Irish Business Network - A frustrated but constructive idea of ours

We have just created: Irish Business Network – a Facebook page dedicated to B2B interaction and to individuals who support local businesses, buy local, recommend local (or Irish) and thus help Irish businesses grow.

We are talking about small to medium size businesses that do not have the resources a large company has and thus need the support that a social network can give.

But this is the story of why we created this page... and why we will do our best to grow it.

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We were in our Twitter account, looking at the number of people/companies we follow and the number following back. Using some online tools we established who is not following us and thought ‘’why not just delete them, what’s the point’’. Well... there is a point, being on their followers list is still something, even if they are not following back. Why? 1. Because once you follow them they get an email with your name on it... and they get to hear of you. So it’s good for brand awareness. 2. You are on the list, they could add you later on, if they care about their Twitter account, or social media strategy, they will browse through their followers and you might get lucky. 3. Others will look through their followers and might find you relevant. < --- That’s some free know-how for you :).

So anyway... we weren’t all at a loss. We were following about 500 people or companies, so our name was out there. But we thought.... ‘’How rude of them, not to follow back. We sell office stuff, we don’t spam them with quick rich schemes’’.

Because this is how we are: we re-tweet stuff that we find relevant, we follow back pretty much all the time (except spam accounts), we mention businesses that we find relevant, we simply do our bit to help others and ourselves.

So we were a bit sad... seeing this lack of solidarity. So we thought... let’s do something. Print some flyers and go out in the streets and hand them to people and encourage them to support Irish businesses. We would get our name out there but we would also do something to help the online B2B realm grow. ''Let's not delete them, let's encourage them''.

A Facebook page comes free. What we are doing with it? It’s up there, for anyone to use. Post whatever they want about their business, about their products and services. If anyone needs help with anything, we will give advice if we can and as the community will grow, we are sure that ideas will float around and flourish.

We can look into the future and see B2B meetings or other things like that too. Or... we will just leave the page to exist and grow and aid businesses. We want accountants to find new clients on this page, solicitors to post their services, cake makers to upload photos of yummy cakes, restaurants to tell us their menus or makes us hungry with their dishes.. and so on and on and on. And on. :)

You know, we sell office things. It’s in our name. We are OfficeThings.ie. But we are also customers. Potential customers. Or we are looking for more customers of our own. There is nothing out of ordinary with this endeavour of ours. But... if nobody does anything... then nothing happens.

So Like companies on Facebook if you think they are doing a good job. We are not saying like everything and follow everyone. But find quality and share it with friends. Find that good intent and share it, because it’s very valuable, in people or in companies.

We are on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. For now. And obviously this Blog.

Thank you for reading. Support Irish businesses! Do your little bit and help the country grow. It needs to happen from bottom to top and not the other way around.