In advance of their national congress in the Croke Park Conference Centre on Thursday May 15th 2008 which focuses on "Beyond Websites: Business uses of social networking and new media" the Irish Internet Association (IIA) surveyed their ezine readers about their uses, budgets and attitudes to social networking and new media.
This online survey was run in conjunction with Ciall.com, one of the IIA's newest members, who deliver a wide range of consulting services and business solutions to its clients across varied industry sectors.
Key findings of the online survey were:
- 33% or large corporations (100+ employees) plan to spend €51,000 to €100,000 on social networking and new media technologies in 2008. This compares to 47% who spent less than €5,000 in 2007. No surprise then that 61% reported they were satisfied with their return of investment on these technologies and 31% reported they were very satisfied.
- Blogs were the favoured new media technology among microtraders and SMEs while large corporations favoured the use of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to make their website content easily available.
- Microtraders and SMEs indicated that "sharing information with clients" was the main reason for their adoption of social networking and new media technologies while 58.3% of larger corporations indicated that knowledge management was their purpose when deploying these technologies.
- While microtraders and SMEs indicated that senior management were driving the adoption of social networking and new technologies, 60% of companies with between 50 and 100 staff indicated that their sales and marketing team were driving the adoption of these technologies. However, in larger corporations the drive for adoption of these technologies was split evenly among senior management, sales and marketing staff and information technology staff.
(Members can access the complete results in our Resources section.)
Sponsored by Dell, the IIA's 2008 Congress "Beyond Websites: Business Uses of Social Networking and New Media" will include a presentation from Bruno Sardo, Head of eCommerce in the Small & Medium Business Division of Dell EMEA. His position and daily contact with Small & Medium businesses gives Bruno a special insight into the needs and aspirations of 75% of the IIA's members who have less than 100 employees.
In light of these findings delegates at the congress will no doubt be keen to hear, for example, case studies from the likes of Barry Meehan, Managing Director of Worldwide Cycles in Tipperary who recorded an increase in the actual customers arriving in their shop in Clonmel due to their blogging.
Other speakers include Mark Charkin, Head of Advertising of Bebo International and Philip Macartney, Bebo's recently appointed Head of Sales in Ireland. Bartley O'Connor, Associate Director, Advisory Practice in PriceWaterhouseCoopers Ireland will be among the speaker in the morning's plenary sessions as well.
While many companies (65% of our survey respondents) see social networking and new media as a way of sharing information with clients, a number of our speakers have realised the potential of social networking to allow collaboration and problem solving on a broad range of issues. Two of these innovators will present at Congress 2008.
- Campbell Scott, CEO of IGOPeople.com, will be presenting their innovative new social networking platform that will allow individuals and groups to find and connect with the right people, organisations and companies to resolve issues and problems. Delegates at the IIA Congress will be invited to be among the beta testers along with a number of organisations, SMEs and major brands.
- Joe Newell, Marketing Director of Ammado, will speak about Ammado's vision to enable people to be "the change you want to see in world" by using the power of social networking to connect nonprofits and socially engaged individuals dedicated to positive change on a global and local level.
Maeve Kneafsey, chair of the IIA and Managing Director of Elucidate, will be chairing the plenary sessions in the morning. The afternoon events will include breakout sessions covering a variety of topics:
- Build a Great Website - Sponsored by iQ Content
- How to eCommerce Enable your Website - Sponsored by Realex Payments
- Monetising your Email Marketing - Sponsored by 4GiftsDirect.com
- Mobile Internet... The Next Big Thing? - Sponsored by dotMobi
- Online Marketing - Capture & Measure - Sponsored by Elucidate
- Know the Value of Your Business
A brand new feature of Congress 2008 will be our web strategy clinics. As a member-driven organisation we responded to requests to make one-to-one assistance on specific issues available. These clinics will allow delegates to spend half an hour with an industry expert focusing on their web strategy as follows:
- Web Analytics, User Experience and Accessibility - iQ Content
- Online, Mobile & Interactive Advertising - David Connor, Strategic Planning Director, eighty:twenty
- Web Design - Rick McKee, Commercial Director, Tibus
- Legal - Paul Lambert, Merrion Legal Solicitors
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) - John Ring, Technical Director, RingJohn.com
Co-sponsors of the IIA Congress include IQContent, Blacknight, IEDR who along with our headline sponsor Dell and Realex Payments, Ion Technologies, TradeDoubler and others will be exhibiting at the Congress in Croke Park.
A limited number of tickets are still available for this unique event from www.iia.ie/congress/ and includes access to all the plenary and breakout sessions, a web strategy clinic, the exhibition and networking areas, and to all the breaks, lunch and the post conference drinks reception sponsored by Microsoft.