A Clever way to use a podcast: Nano Nagle Place

When it comes to your Digital Marketing, a very clever way of making your organisation or brand stand out could be to start your own “Podcast Show“, effectively creating your own unique Media Channel to reach your target audience.

Podcasts can be a very powerful addition to your digital assets, whereby your audience get to hear from your team, hear about the important issues and how you are unique, all in your own voice. Someone listening to just one episode can be worth so much more than ‘liking’ an image on Instagram or Facebook and will create a much deeper, long lasting connection with you

Internationally, there are about 800,000 podcasts, making up almost 30 million episodes in 100 languages. Just 250,000 of these are “active” using the criteria of published in the last month. The people that subscribe and listen to podcasts tend to be extremely loyal to them and follow a listening routine.

Podcasts are perfect for the commuting, gym going demographic who want to be entertained and educated while they go about their daily tasks but can’t watch their screens and also those who are curious and want to delve into topics in a much deeper and more meaningful way.

The beauty of the podcast format is that it is so flexible and it can be used in so many special ways to do quite different jobs, from listening to an expert talking about their subject matter to even bedtime stories for children!

The podcasts can be featured on your website, included in email campaigns and used as very valuable social media content.

Nano Nagle Place Podcast

In the case of the Nano Nagle Place podcast, we were approached by the very innovative team there and they wanted to tell the very special story of the transformation of the near derelict, but hugely significant South Pres site in Cork city, to the fantastic place that they have today including a Visitor Centre, Gardens, Restaurant, Archives, Meeting Rooms and home to the Ministry, which includes the Lantern Project, the Men’s Group and the Cork Migrant Centre.

In order to tell this very special story we agreed to record a series of interviews with a large cast of very special characters and we created a podcast “Show” and a sequential series of “episodes” , each telling the story of the transformation of the place, but also providing a huge insight into the history, the characters, the personalities, the diversity, the ethos, the vision and the sacredness of Nano Nagle Place, which touches everyone that works and visits there.

In the clever series we hear about:

• Nano Nagle’s Story
• Life as a nun in a closed order
• The love of teaching and the need for creativity
• Life in inner city Cork
• The planning and thinking behind the development
• The challenges with the redevelopment of the old buildings
• Planning permission, funding challenges and rebuilding
• The special work of the Presentation Order in Ireland and overseas
• The passion of everyone involved
• The retirees who volunteer as tour guides and as coordinators in other activities
• Transformational and innovative work with migrants
• Famous Cork DJs bringing joy to migrant children through Hip Hop
• A vision to take Nano’s work into the future

All of this story is delivered with passion by the cast of Sisters, team members and volunteers from all walks of life, who have all fallen under Nano Nagle’s spell, as you will hear in the podcast series.

We are really proud to have been part of this podcast series, all of which was recorded during Covid in conditions that were not ideal, over Zoom, in rooms with socially distanced guests and open windows, but I hope you agree they have captured the magic of the Nano Nagle story.

We were part of the planning, we created the show graphics, we recorded and edited all episodes and I had the privilege of hosting these wonderful conversations.

You can hear the first episode of the podcast series here featuring he very special Sr. Mary Dineen who said goodbye to her mum and walked into South Pres as a novitiate on a sunny day in September 1955, a closed order at the time. She tells her fascinating story in huge detail, providing a unique perspective of her life and insights into educating children from inner city, working class Cork.

Click here to hear the episode with Sr. Mary Dineen

This is just a small example of the power of podcasting, a unique way to reach your audiences and tell a story in a special way that is captured for today and for posterity.

Greg 

Greg Canty is the producer of this and other client podcasts and his own, ‘Win Happy’ podcast. We offer a full podcasting production service to clients..

From a rugby career ending injury at 28 to a global successful software business with Conor O’Loughlin, CEO of Glofox

In this episode of the Fuzion Win Happy podcast, Greg chats with Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur 2018, Conor O’Loughlin, CEO and Founder of Glofox, who shares his story of huge disappointment with an injury, which finished his rugby career with Connacht at the age of 28 to a new career in computer software.

Realising that his rugby career and dream was over, he started a web development company where through his client work he discovered an untapped niche in bespoke software solutions for the gym and fitness sector.

With the help of a Competitive Startup Fund from Enterprise Ireland he managed to start developing a bespoke solution and later accessed further funding as part of the High Potential Startup Fund.

This business has expanded globally from Ireland thanks to the hard work and focus of Conor and his team and the careful navigation of the complex world of funding with Enterprise Ireland, Angel Investors and VCs.

Despite the huge demand for IT talent in Ireland and in Dublin, Glofox have managed to continue to attract great people to their team who are enjoying the excitement of being part of a place where they can make a real difference.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the link below:

From a rugby career ending injury at 28 to a global successful software business with Conor O’Loughlin, CEO of Glofox

We hope you enjoy Conor’s and the Glofox fascinating story!

