. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.

As we approach the end of the first month of the year how are you progressing with your objectives and goals? The chances are you started off the year with great expectations of all the things you wanted to achieve in the first quarter of the year, but one or two things have not gone to plan.

Many of us find ourselves in the situation where we want and need to be more productive – in fact I don’t think I have met anyone in the last 3 years who has not remarked that they have to achieve more with fewer resources.

One of the people I know is constantly researching and applying tips to be more productive is Keith Bohanna. We met several years ago and while we don’t see each other often, I know that this is a passion for him.

Late last year I noted Keith was offering ‘taster workshop’ on the subject of productivity – something he does along side his consulting assignments and his postion as Chair of the Irish Internet Association.

So I thought who better to share with us tips to ensure that we keep the achievement of our goals on track by increasing our productivity. Here are the questions I asked Keith and his responses.

Krishna: One of the challenges many of us have is the issue of email overload. Can you share with us tips to manage or email inbox more effectively?

Keith: Here are four actions you can take immediately.

1. Close your email client and only check from hourly to twice a day. It’s not urgent, no one will notice. Except you – because you will become a lot more focused on your work.

2. Create ‘rules’ for your email folders. If you are in a corporate environment consider an inbox rule which automatically moves into a folder all emails in which you ar receiving copies of emails (where you are included as a ‘cc’). Follow this tip for a month and see if you miss anything important to getting your job done.

3. Use an alternative tool to email. Consider introducing a tool such as Chatter (from Salesforce) or Yammer. They are highly effective for the non-urgent, random, “water cooler” and group list emails from others within your business or organisation. For smaller groups or sole traders you could use these tools for projects that you collaborate on with others.

4. Read each email once and immediately decide what to do with it. That means actually reading it. Slowly. Not skimming over it and hoping the contents get magically “absorbed” into your head. The decision should be:
a)   it needs action – move the email into your project/to-do system
b)   no action required – delete or archive the email
c)   reference – move the email into your reference system.

Krishna: With many people using social media as part of their communications tool kit, what recommendations do you have to ensure that people manage their time effectively in these chanels?

Keith: Social media platforms can be managed effectively and here are three recommendations for you.

1. Make good use of your smart phone. Take the opportunity to install social media applications on your phone and use the periods you have ‘down time’ for the casual interactions.

2. Use tools to manage online mentions. Be methodical around monitoring mentions of your business or brand by using free tools (for example Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are two popular tools) and do so two or three times a day. Once you are happy you have set the search terms,  this will save you time.

3. Establish your social media goals. Have clear objectives for your use of social media (unless it is purely personal or useed for peer to peer contact). Record those measures and track them weekly and monthly.

Krishna: Many people communte to work or travel a lot for business meetings. Can you share with us tips to stay productive when travelling?

Keith: I travel for business and and I find these tips help.

1. Use Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) email and not Post Office Protocol (POP).  With POP you may read and sort all your new mail on your mobile device, but when you log back into your computer you will be presented with a full inbox of unread messages that you have to re-read and re-organise. This can be very frustrating. You will need to speak to your IT department (or if you are a solo preneur speak to your IT savvy friends) to put this into practice. If you use Gmail you can find out more details here.

2. Get in sync. You need all of your contacts, calendar and key documents to be identical or able to be accessed on every working device you have. Evernote and Dropbox lead the field here with their ability to keep everything you need accessible to you everywhere and without thinking or active effort – thats the important bit here!

3. Make use of your ‘down time’. Whether you are travelling by train, plane or car, you can take the opportunity to do tasks which you do not need to be in the office to undertake. For example, doing a review of your projects is perfect for a train or plane where you have minimal interruptions and a chance to focus. In your car listen to podcast materials relevant to your work or of interest to you.

Krishna: Can you recommended resources or applications to help us be more productive?

Keith: There are a large number of apps and services which can help you – which you choose will depend on your personal circumstances.

1. For Outlook users consider Getting Things Done® Outlook® Add-In  by Netcentrics – it layers GTD functionality over the usual Outlook interface. Getting Things Done (or GTD) is a productivity approach pioneered by David Allen.

2. For Gmail users I recommend you try Active Inbox – it is a free plugin that installs into Chrome and Firefox, which helps you manage your email tasks and projects supporting the Getting Things Done appoach.

3. For a tool independent of your email client check out Remember The Milk. It is a free task manager application and a firm favorite in the ‘ThinkProductive’ office and runs across apps on all platforms for example Apple, Android and Blackberry.

Krishna: You have shared thirteen great tipsso perhaps you can share a fourteenth tip for those readers who prefer even numbers! Can you share a bonus tip of something that you are working on to help you be even more productive in 2012?

Keith: My final tip is all about Focus. It is not about ‘doing stuff’ (and definitely not about compiling lists of things to do).

The secret to making 2012 great for us all is to ‘pull up’ out of the day-to-day and give ourselves time to get clear on the key projects that will make a real difference.

Once you have identified those projects, then you can start to shift your ‘day-to-day activities’ to favour those projects. Even if you cannot do so immediately, you should make significant progress over a couple of months.

I do hope these tips help you be more productive in 2012. Thank you Krishna for the invitation to share these tips with you and hope they go some way to making 2012 more enjoyable for your readers!

A SPECIAL OFFER TO HELP YOU BE MORE PRODUCTIVE IN GETTING THINGS DONE IN 2012

If you want to learn more about beoming more productive and explore the setting-up of a personal productivity system, I highly recommed that you check out the forthcoming workshop that Keith will be facilitating for ThinkProductive, “How to Get Things Done”. It takes place in Dublin on 7 February 2012.

You can find out more details on the Think Productive website and Keith has generously offered a 15 percent discount to anyone who books using the code Krishna15 when booking your place.

