Category Archives: Digital Marketing

The Rising Star of Instagram!

October 24, 2019 Karen Twomey Leave a comment

See that bright glistening star shooting across the social media sphere? It’s Instagram…

The rise of Instagram has continued at a rapid pace in 2019 and with no signs of slowing down, it’s becoming the latest ‘go to’ social media platform for business and personal use alike.

In fact, without a doubt, Instagram is now the most popular topic in the social media training classes I run.

Businesses are flocking to get established on the platform and the weird and wonderful world of Insta stories, hashtags and moving emojis is becoming more and more mainstream for many SMEs.

Even Influencer Marketing is starting to make an appearance in the Insta marketing of many small businesses, as they begin to appreciate the ready-made markets these ‘bloggers’ can bring to their brands.

According to the latest IpsosMRBI statistics, 41% of the Irish population now have Instagram accounts – an increase of 4% since December 2018. Of those accounts, 65% of users log on daily, bringing it neck in neck with Facebook in terms of daily usage – no mean feat!

So, what is it about Instagram that is so attractive to users?

Its visually driven appeal offers an escape from so much of the clutter and noise of other social media platforms.
It,s not (yet) as advert driven as Facebook, allowing for a more seamless user experience.
It feeds into the popularity of video advertising and storytelling marketing.
It’s fun!

So if your business is burying its head in an Insta-sandpit, it’s definitely time to shake it free and get yourself set up! Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform in Ireland (and around the world), with no sign of slowing down.

And, as we all know – where customers gather, businesses quickly follow!

#GetYourInstaOn

Karen Twomey of COMMUNICATIONS HUB specialises in Digital Marketing Training, Social Media Training and Online Management for Business. For more information contact her on karen@communicationshub.ie

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Digital Marketing

Social Media Stats Ireland 2019

August 12, 2019 Karen Twomey Leave a comment

Ipsos MRBI recently released their most up-to-date social media stats for Ireland and there were very few surprises.

Instagram has continued its enormous growth with 41% of the Irish population now having accounts – an increase of 4% since December 2018. Of those who have accounts, 65% use it daily, bringing it neck in neck with Facebook in terms of daily usage.

Facebook has remained at a steady 62% in relation to account ownership in Ireland. This is the same percentage as back in December. We mustn’t forget that Facebook ownership is probably at a saturated level, so it’s no big surprise that it generally doesn’t see any significant changes. Of those who have accounts, 65% use it daily, a 1% decrease since the last statistics.

LinkedIn fell by 2% bringing it in line with Twitter account ownership, which saw a 1% growth in users. Twitter experienced an enormous growth in daily usership of 5% over the same period, bringing it up to 40%.

A new arrival on the on the Ipsos MRBI Irish social media stats is TikTok which has been measured at only 2% account ownership, however those who have accounts are very active with 33% using it daily.

In terms of social media messaging services, WhatsApp remains the most popular choice of download, closely followed by Facebook Messenger which saw a 3% growth in users over the last 6 months.

The losers of the world of social media messaging continue to be Viber, down 3% since December, and Tinder and Snapchat, which have remained stagnant over the six month period.

All in all, the trends of the last twelve months seem to be continuing among social media users in Ireland. Facebook remains the most popular and most used social media platform, while Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform in the country and is sure to catch up to Facebook in terms of account ownership figures in the near future.

The future is social – make sure your business is!

Karen Twomey of COMMUNICATIONS HUB specialises in Digital Marketing Training, Social Media Training and Online Management for Business. For more information contact her on karen@communicationshub.ie

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Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing Courses Cork

July 24, 2019 Karen Twomey Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year again when the shadow of those long winter nights is starting to loom. It’s no coincidence that autumn is the busiest time for night courses – it’s a great time of the year to refocus and take up a new challenge after enjoying all those lazy sunny evenings (ish!).

August is always a busy time for me, putting together courses and fielding queries. This year, there’s enormous demand for upskilling in the area of Digital Marketing and Social Media and I’ll be running numerous courses throughout the autumn. There are courses to suit all levels of skill and of varying length, depending on the final qualification – internal certification, QQI L5, Diploma.

For ease of reference I’ve included a list of the confirmed Digital Marketing courses below. There will be new courses added over the coming weeks, so keep an eye on our website!

If the commitment of a night course is too much for you right now but you’d still like to improve your digital marketing and social media skills, we offer one-to-one tailor made sessions and workshops. Contact Communications Hub for more information!

