Uncategorized, social media, IIA Digital Toolshed
IIA Toolshed – Influencer Tools
IIA Toolshed #5
Influencer Tools
Tooler’s Choice? Buzzsumo is an online tool that tracks content on all social networking sites and ranks them based on the number of shares on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest. It allows you to find out what content is popular by topic or on any website. You can input search criteria and find out what content is already working in your area so you can identify some quick wins for social content production. Buzzsumo allows you to set up keyword alerts, so you are updated when content is posted or updated. Knowing what content is working on social for your competitors or other publishers in your industry is very helpful. Buzzsumo is a great way to find top content around specific keywords, phrases or topics which is a very useful tool when turning a content plan or strategy into a content calendar of topics. Be careful when using Buzzsumo that you don’t fall into the comfort zone of writing about what is already doing well instead of finding new topics that haven’t been written about yet but combined with other tools Buzzsumo is an excellent tool in the social or content marketers toolkit. You can also track social influencers by keyword and sector. Overall it is very powerful for social content but the free version is limited.
What’s next from the IIA Toolshed? Marketing Automation
IIA Digital Toolshed
IIA Toolshed – Social Media Design Tools
IIA Toolshed #4
Social Media Design Tools
Tooler’s Choice?
We looked at four social media Design Tools, no one is the winner because they are all very different and serve different needs.
What is IIA Toolshed? IIA Toolshed is a group of digital marketers & digital experts who know how difficult it is to keep up with the ever changing array of tools at our fingertips, to supposedly make doing business easier! To make things simpler, we’ve come together to test, evaluate and share the reviews of a broad selection of tools & technologies, to ultimately make the decision easier for you, when choosing what tools might best suit your business needs. At the IIA Toolshed, we come together every 6 weeks to evaluate a set of tools for a particular business objective, and we’ll publish our findings right here.
Who are we? The Toolers who took part this month are:
- Maryrose Lyons, Brightspark Consulting
- Eoin Kennedy, eoinkennedy.ie
- Felicity McCarthy, Sparkdigital.ie
- Ailbhe Lee, iia.ie
- Lynne Rourke, Buyandsell.ie
- Sasha Kinch, inm.ie
- David Cuddy, Realex
- Beatrice Whelan, Sage
Product Name | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Website | https://www.canva.com/ | http://piktochart.com/ | https://venngage.com/ | http://www.picmonkey.com/ | http://makeagif.com/ | https://www.draw.io |
What Is It | It is an online image creation and editing tool. Has been hailed as "The easiest to use design program in the world” – The Webby | Web based infographic software. Works best at creating visuals using your data sets. Not recommended for creating a simple visual. | It is an online infographic maker | A very powerful image creation and editing tool for markers who are not Graphic Designers. Great for editing images, creating logos and even infographics. | Its an online GIF making site, where you can very quickly make a give from images, videos or even youtube videos | draw.io (formerly Diagramly) is free online diagram software that can be used as a flowchart maker, network diagram software but also a handy editing and design tool. |
What's It Like To Use? | Very quick and easy. It is used by non-designers as well as professionals.It can be used for both web and print media design and graphics. | Very quick to get started, easy drag and drop feature allows you to build presentation or infographic quickly. Good selection of templates. | It is a simple platform to use for creating infographics. It has a number sample templates to get inspiration from. However, the majority of templates are only available for paid subscribers. Easy drag and drop interface allows rapid infographic building with elements such as charts, maps, pictograms, icons, text, images and more. | It can be a little intimidating and even fiddly to use initially. There are so many features and options that you can use. However once you get the hang of PicMonkey you can edit and design images in minutes. | It's very easy to use, very straightforward UI, but its sole use is for making GIF's. | The user interface initially appears intimidating as there is a lot of functionality and each session begins with a blank canvas. There is no registration and you literally start to design from scratch but the process is fairly intuitive. You can import images, add text with lots of export options and formats. |
Is There Anything I Should Know? | Social-media and technology expert Guy Kawasaki joined the company as chief evangelist in April 2014. When you pay for an image, you only have rights for 24 hours. Good news - you only pay for what you use. Bad news - users might get an unpleasant surprise if they need to re-purchase an image. This is not made super clear in the interface. | It takes quite a while (marginal few extra seconds) to save, even when you haven't edited anything : ( | In order to unlock all the features you'll need to subscribe for a premium version ($15/month). With the Premium version you are able to export the infographics into PDF and PNG formats. The product was created by Eugene Woo who is also the founder of vizualize.me which is an infographic maker for resumes. | PicMonkey has a free version, but images fonts and functionality are limited. I would strongly recommend upgrading to the paid version (known as Royale Membership). It is inexpensive - $33 a year, billed annually or $4.99 a month. The paid version gives an unbelievable number of image overlays and design templates. One downside of PicMonkey is it does not allow you to re-edit images or even save a "work in progress" for a later date. One big downfall with PicMonkey is that it is desktop only. A Mobile App would be really useful. | There is no need to sign in/register to make a GIF, but having a profile gives you more flexibility (there is a limit to the lenght of the gif you can make without signing in). Also before signing in, Youtube gifs seem to not work properly. Registration is free, and very quick and easy. Once you are registered you can remove the watermark. They have an chrome extension which seems to work pretty well and is easy to use. Its also possible to share to your social profiles (in many different ways) from within the app. Note there is a limit to the video upload size ( MB). There is virtually no editing of videos - it is just a GIF maker. | This tools is really designed for rapid building of flow charts but could also be used for enhancing, editing and producing good graphics for social media output. There are limited stock graphics available in the search bar - mainly icon style but currently it is a free tool with future licensing planned. |
