I only remember a handful of the Christmas presents I received as a young boy (not too long ago ). One of the surprise presents I received one Christmas morning when I was 14 was a Prince August Soldier Making Kit. There were four moulds in the kit. Two for infantry, one for cavalry and one for a cannon. To make the pieces you melted lead and poured into the rubber moulds which were clamped together.

It didn’t take me long to use up the lead that was supplied. Luckily at the time my Father had a roll of lead that would have been used in construction work. Having an endless free supply of raw material I decided to go into business for myself. I don’t know if it was my idea or if someone suggested it, but I began my first self employed venture.

I had the product. I set the price at 10p for infantry pieces, 15p for cavalry (you got a horse) and 20p for a cannon (the wheels worked). The place where I sold them was in the small sweet shop we had attached to the pub. The promotion was via a large A3 size poster I made saying ‘Create Your Own Battles, Recreate History’.

I was never really into playing with small toy soldiers myself, but I knew others who were. So it was worth a try. I sold the lead pieces unpainted. It was too time consuming to hand paint each individual piece. Anyway “who was I to choose the colour of your army? You’ll have much more fun painting them yourself”.

As is always the case, there were a couple of casual buyers and a couple of fervent collectors. Although I didn’t know what it was called at the time, Pareto’s Principle (the 80-20 rule) was certainly in place. I rewarded the big spenders by keeping the best unblemished pieces for them. Money given for sweets was being diverted into unique handmade collectibles and miniature armies were growing under beds in the village.

I was rolling in the dough, fast cars, loose women, exotic holidays……well, maybe not. I was ok at saving, helped in no small part by the fact I lived over a sweet shop! I’m not exactly sure why I stopped selling the soldiers. Maybe the buyers found some new craze. Maybe the moulds were on the verge of disintegrating from constant exposure to molten lead. Maybe I just got fed up of it and wanted something new. Probably a combination of all of the above. Anyhow a new opportunity presented itself.

A farmer who drank in our pub had some baby pigs (bonhams) for sale for £25.  The sow had a litter of around 10-12 bonhams. I did the maths. 10 bonhams at £25 each was equal to 2,500 lead soldiers at 10p each.

I was going to go into pig breeding!

But that’s a post for another day. I guess the idea of this post is to encourage the buying of gifts that encourage kids to create something, to make something, to build something, to bring out their imagination. Encourage them to start their own little micro enterprise. Let them learn, let them succeed, let them fail, just let them at it.

Have you any memories of presents that brought out the best in you or that taught you a lesson?

A woman in England dumped a real cat in a wheelie bin, was caught on cctv and the footage ended up on YouTube and then national TV.

The Kilkenny hurling team, known as ‘The Cats’ were hoping to make history by beating Tipperary to win 5 All Ireland Championships in a row.

Smack bang in the middle of these two headline news events I came up with a simple idea ‘film someone dumping a ‘Kilkenny cat’ in a wheelie bin’.

The next day, Friday, I drove deep inside ‘enemy lines’ to purchase said cat. I toyed with the idea of getting someone well known to perform the dastardly deed. Perhaps a well known Tipperary hurler dressed in drag or similar. I thought about it for a while and decided it best to keep it close to the original video footage and ‘employ’ the services of an unknown woman (nationally at least).

Cue my mother. “Ma I want to video you throwing a cat in a wheelie bin” I said. “For what”, was her confused reply. I explained what I had in mind and this was the result.

On Monday evening 30th August I uploaded the video to my YouTube channel and then posted to my Tipp Tatler Facebook page and then shared through my personal page. I was banking on family and friends and relations who knew my mother Noreen picking up on it and sharing it further. I knew it was quite good and would probably do the rounds of Borrisoleigh and maybe a bit more as she is a popular woman and much liked by all who come in contact with her, and little did I realise her exceptional acting abilities. I had no idea it would go to the 120,000+ viewers that it now stands at or would be featured in so much of the mainstream traditional media and linked to on dozens of websites.

I think the video is beautifully simple (not that I’m biased or anything). But the screenplay, if you like, has all the main ingredients of the original video with some extras thrown in. The solitary wheelie bin at the beginning and end of the clip, the arrival and departure of the woman caught on camera, the stroking of the cat, the binning of the cat (which happens to be from Kilkenny) and the coup de grace the catchphrase ‘Five in a Row My Arse!”, language unbecoming of a mature lady some might think. All captured in 17 seconds. The fact that practically all of the country was hoping for a Tipperary win possibly also helped.

