Keith Shirley

If you write a blog for your business then please make sure you complete the IIA Social Media Working Groups survey. It’s really going to help us get some solid numbers for the whitepaper.

Please also have a look at another survey being done by Sinéad Cochrane for postgraduate research. Her survey is targeted at both people that write blogs and those that are just readers. It should only take a few minutes of your time and she’s offering a prize.

I found the link to her survey via Darraghs blog. His bio says he’s a storyteller and I can confirm it. He writes some great posts that are a pleasure to read. Go read some of his posts after you have done the surveys – he won’t be around much longer as I imagine his sister will kill him when she sees what he has posted.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Business Blogging Survey
• Survey on Irish Bloggers and Irish Blog Readers

The deadlines have been set. I’ve got 1 week to update the sections on SEO and publicising your blog for the IIA Blogging whitepaper. A major part of it will be from the comments people made on the draft copy that was made available online and the comments made during the workshop. The podcasts are also available if you are interested.

If you have anything you think should be included – be quick and let me know. Shortly after the deadline the version will be locked and sent for print. Online versions will be available sooner I’m sure – but people still need a copy in their hands.

The Irish Internet Association and Net Imperative are running a free roadshow event that I think will be very interesting. It takes place on 28 Jan 2009 (so hurry) and has a great range of speakers on Digital Marketing for your business.

From their web page

”
From designing a website for the user experience, through building brands online, leveraging search engines, social media, and blogs, to campaigns, online PR and digital marketing. Hear from high-profile, industry leaders during this information packed day.

All delegates that attend the event will also be able to sign up for a free membership of NetImperative.com at the registration desk usually charged out at £99.00+VAT.
“

Have a look at the IIA site for more details:

https://secure.iia.ie/events/event/188/net-imperative-dublin-roadshow/

I don’t agree with the title of Techcentral’s recent article which gave the impression that you should not buy extended warranties. Here’s my advice and comments on extended warranties and service contracts:

• If it’s mission critical then you need to have it running. You can’t afford the downtime while you try to find someone to fix it. Review the downtime costs versus the warranty and repair costs.
• The manufacturer should be able to give you MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) and MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) values. MTBF gives you an idea of how long the system is likely to run before things start to break and need replacing. MTTR gives you an idea of how long it will be out of action.
• The MTBF and MTTR values are handy but ask candid questions about the kinds of things that can break and how long the individual jobs need to repair.
• A single component might be able to be replaced on site but there mat be a shipping time. Should you keep spares on site?
• The whole equipment may need to be sent back to the supplier. How long would that take?
• What happens during non business hours or the holidays?
• Does any regular maintenance work need to be done?
• Does the equipment need to be taken off line to do maintenance?
• Does the MTBF number assume all maintenance is done?
• Does a specialist need to do the maintenance?
• How long before someone is physically there to fix the equipment? Some contracts give a 1 hour response time but that only means an engineer has been assigned.

THE MTBF is based on best case conditions. I suggest having an informal chat with your supplier to ask how the real world scenario is and what you can do to ensure the equipment is working at its best.
Remember: If the equipment is old – no one might know how to maintain it – even if you have a contract. Check yearly with the supplier how the supply of spare parts is, the engineers technical knowledge. Trust me – They’ll tell you if it’s time to buy new equipment.

Geansai Gorm – The Background

In connection with the Geansai Gorm competition I ran a Google Adwords campaign. It fit very nicely with a Google Adwords training I was providing and I thought it would be fun.

The competition finishes on Monday 1 Dec at 15:00 so I thought I’d prepare some details of the results I achieved and add my personal conclusions.

Keep in mind that I have not actually maintained the ads so please don’t take anything here as a “best practice” example. Maybe a “wasted opportunity” example. I guess that’s the first lesson:

Lesson #1: Make sure before starting a Search Engine Optimisation and/or Adwords campaign that you are going to have the time to maintain it.

The Geansai Gorm Ads

I created the initial ad as a joke and then decided it might actually produce some interesting results. It was along the lines of:

I nearly got sidetracked into creating ads to see how much bad language I could sneak into Adwords but that’s a project for another day.

Lesson #2: Even if Google policies say no – you should experiment. You might get away with it.

What surprised me was how quickly people started clicking on the ads. I guess there was a general curiosity to really see what gobshite was spending money on ads that linked to Geansai Gorm and had no incoming revenue associated with them.

Lesson #3: Keep your ads interesting and catch people’s attention.

I must admit I was a little concerned with getting lambasted by Damien Mulley for messing around with his competition and was relieved when he left a comment on the blog. I might still get a telling off when he sees that I used his name as one of the keyword phrases. It’s a big no no to use someone else’s name/trademark in that way. I’ll buy him a pint the next time we meet and beg for forgiveness – hopefully you’re open to bribes Damien.

Lesson #4: Don’t break trademark rules – you’ll seldom get away with buying a beer and saying sorry.

After the bad language ads I had something a little different:

This actually did pretty OK for something I put about 10 seconds work into – I was getting a click through rate of 1.56% (i.e that percentage of people actually clicked on the ads). At that stage I added some extra variations and decided to stop messing with the ad and see how it ran over time:

That’s when the campaign started to fall apart. The number of impressions (how often the ad was displayed) was increasing quite rapidly but the click through rate was dropping. If I was doing this for a real product then I’d need to start tweaking my ads.