Digital Marketing Courses for Autumn 2019

4-week Social Media for Business Course running with IRD Duhallow starting in September:

https://www.irdduhallow.com/events/social-media-for-business/

10 week QQI L5 Digital Marketing Course in Mallow College:

https://nightschool.ie/digital-marketing/

10 week course in Cork Training Centre, Bishopstown:

http://corktrainingcentre.ie/courses/?sfcw-courseId=238661

If you need any more information on the above, please don’t hesitate to contact us! Email: karen@communicationshub.ie

COMMUNICATIONS HUB specialise in Digital Marketing Training, Social Media Training and Online Management for Business.

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Digital Marketing

Why YouTube?

May 21, 2019 Karen Twomey Leave a comment

Does your business have a YouTube channel? If not, here’s a few good reasons why you should!

Over 77% of the population use YouTube every week – so whether you know it or not, you’re probably a regular user of the platform too!

YouTube was established in 2005 and has grown from strength to strength over the years – much helped, of course, by the explosion of video as a content marketing strategy. It is now the world’s second largest search engine (after Google) and the second most visited site after Facebook.

The average YouTube user spends an unbelievable 21 minutes per browsing session – compare this to Facebook at 11 minutes, Instagram at 6 and eBay at 6! (Similarweb.com 2019).

In fact, over one billion hours of videos are now watched on YouTube every day with 1.9 billion monthly active logged-in users. Of those 75% report watching YouTube on their mobile devices (Hubspot 2019) – a fact that should be kept in mind when designing YouTube content and adverts.

Useless Fact

The most watched video on YouTube is Despacito by Luis Fonsi. Gangnam Style was the first you-tube video to be watched over a billion times. It took five months to hit 1 billion views – in comparison to Despacito which took just over 97 days!

Moving swiftly on…

YouTube ads can be In-Stream, In-Search and In-Display and research has found that they are 84% more likely to hold attention than TV ads. After all, who watches live TV anymore!

YouTube ads can be especially good for building brand awareness, influencing behaviour and driving customers to your website…and who doesn’t want more customers, right?!

Of course, I can’t write a blog on YouTube without mentioning the important fact that it’s owned by Google and rates very highly in terms of SEO and SERP. Couple that with the fact that video gets up to 60% more interaction than images online and it makes Youtube a no brainer for any digital marketing strategy!

I bet you’ve been singing this in your head since I mentioned it, right? Here you go…

#YouTube #DigitalMarketing #VideoMarketing

Karen Twomey MA BSc is a freelance Digital Marketing Consultant and delivers a part-time QQI L5 Digital Marketing course in Mallow College of Further Education and a Digital Marketing Institute Professional Diploma in Cork Training Centre. She also provides bespoke one-to-one and group training sessions. For more information contact karen@communicationshub.ie

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Digital Marketing

Time for a Night Class?

January 18, 2019 Karen Twomey Leave a comment

The best thing about teaching, is the money…joke! (That’s possibly the worst part).

As we finished up another run of Digital Marketing night classes last night, I began to reflect on the drive home what delivering these courses means to me. It is January after all, and a great time to reflect!

I’ve been involved in delivering adult education for over two years now and in that time I’ve evolved so much myself in terms of my knowledge, my experience and, mostly, my confidence. I can now say, hand on heart, that I love teaching and the best part of teaching, is the great people I get to meet along the way.

Teaching adults is, I imagine, very different to teaching children. My students rarely throw tantrums, hardly every fight during break and I’ve yet to have an irate parent accost me in the carpark. All and all, they’re pretty nice people. I tend to like them.

Some are employees, others self-employed, some are unemployed and more are just out of college. Whatever their status, all of them are there to upskill and learn something new to help them along their journey.

That thirst for knowledge is the common denominator that binds them. I watch them over the course of the semester as they develop friendships, support each other and engage in general banter, and it’s such as positive transition.

You can never underestimate how hard it is for an adult to return to education. So many haven’t been in a classroom setting for years. So many never finished school first time around. For others English isn’t even their first language.

I know, I too returned to college as an adult. My previous career had run off with that mythical creature, the Celtic tiger, and left me abandoned at a crossroads. I desperately needed to upskill and move forward onto a new career path.

While pouring over college courses one Friday night (there may also have been some pouring of wine involved), I stumbled on a course that stirred something in me. On a whim, I enrolled, and before I knew what I was doing I was walking back into Cork Institute of Technology for the first time since I had originally left it in 1998. I’m glad to say both it and I had changed enormously, and for the better, in the elapsed 17 years.

But this isn’t a blog about me and my story in adult education. I only mention it to reiterate how returning to education and learning a new skill changed my life. It changed everything about me. It awakened my brain, gave me a new outlook on life and gave me back some of the confidence and self-belief that I had lost along the way.