YouTube have a thing called ‘Insights’ where you can analyse statistics like who’s watching your video, their age, what they are watching it on, how they came to watch it etc. If you’re interested in that kind of thing read on, if not, tune out now.

Statistics on the location of the video.ie. Where was the video viewed, shows that
53.3% on YouTube
31.8% on an Embedded Player (where the video is on a site other than YouTube, eg Facebook, Tipp Tatler etc.)
14.6% on Mobile Devices
.32% YouTube Channel Pages

Facebook without doubt won the embedded player contest with 28.8% of the views on embedded players coming from there. Followed by Boards.ie 0.69%, Newstalk.ie 0.44% and Tipp Tatler 0.32% (Yeah, yeah, there I go plugging it again, well tough )

Embedded player statistics

The demographical statistics are also quite interesting.
Broken down by sex the video was viewed by 64% Male 36% Female.
The larger male % is probably explained by the video associated with a predominantly male sport.

The video was viewed more by the over 35′s than the young whipper snappers.
More than half the viewers were aged between 35 and 54.

13-17yrs 10%
18-24yrs 12.05%
25-34yrs 15.55%
35-44yrs 26.81%
45-54yrs 23.60%
55-64yrs 9.66%
65+yrs 2.28%

Age Demographic Graph

The Hot Spots chart is pretty nifty I think.
It tracks the audience attention by watching where viewers tune out or rewind a particular piece to watch it again. A red vertical line moves along as the video plays so you know at what point viewers enjoyed most. The graph below shows the audience attention was in the hot zone throughout. I guess the length of 17 seconds made it easy enough to accomplish that.

Hot Spots Graph

Some other, what I think are interesting, points are
When it was at 14,500 views I had a look at the insights and the % for viewing on mobile devices was 21%.

While the 35-44yrs group was still the biggest % of viewers, the 25-34yrs was slightly more than the 45-54yrs.

The day after I caught those figures was the day that the story appeared in the newspapers and was mentioned on radio etc. This suggests to me that the traditional media sources drove an older demographic who were less likely to have smart phones to search for the video online. This is further borne out by the statistics of the number of visitors to the Tipp Tatler website through various combinations of the search words Tipperary, woman, cat, bin, Kilkenny etc. which increased significantly towards the end of the week.

I was tempted as it was growing in popularity to edit the video online, as YouTube allows, and maybe add in some reference to the Tipp Tatler magazine but decided against it, as I didn’t want to interfere with what appeared to be a winning combination. In any case, a lot of the national media mentioned the Tipp Tatler along with a local paper and ourselves of course. Our YouTube channel is linked to our website, but that reference would be lost viewing it embedded on other sites. If doing something similar again however I would be sure to put in some subtle hint of who was behind it. Hindsight is a great thing.

It’s been an unusual but fun week, the phones didn’t stop ringing from when the papers came out on the Thursday with The Independent, The Star and The Evening Herald all with some mention of it and a radio interview with Ray D’Arcy on TodayFM, followed on Saturday with another interview with Marian Finucane on Radio1. I’d like to thank my mother for being such a good sport and for capturing the hearts of so many people.

But do you know what topped it all?

Tipperary won the match! All Ireland Hurling Champions 2010!

The first I’d heard of it was via an American, would you believe. I read in a Marketing Sherpa piece about a Peter Shankman who had set up a Facebook group called Help A Reporter Out, where journalists looking for sources could post their queries. The group soon outgrew the 1200 limit set at the time (or that was the limit on messages that could be sent out, I forget which) and a website was set up called helpareporter.com. In emails sent out there was always a mention ‘for urgent haros follow me on Twitter @skydiver’ . Out of curiosity I signed up.

Like a lot of people signing up without knowing how it works or who to follow, I floundered around for a while I’m sure, probably not talking to anyone but following links etc. I was probably following the social media gurus and blogging experts across the water. Then at some stage I found some Irish folk or they found me. I must admit it opened up a whole new world to me.

I never knew there was such a large online community in Ireland. It was almost like discovering a parallel universe. There were Open Coffees and Bizcamps and all sorts of digital meetups that I knew nothing about. The sad thing is most of these are promoted online, so if you’re not online in the right places you rarely find out about them, in my experience anyhow.