Lesson #5: Keep tweaking your ads and try out different variations.

So why were the ads “failing”? Maybe people misunderstood my sense of humour and thought they would be linked to an inappropriate site. I suspect that the number of people searching for Geansai Gorm was actually quite low and the ad had been seen by most who were interested. The large number of impressions was most likely people refreshing the pages to see if their position on Google had changed. It’s quite possible I’d reached some form of saturation and without doing something to reanimate the “target market” my ads would continue to fail.

Lesson #6: Never loose focus of who the ads are trying to attract.

I didn’t change the ads afterwards which means my totals were not as good as they would have been for a properly maintained campaign. If nothing else this experiment made it clear to me how important it is to maintain the ads and make sure they stay focused.

The Geansai Gorm Ad Results

The ads were started on 6 Nov (a little over a week after the competition started) – what are the results?

Upto Saturday:

- 9895 Impressions on the search network
- 112 Clicks

- 54341 Impressions on the content network
- 20 clicks

At the end of the competition today (Monday):

- 11,233 Impressions on the search network
- 126 Clicks

- 63,209 Impressions on the content network
- 24 clicks

I used just 4 keyword phrases – picked because they were the first things to spring to mind

- Geansai Gorm (118 clicks – up 14 since Saturday)
- Ireland SEO (3 clicks)
- mulley.net (3 clicks)
- Damien Mulley (2 clicks)

Conclusion

Not exactly what I would call a stellar success rate. A total of 150 clicks with a CTR of 0.20 percent. I’m glad I was not actually selling anything. Of course – how do you measure success? If I just wanted to get my name displayed then I can say it was a success if someone remembers the ads when I meet them at some business event. In that case the total cost of €28.36 €33.52 is a bargain.

I just hope they don’t remember my name and the word gobshite at the same time.

As for the competition – as far as I know the rules exclude me using this blog so I can’t enter. Having said that – this blog did appear at slot 77 at the closing bell. You can’t be lazy when it comes to SEO – it won’t get you anywhere.

My father used to have a garage in Court Place – RF Shirley Ltd – It was where I had my first job and had my first dealings with computers. As a child it seemed like the buildings were ancient and had been there forever. I kept finding things that seemed to be from another life – office machinery that was a complete mystery to me – or my Grandfathers business card where his phone number in Carlow was 42 (or maybe 45). It always humbles me when I think of the lives that have gone before. The garage has now been torn down to make way for an entrance to the new Carlow Arts Centre and I do miss it at times.

A YouTube user called CroppyBoy1798 commented on my Carlow Grafitti video and being a good net citizen – I went to have a look at what he does. I found the following two fantastic videos that give an idea of Carlow Past and Present. I encourage anyone that is familiar with Carlow and Graiguecullen to have a look.

The second one is my favourite and is a little spooky at times. They have inspired me to dig out some old photos when I get a chance. If you like the videos then please open them in Youtube and leave a comment for the author. If he knows people like them he might do some more.

First Video

Second Video

Damien Mulley has started a competition to test peoples Search Engine Optimisation skills (SEO). Unfortunately I won’t have time to dedicate to it but I couldn’t resist adding a quick ad for tests when I was messing around with Google Adwords.

So now you know – If you see ads from me for Geansai Gorm it’s not because I’ve gone into the clothes business or gone mad. I’m also not wasting my own money on this – I’m using a coupon.

Update: As I’m not taking part I’d be glad for anyone to gain a bit of link love. Feel free to add a comment here with links. There is a spam filter in place but I won’t be blocking anything that is reasonable.

Update 1 Dec 2008: I will be publishing a new post later today with some details of how the Geansai Gorm ads actually did. Keep an eye out for it.

Update 1 Dec 2008: 15:12: The Geansai Gorm Analysis is now available.

I was out for a walk last bank holiday Monday and I came across a group of lads spraying graffiti on the new bridge near Eire Og. I sent them packing but it got me thinking – should I have done more – such as call the police? I don’t think there is any point in kicking their arses as

- There were quite a few of them
- I don’t think it would do any good
- I was on the wrong side of the river

I took a video (see it below if Youtube behaves) with the intention that if they think I’ll report them/tell their parents then that fear factor would be a deterrent. Maybe I’m being too innocent and thinking back to my own childhood where if I had been caught doing this I’d probably have been beaten black and blue – and that would have only been by my brothers.

The next day I had the chance to bolster my new found sense of civic pride when a women threw a burning fag out the window of her parked car and it landed at my feet. Did I say anything? Nope – big chicken that I am I think all I managed was a dirty look. How brave of me.

The Carlow Graffiti “Artists” on Youtube

Update: It seems YouTube ate the audio – don’t worry – you’re not missing much. All I said was something like “right lads – time to go home”. Very inspirational.

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The word Podcamp for me brings up strange visions of Mork and Mindy and his spaceship. It has nothing to do with that of course but I can’t shake it.

