Read one Irish entrepreneur's blog as she operates a business in Dublin
Media Frenzy
July 27, 2004
The Marketing Toolbox was featured in last Sunday's "Sunday Business Post" and the interest generated has been substantial. There was also a rather awful photograph of me and my fellow "tools" which we all hate! I'm the one with the hammer by the way. While I was delighted that they featured it, I was a little disappointed that they chose to focus on the fact that we're all women. In this day and age, and especially in marketing, I really don't think that's so unusual.
If you missed it - don't worry, we're going to be in this Friday's Examiner. For all overseas readers, you might want to check the website.
Butlers Chocolates Win
July 22, 2004
Moving from the world of slurry, sludge and all things that way inclined, we've recently won a lovely contract to optimise the Butlers Chocolates website and provide email marketing services!
Apart from luscious and mouth-watering choccy's, Butlers also run a string of cafes around the city.
Caffeine heads take note - when you buy a Mocha at Butlers Cafes they pour real melted chocolate into your coffee for you! No sprinkling of "Noname" powdered chocolate, but plenty of rich smooth creamy choccy....yum!
Chocolate - there's a word for ya! When you're researching keywords to optimise pages, you get very absorbed in the words. What happens to me after a while is that I start to doubt the spelling of the words. I look at a word I've been looking at in various connotations all day and somehow it looks different. I've even had occasions after signing letters for mailshots that I question if I've spelt my own surname correctly. (It is Lyons. L.Y.O.N.S.) Point is - chocolate - is one hell of a strange word, when you think about it!
I met with a lovely group of people at Butlers, who make up the marketing team. After the meeting, I got a tour of the chocolate factory, and while waiting for my taxi to pick me up, I got to devour the lovely chocoates from the silver plate in reception! From the taxi on the way home, first call was to my favourite 6 year old, Aisling Gannon. She's just discovered "Willy Wonkas Chocolate Factory" and is mad about it. She simply had to be the first to know that I'd been to the Irish chocolate factory!
From Botomask to Slurry Pits
July 19, 2004
You've got to be pretty flexible in mind around here. Recently, the new Facialworks website went live. That was an interesting project to work on, although with a potentially harmful side affects for my own beauty regime...
Writing content for Facialworks, I became highly aware of the range of treatments that are now available to address problems such as acne scarring, premature aging, fine lines and wrinkles. With my fear of needles, Botox and other cosmetic surgery related injections just weren't an option for me. But Facialworks offers amazing treatments that bring the results without the pain! Like Botomask for example. This is a relaxing facial which brings 80% of the results of a Botox treatment! Your lines and wrinkles come off in the mask!
When you're aware of these kind of treatments that are on offer, when it comes to bedtime and you're very tired, you can become a little slack in the application of cleanser, the noble practice of exfoliation, and perhaps even a little lax in the moisturising stakes!!
So, now that Facialworks is live, I've diverted some of my attention to another site I'm working on. It's for a new business that is bringing 3 recycling treatments to Ireland. These are of great interest to farmers and food producers and the content is of the "slurry and sludge" kind of vein! It's an interesting one to work on because this business needs a complete identity - not just online. So Brightspark is helping the entrepreneur out with a logo design (through to business cards and letterhead), website development, and promotion of that site once it has been developed. Search engine optimisation is essential when a new site is being created. More on activities from a recycling business with a noble nature later in the summer...
Get me off these lists
July 17, 2004
I protect my emails vigorously. I have 3 main email accounts - my work one which I guard oh so closely. In fact, I watch it so closely that if I start to receive spam in it, I can almost detect what site has farmed my email address. I've had to unsubscribe myself from what I had presumed to be reputable sites because of the onslaught of spam that resulted from signing up with them.
I have 2 eircom accounts - one for OK stuff, and one for use on dodgy-ass sites that I feel I cannot trust and one for regular use where I don't want to give out my work email.
On this last one, I keep getting mails from Mailpepper and it really annoys me. Who are they? Where are they from? They pose as legit, but they're not. Kind of like Nokia Gamers - yes, I know I've written about them before, but they are still sending me SMS's. This, after 3 attempts to unsubscribe and a number of complaints to ComReg.
Their preferred way of unsubscribing? Key in some secret code number from your phone!
Trouble is that was 2 phones ago, I don't have that secret number anymore. Oh well, just have to continue smouldering every time I receive one of those texts!
Marketing Toolbox
July 06, 2004
Brightspark is the emarketing (internet marketing) provider to the Marketing Toolbox. What's that you may wonder?
