At what other awards could you mingle with the Oscar nominees before the event? See them preparing the acceptance speeches, display their pre-show nerves and ask them for tips on the secret of their success? At the Irish Blog Awards - Business Blogger Meetup next Saturday March 1st , of course.

Details : The blog awards kick off at 7.30pm. So lets do it one hour earlier at 6.30pm. Same venue , Alexander Hotel, has a nice big foyer area. There’s no food at the awards themselves , but the hotel does a waiter service in the lobby if you’re just up ‘from the country’. Just look out for me (I’ve been told I look like my photo on the top right. Which is not a good thing) , or any of the nominees (although I suspect Rowan and Michele aren’t as cartoonish in real life).

You don’t have to be a nominee to come along. Just come along and talk about what has worked for you as a Business Blogger.

Update: I would put good money on Kieran from Ice Cream Ireland turning up in full ice-cream-man gear. Click here to encourage him. It does solve the problem of ‘you-dont-really-look-like-your-photo’.

Did we mention that we’re sponsoring the Best Irish Business Blogger award at the Irish Blog awards on March 1st? We’ve written a guide to business blogging in Ireland, and I’m really looking forward to see who the winner is on the night.

In case you’re looking at the blog award nomination form and wondering who to fill in the business section, may I be as bold as to suggest a couple of possibilities? If I’ve missed your blog , leave a comment.

• [RSS] A Random Walk - Irish Financial Blog
• [RSS] Achieve Marketing
• [RSS] Allagi Blog
• [RSS] ask direct
• [RSS] BIZ GROWTH NEWS
• [RSS] blogged thoughts
• [RSS] Blogh an seanchai
• [RSS] Brightspark, Dublin Ireland
• [RSS] Business on the web - derekorgan.com
• [RSS] BusinessAdvisory.ie
• [RSS] Clear Communication
• [RSS] Coworking Ireland
• [RSS] denise cox’s blog
• [RSS] Den’s Enterprisey Foghorn
• [RSS] Edelman Dublin
• [RSS] FrankFullard.com
• [RSS] Interactions - Creative Strategies for Business
• [RSS] Iona
• [RSS] iQ Blog - Latest Posts
• [RSS] itnorthwest.org
• [RSS] LouderVoice Blog
• [RSS] MadeForOne.com
• [RSS] Market Leader - Technology Sales and Marketing blog
• [RSS] McGarr Solicitors
• [RSS] Murphy’s Law
• [RSS] Paul Lanigan
• [RSS] Piaras Kelly PR - Irish Public Relations
• [RSS] Pinstripe
• [RSS] Pure Play
• [RSS] QUMAS Connect
• [RSS] Real Business Blog
• [RSS] Red Cardinal
• [RSS] Richard Delevan’s notes
• [RSS] The Health Tech Blog
• [RSS] Turbulence Ahead
• [RSS] Web 2.0 Ireland

Or you could follow our suggestions for Best Political Blogger.

Denise Fay of Achieve Marketing is finally blogging over at achievemarketing.ie. The guide to Business Blogging in Ireland is a direct result of Denise’s Marketing Session at the Ballymascanlon Hotel, Dundalk, but even so , it’s taken 6 months of intimidation sorry encouragement since the Barcamp Belfast meetup to get Denise to this point (she insists on using her time to look after customers).

A couple of things that I’ve learnt if you want to get people in your business network blogging:

1. Everybody wants the site traffic, but not everybody can / wants to make the effort. Not everybody is suited to writing stuff (but then again, they’re probably a natural at professional networking). Denise writes press releases already , so not only does she have interesting stories to tell, but she has those stories already written down.
2. Blogging probably seems natural to you now, but you forget how much you’ve learned. Set aside some time to go through the basics with your victim. 1 hr should be enough if you’ve done the ground work (i.e. have wordpress already setup). Get a blogpost out within the first 10 minutes (to show how easy it is). Then work your way through the other tabs in wordpress. Concepts (like categories, linking , trackbacks, url structure) will naturally flow in the conversation.
3. I was lucky that Denise had already setup Google Analytics for some of her clients. Even so the latest version of wordpress makes setting up analytics easy , and those charts are so damn addictive!
4. I found that a combination of having the new blog (Achieve Marketing) and my one (People and Technology) open at the same , and flicking between the the old and new blogs worked well. Some stuff like themes, archived blogposts, spam prevention is easier to understand on a blog that’s been in use for a while.