Who would you recommend it for? | Creating images for use on social networks, in presentations or for print. | Any small business currently outsourcing design work. | For businesses wishing to create quality infographics without the cost of in-house designers | Any business that wants to create great looking images for their marketing materials and social media posts without the cost of a graphic designer. | Creating GIFs quickly from photos, videos, webcam or youtube. Especially useful for companies with lots of related images and willing to experiment in visual story telling. | Creating images and assets with flow chart elements or basic editing of images |
Cost | Free unless you purchase images. It would be preferable if you could arrange to view images by Free/Paid. Payment mechanism is cr card only (no PayPal). You have rights for 24 hours to edit imagery. £1 or €1 only. | "Free" but with watermark. Starts at $15/month. Templates, icons, 100MB download (no watermark?) Moves to $29/month (everything) | Two plans: Free and Premium ($15/month) | There is a Free option, but it is limited. I would strongly recommend upgrading to the paid version (known as Royale Membership). It is inexpensive - $33 a year, billed annually or $4.99 a month. The paid version gives an unbelievabile number of image overlays and design templates. | Free | Free but with future licensing planned. |
Specific Criteria (Out of 4) | ||||||
Size formats for various social platforms | 4 -Yes, it has pre-set up templates for Twitter header, FB cover, and all the main social channel image post sizes. | 3 - Yes you can change the canvas size. | 3 - the canvas size is customisable | 4 - There are plenty of size templates and you can customise your image or design to any size. | 1 - no not really, its an embedded link when sharing on Facebook/Twitter, but this is probably the right way for it to be shared | Size is pretty much determined by the edited size of the canvas. |
Purchase images | 4 - Yes, it has a range of free and priced images that you can search for from within the tool. You only pay when you publish the image - before publish you can use but they are watermarked.You can also upload your own images from your computer or Facebookor drag them from your desktop. | 0 - You cannot purchse images although there is an extensive libriary | 3 - free and for purchase images available. You can also upload own images | 2 - Once you have the paid version there are amazing templates, images and designs you can use. However you will most likely need to bring your own images to the PicMonkey table. | 0 - not relevant to this platform | 0. Some free icon style images available in search bar. |
Add transparencies | 4 - yes you can edit the transparency of layers. | 0 - no | 0 - no | 4 - Yes it is really easy to isolate images and add transparency of layers. | 0 - no editing capability | 0 - you can move images to background but no transparency |
Add layers | Yes, and you can easily move them back and forth - easier to use layers in this than it is in photoshop. | 2 - You can basic layers | 1 - you can add layers | 4 - Yes - very easy to layer images, text and photos. | 0 - no editing capability | 3 - Yes. Simple basic layering |
Editing capability | 4 | 4 | 3 - Fine | 3 - Once you create an image on PicMonkey you cannot re-edit it. However there is great editing features available when editing a picture. | 0 - no editing capability | 3 - Fine |
Add text & edit fonts | 4 - yes and good range of fonts | 4 - some really good fonts | 3 - fine, but could be more variety | 4 - loads of fonts and you can even import and use additional fonts on your pc. | 0 - no editing capability | 3 - Simply start typing. Can change text fonts etc |
Save templates | 3 - Yes although they are not called templates, you can save designs and copy designs to use them as templates for future designs. | 3 | 4 - Yes | 0 - Once you have created an image on PicMonkey you need to save it to your pc. They do not store your images, (This may be a good thing) | 0 - no editing capability | 3 - Yes |
Good range of export formats | 3 - presentation formats don't export to ppt compatible | 3 - limited to pdf formats and image formats. Will not export to ppt | 2 - pdf and png 4 - Dermot - export to Google Docs etc | 3 - Good format options. | 2 - GIF and MP4. Its more impressive that you can create a give in a few ways | 4 - wide range of drop down menu options of fromats and saving options from Google Drive, Dropbox to Browser. |
What did you love? | 4 -ease of use and the pre defined templates for social and ads. | 3 - SurveyMonkey Integration was great and really easy and quick to use and get started. | 3 - easy and quick to build infographics | 4 - Once I got used to it. It made me feel like a Photshop wizard without even going near the complexities of Photoshop. | It does what it says on the tin, no unnecessary frills | Although built for flowcharts it offers lots of functionality for creative use. Easy to play around with. |
What did you hate? | 3 - Very little. Can't believe there is no mobile option. Not even mobile optimised site. | 3 - Felt a bit like WordArt at times, limited shapes. Slight time delay can be annoying. | 1 - no keyboard shortcuts copy/paste like ctrl+c or ctrl+v, instead of clicking on delete button you need to use venngage interface button to delete items. | 3 - Only complaint is the inability to save and re-edit images. And the lack of a mobile app. | Inability to do ANY editing (even to flip the images around, which would be handy for videos taken on a phone). To get around this, upload the video to Youtube first. | Initial blank canvas and early learning curve. |
Are you going to continue using it? | 3 - Yes | 3 - Yes, good for reporting | 3 - Yes | 3 - Yes | 4 - Yes |
What’s next from the IIA Toolshed? Customer Service Tools
Uncategorized, social media, Social Media Working Group, new technology, IIA Toolshed, Social Media Monitoring
IIA Toolshed – Social Media Monitoring
IIA Toolshed #3
Social Media Monitoring
Tooler’s Choice?
We looked at four social media monitoring tools, no one is the winner because they are all very different and serve different needs.
- Market leader Radian6 from salesforce is powerful and provides all you need for monitoring and listening, but it is truly an enterprise solution and requires a hefty investment. For enterprise, Radian6 is one of the best there is.
- Mention is accessibly priced tool for medium sized companies, with budget, who have reasonably large web and social search monitoring needs and wish to centralised the management of these. Ideal for those who have report generating needs and wish to involve large teams.
- New Irish offering, Olytico is an interesting software and a service tool. You tell Olytico what keywords you want to track, they set up the searches for you, and you use the tool to view results. It neatly overcomes the problem that many face with social media monitoring tools of only being as good as your search terms, but this at times can be a bit limiting. We decided that Olytico is the perfect tool for agencies who need to report back on how far their client’s brand travelled across the social media spaces.
