Social Media Awards 2014 at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre

Social Media Awards 2014

On Thursday the 5th of June at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre, social media experts and marketing folk from across the country gathered for the award show to beat all others, The Social Media Awards or more lovingly known by their hashtag the #Sockies!

The Social Media Awards were first launched in 2011 to recognise companies for their innovative and business-focused use of social media. Last year 450 people attended the event, however, this year that number increased to over 500. The awards are the brainchild of Damien Mulley one of Ireland’s foremost experts on Social Media and Rick O’Shea, 2FM  DJ and social media aficionado!

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Popdeem won the #Sockies Cat Walk award with their highly inspiring customised socks!

Upon entering the Bord Gais Energy Theatre, anyone wearing socks was asked to participate in the ‘Sock Walk’ which had an overall winner for the best socks.

Once through the sock walk, guests were presented with ‘Fish n Chips’ style food which seems to be a change from previous years. Maybe they wanted it to be more of a social event?!

The awards ceremony was hosted by RTE 2FM DJ, Rick O’Shea, who most definitely brought the fun factor to the night. Throughout the night sweets, crisps and chocolate were thrown into the crowd to keep them on their toes, literally! He engaged with everyone in the theatre, moving around and making sure everyone got something! He brought an element of ‘Panto’ to the night, adding to the fun atmosphere.

 

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Jill Robinson of FCR Media

Our View of the Awards Ceremony

The FCR Media Team gained a great insight into how some of Ireland’s biggest brands use social media to run creative and engaging campaigns to get their message across to their customers.

Centra, winning 3 awards and the Grand Prix award, really showed us the impact social media campaigns can have on businesses, and what can be achieved if you invest time and effort into your campaign.

It certainly gave us determination and drive to be on the stage next year collecting awards for FCR Media and our clients!

 

This years social media awards sockies winners from FCR Media blog

Congratulations to this years winners of the 2014 #Sockies!

And the winners of the 2014 Social Media Awards / Sockies are:

Facebook Page for a Business (Agency Run)
Universal Pictures Ireland

Facebook Page for Non profit/organisation
Alone Ireland

Facebook Page for a Business (owner managed)
Lidl Ireland

Integrated Facebook Campaign:
Centra Ireland

Best Business Twitter account – Marketing
Spin 1038

Best Business Twitter account – Support
Irish Rail

Best Business/Org Twitter Campaign
Centra Ireland– #CentraCronado

Best Blog of an SME sponsored by .Me Registry
Brave Media

Use of Social Media by an SME
Tour America

Video/Video Campaign sponsored by YouTube
Kevin Egan Cars

Online PR Campaign
Bewley’s fair-trade Fortnight campaign

Use of Social Media by State Body
Defence Forces

Mobile App
Two winners
Just Eat + St Patrick’s Festival

Customer Care sponsored by Sky Ireland
Vodafone Ireland

Best use of SM for a sponsorship campaign
Electric Ireland

Innovative Use of Social Media
Spin 1038 The Drop

Social Media Effectiveness sponsored by Cloud90
UCC

Integrated Social Media Campaign
Centra Ireland

Social Media Only Campaign
Samsung ‘Re:Create’

Experimental
Essential French

Agency of the Year
Radical

Grand Prix
Centra Ireland

Tips for Google AdWords Success in 2014

If you’re looking for success with Pay Per Click via Google AdWords, you couldn’t find a better digital agency in Ireland for overseeing your campaign than FCR Media. We’ve spent over a decade creating and managing Google AdWords campaigns, and we are also the first Google AdWords Premier SME Partner in the country, providing a full service solution encompassing in-depth expertise, campaign management and detailed reporting.

But if you’re unfamiliar with either PPC or AdWords, you may not realise just how powerful this online advertising platform can be in driving interested people to your website, drawing on the immense popularity and functionality of Google search

Seemingly, it’s a simple case of creating ads for your business that are then showcased on Google when someone performs a relevant search. However, there’s such complexity and nuance to Google AdWords that the right in-depth expertise is truly needed to make the most of it.