To set the background, Denise is very knowledgable about her area (Marketing), has people to get the techie stuff done and definitely knows more about the web than she admits, but would in no way be classed as a ‘techie’!

At yesterday’s Plato marketing training event, the topic of business blogging came up. Seems like our 100,000+ unique visitors is nothing in the blogging world, but most Small to Medium Irish Business (SME’s) would kill for that kind of traffic. So since I’m an ‘expert’ (and when exactly did that happen ?!) here’s the 10 minute guide to get your business on it’s way.

Plato rules presume that member companies remain confidential (until they choose to break cover!). So, if you want to leave a comment below (feel free to link back to your website) I’ll be happy to apply the advice below to your business. I don’t sell blogging advice (although there is a business idea!) - more Irish Business Bloggers there are the better (all, hopefully, linking from their websites back to here!)

What is blogging?

• A Blog is a new way of doing that same old things. You already network, talk (and listen!) to your customers and are passionate about publicising the thing you love (your business idea). A Blog just helps you do the same things online.
• A Blog is the easiest way to update a website. If you can email (remember how scary that used to be?) you can blog. And yes, I can give examples to back that one up. And that’s you updating it, not paying some web design company to do it.
• A Blog is the quickest way to get a good website. If you haven’t a website, a blog is the quickest way to get one. It does most of the Vodoo Search Engine stuff out of the box. Likewise, a blog can easily added to your existing website.
• A Blog is an online Diary. Think one of those reality TV shows. But about your business. And without Jade Goody in it. There is a reason that ‘Big Brother’ and ‘Blogs’ score highest in the ratings - they’re all about people. Remember ; People don’t buy your business, they buy you.
• A Blog lets you have conversations with your customers. It allows customers to say what they think about you on your website.Scary? Yes. But not as scary as not hearing what they are saying about you.Yes you can delete offensive comments, but I’ve only had to remove 2 out of 700 comments in the last 3 years.

The Who, What, When , Where and Why of Irish Business Blogging

Remember, blogging is cheap to try out (in money , if not in your time) . It’s still new enough to forgive people who make mistakes. Dive in , give it a go, and when (not if) you learn something new, tell me about it.

And after all that, you couldn’t be bothered blogging?
Try LinkedIn.com. As a business networking tool , it’s excellent, with more Irish business contacts than anywhere else.

Forget inflation, overpaid government ministers or a still bubbling Irish property market. The hot news (coming an inside contact) is that according to Webmarshal and Websense (Net nanny type products that many Corporates use to restrict access to certain websites), the biggest threat to Irish Economic Success is ….

… Damien Mulley (Warning: site may contain opinions on Irish Broadband and Comreg dangerous to corporate web filters).Paul Watson has more on his Websense issues.
Yes, who would have thought it. Apparently Damien, organizer of the Irish Blog awards and PR Guru by day, is actually a dangerous left wing subversive determined to undermine the economic foundations of the Irish state. Think a Cork version of Che Guevara. Or maybe I’m just jealous that this blog isn’t important enough to get banned. Well, it did get Frankie goes to Hollywood to number one in the UK Charts.

What is strange is that there are several other ‘higher profile’ sites that are not blocked. ‘Higher Profile’ includes one that is valued in Billion Dollar range. In general, the site of banned sites is ‘bought in’ from WebMarshals centrally maintained list , so I would expect this ban to have a substantial (but not crippling) effect on Damiens Google Analytics Stats. And that’s before we get into the ethics of not trusting well paid employees to manage their own time.