- Social Bakers is probably best suited to SME’s, although it only really monitors what’s being said about your own social media, rather than listening widely about broader conversations. It serves a purpose for bringing reporting together and does that very well, providing benchmark industry data.
What is IIA Toolshed? IIA Toolshed is a group of digital marketers & digital experts who know how difficult it is to keep up with the ever changing array of tools at our fingertips, to supposedly make doing business easier! To make things simpler, we’ve come together to test, evaluate and share the reviews of a broad selection of tools & technologies, to ultimately make the decision easier for you, when choosing what tools might best suit your business needs. At the IIA Toolshed, we come together every 6 weeks to evaluate a set of tools for a particular business objective, and we’ll publish our findings right here.
Who are we? The Toolers who took part this month are:
- Maryrose Lyons, Brightspark Consulting
- Eoin Kennedy, eoinkennedy.ie
- Felicity McCarthy, Sparkdigital.ie
- Ailbhe Lee, iia.ie
- Lynne Rourke, Buyandsell.ie
- Sasha Kinch, inm.ie
- David Cuddy, Realex
- Beatrice Whelan, Sage
Product Name | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Website | Radian6 | Mention | Olytico | Social Bakers |
What Is It? | Radian6 is a Social Media listening and monitoring tool owned by Salesforce.com. It is heavily integrated with other Salesforce products (Buddy Media) and features. Very often used as part of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud package. They are repackaging Radian6 with new features under a new name called Social Studio | Mention is a online social media monitoring tool that searches the main social media channels and incorporates alerts, responding capability, task assignment, reporting and analysis. | Software AND a service! It's a hybrid between self service and managed. You tell Olytico what you want to track, they set it up for you, and you can then do the monitoring yourself | Online, Self Service, Social Media Measurement Tool. Very good for competitive analysis & industry benchmark. Super basic for Free. Social Bakers Statistics = free. Marketing Suite = paid. Additional upgrade features = Analytics (customised reporting, benchmarking etc), Builder (Plan, publish, measure from single place), Advertising (plugin to FB & Twitter ads), Listening. |
What’s It Like To Use? | Simple to use. Set up automated searches by keywords and/or company name. Search by location for better results. One of the best things about Radian6 is its ability to turn searches into really digestible reports. Within seconds I can search, measure and identify business opportunities. It is great for analysing sentiment, monitoring competitors and identifying influencers and brand advocates. | Reasonably simple set up. Does a very broad search and generates good reports. Allows you to respond to mentions or allocate to team members. | Simple to use. It's all set up for you. Can view activity by day, and assign content to team members. Cannot track whether they have actually done something with it or not. It trawls all the main social platforms (FB pages plus open groups, not profiles), Flickr, Insta, not that strong on Pinterest, plus forums, and news sites. | It's easy to use at basic level. Free Trial offered for 2 weeks. Heavily focused on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. May be more customisation possible but not obvious. |
Does it give meaningful results for Ireland? | Yes - easy to limit results to Ireland only | Yes. Strong on Twitter especially when hashtaged | Yes. Strong on Ireland as you'd expect from an Irish tool. | Yes, as strong as any other country |
Is There Anything I Should Know? | Salesforce seem very cloak and dagger in giving anyone access to it unless they are a large multinational and already using the Salesforce platform. Very difficult to get a price list from them. They can penalise organisations when high volumes of data. | Range of functionality appears limited for the price. Much of the functionality could be achieved with free tools like google alerts and topsy/social mention. Low threshold on number of mentions means upgrade for busy accounts. | Workflow exists in that you can tick the box and assign content to team members. Team collaboration is coming, where you can mark it as done or dealt with. Good support function. | Ideally you should set up more than one business for benchmarking, so ideally you're monitoring you and your competition. I like the presentation format exportable reports. Love reports about which types of posts perform best, which times of day, and days of week, also industry benchmarks |
Who would you recommend it for? | Organisations already using the Salesforce.com platform. Great for big companies with a sizable budget and a large community to monitor and listen to. Possibly a good tool for Digital Agencies who want to offer listening and monitoring services to their clients. Enterprise. | Medium to large organisations with budget who wish to utilise the team collaboration features. Suitable for disparate enterprises centralising brand/company mentions who appear over a wide variety of online sites. | Agencies needing to track client mentions. Or brands/businesses who are being talked about widely and not just on FB and TW. Good example given was Jameson Film Festival, who were talked about widely for a month. No annual contract means they can sign up and use the tool just for the month. | Medium size businesses who are |
Cost inc VAT | Expensive - Pricing in Feb 2013 - The good folks at Radian6 got back to me and it turns out that they have changed their pricing model. There are now two different models: Business Model: $600 / month for up to 10,000 mentions Agency Model: $950 / month for up to 1 million mentions Historical Data: $100 / month going back to 2008 (except Twitter that goes back to 2010) Source Some hidden charges especially when there are peaks in activity, which seems counter intuitive | Starter $29, Growth $99, Company $299, Enterprise $799 (per month) | €700 per month, without limitation on keywords or Results or seat/user. If you want separate feeds per channel, €200 per additional channel. Single chanel is good 2-3 clients.. | "Free Trial for 2 weeks. $120 per month thereafter. I believe there are other more tiered products, but v difficult to get access, and default is to 120 per month. Social Bakers Statistics = free. Marketing Suite = paid. Additional upgrade features = Analytics (customised reporting, benchmarking etc), Builder (Plan, publish, measure from single place), Advertising (plugin to FB & Twitter ads), Listening." |
Name of Tool: | Radian6 | Mention | Olytico | Social Bakers |
Ease of Use | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 |
Price | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
Documentation | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
Mobile Compatible? |
3 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
Tablet Compatible? |
3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
Social Media Platforms It Monitors | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
Sentiment analysis | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Reporting | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
Unique Insights | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
Analytics? | 3 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
Any Restrictions? Gotchas? | Some hidden charges especially when there are peaks in activity, which seems counter intuitive | You can’t experiment with searches | No API integration | |
Customisable dashboard | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
Product Intuitiveness / UI | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 |
Team Collaboration Features? | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
Are we going to continue using it? | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
Total Score | 35 | 32 | 32 | 34 |
What’s next from the IIA Toolshed? Social Media Design Tools in July.
