Twitter - what is all about?

I'm relatively new to twitter but already I love it. I've gotten to meet a great bunch of people, including the Limerick Open Coffee Club and the inspiring #Bizcamp Limerick Business Startup Project. I've also caught up with people I used to know and work with (pre-twitter).

twitter is a great tool. You pick up on news very quickly. People share ideas, knowledge and information that you'd otherwise never be able to pickup on. I always thought the News on TV and newspapers never went into enough satisfying detail. I don't just want to know what happened to the bank, I want to know why, how and who was behind it - and thanks to all of the financial gurus, technical whizz-kids and general bloggers out there I can get a whole better understanding.

twitter has some great networking opportunities. Meet like minded and smarter people at tweet-ups, barcamps, bizcamps etc. People end up collaborating together or even get hired for a particular project or event. All very good. But this great tool is under massive abuse from the so called "Social Media Expert". These people are very easy to spot and my next post will go into further detail

#BizCamp Limerick, Incubation Space and other ideas

 #BizCamp is being run in with Stephen Kinsella and other good people at the University of Limerick. I had a tour of the Kemmy Business School on Friday, and it's a very impressive place. Read more at Stephen's blog.

Other quick items: Italian Tailored Suits in Ireland - found this nice online tailoured suit webstore -TailoredToSuit. I like TheJackanory blog - something unique and very readable. Also nominated for the '09 Blog Awards.

Karina has launched 1-2-1 Business Networking , which has announced First Wednesday, a meetup every first wednesday in the Mint Bar in Dublin.

Blogs need promoting too!

I've been reading quite a lot of new blogs this past week. I've also been convincing a number of people to setup their own blogs. I spent Thursday and Friday in Dublin meeting a number of clients and I'm delighted that they are all going to start blogging!

These blogs will give them a better way to connect with their clients. Websites can be a little cold, too much of a shop window. But websites need search engine optimisation (seo) too! Blogs have great avenues for SEO and I was very pleased to see this blog get a PageRank of 3/10 from Google in just 4 weeks. Not that I'm overly bothered with Toolbar PR! (Read about Toolbar PageRank)

The traditional way to promote blogs is from having other people recommend you - through blog aggregators, blog rolls, twitter posts, social media networks and so on. But look at the visitor traffic information for any well read blog and you'll see traffic from Search Engines is one of the biggest traffic providers - but only if you have Search Engine visibility.

Many young or first time bloggers forget this, opting for the "build it, they will come approach". Yes Google loves unique content and every good SEO will repeat this mantra over and over again.

But you cannot stand out on the internet through self validation alone. Unique content without authority/votes from other important, relevant meaninful sites are still needed. Blogs go down very well with Google, but a blog with little or no links won't gain traction. There's too much competition. Google's ranking of sites is still heavily based on its link-voting system.

I'll be setting up a new, personal blog this week (I hope), and I'll use it as a case study about promoting blogs. I know I'm relatively new to blogging but SEO for blogs hasn't changed. In the 6/7 weeks we've set this up, posts from this blog are live in Google in under 5 minutes, and often ranked in the top five for it's post title or tags. We get 50% of our traffic from Google and have over 100 subscribers across different subscription systems.

Must to things to promote your blog? Build a circle of links to your blog, website and social networking sites from your blog, website and social networking. MyBlogLog, a service from Yahoo, is a fantastic "hub" type link spot. Here you can join your blogs, profile and links from social services in one page. So Google can find your other profiles and so can other people. You can also join other communities and make new friends. Take a look at the page I setup for this blog to see what I mean.

Then go over to Technorati and set up your blog there. You'll need to add a widget to your website. It's not that complicated! My Technorati blog page is here. Now, set yourself up with Feedcat. Feedcat gives a great little button so that people can see how many RSS subscribers you have with that service. Other great places to get your blog into are:

• Irish Blogs
• Blog Lines
• BlogCatalog
• Blog Directory
  

Update to Open Coffee

The IGO Network URL is http://www.igopeople.com/g/564-Dell-Limerick for people in Dell Limerick who are interested in setting up or helping others setup their own business.

Geo Targeting in Google

The days of having one domain show for all countries is nearly over. Domains are now, almost always, indexed for a particular country. There is a way to set certain folders on the same domain for different countries, but if you're localising content, why put it on the same domain. Single domain strategies are a failure - that's what happens when you listen to branding experts!

Such a common "strategy" of people is to use their business name/brand name as their domain name. Of course every company should have a matching domain name to their brand but if you're interested in SEO, then it's to reach people which your brand hasn't. So having the brand name in the domain name doesn't help. You can put your brand name on the web page.

For companies with multiple products and multiple locations, then multiple domain SEO is the best strategy. Note to self: follow up on this in more detail

Limerick goes on...

I wasn't too impressed with everyone blaming the government for DELL's closure in Limerick. I'm not entirely sure that DELL are moving to Lodz as much as they are just closing Limerick. There has been a downturn in demand for it's products. So it cut from it's most expensive cost base.

Limerick has become too costly for a number of reasons - land, fuel, shipping, labour costs from suppliers (think contractors, electricians). It's very sad to see it all cut so quickly.

In response to it, Evert Bopp and others are using the Limerick Open Coffee Club to spearhead an initiative to help people in Dell and Limerick who want to take their own ideas to market. The group is made up of professionals and experts in Limerick who meet informally at the Absolut Hotel.

The club meetings are open to everyone and anyone may attend. I attended last weeks meeting, and found it very worthwhile and interesting. I'm sure with more and more members this will only get more interesting. There was a good range of people with business and sales experience, as well as general entrepeneurs who no doubt have many years of wisdom to pass on. I look forward to meeting the other members in time.

For those interested in starting up in Limerick, there are a number of resources you can look to. I'll Publish about this separately.

DELL closes in Limerick

Just a quick post to say how very sorry I am for all the employees at DELL in Limerick who going to lose their jobs this year and maybe into next year. I'm also very sad to see DELL's plant close in Limerick as I feel it was an important part of Limerick and a great source of local pride. It's also a massive part of the Limerick and Irish economy and I feel too for the many suppliers who will be hurt who don't get as much of a mention, as well as the many retailers and hotels and so on - we'll all be affected by it. I worked at DELL for 2 years, met my fiancè while working there and cut my teeth as a programmer, software engineer and project manager.

Let's not forget at this time the many companies who have weathered many storms in Limerick, much longer than DELL. Analog Devices, just down the road from DELL have been here since the '70's, I'm sure their continued presence will be even more value by Limerick.