You will never regret the things you’ve learned – the knowledge, the skills – you will only regret the opportunities you didn’t take to help yourself along your journey. Nobody is ever too old to return to education. You are never too ‘stupid’ to learn something new. You are never too ‘out of touch’ to embrace a new skill.

There may never be a right time to take up a class. There will only ever be now, today. Make the decision and you’ll make it work. What’s the worst that can happen?

Karen Twomey MA BSc is a freelance Digital Marketing Consultant and delivers a part-time QQI L5 Digital Marketing course in Mallow College of Further Education and a Digital Marketing Institute Professional Diploma in Cork Training Centre. She also provides bespoke one-to-one and group training sessions. For more information you can contact her on karen@communicationshub.ie or see her website.

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Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing in 2019

January 10, 2019 Karen Twomey Leave a comment

It would be rude of me to start the first blog of 2019 without wishing you all a very Happy New Year!

Well here we are, on the 12 month countdown to 2020! Maybe it’s just me, but it’s hard to believe we are almost 20 years into the new millennium. So much has changed in terms of technology and communication and with it, society as a whole has also changed.

It would be nice to see those changes as ‘advancements’ and ‘enhancements’ to how we live and do business, but in truth the huge growth in technology has been a double-edged sword in many ways. However, that’s a blog for another day and this blog is all about positivity for the year ahead!

The last few years have seen huge changes in how we do business and, in particular, how we market ourselves and communicate with our stakeholders. Most businesses have embraced the online world in at least some way, be it a website, social media platform or email marketing.

Not every business is necessarily comfortable with being online, but they are savvy enough to understand that the wheel keeps turning and you have to roll with it. After all, if you’re not moving forward…

For me, 2018 was a major year of change in how businesses went about their digital marketing and social media marketing. It was the year that businesses started to understand that the best way to showcase online was by showing some personality.

Marketing is no longer about just selling goods and services, it’s about storytelling.

It’s about showing who you are and what’s important to you. It’s about relationship building, and the only way to for a business to do that is to take responsibility for their online presence.

It’s not enough to just pay someone in-house or otherwise to ‘do your social’. It has to be about more than that. There has to be joined up thinking and contributions to what forms your online marketing plan. The best social media content is when it’s real and authentic and, to achieve that, everybody in an organisation needs to be on board.

So, last year saw me delivering a huge amount of Digital Marketing training sessions all over the country to all different types of industries. All of the businesses attending these sessions wanted to get a better understanding of how to manage their brands online.

They understood the importance of taking some control to help grow their business’ online presence.

We covered everything from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Blogging, Organic SEO, Paid SEO, Email Marketing to the basics of content creation including picture and video editing, keywords and hashtags! And they weren’t the only ones learning – along the way, I was too.

That’s the interesting thing about Digital Marketing – there’s no such thing as an expert. It’s a constantly changing and evolving field of study and, in truth, it moves so fast that we’re always playing catch up.

So, whatever your goals for 2019 might be, do yourself and your business a favour and get yourself online! Do a course, do some YouTubing – just do something to improve your Digital Marketing skills! I promise it will be worth it!

Karen Twomey is a Digital Marketing Consultant with Communications Hub and specialises in providing Digital Marketing and Social Media Training for businesses. For further information Tel: 087 7642576 or email: Karen@communicationshub.ie

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Digital Marketing

Certificate in Digital Marketing for 2019?

December 17, 2018 Karen Twomey Leave a comment

New Year, New Skills?

The Certificate in Digital Marketing QQI L5 will kick off again for 2019 on 28th January at Mallow Night School, which is part of Mallow College of Further Education.

The course runs on Monday nights from 6.30 to 9.30 for 12 weeks and includes digital marketing modules on:

Social Media for Business – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram & Snapchat
WordPress & Blogging
Creating Online Marketing Schedules
Creating text, photo and video content
Search Engine Optimisation
Google Analytics
Email Marketing Campaigns

The focus of the Certificate in Digital Marketing is to gain a sound knowledge of digital marketing for business and organisational use and learn some practical take-home skills to help you improve your marketing and communications online, as well as integrating digital marketing strategies with traditional marketing methods.

For further information on the course or to sign up online and receive a discount on fees, see NightSchool.ie

#Digitalmarketing #NightClasses

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Digital Marketing, Uncategorized

Too many Social Media Platforms, too Little Time?

