SOHO Solo West Cork

omahonydonnelly November 19th, 2008

Image by Danny McL via Flickr

I am sitting here fairly frustrated as it’s taking extremely (and painfully) long to upload back-ups to an online source, so I am thinking, “Will Ireland ever catch up with the rest of the modern world as far as broadband coverage, level of service and price?”  Let’s throw in mobile phone coverage as well!  I just got off the phone with a friend — I would have texted her instead, but she doesn’t get coverage in her own home and wouldn’t have got the message until she went to drop her kids to school in the morning.

A few years ago I was more patient thinking that we would get there in time.  I went from regular analog dialup connection, to having two ISDN lines and now have wireless broadband.  I’ve tried a friend’s Vodafone mobile broadband and the coverage is not good enough.  I live smack in between Clonakilty and Rosscarbery, just outside the distance from each to get Eircom Broadband.

As a web designer who is uploading and downloading all the time, this is critical — not only to my own work efficiency, but also to my mission to promote the use of the internet in Ireland.  So many people don’t want to bother.

So we have mediocre service, if any — and pay top prices for the ‘priviledge’! Do we need the government to get more involved?  Is it just a case that there isn’t a big enough market and so the companies involved will never venture out here?

What’s your experience like?

Tags: broadband, internet, Technology

• Home Working , Web , internet
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Calvin November 4th, 2008

04 November 2008, Co. Cork, Ireland: Small businesses can compete with big brands online regardless of geography and size, and SOHO Solo, a small business networking group in South West Ireland, is helping its members to do just that….

Online advertising is growing apace despite the global economic downturn, with estimates suggesting that online advertising spend in the UK will reach a massive £3.4 billion by the end of 2008 (emarketer.com) and it continues to grow at a time when spending on all other advertising channels is contracting sharply.

The transition from traditional to digital media is well underway, and Big brands are certainly waking up to the potential of online marketing… but the nature of big business means that change is usually a slow and laborious process.

Their ponderous transition from the old to the new, coupled with the comparatively low barriers to entry in the online marketplace, means that smaller businesses have a great opportunity to engage online and steal a march on their much larger competition, regardless of budget or geographical constraints.

In South West Ireland a small business networking group called SOHO Solo (www.sohosoloireland.com) is encouraging its member-base of solo entrepreneurs and home-based businesses to explore online marketing channels: introducing them to the potential of

business blogging (www.sohosolowestcork.com), microblogging services like Twitter (www.twitter.com/sohosolo), search engine marketing and of course social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Calvin Jones, a West Cork based SOHO Solo member and co-author of “Understanding Digital Marketing”, is spearheading the initiative, and believes that there’s never been a better time for small businesses to engage with both consumers and with their peers online.

“Digital technology is changing the way people do things at a fundamental level – in business and life in general. When was the last time you picked up the golden pages to look up a supplier? These days you’re far more likely to use a search engine to find what you’re looking for.

“The way people look for the stuff they need has changed, and businesses of all sizes need to adapt to that change if they want to keep reaching their customers and generating sales,” he said.

Calvin maintains that small businesses are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the burgeoning opportunity of this digital migration – if they act quickly and play to their strengths. “The smaller a business is, the less encumbered it tends to be by policies, procedures and corporate culture. In a larger business adapting to change means shifting the collective consciousness… when you have a head-count of one, making the same transition is a comparative breeze.”

Ireland already has a thriving online business community, but at the moment, Calvin says, those businesses tend to be a little technology centric. These are very much the early adopters of the business community – but that’s changing as more and more businesses realise that their customers are looking for their products and services online, and that to engage with them simply having a static corporate website is no longer enough.

“Through SOHO Solo we’re encouraging small businesses to participate through the blog, introducing them to the networking benefits of Twitter, LinkedIn and other online communities, and generally encouraging them to join the online conversation,” said Calvin. “This is the future of business – and the time to engage is now!”

ENDS

For more information on the SOHO Solo blog and Social Media Campaign contact Calvin Jones:

Skype: calvin141170

AIM/YahooIM: calvin141170

GTalk/MSN/E-mail: calvin141170@gmail.com

For more general information on the SOHO Solo Network please contact Jennifer Berton on the SOHO Solo Helpdesk:

Email: jberton@corkbic.com
Tel: +353 21 2307003
Fax +353 21 2307020
NSC Campus, Mahon, Cork
www.nsc-campus.com
www.corkbic.com

Tags: internet, online marketing, Press Release, Social Media

• Press Release
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Calvin August 5th, 2008

Just installed Twitter Updater — a Wordpress plugin that automatically posts an update to Twitter whenever a new blog post is published to the blog. Now, if you follow SOHOSolo on Twitter you’ll receive a twitter update with a link back to the blog whenever there’s a new post here.

For those of you who don’t know what Twitter is, I’ll be dedicating a post soon to how small businesses can use this short-messaging social media tool to engage productively with an online community that includes customers, peers and thought leaders in your industry.

It’s a great tool for keeping up-to-date with the latest developments on- and off-line, for seeking advice and sounding out opinion.

You might be sceptical about the benefits of a medium that restricts you to posts of 140 characters or less… but the real value of Twitter isn’t so much in the individual posts, but more in the networking, the collective awareness and sense of community that develops over time. Put your preconceptions aside, give Twitter a try and before long you’ll find it invaluable.

Tags: internet, Networking, Social Media, Soho Solo, tools, Twitter

• Networking , Social Media , Soho Solo , Twitter
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