The Fuzion Win Happy Podcast is produced by Greg Canty

 

Don’t be a Commodity, be Remarkable!

Queuing for my salad at lunchtime in the corner store near our office today in Dublin, I couldn’t help but notice the piles of health bars above the sandwich bar.

Even if I wanted one, I wouldn’t have a clue which one to pick as there were so many different brands, all offering the same thing!

A few years ago, health bars didn’t even exist and now they are competing for space at every till across Ireland. So much noise and so little differentiation.

Health bars have become a commodity.

How can you make sure this doesn’t happen to you and your business?

You have to keep on reinventing, reinvesting – in you, in your business and in your brands.

You have to continually give your target audience good reasons to engage with you. You have to create compelling stories about your products and your business.

As Seth Godin says in his Marketing Bible ‘The Purple Cow’ – you have to be ‘remarkable’ to stand out.

Looking at the image (above) of all these health bars, despite the investment in packaging, despite negotiating shelf space, despite “magical” ingredients that will make you leaner, fitter, healthier, not one of them is remarkable.

Why not make it a resolution to ask yourself right now – what steps could you take today to make your business more remarkable?

If you need any help guiding you towards the answers –  I’d love to help…….

Deirdre 

Deirdre Waldron is the founding partner of Fuzion Communications, a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design firm with offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

Go on – Personalise

Hi there!

Wouldn’t it be a lot better if “Hi Greg” had appeared on the email instead of the words “Hi there”?

Dear Customer,

Wouldn’t it be a lot better if “Dear Greg” appeared on the invitation to attend the launch event instead of “Dear Customer”?

The Manager

Wouldn’t it be a lot better if “Greg Canty” had appeared on the envelope and letter that accompanied the brochure instead of “The Manager”?

Price List

Wouldn’t it be a lot better if  “Fuzion price list” had appeared on the quote instead of a generic price list?

Reserved

Wouldn’t it be a lot better to see “Reserved for Fuzion” on the restaurant table instead of a plain “reserved” sign.

It does take time to customise and personalise, it does take a little extra effort but your communication will resonate so much more when you can avoid being generic. (Personalising has never been so easy with the tools that are now available).

Often being generic can even have a negative effect and can have your customer feeling very “not so special“.

1. If you can’t personalise think twice about communicating
2. If you can personalise get it right – double check the spelling of people and company names
3. Where personalising isn’t expected …personalise!

I received a CD in the post from an Amazon affiliate supplier and the docket had “thanks Greg” marked across it in marker – Wow!

Sometimes it’s really easy to stand out by doing just a little thing.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Firm in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

Who does the world think you are?

Apparently I’m someone who is interested in Adult Fantasy Games, the odd bet and I wouldn’t mind driving the new Volvo V40.

I’d like to go on holidays to Tuscany after needing the help of a Retail Consultant and playing some more adult fantasy games!

When I get serious I’m interested in ERP (excuse my ignorance but I have no idea what that is) for small business, a white board device for waking up ideas and I might even like to earn some extra money.

When I’m done with all of that I might like to find a new  file sharing platform while I take on my one year diploma course in Corporate Governance with DCU.

Finally I might be interested in switching to UPC.

Interesting person!!

Social Media Advertising

This is a sample of the advertising that is being targeted at me across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

With all of the different social media platforms it is possible to do some very specific targeting with your advertising campaigns.

Facebook – this probably has the biggest targeting capability as it can focus on your location (as precise as towns), age, personal status and declared personal interests.

For the advertiser  it works on either a pay per click basis (you only pay when someone clicks your advert) or on impressions (the number of times your advert has been shown).

You set a daily budget and you also have the capability of setting a maximum amount per click. The big limitation with Facebook advertising is that most people are in a very social frame of mind when they are using the platform so it probably isn’t great for “heavy” topics.

With Facebook you can also enjoy an element of what I call “endorsed” or “trust” advertising – where you see an advert and it declares that one of your friends likes that brand/product. If you want extra oomph from your page posts you can invest a few bob to push them out to the people who have liked your pages and their friends.

We have found it to be quite effective for many of our clients.

LinkedIn – the targeting capability for advertisers is really good here with options around location (just country so far), age, seniority, the size of the company the person works for, job role, sector and you can even target Groups that have been set up. This also operates on a pay per click basis (these are quite expensive) – you set the maximum per click and a daily budget.

I haven’t used it yet for clients but I have experimented with it for Fuzion – we have won some business as a result.

Twitter – advertising on twitter is still in it’s infancy and my feeling is that targeting will be more difficult because a user provides limited information when they set up their account. However if you read the blurb twitter reckon you can target by gender, geography and special interests (it must track the content of your tweets  or maybe who you are following to assess this – it might be tricky to target the huge number of users on twitter who lurk and never tweet). You have a choice between promoting your account or pushing your tweets into peoples twitter feed).