Do I have a better suggestion on how corporates can manage their web access? Yes; let all employees access any website. Then publish the web-surfing records (everything is recorded you know) on the company intranet. Amazing how much productivity will improve. As it is, any intelligent employee could find their way around the current set of net filters.

According to Justin Mason’s List, it’s this blog (People and Technology). We’re number 19 by incoming links, number 22 by bookmarks and number 45 by Technorati rank. No , I don’t understand the numbers either - just happy to be in the top 100.

Given that Tom is off to Spain, Grandad has Retired (allegedly) and Donncha’s page rank is being pummeled by Google, all I need is for Lucky the Laughing Assassin (of Twenty Major fame) to bump off both John and Michele and I’ll be well on my way to the top 10.

How much does it cost, Twenty?

It’s been inching towards the milestone for the last month , but Google Analytics is finally reporting that this site has finally passed the one hundred thousand visitor mark. That’s visits (as in people) and not just page impressions.

To celebrate, the site has got a little bit of a makeover - an evolution of the last theme, more whitespace and less orange. I’ve also followed Krishna De’s advice and lost the tie.

There have also been savage cuts to the blogroll (on the righthand side). To be fair, it was a bit mad at 212 entries.

Update: The 212 blogs have been cut back to 38.

If you blog about Ireland, Technology or Business and think you should be listed, then leave a comment, Drop me a line or use the standard FirstPartners.net net ‘contact us’ form to get in touch.

Richard Hearne writes (a bit) about Search Engine Optimisation for Bloggers. One point that he made in his review of Pat Phelan’s (Roam4Free) site was how to help Google find your older content. Taking this advice, I’ve installed the Wordpress Page Navigation Plugin on this blog - it’s the widget giving the ‘Page 1..2..3..end’ at the top of this site.

Without this plugin , all wordpress gives you by default is a single ‘previous page’ link. A user (or Google) might have to follow 15 or so links to get all your articles. Now it is all linked from the home page of your blog.

Almost as important as the number of visitors to the site, is what they do when they get there. You can see from the Google Analytics above , that the average visitor reads one and half pages on this site. (Is this Good? Is this Bad? - let me know) This could be multiple articles (there are about 20 per page), but the number isn’t really moving over time. I’m hoping the plugin can shift these numbers (up) even a little bit.

(Almost) Related Update and links (via Damien) : If you want to know more about SEO optimisation for Wordpress, Matt Cutts of Google had a very interesting talk. A transcript of the video and a summary are also available.

From the ‘If-Tom-Raftery-can-do-it-so-can-I‘ school of marketing, the name of this blog has changed from Technology in Plain English to Technology and People. Justin has also done a name change, so maybe it’s something in the water (or is going to happen to everybody once they’ve been blogging long enough). On the other hand, Grandad’s Name change ended up getting voted down.

Reason for the change is that the new name explains better/shorter what I’ve tended to write about. Not just the technology (go to the wiki for a real dose of that) , but how people use the technology. It’s still all shameless self-publicity.

Url and feed address remain unchanged.

For a (semi) Techie, I’m not that much into gadgets. Until now , there are only three that I’d class as ‘must haves’.

• Vodafone Broadband internet card - it means I can get the Internet on the train. Living in Drogheda with a lot of clients in Dublin, this means about 10 hours extra a week when I’m now connected.
• Hard Disk TV recorder - most of the good shows are on after 10pm. I’m up early most mornings and that is way past my bedtime.
• A Phil and Ted. You either know what this is , or you don’t , but if you have one you’ll swear by it.

Now I’m going to add a fourth : the Nokia 770 , bought solely on Damien’s recommendation. It’s not a phone , more of a big screen that you can add your existing phone (it connects pretty automatically via bluetooth, and will use any available wireless network). It solves the problem of using internet on your mobile ; before you had to choose between a normal-ish phone with a tiny internet screen, or a large screen but having to hold a brick to your ear to make calls. It’s almost small - about the size of 2 decks of playing cards.