Summary:
Uncategorized, events, email marketing, Diploma, eCommerce
IIA Launches New Diploma in e-Commerce Management
The IIA in partnership with Irish Times Training are delighted to launch a brand new Diploma course in e-Commerce Management.
This Course covers everything you need to know to run a successful ecommerce business. Click here for more information.
Module 1: Planning your e-Commerce Customer Proposition
Lecturer: Ronan O’Brien of Zatori – The Costume Shop
Module 2: Business Planning
Lecturer: Fionan Dunne of CFO Services
Module 3: Effective Website Design
Lecturer: Gareth Dunlop of Fathom
Module 4: Driving Customer Traffic – PPC, SEO, Affiliate Marketing and E-Mail Marketing, Deals Management
Lecturer: Ronan O’Brien of Zatori
Module 5: Transaction Management
Lecturer: Bob Curran of Buy4Now
Module 6: eCommerce Customer Services: CRM – Relationships and Returns
Lecturer: Bob Curran of Buy4Now
Module 7: eCommerce Customer Services: Deliveries and Deadlines
Lecturer: Rory O’Connor of Scurri.com
Module 8: International e-Commerce: Translations & Transactions
Lecturer: Mark Rodgers of Cipherion Translations
Module 9: Metrics / Analytics
Lecturer : David Murphy of Amplify
Module 10: Content – Images and Copy
Lecturer: Fiona Ashe of FlasheForward Communications
Module 11: Mobile Commerce
Lecturer: Sian Gray, Mobile Marketing specialist (Nokia)
FREE Module : Breakfast Briefing Managing Customer Information: Your Legal Obligations as an eCommerce Manager from Gary Davies, Assistant Data Protection Commissioner
If you’ve got customer information on file you will need to know in what form and for how long you can store it. You will also need to know for what you may use it. You will need to be fully aware of your obligations as a retailer vis a vis Trading Standards etc.. This module is painful but necessary!
Social Media Working Group, Guest Blogger
Book Review: Engage or Die by Brian Solis
This is a guest post by Robert Purcell. Robert is a member of the IIA Social Media Working Group which seeks to support businesses in the development of strategies for engaging with social media. As Marketing Manager for Post Consult International Ltd. (PCI), Robert’s main focus is developing the marketing and product strategy for the company’s Security Solutions offered under the corporate brand, Post.Trust. Post.Trust is a national-level Certificate Authority, wholly owned by An Post, providing security solutions that enable organisations to communicate with one another more securely and confidently in a trusted environment. You can find him on LinkedIn or @robgerard on Twitter.
Engage! Revised and Updated: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web
Brian Solis (Author), Ashton Kutcher (Foreword)
The second edition of Engage! written by social media thought leader Brian Solis really is a fascinating read. I haven’t read the first edition, but this instalment focuses more on enabling you to design a new media engagement program specific to your business and your customers. It empowers you to develop metrics and KPIs to measure the success of your activities and translate that data into bottom-line benefits. As anyone who has ever tried to champion a social media program within their organisation knows; the first question you are asked is, What’s the ROI of social media? This book will help you answer that question.
A word of warning though – Engage! is not a book you can pick up and read from cover to cover. Sections of the book are quite dense and academic – but then isn’t that what you would expect a Complete Guide to be? The book doesn’t define its target audience but whether you are new to social media or experienced in social media marketing, this book has plenty of substance and will serve as a source of reference in your social media activities. As Solis says, this is an opportunity to “hit ctrl-alt-del and restart with a fresh perspective”.
The book starts by defining social media and introducing the arsenal of social media tools available for creating touchpoints across the Social Web. It explores building a framework to amplify the visibility of your social objects, extending the reach of your online presence to new audiences, and defining the end game, ultimately guiding people to action through participating, listening and engagement.
Solis reminds us that understanding the rules of engagement is critical in this new world of socialised media. It’s about training and putting the necessary policies and guidelines in place to ensure everyone is singing from the same hymn book. The latter part of the book looks at the realignment and restructuring the organisation as part of this socialisation process. Finally, it focuses on the management of this social media activity; how to track, measure and translate that social data into tangible value for the business.
Solis discusses the concept of unmarketing as one of the most effective forms of marketing in this new genre of socialised media and really unmarketing underpins the ‘How’ organisations should use Social Media. Marketing is no longer about broadcasting brand messages – it’s about embodying the characteristics of your brand, being an active participant in the conversation, contributing value to earn relevance, build influence and create brand advocacy and loyalty toward a desired outcome.
At times, reading the book was a bit of a slog and I found myself going back over passages each time I picked it up because there was a lot to absorb. But on the whole, I found it uplifting and insightful, reaffirming my understanding of the real power of Social Media – so stick with it. Solis’s voice comes through the words on the page, inspiring the reader to embrace the social web, to champion new media engagement and become the expert to drive change within the organisation. The book is ‘peppered’ with frameworks, methodologies and tools to assist you in your journey towards building a two-way information bridge between the organisation and the online communities in those networks you choose to participate.
As Solis says, “The future of business is social”. Social Media cannot be confined to one person or department. The entire business must socialise. Organisations must embrace and ride the social wave or risk being engulfed by it.
“The greatest advantages of social media reside in its ability for worthy individuals and companies to shape perception, steer activity, incite action, and adapt to the communities that establish the market. Engage or die.”