I’ve met loads of wonderful people and learned loads of fantastic things through Twitter. If you want to know something or have a query on how to do something most likely you will be able to find out via Twitter.

Once I got into it I was tweeting like a thing possesed, on my pc, laptop, blackberry and then iPhone. I couldn’t watch TV without tweeting about it and my viewing was often dictated by what others on Twitter were talking about. I’d switch to that program so I could join in the conversation. Ok, that probably sounds worse than it was. To put into context, to date I’ve 7287 tweets over 714 days, that’s an average of around 10 tweets a day. Of course some days there would be a lot more and other days hardly any or none at all.

Lately (as in the last few months) I haven’t been as active as when at my peak (on Twitter that is!). There are a number of reasons for this.

It takes time to tweet. Despite what is often said by the gurus, it does take time. Taking my average 10 a day and multiply it by 30 or 60 seconds (conservative estimate of how long it takes me to type a tweet) gives you 5 or 10 minutes a day simply typing. Now factor in time spent reading other peoples tweets, copying and pasting interesting links and following links to read an article or blog post that someone is sharing. It doesn’t take long before an hour or two is spent. Basically, engaging in conversations online (or offline) takes time, otherwise you’re just broadcasting.

Adverse effect on productivity. Because of the time spent on Twitter, especially during working hours, it definitely meant I was less productive on the tasks I should have been focusing on. It’s very easy to get pulled into reading tweets, following links and chatting away. Mainly because it’s so enjoyable. If major news starts to break, as it regularly does, then it’s very hard to pull yourself away. But now I’m happy to wait until I hear the news on radio or TV. I don’t really care if I’m not one of the first to know about some political scandal or somebody dying.

I like to daydream. This may seem at odds with the previous paragraph but actually it complements my productivity. One of the side effects of Twitter and the Internet as a whole is information overload. In any given day I could read dozens of articles and blog posts across a range of subjects. They would be informative, educational and entertaining. I enjoy reading them and have learned a lot, for which I am thankful. But it meant my brain was soaking in vast amounts of information without getting a chance to rest. Now if I’m waiting somewhere, waiting for something to download, waiting to meet someone or simply just waiting, I let my mind wander. I daydream, I engage in people watching, I think about issues affecting my work or private life. You need to give your brain a chance to wander to let the creative juices flow.

Plancast and Foursquare. These two services have eliminated some of my reasons for logging in to Twitter. Plancast keeps me updated on events that people whose opinions I value are attending. I get a notification email telling me that so and so is attending such and such. It’s a great tool. Foursquare allows me to ‘check in’ at various locations and posts it to Twitter and Facebook should I choose to allow it. So instead of Tweeting ‘I’m getting new tyres for the car’ I check in to the tyre shop on Foursquare and can also add a comment. I have another reason for doing this. If I’m in one of my customers premises, I’ll check in and announce it to my friends on Twitter and Facebook. This gives my customers some extra publicity and hopefully translates into extra business for them. You also get lovely virtual ‘badges’ for regular use

Family Time. This is the main reason I cut back on tweeting outside of work hours. I have four fantastic children, the eldest of whom is five years, the youngest is five weeks. From the time I finish work to when they go to bed only adds up to a couple of hours. The best gift you can give a child is your time. I try to give them that gift every day. Then when the kids are in bed there’s my wonderful wife who is also equally deserving of my attention. It takes me a good hour to check that she has completed the household chores to my satisfaction! What’s a man to do

There’s other minor things as well I’m sure, but I’ve gone on long enough. I’m not knocking Twitter, I still think it’s a great tool (if that’s what you call it). Social Media apparently affects the brain like falling in love. It triggers the release of the generosity-trust chemical in our brains, the cuddle chemical, in other words oxytocin. If that be so, I think my love affair with twitter seems to have come to an end, but we will always remain good friends

Funnily enough when I logged onto Twitter before finishing this post it was down. She must be sulking.

Nowadays I just get the chance to jump in and out occasionally and I find if I’ve missed a few days it seems to take a while to get back into it.

But who knows, maybe someone will come up with virtual twiagra and our love affair can blossom once again.

A: Depends on you. Probably two weeks. Some people take as long as a month.

