Conor's Bandon Blog

The stats around Facebook in Ireland are staggering, they are racing towards 1 millions active users here. That just blows my mind. Some are predicting they’ll have more pageviews globally than Google by next year!

Whilst I initially didn’t have much time for it, coming from the open blogging world, bit by bit its value for me has grown. Even at the simplest level, it is the only site where many people I know from school and college ever congregate online.

In our business, LouderVoice, we have hooked ourselves into Facebook so that when people review products/services on our clients’ web-sites, those reviews can be published to Facebook too. It’s an amazingly powerful marketing tool. You can see it in action here. That system can be placed on any web-site in as little as 10 minutes.

If you are on Facebook or you are thinking of joining, why not become a fan of LouderVoice there? You’ll see a sample of the best content from our site and customers posted there along with questions, ideas, polls and competitions.

If you are a small business, then you should really consider creating a Facebook Fan page. It only takes a few minutes and can be a great way of interacting with customers and fans. You only have to look at the success of the Hairy Baby one to see how well it can go!

I have no excuse for the lack of posting here other than the usual busy-ness of life. I’ll get back into writing mode very soon. Lots of blogposts and book reviews in my head, I just need to get them out through my fingers.

Speaking of reviews, I hope my loyal readers don’t mind me doing a very quick bit of blatant promotion of LouderVoice. We have just kicked off our 2008 BES offering. If the mayhem of the markets has you spooked, then you may find our tax-efficient offering interesting. All details over on our corporate blog.

So for my next post, should I do a rant on Annaghmore (greatest idea since the invention of the square wheel), a review of “Drive On” by LJK Setright (stunning), a review of “Full On Irish” by Kevin Dundon (patchy) or something on why I think British Stand-Up Comedy is dead (having seen The Secret Policeman’s Ball) ?

It looks like Taste of Dublin this weekend was a big success and a huge improvement over last year. I was thrilled to hear that they are doing a Taste of Cork from Friday 27th June to Sunday 29th. Over on LouderVoice, we’d like to capture the quality of the event by having people review what they eat/drink/encounter by SMS. The most popular review will win a prize (suggestions on what that should be are very welcome).

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be remotely geeky to do the reviews. Both of my parents are very non-technical and they do SMS reviews all the time. You don’t even have to sign up on the site, it’ll happen automatically when you send your first review to 087-9409325. Here’s all you have to do:

There is a good selection of reviews from Taste of Dublin here so you can see the sort of things people were saying. If you want to do it in Cork just follow the instructions above and your reviews will appear on LouderVoice a few seconds later. If you know for definite that you’ll be trying it ahead of time, why not leave a comment here or ask any questions you might have?

The SMS are at your standard rate, they are not premium rate. You can also write long SMS reviews if your phone supports them. We’d love to see the feedback you all have on both the event and the exhibitors, many of whom are local Cork businesses.

By the way, if you run a local biz that is exhibiting at Taste of Cork, we’d love to provide you with mini-flyers to give out to encourage people to review your offerings. Either pop a comment here or mail me on conor AT loudervoice DOT com for more info.

I know a lot of the readers here are foodies and I’m sure some of you may even like the odd glass of wine. We’ve decided to take part in a regular event called Wine Blogging Wednesday. Event #42 happens this coming Wednesday and the challenge is to review an Italian Red in 7 words. I love a challenge and this is a tough one.

You don’t have to be a blogger to take part. The easiest way to do it is to send your review by SMS from your mobile phone to LouderVoice. We’re going to collect them all and point the WBW guys to them.

The steps you need to follow are simple.

1. Sign Up on LouderVoice here
2. Login to LouderVoice using the username and password you picked
3. Tell us your mobile phone number here using format country area number, like this:
   

   

4. Send us the wine review in this format to 087-9409325 (standard rate message)

   Review Rating-1-to-5 NameOfWine: Seven Words of description. #wbw42

   It should look like this:

   

5. That’s it, you’re done! Your review will be available immediately on the LouderVoice site

More details about the Wine Blogging Wednesday event over on the LouderVoice Blog.

We kicked off a competition recently over on LouderVoice for the most popular review each week. Your reviews can be via SMS, blog or microblog and it looks like the winner in the first week is a two line SMS review. Not only that, but it is the number one result on Google for its subject!

In fact, we are seeing more and more LouderVoice reviews manage this trick. Here is one I did recently:

I’m sure the BBC are not amused!

The reviews can be of anything that interests you, such as restaurants, movies, music, beaches, TV, gadgets, wine and everything in between. Signing up on LouderVoice just takes two ticks and you can send your first review immediately after that. SMS reviews appear on the site within seconds.

The prize each week is a cool Hairy Baby t-shirt of your choosing. So thumbs to the ready, start sending in reviews and maybe you’ll top Google too.

We’re really excited over on LouderVoice by this latest feature. You can now SMS your reviews directly to the web-site. So if you walk out of a terrible movie or wonderful restaurant or just want to get your opinion on any product or service off your chest, now you can. Those reviews will appear within seconds on the LouderVoice site.

The format is simplicity itself:

Review Rating1-5 ItemName: Opinion

It should look like this on your phone:

Then a few moments later, it will look like this on LouderVoice:

We have two numbers you can use: +353-87-9409325 and due to lots of demand +44-778-6205133

Each SMS costs your standard network rate if you are texting your local country number.

And if you are feeling strongly opinionated, we do accept multi-message SMSes up to slightly more than 400 characters.

Just add your mobile number to your LouderVoice account (or sign-up, it only takes a moment), try it out and let us know what you think.