Note – this is not an affiliate programme so I don’t get a referral fee – it’s a kind offer from Keith tmy Biz Growth Community.

14 tips to help you be more productive ‘getting things done’ in 2012 is an article post from: Biz Growth News – please do share the article with your network if you found it of value. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.

As part of the preparation I also had the opportunity to get involved in Irish research developed for the conference and in collaboration with Rachel Dalton of RD Communications and Oisin Byrne of iReach. Here is a summary of the Irish research I presented.

• We explored the categories that female Irish consumers research after receiving a recommendation for a product or service – the most popular being holidays (78%), electronics and household appliances (62%), PC’s and technology (59%) and entertainment e.g. movies and restaurants (58%)
• We found that men search online more than women in the categories of automotive, electronics and household appliances, technology and telecommunications
• 87 percent of female Irish consumers research online before making a decision to purchase a product or service
• 84 percent of female Irish consumers indicated they are more likely to purchase when they can find recommendations about products and services online (this was 92% for the 18-24 year old age group)
• Overall, 70 percent of female Irish consumers who comment that negative information online has made them change their mind about purchasing a product or service recommended to them
• Overall, 80 percent of female Irish consumers who comment that positive information online has reinforced their decision to purchase a product or service recommended to them
• When researching to make a purchase, the majority of female Irish consumers start their search with a search engine
• When researching to make a purchase, for female Irish consumers, the next most popular place to start a search is a retailer site
• When researching to make a purchase, a minority of female Irish consumers search on a manufacturer’s site, with this being more likely for an older consumer
• 47% of female Irish consumers had used a daily deal or group buying site to make a purchase in the last 3 months.

I also talked about global research in my presentation (which you can download here) and summarised my session with the following seven points:

1. Learn about your own consumer – what do they search for when looking for your products or services and what device do they use
2. Extend your marketing personas – include digital insights about your consumer
3. Integrate mobile marketing – include mobile marketing and mobile commerce in your marketing plans
4. Meet consumers where they are online – experiment with social commerce and look for ways to build engagement in Facebook with the development of apps
5. Hyper-target and personalise your communications - ensure that your adverts and your marketing message is relevant to your consumer and target audience
6. Invest in your website – search engine optimisation is critical and consider integrating the ability for consumers to leave reviews
7. Proactively manage your online reputation – invest resources to track brand mentions and use the information to enhance products and services alongside your sales and marketing processes

In these challenging economic times remember that price and value for money, service and quality will help you retain your customer and attract more word of mouth referrals.

I hope this research inspires you to further understand the female consumer who in Western Europe and the US strongly influences consumer purchases.

I will be publishing the extended research report later this month, but in the meantime, if you have any questions about marketing to women using online or offline communications don;t hesitate to post them to my Facebook Page.

You can see my presentation about marketing to women in the digital age below.

Digital Influence And The Female Irish Consumer

Marketing To Women: research about digital influence and the female Irish consumer is an article post from: Biz Growth News – please do share the article with your network if you found it of value. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.

Then here is a book I highly recommend that you read – and make sure that you read to end of this article as for today only you can access the book at NO COST.

The book is called “Twitter for Good: Change the world one Tweet at a Time” and is authored by Twitter’s own Claire Diaz-Ortiz who leads social innovation and philanthropy.

I was delighted to receive access to”Twitter for Good” from Claire’s publisher Jossey-Bass and found it to be a great, accessible read in which Claire shares her tips for your Twitter communications plan which she describes as T.W.E.E.T and covers each area in depth with lots of Twitter case studies of non profits using Twitter effectively to achieve their organisations goals. T.W.E.E.T stands for:

1. - Target
2. - Write
3. - Engage
4. - Explore
5. - Track.

In “Twitter for Good”, Claire covers what she sees are the three most common types of Twitter accounts used by organisations:

• Information accounts – providing information and resources around a given subject matter
• Personalised accounts – putting a human face to the business or organisation
• Fund raising account – where the goal is accessing donations.

In my experience there are a number of organisations who are also setting up accounts for their non profit which represent the PR or communications team where they post official information and press releases and are the account that connects with journalists and the media.

Of course if you are a commercial organisation you may have Twitter accounts for a specific brand, product, service or campaign and of course one for customer support and even an account for recruitment and hiring.

I highly recommend “Twitter for Good” as helpful resource for your non profit, providing you with lots of examples of case studies that you can be inspired by.

But here is the really great news – for the next 24 hours (starting midnight Pacific Time on 6 September) Claire and her publishers have made it possible for you to access the book at no cost!

You can find Twitter for Good online in the US at:

• Amazon in the Kindle bookstore
• Apple iBookstore
• Barnes & Noble
• Google eBookstore
• Kobo
• Sony.

You can find Twitter for Good online in the UK at:

• Amazon UK in the Kindle bookstore
• Apple iBookstore
• Kobo.

NOTE: you don’t need to have an Amazon Kindle to read your Amazon ebook – you can access Kindle ebooks on your computer.

Be sure to Tweet that you have accessed “Twitter for Good” and tell your network on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – and if you are using Twitter use the hash tag ‘#Twitter4Good” – and don’t forget to leave a review of the book on the online bookstore you access it.

And if you enjoy reading “Twitter for Good” why not buy a copy and pass it to a friend in your network of non profits to help them build visibility, awareness and attract volunteers and donations to their organisation?

If you are having great success with your Twitter campaign for your non profit, please do leave your tips below or post them over at my Facebook Page.

Book Review: Twitter for Good – Change the world one tweet at a time, an essential guide to Twitter for non profits is an article post from: Biz Growth News – please do share the article with your network if you found it of value. Remember to join our Facebook Page to access 5 marketing tutorials.