Brian Solis is regarded as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. Engage! is available on iTunes, Kindle, online bookstores and a book store near you.
Social Media Working Group, Guest Blogger
Sugru – Marketing Through Word of Mouth and User Generated Content
I have been intrigued by sugru and how it achieved so much in a short period of time since seeing them in Time magazine and buying/testing some of its products over Christmas.
Company founder Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh from Kilkenny shared some insights into the company and how it has made great strides in getting and harnessing user generated content in its social media platforms and achieved worldwide word of mouth exposure.
Sugru (www.sugru.com) is a UK based company that has invented a silicone based modelling clay that helps people fix or improve everyday items. The product itself is a new development in this class and has some unique properties in that it cures at room temperature, is very self-adhesive, heat resistant, waterproof, flexible and dishwasher proof. The company has one core product with 5 colours and has shifted over 40,000 units in its first few months.
How did the idea come about?
The idea came from a process of material experimentation and an observation of the development of the open source community. Jane has an active interest in how additional life can be given to products and giving people an ability to ‘hack’ and personalise products.
She felt that traditional product design was very static in that once a product emerged from the factory, there was very little interaction where focus should be on discovering and finding out how people use it at home and other areas. This could lead to better products and also connects the company with its user base.
How did the idea come into fruition?
Jane’s story reflects many other SMEs as they build their brand but some initial kick starts have really helped. Jane’s product came from research she did when studying at the Royal College of Design in London, following previous study at NCAD in Dublin. One of the big lifts she received was when the British Airways inflight magazine featured the product in a column which sparked off lots queries from consumers and people in industry.
With help of the innovation department in the college she set up sugru with business partner Roger Ashby and after six years of development and initial grant and investment funding of £350,000, with a modest investment of £100,000 they converted their lab into a production facility. Their initial production of 1,000 packs sold out in 6 hours following their launch and they knew they had a viable business but needed to scale up production.
How do you go to market?
sugru is mainly sold from its website and also through some shops in Ireland/UK and is now in the process of setting up in the US.
- 25% of its orders come from UK,
- 45% from US with
- Ireland and Germany accounting for much of the remaining sales.
Initially they have focused on shipping small single orders and reacting to who wanted to buy it from the website but are now scaling to additional retail distribution.
What marketing do you deploy?
sugru defied much of the text book approach to marketing in that it spends very little on traditional marketing.
Most of sugru’s growth has come from word of mouth which has led to some high profile articles on the company also the inclusion in Time Magazine’s Top 50 Inventions and features in the Irish Times amongst others.
Its website, blog, email and social media platforms are still the key drivers of the business and Jane manages these directly. The company also organises and facilitates ‘Hack It Sessions’ such as a recent one in 091 labs in Galway.
Social Media Presence
According to Jane
“the Blog has been brilliant in terms of articulating our mission. This is not just a product. It was invented to reduce waste and give people an easy way to improve stuff”.
This is where sugru really excels. The company and product has plugged in to a growing movement of people fixing and repairing items and is an enabler of this movement. Rather than just looking at social media channels to push company news it sees the community as central. Most of the content on the channel tap into how people are using the product. Jane receives a lot of emails and correspondence from users who take the time to document what they have fixed/improved and even supply photos showing the degree of connection that the company has with users.
The company rewards and encourages this and as Jane puts it
“all of our marketing comes from customers in the form of hundreds of photo, stories and videos”.
The Hack of the Month profiles how innovative users have been in the use of the product which ranges from fixing medical devices to protecting school bags. sugru also asks for suggestions on who they should send sugru packs to and this recently resulted in packs being sent to scientists working on the largest bore holes in the world based in Antarctica. They featured stories on how they used it to repair diverse items from glasses to knives.
The outreach and investment in the online community now means they have a large gallery of photos and stories of customers documenting their use of the product.
User generated content is the nirvana for a lot of companies and getting customers to tell their stories can be notoriously difficult. Even if people really enjoyed the product getting them to invest the time and allowing you use their stories is rarely successful. Although there is no doubt that this is a very innovative and good product, the subtle difference having the ethos of the company – to reduce waste and allow people to personalise and improve stuff – central in all they do is key to their success. It’s not about sugru but rather what people do with it and how it helps their lives. This approach means people are happier to contribute as it plugs into their lives and the sugru community feels like a grouping of like-minded people rather than a community website. Even the website itself clearly positions it as being about the user and not the product itself. You get a clear impression that much as sugru benefits from user engagement people are learning, teaching and educating each other how it could be used.
Jane is the first to admit that although they do a lot with communities that there is more to do and she feel they are only scratching the surface on what could be done. Similar to most companies, measurement is evolving and difficult to quantify. Easy to measure items such as ‘likes’ are less a concern than the quality of interaction such as conversations and comments. Key is seeing if people are getting the message and spreading it. Twitter is also another active daily channel with most activity taken up by answering queries and interacting than pushing company messages. Jane herself still manages these channels directly herself showing the level of commitment to the users.
One of the other positive aspects of so much user generated content is that now the company can see recurring uses and this can be fed back in to product research, design and marketing. This translates as possible future iPhone cable and adapter products/packs as the company has seen lots of examples of sugru being utilised to fix or improve these.
Real World Interaction
As with much social media activity it’s important to have a real world footprint also. The ‘Hack It’ Sessions facilitate this and are almost a real world reflection of what goes on in the online world. sugru sometimes organises these itself or facilitates them by sending product to users who want to create a shared experience of using the product. People learning from each other and being creative opens up new views on the product that sugru could never do by itself.