I went to the Podcamp Ireland event yesterday (Sat 27 Sept 2008) to have a look at what people are doing in the area of social media and podcasts. The event is a very informal but very well organised conference type day that has numerous presentations and conversations running at the same time. As Krishna De said in her opening talk – you vote with your legs. If you are not as interested in something as you had hoped then you can get up and go to another session. The problem for me was that there were so many interesting things going on that I ended up in the hall moving between sessions trying to get a bit of all of them.

There are a couple of things that really caught my attention – most of them heavily influenced by my desire to apply what I’ve learned to an educational environment. I’m also playing with the idea of how social media can be put to good use helping rural businesses – so these kinds of events are fantastic inspiration for me.

Simon McGarr was the second session I attended and it really did strike a chord with me. I was worried that I might misquote what he said but I’m glad to see that he’s put his notes on his blog. What I got from it was the need to help people learn to question what it is that they are reading in the newspapers etc. Where did the information come from? Who’s doing the writing? What is influencing the way things are written? I liked that the emphasis was on making your own informed decisions and not just being cynical and thinking that the papers are full of lies etc. There was a facinating reference to research done by Conor McHugh of St. Thomas’ Senior National school in Jobstown in Tallaght where getting the students really involved in these issues had a positive influence on other classes. I’ve written before on how sceptical I am about statistics and this discussion was really an extension of that for me. I’ve even discussed how “facts” can be twisted with my own classes and use the example of how dangerous bread can be.

Darragh Doyle had a session giving advice to new bloggers and it was really great. Instead of him standing at the front preaching, he sat in a chair and facilitated a session where members of the audience talked about their own concrete experiences and passed on titbits of wisdom. It was facinating to hear the stories of people whose blogs I have been reading. I was able to add to the discussion myself – hopefully someone found it useful.

Martha Rotter did a presentation titled “Podcasting Inside the Evil Empire” about her experiences inside Microsoft. With a title like that I could not resist going and I’m very glad I did. The teaser video on her blog gives an idea of how entertaining it was. It was also very informative and I’d love to be able to rent the functionality for some companies here. It’s been about a decade since I first read about how well Siemens used their Intranet and other tools to disseminate information internally. Since then I’ve been facinated by the whole area of internal communications – especially as I really wonder how much waste there is when the same mistakes are made again and again because there is a lack of information inside a business.

There were a huge range of other sessions on the day and I wish they had all been videoed as I’d love to catch up on some of the ones I missed. My notebook is filled with ideas and websites that I need to followup on. It was also great for me to be able to help others and pass on some of my experiences or point them in the direction of people who should be able to help them.

Apologies to anyone I didn’t mention – there would be too many. Rest assured – there was not a single session that I did not gain something from.

Rollon next year and the next PodCamp.

Here’s another photo of me – proof that I was there. All the photos are on pix.ie:

Image via Wikipedia

Working on your own can be a challenge at times. Before returning to Ireland I had spent about 13 years working in a busy office environment. SOLINET is a relatively small company in terms of the number of people that work there but the atmosphere is very much corporate in terms of the amount of stuff going on.

When I returned to Ireland I started working from a home office. It was initially fantastic – I noticed a big increase in productivity without the constant phone calls or exigencies that needed to be dealt with. After a while though I noticed that there were a number of creative activities that were suffering without the benefit of social interaction. Even problem solving was a little more difficult. The process of describing problems was often enough to help me find my own solution. And lets be honest – I miss the craic.

Back in May I spoke to Michael Kelly, Carlow CEB CEO, about the potential of them providing hot desks for very short term use rather than longer term offices. Carlow CEB have an incubation centre at Enterprise House on O’Brien Road in Carlow. They provide office facilities on a medium term (generally up-to 3 years I believe) to startup businesses. They will soon be building a new premises and I thought that reserving some space for ad-hoc space would be useful – and importantly for them would not conflict with commercial offerings in the town. Carlow Chamber of Commerce have some furnished offices which are a start but I think don’t go quite far enough. Actually my brother has a place there offering Building Energy Ratings. For a start – there are no hot desk facilities. By hot-desk I mean somewhere where you can hire a desk for a short amount of time to do some work from. I can’t say if they would be commercially viable but I do think they would be very useful.

If Carlow CEB are to do something like this they need to know you are interested. I thought it would be interesting for the following situations

• Seasonal work – At certain times of the year businesses need to be able to take on extra people for a short period to deal with order etc
• Short term work packets – Sometimes I need to work with someone closely for a few days. Currently I have to travel to their offices – it would be nice to be able to offer something here
• Home Emergencies – Sometimes you just can’t work from home.
• Business Idea Testing – I imagine there are people who are interested in testing the market for some business idea but are concerned with signing up for long term leases. Even just having an office for a few months would be useful.

This morning I received a tweet from Evert Bopp. He is going to start up his own Co-working/techhub/start-up centre – presumably near his home in Nenagh. I met Evert for the first time last July when he organised the Open Coffee BBQ. The event was great and really highlighted for me how important the exchange of ideas and peer review can be. Evert is looking for comments from people for things they would need from a co-working environment. If you have any ideas then please click on the co-working link above and add a comment.