I was getting a bit worried before it arrived as Elly has one and is cursing it, but it solves two problems for me:

1. If on the train / other location, and can’t use my laptop (e.g. I didn’t get a seat and I’m standing up), then I can still get (fairly decent) access to email and other online services (Google Maps, Del.icio.us bookmarks, LinkedIn Social Networking being the ones I’ve tried so far).
2. When I couldn’t be bothered getting out the laptop (e.g. 5 minutes before a meeting), it’s useful for a quick check.

So, it’s not perfect , but it does the job that I want it to do ; for a little over 100 Euro - Bargain. Yes , it could be quicker, but it does a fairly good job of showing most websites (including this blog, the main site and the wiki). It’s a pity it doesn’t have flash, nor play the BBC internet radio , but I’m sure I can get downloads for it. It does do GoogleTalk for free Voip calls and have other internet radio stations. And , if you’re bored you can use it as an MP3 player. Battery life (4hrs) isn’t great, but (a) the charger is very very light and (b) if I need internet that much I’ll use the laptop.

An added bonus is that I’ve been looking around for a simple ‘Contacts Management’ solution. The 770 has one built in , with more that you can download /access online. Not holding my breath that it will solve this problem as well for me (would never have considered a PDA before), but icing on the cake if it does.

As a personal quirk , I like the fact that it’s an open platform (it’s Linux based). What it means for normal people is that there are plenty of 3rd party downloads if there (I’ve added a PDA and a console to monitor web servers) without having to pay through the nose. While I’ve dabbled with development for mobile devices, that wasn’t the main reason for buying this thing.

It will be interesting to see how Conor, Niall , Walter and Gordon are getting on with theirs. And to answer Michele’s question, the email client is ok , but I’ll end up usign Gmail (they’re hosting Firstpartners email , no synch issues.)

Update: Ken also has a review, with real life pictures (give a better flavour of the size of the thing, even though the screen is much sharper in real-life.

You may have noticed that this blog has been up and down over the last couple of weeks.

After much tuning and investigation (thanks to the guys at Rimu Hosting for your help) it turns out that (one of) the problems has been a flood of automated comments hitting the site in an aid to boost their google rankings. This wordpress referrer bounce plugin should solve the problem.

Update: Direct download link (it’s a bit hard to find on the site).

People we met at the pre-blog meetup

• Eddie from McGarr Solictors; Keep up the good work - yes at least one non-legal reader can follow your blog, and I suspect that there are many more.
• EllyBabes. I’ve volunteered to help organize Barcamp Dublin. I don’t even have the excuse of being drunk. And now I’ve gone and put it in writing , so I’ll really have to help.
• Tom and Damien, and ended up stuffing things into paper bags (I’m sure that wasn’t on the original invitation).
• Antoin from Eire.com , busy handing out fon.com cards (and he has me almost sold on the concept).
• GrannyMar. She’s a lovely lady, and was very graceful about my confusing her with Grandad’s wife.
• Eoin O’Dell - cearta.ie, who wasn’t able to stay for the rest of the evening

At the Awards themselves (mainly beside the bar, take from that what you will)

• Bernie Goldbach. Ungrateful sod that he is , gave away the award that we sponsored. I couldn’t have done it better myself, given that I originally wanted to nominate Damien for the category.
• Keith Bohanna, who looks exactly like his photo on his blog (don’t know if that is good or bad - see next point).
• Krishna De, who told me I should lose the tie in the photo (top right) , and she’s probably right.
• Ann from Allagi, also nominated for ‘Best business blog’ , but lost out to the Ice Cream guys (below).
• Conor from LouderVoice - as funny in the person as he is on his (award winning) blog posts.
• Thomas Holmes (YClickit) and Eoghan McCabe , fellow conspirators competitors in the pint competition. Thomas is living my ideal lifesytle (working remotely , living in Montpellier France. It might also be worthwhile (hint) subscribing to Eogans blog today.
• Richard Hearne, Red Cardinal. Target number 2 for lifestyle Jealously with 6 months a year in Thailand.
• Joe Drumgoole , yet I still don’t understand what ‘ace king - check it out’ means (see the top of is blog page). Maybe if I help organise barcamp dublin he’ll let me in on the secret.
• Roger Galligan , from irishblogs.ie. Yes I do know the difference between you and boards.ie
• Conn Ó Muíneacháin. Giving the (Irish Language) awards away this year, instead of winning them