Much could be learnt from the sugru experience online and according to Jane companies could really improve their online presence with some simple philosophies including:
- Have a clear mission that is people/users focused and not company centric
- Tweet and interact with people the same as if over a shop counter
- Don’t be frightened of people or interaction
- Don’t be overly promotion
- Remember people are not interested in you but rather what you can do for them
- Have conversations
- Facilitate, reward, and respect the input from people who contact you
Future Plans
sugru is now working on expanding its US presence directly through stores and setting up shipping locally. They are also talking to hardware chains in Ireland to extend its reach and easy of buying.
Summary
sugru has achieved a worldwide presence after only 9 months in operation and sold over 40,000 packs. Its marketing is mainly word of mouth and customer based. It has made huge progress into cracking the ‘user generated content’ nut and has built a very strong online brand by having a mission driven and customer centric approach.
In Ireland you can get Sugru in the Science Gallery, Designist, O’Sullivan Graphics. and from www.sugru.com
This case study is part of the IIA Social Media Working Group‘s series of studies on how companies are using social media to achieve their business aims and objectives. This study was written by Eoin Kennedy of Slattery Communications, chair of IIA Social Media Working Group.
Sugru – Marketing Through Word of Mouth and User Generated Content
I have been intrigued about sugru and how it achieved so much in a short period of time since seeing them in Time magazine and buying/testing some of its products over Christmas. Company founder Jane Ní Dhulchaointigh from Kilkenny shared some insights into the company and how it has made great strides in getting and harnessing user generated content in its social media platforms and achieve worldwide word of mouth exposure.
Sugru (www.sugru.com) is a UK based company that has invented a silicone based modelling clay that helps people fix or improve everyday items. The product itself is a new development in this class and has some unique properties in that it cures at room temperature, is very self-adhesive, heat resistant, waterproof, flexible and dishwasher proof. The company has one core product with 5 colours and has shifted over 40,000 units in its first few months.
How did the idea come about?
The idea came from a process of material experimentation and an observation of the development of the open source community. Jane has an active interest in how additional life can be given to products and giving people an ability to ‘hack’ and personalise products.
She felt that traditional product design was very static in that once a product emerged from the factory, there was very little interaction where focus should be on discovering and finding out how people use it at home and other areas. This could lead to better products and also connects the company with its user base.
How did the idea come into fruition?
Jane’s story reflects many other SMEs as they build their brand but some initial kick starts have really helped. Jane’s product came from research she did when studying at the Royal College of Design in London, following previous study at NCAD in Dublin. One of the big lifts she received was when the British Airways inflight magazine featured the product in a column which sparked off lots queries from consumers and people in industry.
With help of the innovation department in the college she set up sugru with business partner Roger Ashby and after six years of development and initial grant and investment funding of £350,000, with a modest investment of £100,000 they converted their lab in to a production facility. Their initial production of 1,000 packs sold out in 6 hours following their launch and they knew they had a viable business but needed to scale up production.
How do you go to market?
sugru is mainly sold from its website and also through some shops in Ireland/UK and is now in the process of setting up in the US. 25% of its orders come from UK, 45% from US with Ireland and Germany accounting for much of the remaining sales.
Initially they have focused on shipping small single orders and reacting to who wanted to buy it from the website but are now scaling to additional retail distribution.
What marketing do you deploy?
sugru defied much of the text book approach to marketing in that it spends very little on traditional marketing.
Most of sugru’s growth has come from word of mouth which has led to some high profile articles on the company also the inclusion in Time Magazine’s Top 50 Inventions http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2029497_2030629_2029789,00.html and features in the Irish Times http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2010/1112/1224283151234.html amongst others.
Its website, blog, email and social media platforms are still the key drivers of the business and Jane manages these directly. The company also organises and facilitates ‘Hack It Sessions’ such as a recent one in 091 labs in Galway http://091labs.com/2010/11/hackquarium-on-5th-december/
Social Media Presence
According to Jane “the Blog has been brilliant in terms of articulating our mission. This is not just a product. It was invented to reduce waste and give people an easy way to improve stuff”.
This is where sugru really excels. The company and product has plugged in to a growing movement of people fixing and repairing items and is an enabler of this movement. Rather than just looking at social media channels to push company news it sees the community as central. Most of the content on the channel tap into how people are using the product. Jane receives a lot of emails and correspondence from users who take the time to document what they have fixed/improved and even supply photos showing the degree of connection that the company has with users.
The company rewards and encourages this and as Jane puts it “all of our marketing comes from customers in the form of hundreds of photo, stories and videos”. The Hack of the Month profiles how innovative users have been in the use of the product which ranges from fixing medical devices to protecting school bags. sugru also asks for suggestions on who they should send sugru packs to and this recently resulted in packs being sent to scientists working on the largest bore holes in the world based in Antarctica. They featured stories on how they used it to repair diverse items from glasses to knives.
The outreach and investment in the online community now means they have a large gallery of photos and stories of customers documenting their use of the product.
User generated content is the nirvana for a lot of companies and getting customers to tell their stories can be notoriously difficult. Even if people really enjoyed the product getting them to invest the time and allowing you use their stories is rarely successful. Although there is no doubt that this is a very innovative and good product, the subtle difference having the ethos of the company – to reduce waste and allow people to personalise and improve stuff – central in all they do is key to their success. It’s not about sugru but rather what people do with it and how it helps their lives. This approach means people are happier to contribute as it plugs into their lives and the sugru community feels like a grouping of like-minded people rather than a community website. Even the website itself clearly positions it as being about the user and not the product itself. You get a clear impression that much as sugru benefits from user engagement people are learning, teaching and educating each other how it could be used.
Jane is the first to admit that although they do a lot with communities that there is more to do and she feel they are only scratching the surface on what could be done. Similar to most companies, measurement is evolving and difficult to quantify. Easy to measure items such as ‘likes’ are less a concern than the quality of interaction such as conversations and comments. Key is seeing if people are getting the message and spreading it. Twitter is also another active daily channel with most activity taken up by answering queries and interacting than pushing company messages. Jane herself still manages these channels directly herself showing the level of commitment to the users.
