Pure Play

Upcoming Training Days - Dublin and Kilkenny

Food Producers, Selling Online. Tues 12th October, Dublin

If you are a member of the Brand Forum in Bord Bia then you will already have heard about this one. A new half day (5 hours technically!) and free for Forum members workshop which I am doing with Bord Bia exploring a number of the key considerations for you if selling online is a current goal for your business. Includes:

• Different ways to sell online
• Making decisions on what you want from a site
• Choosing and managing a website developer
• Content and product decisions
• Marketing - offline, online, online social media
• Taking money off consumers
• The logistics of tracking and dispatching orders

Contact Paula Donoghue for more information; Paula.Donoghue AT BordBia.IE

Build Your Own Website. Friday 15th Oct (and Friday 28th), Kilkenny

I do at least 4 of these training courses a year and always get a real kick out of them. Reason being that the participants - small sized business owner/managers - really enjoy the process of building a website (using the www.sitekreator.com service) from scratch.

We cover the basics of usability, calls to action, good site design, content for the internet and focusing on key messages.

You can book here: http://www.kceb.ie/online-booking#ict-skills-training

Internet Marketing Using Social Media Tools, Tuesday 19th Oct, Kilkenny

This is a practical day - we do cover the theory of each of the key tools but mostly we actually build a web presence. Blogs, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook are the 4 and the emphasis depends on the participants and what is of relevance/interest to them.

But you leave with each of them started if you want and you will have a good idea of what you want to achieve.

You can book here: http://www.kceb.ie/online-booking#ict-skills-training

Any questions just email me - [email protected]

keith

Bizcamp Galway - wrapup from Elaine Divilly

Looks like this event added a lot to the strength of the Bizcamp brand in the SME business community in Ireland. From her post:

Organising this event was an inspiration in itself. The team of wonderfully creative and intelligent guys; Dave Kelly, Ambient Age; Michael FitzGerald, OnepageCRM; Paul Killoran, Starlight Solutions and Mark Campbell, Pocket Anatomy, and I brought together over three hundred Irish entrepreneurs, innovators and ideas people.

The day was a huge success. We had 33 speakers giving presentations on topics spanning diverse areas of business and innovation from App design to venture capital to work-life balance. Each speaker had twenty minutes to share their knowledge and advice with ten minutes at the end for audience discussion. Being the organiser, I didn’t get to see many speakers but heard chatter of praise for many.

Well done to all. Next Bizcamp scheduled is Belfast on Monday 15th November.

keith

Another short and funny video ad - Kindle V iPad

More stuff that brings a smile to your face (via Crunchgear)

keith

Biabeag - a new food blog by me (artisan and small scale food producers)

A vegan foodie may seem like a contradiction but it is possible apparently and biabeag is my outlet for same.

It is not recipes (they are done really well by so many others - check out the Irish food blogs here) nor is it vegetable growing nor the raising of farm animals. All important, none of which do much for me.

It is about food products from small scale producers - passionate people who take on incredible odds and long hours to bring consumers and foodies foods which are amazing. Biabeag is a reference to scale, not the physical size of the goods ;-)

Budgeting and awareness of cost are important - however really cheap food is compromised somewhere along the line. Every Euro you spend with a small scale food business makes a material impact on their turnover and bottom line - while it will not even register with the multinationals who spew out the majority of the food brands you see around you.

I am still settling into the rhythm and style of the blog so feedback very welcome - I have already adjusted upwards the proportion of Irish producers in there. There will be regular design references - branding and packaging being so important to get right if the public are going to be persuaded to switch their buying habits.

Also if  you know of similiar blogs please let me know - I have struggled to find them.

Hope you enjoy it - http://biabeag.posterous.com/

keith

Creative advertising - watch this very short video!

Very short, very effective, very funny

 

keith

Taking Control: Why your email client may not be the place to run todo lists

'Bull - it has to be. Its where I spend the most time. And where most of my actions come from."

All that is true. However it takes a lot of work to make the structure of a piece of software designed to manage email into a system which is flexible enough to help you control all of your stuff.

A key issue is the actions which arise outside of your email - voice mails, twitter messages, physical paper stuff (remember that?), texts, messaging from online collaboration systems, whereever.

All of those items need to be incorporated into your system. And the emails which are non-action items (for review, for reference, for delegation or just to be deleted) need to be cleared out of it.

As  you move from a basic email client or service (ie Mail on the Mac) to a more featured offering like Outlook then the task becomes easier with discrete areas for tasks and calendar items which are nicely integrated. Addons such as the GTD® Outlook® Add-In by Netcentrics or the Jello dashboard for Outlook.

Ultimately you have to balance the friction which comes from using multiple pieces of software with the compromises around implemention of your system using software not designed for that purpose.

keith

 

Taking Control: Avoiding the mental head wreck of endless to-do lists

I have rarely met anyone who can deal with to-do lists that are hundreds of items long - there is a serious mental challenge to scanning something that long without pulling away and finding something less painful to do.

That is where projects come in. In Getting Things Done terms a project is anything which will take more than one action (remembering that an action is something discrete as opposed to a large and sweeping aspiration statement!).

So for me almost everything falls into the category of projects. And inevitabley some projects are more pressing or more important than others. So the actions contained within those projects are ususally the only ones I consider when deciding what to do on any particular day.

A level above that I group projects into discrete sections - usually operational. So either a larger project which contains several elements (a complex website build for example) or an operational area.

What do you do to make sense of your list?

keith

IIA October 7th Event - 8 Ways to Sell More Stuff

I have been helping with getting this together for a couple of months - inspired by a relative underwhelming (for me) IIA Congress and with the memory of a couple of great conferences in New York which focused on online sales and how to improve them.

So we have a conference on 7th October in which experienced people share their experience of selling online - for an audience of anyone who has physical products (or possibly services) and wants to sell more of them.

You must be spotting the theme here. Its about sales. Revenue. And profit.

Details here: http://www.iia.ie/events/event/297/8-ways-to-sell-more-stuff/

And with tickets at 99.99 they will be snapped up. Can't believe we are able to sell them at that price. Never mind the first 20 at 79.99. You are killing me here - may as well give them away. Easy there.

keith