and pings for the people that we didn’t meet …

• Brian Honan couldn’t make it (he was nominated for best business blog), but lost out in the end to the Ice Cream guys.
• Ken McGuire, who I still owe a pint (unless he can come up with a ‘double or quits’ scheme).
• Kieran from Ice Cream Ireland. He must have been surrounded by frozen food groupies
• Lar from IQ Content - almost got talking a couple of times, but generally one or other of us got sidetracked.

It seems like we’re handing out prizes every day of the week.

We’re (as in FirstPartners.net) sponsoring the Best Contribution to the Irish Blogosphere at the Irish Blog Awards. If this was Rock’n'roll, this award would be given for ‘lifetime achievement’ and Keith Richards, Bono or Burt Bacharach would be accepting it.

So who will we be handing the award to on Saturday night? Who is the blogging equivalent of Keith, Bono or Burt? Will it be ….

• Bernie Goldbach , from Irish Eyes. I want Bernie to win as he was generous with his time 2 years ago at Techcamp to a wet-behind the ears blogger.
• Donncha from Holy Schmoly. I want Donncha to win for his contribution to Wordpress - one of the best pieces of web software there is (and we use a lot of them , so we should know).
• Tom from Tom Raftery IT. I want Tom to win as like Bernie , he’s been very generous with his advice over the years. His new tagline is ‘Highest ranked blog in ireland’ so you can’t argue with that.
• Simon from Irish Election. Simon’s is the only blog that I wasn’t previously aware of. I still want him to win because anything that injects a bit more democracy to the current Irish political system is a good thing.
• Rick from the Breakfast blog. I want Rick to win as he’s one of the better 2FM DJ’s (damning with faint praise), but as one of the first mainstream bloggers, he’s done a lot to raise the profile of blogging in Ireland.

So good luck all , and I’ll be speaking to you on the night.

And the winners of the Feedburner T-Shirts (as chosen by our completely automated selection process) are …. at the bottom of this post.

In another shock scandal, Bernie Goldbach got disqualified by following a link from his own blog. He did send the most (25) commenters our way, and since we’re making this up as we go along, if anybody doesn’t take up their prize , I’ll pass one onto him.

Thanks to everybody who took part , and to everybody who posted the message on their blogs! (Bernie , Damian, Phil, Billy Leo and Podcasting Ireland.

Drum Roll please …. The winners are ….

• Jonathan Brazil (from the Weblog of the same name) , as sent by Irish Eyes.
• Frank , from BifSnif , as referred by AskDirect
• Bernard from Running with Bulls, as sent by Irish Eyes.
  

What happens next? I have the winners emails , so I will contact them directly to arrange posting the stuff out.

You may remember our ‘Free beer at the Irish Blog Awards competition‘. Well FeedBurner have smiled from on high at our efforts, and decided to donate some goodies to the cause.

So, in the spirit of increasing everybody’s subscriber numbers I’m going to give YOU the gear to give away on YOUR blog. Here’s how it works:

1) Leave me a comment on this blog. Wordpress will ask for your email when you leave a comment, but it won’t be publicly displayed.

2) Sometime next week, I’ll ask you (by email) to post on your blog. I’ll even give you a bit of advance notice . Most blogs allow you to publish at a given time in the future , so you don’t even have to be there to push the button.

3) I’ll be asking your readers to leave a comment on this post. We’ll leave the lines open for a couple of hours, then pick 3 comments at random to win the stuff.

To keep it clean , you can’t giveaway the stuff on your blog and win at the same time. I’ll reserve the right to change the rules if somebody blatently tries to cheat (not that it would be hard!).