Q: Does it take hard work or long hours to get insanely rich?

A: No. This is the Internet.

Q: Can just anybody get insanely rich?

A: Yes. This is the Internet.

Q: How do I proceed?

A: As you’re surfing around the net you’ll see banners and links that say things like “Make Fourteen Million Dollars in Ninety Days, Click Here to See How!” Simply click the link to get started.

Q: It won’t really take ninety days though, will it?

A: Of course not. They just say that so you’ll be pleasantly surprised and so it doesn’t sound like hype.

Q: Okay, I’ve found one that says “Retire to Your Own Caribbean Isle in One Month!” Is that good?

A: Perfect.

Q: What does MLM mean?

A: Nobody really knows. Morons Lose Money has been snidely suggested by the little-brains.

Q: I signed up and now I sell low phone rates. They say it’s the easiest thing to sell because everyone uses a phone. And since it’s MLM, by the time my third level is operating I’ll be making $345,915.45 per week.

A: Conservatively.

Q: They say the first step is to get my mother into the program. Why is my sponsor happy that Mom has Alzheimers?

A: Your sponsor is a shrewd business person. People with any sort of memory disorder make the best targ… uh, clients. You can switch your mother’s long distance carrier for her, and then start calling the other members of her support group.

Q: That sounds a little fishy.

A: The ends justify the means. You are offering people substantial savings on long distance. It’s for their own good.

Q: How else can I get new business?

A: Spam. Spam. Spam.

Q: I thought spam was bad.

A: No, spam is good. Anyone who says it’s bad is just jealous because their brains are too small.

Q: But won’t I lose my web host and ISP?

A: In the get-rich-quick business, it’s important to cultivate a zen-like non-attachment to service providers.

Q: What else can I do to promote my new business?

A: Here’s a list of suggestions:

–Sign up with a free website provider and fill your site with zany colors and flashy banners.

–Join every free banner exchange.

–Get your own free-for-all links page.

–Join every opt-in email list with the word Money, Rich or Lackwit in the title.

–Buy software that submits your site URL to the 15,000 most important search engines. –Buy software that submits your ad to the 50,000 most-read free classified sites.

–Hire a bulk emailer.

–Sponsor a golf tournament.

Q: Okay, I’ve done all that and I’m still not rich. I haven’t even driven my hit counter to its knees yet. What am I doing wrong?

A: It’s possible that you’re not very bright. Consult one of your friends who has retired on their Internet earnings.

Q: What if I don’t have any friends who have retired on their Internet earnings?

A: Then contact someone on the Internet who has retired on their Internet earnings.

Q: What if I’ve never heard of anyone retiring from their Internet earnings?

A: Well, then maybe you can be the first.

———————————————————-

Hope you enjoyed this and I must admit I didn’t write it, simply a copy and paste job from a joke newsletter I received (Yes, part of my job entails reading jokes for publishing them in the Tipp Tatler). Hopefully someone will read it before ‘investing’ money in some get rich quick scheme.

Now I’ve got to go and sort out the paper work to collect the lotto winnings from that country I’ve never heard of and help that widow transfer her deceased husband’s millions to my account.

Where’s my cheque book?

Today I received a letter from the CRO stating that I would have to resubmit the forms because “It appears that the business is located at your residential address. Given the nature of your business it would seem more appropriate that your business would be better located at a commercial premises“

Extract from CRO letter

What the hell gives the CRO the right to tell me where the most suitable place to run my business is?

Do they even know what it entails to run my business?

I have run my business from an old kitchen table at the foot of my bed.

I have run my business from cafes with free wifi.

I have run my business from another country for God’s sake.

Why the hell should it matter where I run a business from so long as I at least try?

Why does some bureaucratic bullshit delay me in my attempts to start something new, maybe even create employment (heavens forbid) while someone with a clipboard offers me unasked for advice on where best to run a business from?

I despair, I fucking despair

The day long course covered a range of topics such as the basics of online communications, developing a communications bible and a communications philosophy, working with blogs, Twitter, Forums etc. Finding tools – who is talking about you online and crisis communications.

I won’t go into explaining all about the above as that is expertly done by Damien himself (yes, that’s it, click on the links). An incredible amount of news stories are generated as a result of PR, over half at least, according to this research. So knowing and understanding the importance of PR is vital.