September 17, 2018 Karen Twomey Leave a comment

Confused about which social media platforms your business should be on? You’re not alone…

This is a question I’m always asked when I’m meeting with a business or running one of my social media training courses. In fact, if I had a euro for each time, I’d be writing this blog from a golden beach in Hawaii…maybe it’s time to reconsider my professional fees.

Anyway, I digress. Back to social media platforms.

Which social media platform is best for your business is a hard question to answer. There may even be a place for many businesses on almost all platforms, but in reality, most businesses won’t have the time, inclination or budget for that.

I always answer that it’s better to be on one social media platform and do it well, rather than be on all of them, and failing miserably.

If you’d like something a bit more technical though here’s a breakdown of age profiles on each social media platform. Think about your audience – Who are they? What age are they? Let that be a guide as to the social media platforms your business uses. It’s also a great guide as to the type of content you should be posting – but that’s a blog for another day.

Social Media Training — (source: Spedfast.com 2018)

For those wondering why Snapchat isn’t included in that graph, it’s because Snapchat isn’t a social media platform, it’s a messaging service. But, because I’m such a nice person, I’ve put together some stats on age profile use of that too…you’re welcome.

So, to sum it up. Facebook seems to be a ‘catch-all’ for all age groups, while the likes of Instagram and Twitter tend to appeal to a slightly younger to middle-aged aged group. If your customer is under 25, Snapchat should be a focus for your business online.

Of course, there are always exceptions and the above is just meant as a useful guide for your business when trying to decide the best social media platforms to use.

For more information on social media training and online management, see our website www.communicationshub.ie

#SocialMediaTraining #DigitalMarketing #OnlineTraining

Karen Twomey is a freelance Public Relations and Social Media Consultant with Communications Hub For further information Tel: 087 7642576 or email: Karen@communicationshub.ie

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See that bright glistening star shooting across the social media sphere? It’s Instagram…

So, what is it about Instagram that is so attractive to users?

Karen Twomey of COMMUNICATIONS HUB specialises in Digital Marketing Training, Social Media Training and Online Management for Business. For more information contact her on karen@communicationshub.ie

Ipsos MRBI recently released their most up-to-date social media stats for Ireland and there were very few surprises.

In terms of social media messaging services, WhatsApp remains the most popular choice of download, closely followed by Facebook Messenger which saw a 3% growth in users over the last 6 months.

Karen Twomey of COMMUNICATIONS HUB specialises in Digital Marketing Training, Social Media Training and Online Management for Business. For more information contact her on karen@communicationshub.ie

It’s that time of the year again when the shadow of those long winter nights is starting to loom. It’s no coincidence that autumn is the busiest time for night courses – it’s a great time of the year to refocus and take up a new challenge after enjoying all those lazy sunny evenings (ish!).

Digital Marketing Courses for Autumn 2019

COMMUNICATIONS HUB specialise in Digital Marketing Training, Social Media Training and Online Management for Business.

Does your business have a YouTube channel? If not, here’s a few good reasons why you should!

Useless Fact

The best thing about teaching, is the money…joke! (That’s possibly the worst part).

It would be rude of me to start the first blog of 2019 without wishing you all a very Happy New Year!

Karen Twomey is a Digital Marketing Consultant with Communications Hub and specialises in providing Digital Marketing and Social Media Training for businesses. For further information Tel: 087 7642576 or email: Karen@communicationshub.ie

New Year, New Skills?

The course runs on Monday nights from 6.30 to 9.30 for 12 weeks and includes digital marketing modules on:

Most of the social media training courses I do cover a section on how to put together a digital marketing plan. You can spent hours posting online, but if you don’t have a strategic marketing plan, you may just be talking to yourself – and we all know that’s a sign of madness!

1. KNOW YOUR BUSINESS GOALS

2. KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER

3. DEVELOP A STRATEGY & TACTICS

4. MONITORING & MEASURING

And there you have it – four easy steps to putting together a digital marketing campaign for your business. Happy marketing!

Karen Twomey is a Digital Marketing Consultant with Communications Hub and specialises in providing Social Media Training for businesses. For further information Tel: 087 7642576 or email: Karen@communicationshub.ie

Confused about which social media platforms your business should be on? You’re not alone…

#SocialMediaTraining #DigitalMarketing #OnlineTraining

Karen Twomey is a freelance Public Relations and Social Media Consultant with Communications Hub For further information Tel: 087 7642576 or email: Karen@communicationshub.ie

COMMUNICATIONS HUB specialise in delivering digital marketing and online training campaigns and pride ourselves on using creative marketing to push beyond the boundaries of traditional marketing.

What Communications Hub can do for you

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