We haven’t used twitter advertising for any clients yet.

Collectively across all platforms there is a lot of information and capability that can help you target customers – the skill is knowing who your customer might be and using the targeting tools to attract their attention.

For the record when it comes to me other than a trip to Tuscany (off there next week!), Facebook marketing and pulling my hair out with Sky last Christmas the world just doesn’t know me at all.

I definitely have no interest in adult fantasy games… (al least that what I keep telling everyone!)

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion 

Fuzion with offices in Cork and Dublin in Ireland provide Social Media Consultancy and Training services.

Johnny Logan and knowing your audience!

I know what you like!

I was listening to the Ray D’Arcy Show on Today FM yesterday and they were interviewing one of this year’s nominees to be selected to represent Ireland in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, Kasey Smith.

When discussing how unsuccessful Ireland have been over the last few years, co presenter Mairead Farrell made a very valid point saying that it’s Europe that will be voting on the night (not Ireland) and we should all remember this when choosing Ireland’s act. What Ireland prefers may not be what Europe would vote for!

This got me thinking about businesses and I wondered are they fitting in with this logic?

The market is changing rapidly and what may have worked before may no longer be relevant to your ‘current audience’ so businesses need to take a step back and see how they can improve their product/service in order to keep up with their competitors or even better, get ahead of them.

It’s obviously easier for bigger companies to get to know their audience as they can afford to do lots of detailed market research to identify their target audience and find out what they are thinking.

This shouldn’t stop smaller companies conducting their own research – you can carry out surveys using free services on-line such as Survey Monkey or Group-Surveys to help identify your product/service’s strengths and weaknesses in your customers’ eyes.

Even monitoring feedback received on social networks or review sites can be used to your advantage. Watch carefully what is being said and keep your mind open to new opportunities and needs! (This is one of our reasons for making sure you look after your own social media).

Once you know your audience you need to also know where to find them!

A brilliant advertising package may sound like an amazing offer but will it actually reach your own target market? – I remember a client of ours ringing us all excited because she had just secured a great deal – she secured a double page advert in Magill magazine for half price ..the services she offered were an alternative to cosmetic surgery!! The poor pet was out of business three months later.

Don’t just research the publication/radio station – Find out what issue/ radio show would be most relevant to your business.

It looks like we all need to be like Johnny Logan ..

Mary Quille is a PR Consultant with Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design firm with offices in Dublin and Cork

Those Days are well and truly gone?

Handy brand ?

“Those days are well and truly gone” she said with a nod that demonstrated clarity and conviction around the topic. Around the table everyone nodded their heads agreeing with the wise statement and more importantly the sentiment.

We were working on an event with some very high profile, weighty organisations. This was a planning meeting and the marketing representatives from each organisation were in attendance. The event was very progressive and was targeting attendees that were perfect for each of the participating organisations.

It sounded like a blast from the past when someone around the table suggested a “goodie bag” for the attendees. I hate that description – I immediately think of a branded plastic bag with some literature and a few bits. However I always saw the absolute sense in the “right” branded item that helps make your brand connect with the attendees.

If it is the right item and is useful and durable your brand could appear in all sorts of places being used over and over by your target audience – how bad?

The big danger is that we sit and discuss and because of the “economic climate” we too easily reject things that could make total sense without thinking properly about our objectives.

Why did we do this “stuff” before – was it because we had loads of money and we wanted to chuck it away or was it because it was simply a great idea ?

It”s pouring outside and I grab my really decent umbrella with that “logo” on it ….that brand has done a lot of travelling since the event I got it at!

A lot of what we did before made sense – those days may not be gone after all!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing & PR firm with offices in Dublin and Cork

Facebook – You can now target your posts

It won’t fit everyone!

Maybe you don’t want every post from your Facebook business page reach every single viewer.

A great feature has just come on stream with Facebook which gives you the ability to control exactly this scenario.

Why might you do this?

With a particular post you might want to limit it to fans of your page who live locally or who are in a particular age group. Sometimes you may want to just target your post at members of a particular sex or with a particular personal status.

A department store who are running a special promotion on bra fitting may not want to interrupt their male audience with such a message, running the risk of them deciding to unlike the page.

A restaurant may not want to annoy viewers who are single when they are promoting specials on Valentines day – it might just annoy them!

How does it work?

Who do you want to see this post?

When you are writing your post before you publish it you can choose to target the audience for this post be clicking on the “target” button, which can be seen on the bottom left corner of the post window alongside the timing button. (you must first enable this feature in your page settings – see below)

From here you can make your audience selection, which gives you a wide range of choices enabling you to limit the reach of your post.  Once you decide to publish, the post will only appear in the newsfeed of those fans that match your selected criteria.