Well, it's a nifty idea that will make life easier for harried, time poor, business owners in Dublin's surrounds. The idea came about through my involvement with BNI. In that networking group, there is a group of businesses who all operate - but don't compete - in the marketing arena. It just so happens that we're all switched on women who get on well, so we decided to create The Marketing Toolbox.
The businesses that form the Marketing Toolbox are: Brightspark for internet marketing, WOW! Marketing for general marketing, Eventuality for event management, Mercury Media for advertising, and Project PR for PR (funnily enough!).
The thing is I can wholeheartedly recommend each and all of these wonderfully talented individuals and the Marketing Toolbox simply formalises this.
There is some press stuff going out round about now, and some nifty packs going out in the post. We have targeted businesses who may have marketing needs, but don't necessarily have the marketing resource to deliver on that. It's also of benefit for those who have a marketing team, but they don't have the specialist skills to deliver an intranet for example, or a radio campaign.
I'm very excited about the Marketing Toolbox. I believe it will bring real benefits (and an end to marketing headaches) for businesses, while at the same time it enables us to develop our respective businesses.
You can access my talented co-tool's sites by visiting The Marketing Toolbox website.
Into The West
July 05, 2004
The last line of the last blog mentioned the fact that I was heading off to the West to go camping for the weekend. In the interests of conclusions, I simply had to write to tell the tale...
Brightspark and partner headed off for the West on Friday evening, a little later than planned, but still we'd make up the time. Or so we thought. Enfield scuppered that one. Later on, the car started to give us a bit of grief and we had to stop for quite a while to get a jump start.
We arrived in Easkey at 12.30am. Anyone who has ever been to that edge of the country will know that Easkey is a very open terrain, a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. There was a Gale (force 99) blowing which made putting up the tent a bit difficult. The torch had no batteries, so I was trying to manoeuvre the car into a position that would shed light on my poor Australian boyfriend who was wrestling with the tent. They just don't go camping in that kind of extreme weather over there, so he was a bit shell shocked!
Got the tent up and jumped in - I promptly fell asleep to the sound of gales and heavy rain. Australian Man lay awake waiting for the tent to lift off and take us with it. You see - he knew about the lack of ropes holding the tent down, while I slept on, oblivious.
The next morning at the crack of dawn, we upped and left. Got that tent down in 5 minutes, packed it into our car and drove away rapidly. There were other campers there too (mad!), they must have thought they imagined people arriving in the middle of the night, because they were sure gone by daybreak.
We went to a caff in Strandhill and had a feast. Then, at an appropriately late enough hour, we knocked on the door of one of our friends and begged if we could use the shower! Our hospitable host offered to put us up for the night which we gratefully accepted.
So that was the adventure of camping in Ireland. I will not say "never again" but if I do go again it will be with conditions...like a large storage heater in the boot, and hot whiskeys...
I know that this story is not directly about running an internet marketing business in Dublin, but it does go to show the lengths that people will be driven to when they feel they need a break from it all!
Happy Irish Summer Everybody!
Facialworks Goes Live
July 02, 2004
The start of July - while the temperatures haven't soared, the level of activity certainly has. It's been a busy old few weeks. I've been putting a lot of work into the Facial Works site which went live yesterday! Visit the site and sign up for the newsletter and you could win a very nice prize indeed!
Facialworks is geared towards a very specific group of people in Ireland - those who aren't prepared to let time win the battle, who have the money, but would be put off by the medical environment of cosmetic surgery. Not fond of needles and surgery? Then, you'll find a range of alternative therapies that incorporate chinese medicine and eastern beliefs at Facialworks.
As always, it's great to receive feedback on a newly launched site. Working so closely on it, "sometimes it's hard to see the wood from the trees" (as my old man used to say). I am a big believer in usability testing, but in these busy times, one doesn't always have the luxury. That said, I would definitely not launch an intranet or even relaunch an intranet without carrying out usability tests. Read about the Brightspark approach to intranet development in an article I wrote for the Marketing Institute website.
Usability tests can throw up potential pitfalls in navigation and tone of the site and your mistakes will be spotted instantly! So, I'm making a big request off all you bloggers to come back with your comments on Facialworks website.
Visit the site and come back with what you think of it's navigation and presentation of services. The tone of voice - is it consistent? Clear? Informative?
So, the site went live yesterday and today I am heading off to the West of Ireland, to get into the sea and (hopefully) catch some waves!