Grow It is a Dublin based marketing & design agency. Grow It specialize in immersive content marketing, graphic design and marketing consultancy. If you’d like to get in touch please see the Grow It contact page here.

What is it?

As a new business, we have in the last few weeks started to engage with the monster that is #IrishBizParty on Twitter.

#IrishBizParty is a discussion for small Irish businesses, that takes place on Twitter every Wednesday evening from 4pm til 6pm(EST). Founded by Samantha Kelly (@TweetingGoddess), #IrishBizParty is regularly attended by hundreds of small Irish businesses, all starting off and engaging with similar brands, and learning from each other.

Samantha will also regularly organize an industry expert for a Q&A session, further increasing the learning experience for the small business owner.

Henceforth, Grow It details the 6 main reasons to get involved with #IrishBizParty:

1. Learn

As we’ve already touched on, #IrishBizParty is a tremendous opportunity for your business to learn from similar businesses and take on board some of the tips from both other businesses, and industry experts that attend often.

Recently @NiallHarbison, author of Get Sh*t Done!: From spare room to boardroom in 1,000 days (which you can buy here), was the weekly expert on #IrishBizParty. Niall is a successful Irish entrepreneur, who has been in the shoes of the hundreds of regular attenders to #IrishBizParty. Niall is an example of the perfect type of person to advise the audience, and an excellent opportunity for small businesses to get advice directly from someone of Niall’s calibre. He would also I’m sure agree that he made a few book sales out of the process, so there’s benefits for the more established entrepreneurs too.

2. Engagement

There can’t be a less hassle free way of engaging with potential B2B client’s than taking part in #IrishBizParty. Every week, you will see your company becoming more and more recognized within the conversation, and this in turn leads to professional connections.

As is the case with all conversations on Twitter, don’t be afraid to jump in and give your opinion or advice!

3. Generate leads and make sales

In our relatively short time involved with the discussion (2 to 3 weeks), we have already made enquiries to 3 or 4 different businesses who take part in #IrishBizParty. You continue along these lines for months on end and that results in dozens of sales leads over the course of the year.

Use the discussion as an opportunity to showcase exactly what your business can do for other Irish SMEs.

4. Gain exposure for your brand

#IrishBizParty is an incredible window of opportunity to leave a lasting impression. Regular influencers will get involved, and you never know who might need your services next. Your tweets have the opportunity to be viewed by thousands, even if you only have 50 followers!

Based on the last 1500 uses of the hashtag (as of 23/07/14), #IrishBizParty tweets have reached over 1 million accounts, and have popped up on people’s timelines over 3.2 million times (figures provided by www.hashtracking.com).

These numbers truly give you an impression of just how big this conversation is.

5. Marketing Ideas

Marketing is a common topic of conversation on these Wednesday night discussions. Every brand has their different audience, and therefore has a different way in which they need to approach them. #IrishBizParty is a great way of discovering new marketing techniques and tools, which can help your business to grow going forward.

It is also full of people (such as ourselves @GrowItIe) willing to answer any questions you may have with your marketing activities. You will find regular tips and marketing hacks popping up on your timeline too!

6. It’s fun!

Fun leads to work enjoyment! As most would agree, #IrishBizParty can seem pretty daunting at first, and the pace is fierce, however don’t let these factors deter you. They just add to the enjoyment of the experience every Wednesday.

It’s something new and completely different every week! You will have a laugh, you will get excited, you will lose track of things a bit, but that’s what it’s all about. It also drives social engagement throughout Thursday and Friday, as people reflect on the new connections they’ve made, and the subjects that were touched upon.

Some final tips:

As we’ve said it’s fast paced. Ideally you will be sat in front of your computer with your phone at hand to optimise your engagement levels and crawl the internet for relevant content.

However, we realise this is not always an option on a Wednesday evening, as stuff tends to come up every now and then! So we recommend use of the Twitter search tool to keep engaged.

Try the following:

Save the search “#IrishBizParty” in your Twitter app, in order for you to be able to easily access the latest tweets, and keep refreshing.

Save a search with the hashtag PLUS a relevant term to your business i.e. “Marketing”, “Social Media”, “Food” etc.

Take note each week of the businesses you have engaged with and organize them in a list so you know how you developed your connections. This way you will be able to actively monitor and measure exactly how #IrishBizParty is helping you on your social channels.

Speak to at least 2 new businesses each week, (this is not too strenuous with at least half a dozen new participants every week). You will slowly see your social business starting to grow.

Remember, Social Media is still an extremely hard place to prove that it is affecting your sales, but trust us, with the right attitude and strategy in place, it can become one of the most beneficial aspects to your business.