The criteria includes gender, location, age, relationship status, education and interests.

If your fans choose to share that post it will only appear in the newsfeed of their friends that match that criteria.

The post will appear on your wall as normal visible to everyone who visits your page.

Enabling the Post Targeting feature

If your want to use this feature you must first enable the post privacy gating feature for your Facebook page – what a terrible name for the feature!

To do this you must go to the edit page menu that appears at the top of your admin panel. From here click into the manage permissions menu and you will see the “post privacy gating” option towards the end of the page, which you enable by just clicking the box.

Once you have done this the “target” feature\icon will appear as an option in the post comment window as already described.

Well done Facebook !! – its a great new feature.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training from our offices in Cork and Dublin.

Missing the low hanging fruit!

Waiting for the penny to drop!

“If I do a search for what we do online we’re nowhere to be found” barked my client down the phone. This was obviously a big deal to him as well it should be!

After all this was the low hanging fruit – the potential customers out there who have already decided that they want what you are offering and are searching online to find it.

“We didn’t do your website for you, it hasn’t been optimised properly which is part of the problem and if you make a few simple changes it will make a big difference” I explained.

“Ok, ok, I must get onto the website crew” he eventually calmed down, “Is there anything we can do for now?” he asked.

I suggested a Google Adwords campaign to ensure he had a web presence (in adverts) where key search terms were used – at least until his website would start performing organically.

“Perfect, it’s vital that our website always comes up first” he explained, “Can you do it ASAP?”

He was right – for his sector a strong web presence was an absolute priority.

We quickly put the Adwords campaign in place and this corrected his lack of web presence immediately. For a reasonable daily budget we ensured that all relevant web traffic found his website and this was done on a pay per click basis – you only pay when a user clicks on your advert and comes onto your website.

A few weeks later we had a review meeting with our client – we covered the PR coverage and we also discussed the effectiveness of his advertising spend, which he was looking after himself.

As I had set up the Google Adwords campaign for him I gave him a detailed report showing how many times his adverts were shown, how many times the adverts were clicked upon and the traffic that came onto his website as a result.

We could see in detail the keywords and search terms that had generated the most traffic and the cost of each of these.

Budgets were a little tight he explained because he had committed to a long term advertising plan (obviously to a good salesman – or woman as it turned out to be) with a particular publication (no problem there) and a local radio station (totally wrong demographic ….but he got a cracking deal!).

“I want to stop my Google Advertising” he declared.

Hmmm, “No problem, but you do know when we stop that advertising when anyone searches for you online, they just won’t be able to find your website? ” I explained.

“I want to stop it” he repeated.

His sudden stance staggered me – despite the previous declaration of intent by this fairly clued in operator he still opted for an advert that he could see in the paper and hear on the radio rather than pay for this online Adwords “stuff” that absolutely guaranteed a web presence for hot leads, the low lying fruit!

I had nothing to gain from the argument, I had explained the “risk” as clearly as possible and he had just made up his mind.

Ah well … that penny will drop all by itself when the low lying fruit drops somewhere else! (I’m waiting for the call ..)

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

(I did help him with the optimisation of his website, which will take a while to fully kick in – he is now appearing on page two for relevant Google searches instead of page 8!)

Fuzion offer Web Marketing services including Google Adwords campaigns for clients

Aer Lingus celebrate 75 years by bringing back the Peanuts!

Peanuts anyone?

“Aer Lingus celebrate 75 years by bringing back the Peanuts!”

Can you imagine a headline like this?

While it would seem like a terrible way to celebrate 75 years (On May 27th 1936 Aer Lingus launched its first ever flight between Baldonnel and Bristol, with just five passengers) for me it would be the best possible news to come from our famous airline.

Do you remember the days when flying was a treat and when the smiling hostess would genuinely look after each of the customers with water, orange juice and peanuts?

In so many businesses the level of service has increased but in the airline business the exact opposite has happened with a horrible race to the bottom. The level of service has reduced to such an extent that air travel is now a right pain in the backside.

Aer Lingus seem to be caught in no man’s land trying to compete with the “Low Care” airline Ryanair – I honestly get really cross when I hear people waxing lyrical about the great businessman, Michael O’Leary who proudly boasts about his brand of lousy customer service. While they might make record profits (€401M in the last 12 months), Michael will use every situation and every trick to squeeze a bob out of you – listening to jingles on board selling tickets is not my idea of a good time!

When we plan holidays it will never be to a route serviced by a Ryanair flight – plenty don’t mind so who am I to argue? I don’t want to travel with anyone who values customers in such a way.

Tickets for Ryanair charity anyone?

So, Aer Lingus – go for it … bring back the peanuts, that extra little bit of customer service, take a premium on the price and stop chasing Ryanair to the bottom.

What have you got to lose?

Happy 75!!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion