Hashtags to flood Dublin for Social Media Summit in March

13 Jan 2016

From l-r: Ian Cleary, Criona Ni Dhalaigh, Samantha Kelly, Tom Williams and Peter J Finnegan. Image via Conor McCabe

No doubt there will be hashtags galore on 1 and 2 March this year as the inaugural Social Media Summit will get underway in the Helix venue in Dublin City University (DCU).

Co-created by Irish Biz Party founder Samantha Kelly – who goes under the Twitter handle @tweetinggoddess – the Social Media Summit has grand plans for its first year and what it is describing as “two full days of non-stop social media discussion”.

Launched earlier this week by the Lord Mayor of Dublin Críona Ní Dhálaigh at Dublin’s Mansion House, the event is aimed squarely at start-ups and other emerging businesses in Ireland and showing them how best to utilise social media in areas such as learning, best practice and future strategy planning.

As the organisers are quick to point out, only 26pc of Irish marketing heads think that their efforts on social media are actually making a difference to their business.

Speakers announced

This is despite the fact that a report towards the end of last month showed that Ireland ranks rather highly for the number of businesses using social media (64pc) compared to our European neighbours (39pc).

The summit’s keynote speaker has been announced as Ted Rubin, who was ranked 13th on Forbes’ list of Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers, while other speakers include Razorsocial founder Ian Cleary and author of the book, The LinkedIn Code, Melonie Dodaro.

Speaking at its launch, co-founder Kelly said: “Social media is a valuable tool for engaging and enriching lives, through communicating and sharing knowledge with lots of people, very fast, in ways that weren’t possible only a short time ago.

“The Social Media Summit has been created to help Irish companies to engage more and show them how to use the latest platforms and tools available to them.  The noted speakers we have assembled will show how brands and companies can excel through effective use of social media to generate strong customer loyalty and advocacy.”

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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