I guess the main thing I took from the day was the importance of reputation management. What kind of reputation do you want portrayed about your business. How to monitor what’s being said about you. Who in your organisation should be responsible for representing it online. And most importantly, how to respond when the shit hits the fan.

Darragh Doyle gave a great example on what happened the previous week with boards.ie and how they responded.

For some interesting media monitoring cases studies have a look at O Leary Analytics

The need for Online PR or reputation management is not just the preserve of large corporations or government bodies. It also applies to individuals. How many times have you heard about employers searching through a  prospective candidates Facebook/Bebo etc. account. Indeed in my latest recruiting quest I came across a CV of a potential candidate. Upon Googling the name the first result that appeared was a newspaper report of a court case involving the would be candidate and former employers. Not exactly the best first impression to create is it?

If you care anything about your online reputation, whether business or personal, it is most certainly worth your while clicking through to the links above to Damien’s posts and attending  one of his courses.

For years lovers of the Internet and Social Media have predicted the death of print media. It is true that sales of magazines and newspapers have declined Worldwide along with the advertising revenue which accompanies them. I don’t accept for a minute however that print media will soon be extinguished anymore than ‘video killed the radio star‘. Yes, things will have to be done differently by magazine and newspaper publishers. Some will survive and thrive and others will just die, the same as they did before the Internet and in other industries.

Anyhow, this subjects warrants a much longer post than I currently have time to write, but I will come back to it. This post has been prompted by a campaign that has begun in the US by 5 leading magazine publishers who have teamed together promoting magazines and the power of print. Below is their ‘Good News’ celebration video. What do you think? Is print dead or does it have a future?

And if you want something else to Tweet about, here’s another video

Twenty Tweetable Truths about Magazines

Simply put, it converts websites into PDFs making it handy for reading offline, putting on an e-book reader or just filing away. Updated versions of Adobe reader have a ‘Read out loud’ function (click on view at top of the PDF, it’s located at the bottom (for my non tech readers)) This means that the blind and visually impaired can listen to websites, blogs etc. being read out without having to install software to do so. I think that’s pretty good.

Best of all PDFmyURL is free and extremely easy to use. So off you go now and convert this blog (not the whole thing, just whatever posts appear on the main page) into a pdf and read at your leisure.

Would it be better to Tweet about it?

I saw this sign recently and thought to myself, ‘Fair play to the publican for making an effort’.

Clonmore is a village in Co. Tipperary about 6km from Templemore. As far as I know there’s only one pub in it ‘Fitzpatrick’s’ and this is where Eamon McCann was playing.

The publican could just sit around and complain about the death of rural pubs and give out about the drink driving laws, politicians etc.

Instead he’s being proactive and fighting for every last customer. I don’t know if made the signs and hung them up himself. I don’t think it matters.

Now some would say that maybe he should set up a Facebook Fanpage, a Twitter account, video the bands and put them on YouTube (see update below), start a blog and all the rest of it.

For what? To become the expert on Country Music bands playing in Clonmore?

It wouldn’t matter how many followers or fans he had, the profile of a typical Eamon McCann fan from Tipperary does not have a Twitter account. The book they are most likely to be absorbed in, is a bingo book father than Facebook. So rather than waste time learning all about these new tools and using them to no avail he uses a simple, but effective  marketing tool aimed at his prospective audience.

The simplicity of the design is pure brilliance. It answers all the important questions, who? what? where? when? The placement of the signs at junctions and entrances to surrounding towns and villages  ensures that anyone in the area that would be interested in whatever country band is playing will know about it.

The fact that he’s not using Social Media also means that he can engage and connect with his customers when they are in his premises rather than having his head buried in a laptop or handheld device.

I’m not dismissing Social Media as an effective tool for business. God knows I use it enough myself. But it irks me when I read that it is the only way. It’s more about knowing your customer and going where they are.

A classic example of this is the complete absense of any Irish Google Ads when you search for ‘Farming Ireland’ or ‘Agriculture Ireland’. (When I mentioned this via Twitter, it was suggested, rather brazenly, that farmers didn’t have any money to buy anything that was advertised.) I can’t think of any other industry, big or small, where there isn’t some kind of bidding war over industry specific keywords.