One of the other positive aspects of so much user generated content is that now the company can see recurring uses and this can be fed back in to product research, design and marketing. This translates as possible future iPhone cable and adapter products/packs as the company has seen lots of examples of sugru being utilised to fix or improve these.
Real World Interaction
As with much social media activity it’s important to have a real world footprint also. The ‘Hack It’ Sessions facilitate this and are almost a real world reflection of what goes on in the online world. sugru sometimes organises these itself or facilitates them by sending product to users who want to create a shared experience of using the product. People learning from each other and being creative opens up new views on the product that sugru could never do by itself.
Much could be learnt from the sugru experience online and according to Jane companies could really improve their online presence with some simple philosophies including:
– Have a clear mission that is people/users focused and not company centric
– Tweet and interact with people the same as if over a shop counter
– Don’t be frightened of people or interaction
– Don’t be overly promotion
– Remember people are not interested in you but rather what you can do for them
– Have conversation
– Facilitate, reward, and respect the input from people who contact you
Future Plans
sugru is now working on expanding in its US presence directly through stores and setting up shipping locally. They are also talking to hardware chains in Ireland to extend its reach and easy of buying.
Summary
sugru has achieved a worldwide presence after only 9 months in operation and sold over 40,000 packs. Its marketing is mainly world of mouth and customer based. It has made huge progress into cracking the ‘user generated content’ nut and has built a very strong online brand by having a mission driven and customer centric approach.
In Ireland you can get Sugru in the Science Gallery http://www.sciencegallery.com/category/blog-tags/sugru, Designist http://www.designist.ie , O’Sullivan Graphics. http://www.osullivangraphics.com/ and from http://www.sugru.com
Social Media Working Group, Guest Blogger
Review: The New Handshake: Sales Meets Social Media, by Joan Curtis and Barbara Giamanco
This review is part of a series of reviews that you can expect to see over the next while from the Social Media Working Group. This first one is by Eamonn O’Brien, Founder of The Reluctant Speakers Club. Here he reviews The New Handshake: Sales Meets Social Media, by Joan Curtis and Barbara Giamanco:
This book offers an introductory guide for people who need to figure out how to both understand and harness social media in a world where traditional sales techniques may have had their day. As such, it probably won’t serve as more than light reading for seasoned social media pros.
The authors spend the first half of the book outlining the revolution that has occurred in the way businesses and customers/consumers communicate – and why companies need to learn how to adapt to a new sales era, dubbed Sales 2.0. They argue that since customers are now more in control of what they buy, and have instant access to more information prior to when they make purchase decisions, that a modern form of consultative selling (which integrates the power of social media to develop better relationships, trust and customer collaboration) needs to be used as a replacement for traditional push based selling techniques.
While there are many nuggets to be found in the first 8 chapters, including author observations, examples of how politicians and companies are adapting to/benefiting from communication changes plus a quite interesting potted history lesson on the evolution of selling approaches from the 19th to the 21st century, much of the information provided at the outset of the book appears to be rehashing of stories and observations that have been doing the rounds for some time (online and offline). Also, many of the points made in the first half of the books seemed be endless variations of a single theme; “Embrace the new technology… move away from old sales approaches, they won’t work any longer with the 21st century buyer”.
That said, the second half of the book (when the authors get into a more ‘how to’ mode) is likely to prove both interesting and genuinely useful to anyone who needs practical suggestions on how to harness social media for sales and marketing purposes. The authors did an especially good job on how Sales meets LinkedIn and Sales meets Twitter, including really helpful ‘do’s and don’ts’ tips.
Also, their observations on how to use blogging to drive better Google site rankings together with their suggested ‘rules of engagement for bloggers’ are spot on. But the real value in this book comes at the end, with a case study style 30 day social media sales challenge. This blow by blow demonstration of how social media can be used and why – together with suggestions re goal setting and performance measuring – sold me on this book, all on its own.
My Overall Book Rating: 4 out of 5
Thanks a million Eamonn! More from the authors on their website.
IIA Conference 2011
Our Twitter Wordle from Open for Business #04b
Here is a visualistion from Wordle.net of some of the tweets that were flying around yesterday afternoon and this morning about Open for Business the IIA Annual Conference in the Aviva. I hope to release the plenary sessions as podcasts in the coming weeks and I know the social media working group have a video of their session which we will share soon too. Hopefully one of our delegates might write a review for next week as well (hint hint everyone!)
In the meantime many thanks to all our delegates for engaging in such a lively manner at the event and via Twitter, thanks to all our brilliant speakers in the plenary sessions, hosted conversations and breakout sessions. Thanks also to our brilliant sponsors without whom much of the event would not have been possible. We appreciate your community spirit!
With many thanks to our supporters, sponsors and exhibitors | |
IIA Conference 2011
Don’t miss these rocking Breakout Sessions at Open for Business
One of the most popular features of our Annual Conferences every year are the breakout sessions. This year we’re mixing it up a bit and in addition to our usual practical breakout sessions we are holding three hosted conversations in the morning. These promise to be fascinating and a great opportunity to get your voice heard on the following topics:
- A conversation about collaborative innovation hosted by Amy Neale and Gary Leyden of NDRC
- Seán Baker, Irish Software Association Board and entrepreneur and Peter Finnegan, Dublin City Council host a conversation about Open Data and Open Government.
- Neil Leyden, Your Country, Your Call winner, will host a conversation about his plan for Ireland as an international content services centre.
In the afternoon we will be running 4 breakout sessions covering smartphone insights from Amárach Research, the reality of cloud computing with the IIA Cloud Computing Working Group, social media strategy with the Social Media Working Group and Ecommerce Best Practice and Emerging trends with Realex Payments.
I caught up with Jonathan Forde from Realex Payments yesterday and asked him to share a little bit more about what delegates can expect from their breakout session on Thursday afternoon.
