Brendan Allen of Castlemine Farm in Roscommon is destined to be Ireland’s latest Internet sensation. A few short weeks ago Brendan was a typical, unknown and unsung Irish farmer, but today, thanks to the power of social media, Brendan now has followers in every continent and is at the forefront of promoting Irish produce to the world.

It all began with an innocent tweet……….

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Leading social media expert, and contributor to allaboutbusiness Fiona Ashe is running two courses- one on LinkedIn and one on Facebook Marketing -see details below:

SOCIAL NETWORKING: LEVERAGING YOUR LINKEDIN PROFILE
Tuesday 5th April, 6pm – 9pm, Camden Court Hotel, Dublin 2
Standard Ticket – €150. Early Bird Ticket – €99 Early Bird booking closes on Thursday 31st March

SOCIAL NETWORKING: FACEBOOK MARKETING
Tuesday 12th April, 6pm – 9pm, Camden Court Hotel, Dublin 2
Standard Ticket – €150. Early Bird Ticket – €99 Early Bird booking closes on Wednesday 6th April

Fiona is also happy to organise trainings in other parts of the country, you can contact her on  087-2372289.

Social networking has become a mainstream business tool in Ireland with fully 40% of businesses having successfully used social networks to win new business, reveals a new global survey commissioned by global workspace solutions provider Regus.

Testimony to the faith businesses are now putting in the social networking medium is seen in the fact that 26% of Irish businesses are setting aside a proportion of marketing budget specifically for social networking activities. …

Facebook has begun the rollout of its new feature, Facebook Questions. While online Question and Answer services are not exactly new, Facebook’s community of 500 million users adds a new dynamic to the space and could potentially create an exciting opportunity for small businesses.

A Facebook blog post explained the service: “Millions of people ask their friends questions on Facebook every day. What new music should I listen to? Where’s the best sushi place in town? How do I learn to play the piano? With this new application, you can get a broader set of answers and learn valuable information from people knowledgeable on a range of topics.” …

Foursquare, a location based social network that incorporates gaming elements, is planning to distribute a free analytics tool, which will give business owners access to a range of information about visitors to their premises.

With the new analytics dashboard, businesses will be able to see a range of real-time data about Foursquare usage, including who has “checked in” to their place via Foursquare, when they arrived, the male-to-female customer ratio and which times of day are more active for certain customers.

According to the New York Times, a test customer, P.C.C. Natural Markets, a Seattle-based organic foods company, saw a large number of new Foursquare users coming to its stores over the weekend and used the analytics tool to figure out where they were coming from.

“By using the Foursquare dashboard, we figured out that they were coming for a new organic doughnut that had been advertised on TV,” said Ricardo Rabago, social media specialist for the company. …