I delved deeper into the ‘long tail’. Searches for ‘calf nuts’, ‘dairy milk substitute suckler calves’ ‘artificial insemination cattle sheep’ still yielded no results. Don’t even ask me where those terms came from. As The Breffmeister might say “They were in my brain waiting to come out”

Why wasn’t anyone targetting all the farmers in the country online? Maybe they just don’t go online.  How do you target them? Go where they go. Newspapers, Magazines, TV, Radio, The Mart, The Ploughing Championships.

There’s a vast segment of the population who never have and never will go online let alone engage with Social Media. Don’t put all your eggs in the one basket, you reap what you sew, make hay while the sun shines (ok, no more). If you are succeeding in business through your online activity alone, keep it up.

But if you are finding it hard to get new customers and seem to have exhausted all online efforts, maybe it’s time you tried something new.

Update:

Since writing this I’ve come across a YouTube video with Finbar Dennehy playing in Clonmore (see below). It’s not by the publican himself but who knows, maybe it might start a trend.

I did some work while I was there, an hour in the morning and an hour, sometimes two, at night. Not every day, but as much as was required to keep my businesses going. That was back in the early 90’s when there weren’t too many millionaires in Ireland. Life was good. I hadn’t a care in the World.

Recently I read a copy of Tim Ferris’ bestseller ‘The Four Hour Workweek’ as recommended to me originally by James Kennedy at Bizcamp Limerick.

It brought to mind my Summer in Nice living the millionaire lifestyle.

Technically speaking I wasn’t actually a millionaire. I merely lived the life of one.

Yes, I lived in the sunny South of France and did all those things I mentioned earlier. I did the things that a lot of us fantasize about doing if we won the lotto. The only difference being I hadn’t a million pounds. Not even close to it. In fact I was pretty much penniless. The business I had which required an hour of my time each morning required no training and very little skill or technical knowledge.

For an hour each morning along the Promenade Des Anglais I set up camp and washed car windscreens at the traffic lights. During that hour I earned, on average, more than I did for a days work in my previous job as a trainee accountant in Mullingar. Granted the career prospects were less appealing, but the hours were great. And you got a break every time the lights turned green.

My night time job was a little more glamorous. I had conceived the idea and being confident that it would work, I handed in my notice in the Brasserie where I had worked as a barman for 3 weeks. Then I planned to find an Art student to carry out my plan. A chance encounter by my flatmate with some Irish girls on my last day at work proved very fruitful. We were invited to a party in their flat that night and as luck would have it, one of them had done Art in college. I kid you not.

I bought a Polaroid camera and borrowed a sheet of plywood from a building site. The girls set to work and painted one of those things you put your head through to have photos taken (the photo below explains better:)). I set up shop each night in Marche Aux Fleurs, the centre of night life in Nice. There were several other street traders and entertainers. I charged 40 Francs (about £4 at the time) a photo (10 francs if you used your own camera). Each photo sheet cost around 5 francs if I remember rightly. At the end of the Summer when I was returning home I sold the board to a pub for 200 Francs.

Anyone for a holiday photo momento?

The painting nearly completed

It wasn’t very a very glamorous way to make a living. Although I did meet Goldie Hawn while trying to sell her a photo. Of course I didn’t realise it was her at first, until I stood back with arms folded and said ‘Jasus, do ya know something? You’re the spitting image of Goldie Hawn’. When she ran off into the crowd then I realised my missed photo opportunity.

About 2 weeks later after accompanying some friends to the airport I saw a fella who looked just like Bono pass me going into the airport. Get a grip on yourself Derry I said to myself, just cause you met Goldie recently doesn’t mean they’re all famous. A few later I got a thank you letter from my friends with following photo enclosed.

The time I nearly met Bono.

Anyhow, why am I telling you all this? I’m not sure myself. I think I’m re-evaluating my modus operandi. I quiet like  the thoughts of having more free time to play with the kids and romance my wife. I was never into flash cars or having the latest fashion (although I do like gadgets) or building the biggest house. I enjoy my work, so much so that it doesn’t seem like work, but it still has to be done. And that does take up my time. I like the idea of outsourcing and it’s something I will be trying to implement more and more of. With all the technology currently available it is possible to run a business from anywhere.

Then maybe I will be able to spend another full Summer in the South of France with my young family while only having to work a few hours a day. But not washing windscreens or selling photos.