Jonathan, you are running a breakout session on eCommerce at Open for Business, the IIA Annual Conference on the afternoon of May 12th in the Aviva Stadium. Which key areas are you going to be focussing on during these 2 sessions
The focus of our E Commerce breakout session will be Taking Your Business Online and the different elements that you need to take into account when developing your own E Commerce Strategy. Three speakers will present on different aspects of E Commerce to give the attendees an indication of what they need to do to get up and running successfully.
I’m going to discuss your online strategy as a whole including
- how to go about getting your Merchant Service Agreement,
- choice of web developers,
- what to look for in a Payment Gateway and how to combat fraud.
Bob Curran from Buy4Now will present on the different options available to businesses in E Commerce Platforms and Shopping carts and some tips on what to look for and best practice.
Aileen O’Toole of AMAS will look at the State of the Net and the importance of knowing what’s going on in the market around you, the emerging trends in E Commerce, spending patterns etc.
Following the three presentations there will be time for questions and answers including some questions that have been received via Twitter and Facebook in advance of the session.
Realex Payments have been a great supporter of the IIA over the years, getting involved in the conference in some capacity every year; what are the biggest changes/ challenges you have seen for Irish businesses who are coming online or upping their online game in this time?
We’re always happy to support the IIA and the Irish internet sector! 🙂
In terms of changes, the biggest and most positive change has to be social media, a large majority of our merchants are now actively involved in Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn etc and have benefitted significantly from being involved in this area. Many of our merchants tweet specific deals, have discounts for consumers who like their product on Facebook etc, so social media has become an important sales tool for so many businesses. The ability to have frequent conversations with your online community offers an incredible opportunity, not just from a social engagement point of view, but from a commercial perspective too.
I think initially many businesses were a little reluctant to participate in social media, particularly those businesses operating in a B2B environment, but as times gone on, the likes of twitter and Facebook have become an integral of marketing strategies throughout the country, including our own!
If you have one piece of advice for an Irish business reviewing their ecommerce strategy in light of these new challenges what would it be?
Integration of social media with ecommerce has become a crucial element for every ecommerce business, for B2B as well as consumer companies. Whether it is integrating social sharing on purchases, offering special deals/incentives to followers or likes, adding facebook open graph to enable Facebook likes to see friends purchases on your ecommerce site or simply leveraging brand ambassadors who emerge on Twitter and Facebook, there are a wealth of opportunities for brands to enhance their ecommerce offering. It’s becoming more and more important for brands to have personalities, as people want to know and engage with the brands that they’re buying, integrating your ecommerce strategy with social media facilitates this process.
Thanks a million Jonathan! See you and everyone else on Thursday May 12th!
IIA Conference 2011
1 to 1 Web Strategy Clinics at Open for Business
As part of this year’s annual conference Open for Business in the Aviva Stadium on May 12th, Sandra Hennessy of Dynamic Web Marketing will be running a series of one-to-one web strategy clinics. We hold these every year, inviting a member to host them. Sandra may well be known to some of our members, attendees and readers already as she is one of the lecturers on our Diploma in Digital Marketing.
Conference delegates can book a clinic online but as they are one-to-one and run only in the afternoon the places are very limited so please no dawdling! (You can book your ticket for the conference online too and again less of that dawdling at the back please!)
I had a chat with Sandra last week about how she is going to run the clinics this year and here is how she replied
Q. Sandra, you are running a one-to-one web strategy clinic at Open for Business, the IIA Annual Conference on the afternoon of May 12th in the Aviva Stadium. Which key areas are you hoping to help delegates with at these clinics?
A. I anticipate a lot of questions around search engine optimisation and social media but I hope to help businesses identify new ways to increase their online profile and conversions. QR codes are getting popular and a lot of the larger businesses are using them, I am currently on a mission to get Irish SME’s using QR codes in innovative ways to help drive sales.
Q. Some of our delegates and members might recognise you because this isn’t the first time you have helped on the web strategy clinics at our annual conference. Tell us about some of the issues you managed to resolve for delegates in previous years.
A. I am delighted to be sponsoring the clinics, I only recently set up my own business but have been working in online marketing for 9 years now. Over the past few years the clinics have centered around websites evaluations, giving delegates advice on how to improve their website usability, search engine optimistion and conversions. I expect this theme will run into this year but the web is moving and how we attract new business online is changing every day. Setting up and using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter was discussed last year but I anticipate a lot more questions in this area as it is now paramount to any online marketing strategy to include social and business networking.
Q. And in the (2/3) years that you have been doing this and working in this area in general what are the biggest changes/ challenges you have seen for Irish businesses who are coming online or upping their online game?
A. The biggest challenge I have seen since the birth of social media is time. It’s great that we can use Facebook, Twitter etc for free but it does take time to set up and manage. Part of what I do every day is help businesses establish and implement their social media strategy. I help them build social media it into their working day. It eventually becomes habit rather than a chore but it takes time to get to this stage.
Q. If you have one piece of advice for an Irish business reviewing their online strategy what would it be? I know tough question!
A. Three words – PLANNING, DELEGATION and ANALYSIS. Planning will help structure things, plan out a time line for different stages and don’t be afraid to delegate out some of the work to colleagues. Once upon a time looking at your website once a month and making a few changes would suffice but now online marketing is an integral part of any marketing plan so it needs to be planned into every day tasks. Decide when things will be completed and who will complete them. Once they have been implemented, analyse. No point in taking the time to plan and implement if you are not going to review how successful your online marketing campaigns are.
Big thanks to Sandra for answering those questions and giving us a flavour of the good sense Open for Business delegates can expect at her one-to-one clinics at the Conference.
If you do hope to participate please book online. In this form you can include details of the particular issue you wish to discuss so Sandra can prep in advance and you can really make the most of your half hour with her.