Unfortunately , because I’m not a photo blogger , I couldn’t get a clear shot of what the goodies look like. Trust me that they’re pretty cool.

• 1st Prize : A long sleeved FeedBurner Jersey, and assorted stickers and badges.
• 2nd Prize : A T-Shirt with the FeedBurner logo, and assorted stickers and badges.
• 3rd Prize : Just the T-Shirt with the FeedBurner Logo.

I’ll post the stuff direct to whichever reader of yours wins - so it doesn’t matter what sort of blog you have, where you’re located , or where your readers come from.

You may have heard about the 2000 Bloggers project hosted by Tino Buntic. You may have even got your photo included among the 2000. And you may have pulled the links when Technorati complained about what was going on.

What Technorati (and to some extent Google) didn’t like was this as an attempt to game the system - loads of blogs , with little or nothing in common, all linking to each other and in process seeing a massive increase in their Technorati and Google rankings. Given that 2000 bloggers included photos and nothing else, what’s the difference between this and a sophisticated link farm? Better said on ‘I don’t deserve this Technorati rank and you don’t either‘.

If you’re one of the people nominated for the Irish Blog Awards You’ve probably seen a lot of incoming links from people who have taken the original IBA Nominee List (by Jason Roe) and posted it on their blogs. Over the past couple of days, I’ve seen about 20 links come my way via this method. Out of curiosity, I’d tend to visit people linking to me in this way.

Is this the same idea as 2000 bloggers, an attempt to game the Google / Technorati pagerank system? Will all 500 of us be blacklisted by Google? I don’t think so.

The difference between this and the 2000 Bloggers is:

• All the links have a connection (they’re Irish Bloggers, or bloggers with some connection to Ireland).
• More information is provided on the links - not just a photo , but what they blog about.
• There is a quality screening going on (i.e. you have to be nominated) not just first come first served.

Just to prove the point, the list of nominees is below. And if you haven’t voted already, drop over and vote for us (FirstPartners.net / Technology in Plain English).

Best Designed Blog

• 5 Pieces
• Ach go háirithe
• Beaut.ie
• BifSniff
• Clamnuts
• Creative Imagination - Ken McGuire
• ElBlogador.com - The Voice of Irish Nationalism
• From Ireland to Kansas City
• Fustar
• Ginger Pixel
• Inside the mind of an idiot
• IrishElection.com
• Jason Roe’s blog
• John Handerlaar’s Blog
• Kind I Like - Things that look like people
• Léigh ar mo T-léine é!
• Letter to America
• Magoo
• Nialler9
• Pretty Cunning
• RedFly Marketing
• Soundtracks for Them
• Spoilt.ie
• Stunned.org
• Team Geared Up
• The InFactah Blog
• The IQ Content Blog
• Twenty Major
• UnLaoised

Best Blog

• Alive in Limerick
• An Irish Craftworkers Good Life
• An Spailpín Fánach
• An tImeall
• Arse End of Ireland
• ArseBlog
• Backseat Drivers
• Barbara’s bleeuugh!
• Beaut.ie
• BifSniff
• Biz Growth News
• Blogorrah
• Bock the Robber
• ElBlogador.com- The Voice of Irish Nationalism
• Fustar
• Head Rambles
• I Take Photees
• Ireland 16 Days
• IrishElection.com
• Letter to America
• Manuel Stimulation
• Mcawilliams.com
• Mine’s A Jack Daniels
• Nialler9
• Pygment
• RedMum’s Blog
• Skinflicks
• Snackboxdiaries
• StigOnline
• The Cedar Lounge Revolution
• The Community At Large
• The InFactah Blog
• The Limerick Blogger
• Tir na Blog
• Twenty Major
• Womans Aid

Best Use of the Irish Language in a Blog

• Ach go háirithe
• An Saol
• An Spailpín Fánach
• Arm Rúnda na Gaeilge
• Blag Shomhairle
• Chetwynde Down
• Hilary NY
• Léigh ar mo T-léine é!
• MH Wombat
• nobyegarawn
• Roinnt Smaointe</