Time and attention is needed for a successful campaign
Many companies may swerve clear of Google AdWords given how time-consuming and expensive it can be, but for others, the potential ROI makes the platform more than worth the huge amount of time spent contemplating, researching and planning for the best campaign. However, Google AdWords can certainly be frustrating if you do not give it the attention that it deserves.

From specific keywords to directing users to the right places
To ensure that your clicks come from the right prospects, keep your keywords specific. Choosing overly general keywords can greatly compromise your campaign’s effectiveness due to Google subsequently serving your ad to a disparate range of people with little interest in it. That means that even if such visitors do click on your ad, you’ll lose money. So, consider the very specific terms that actual human beings are likely to enter into a search engine.

You can also maximise the relevance of the users who are shown your ads by putting keywords into themed ad groups. A bakery, for example, may have separate ad groups for keywords related to cookies, brownies and cupcakes. An ad from that ad group can then target a shared set of keywords. Use ad groups to group things together, and you’ll have better-aligned ads and keywords and a better chance of quality click-throughs.

Consider, too, where visitors will be directed when they click on your ad. Sometimes, your homepage may be a perfectly suitable destination, but doing this too often can make visitors feel more than a little exploited – particularly if, for example, they click on an ad for a certain type of shoe, only for them to be led to a page lacking even a picture of a shoe.

Finally… continually track, test and review
There should never be a time when you are not monitoring your PPC campaign, experimenting and assessing the results. From performing AB and multivariate tests on your ads to reviewing keyword performance and making adjustments when returns diminish, even the most seemingly modest measures can hugely impact on the effectiveness of your Google AdWords campaign over time.

The State of Digital in Ireland as of April 2014

It’s useful for those firms in Ireland drawing on the services of a digital agency like FCR Media to know the exact state of play with regard to digital in this country – how are people accessing and using digital media, and who are they?
The social network ‘hits’ and ‘misses’

The most recent available statistics reveal that 86 per cent of adults in Ireland now use some form of mobile device – 61 per cent of them using smartphones and 40 per cent on tablets. Social networking sites seeing widespread usage included Facebook, with a 57 per cent share, while 27 per cent of Irish people used Twitter and 23 per cent had a LinkedIn presence.

Only slightly lesser-used social networks among Irish adults at the moment range from Google+ (20 per cent) to Pinterest (6 per cent), while instant messaging client Skype (33 per cent) also sees widespread popularity in the country. A big hit among the Irish young, meanwhile, is Snapchat, the photo messaging application used by 43 per cent of 15-24 year olds, with half of them turning to it daily.

Household use of the Internet
Clients of FCR Media may be equally interested to read that 82 per cent of households in Ireland had access to the Internet in 2013, suggesting that while much remains to be done, online engagement in the country is still extremely high even before the full implementation of the National Digital Strategy announced last year.

Indeed, 61 per cent of households use the Internet every day, with 78 per cent having used it in the last three months. The Internet has been used to find out about goods and services among 61 per cent of households in the last three months, with 71 per cent using laptops and 39 per cent using PCs. But it isn’t just about those platforms for Irish web users, as 22 per cent had also used mobile in-store for researching products.

How Facebook and Twitter are being used
There’s little question about the continuing primacy of these two social networks for many Irish Internet users, with Facebook having 2.3 million active users in Ireland alone. 70 per cent of those users visit Facebook on a daily basis, and have an average of 280 friends. There’s also a slight gender bias – 54 per cent – in favour of women.

The Irish brand that enjoyed the greatest number of Facebook fans, meanwhile, was Penneys, with 424,280. 70 per cent of all Irish businesses, in fact, are using Facebook, for which mobile is also an increasingly big factor. 70 per cent of all Facebook activity is now done on mobile, with 1.7 million Irish people using their smartphones to access the social network.

The figures relating to Irish use of Twitter are similarly interesting, with Christmas Day having seen 120,000 tweets made, and 101,000 retweets having been made during the Six Nations tournament. 50 per cent of Irish Twitter users are female, and 47 per cent have children.

Taken together, such statistics may seem merely a curiosity, but they actually help to piece together a very valuable and more complete picture of who uses the Internet and social media in Ireland, and how they do it.