Irish Entrepreneur Blog

You may have noticed that some pages on Instagram are able to include a product tag on their posts (as seen in the images below). This is a great way of driving more traffic to your eCommerce store and increasing your conversion rates.

You don't need to be a big store, have a certain number of followers or anything of the sort to get this functionality in your Instagram account.

This Guide will walk you through how to tag products on Instagram from start to finish.

Danny O'Brien is a entrepreneur from Kildare who has founded Idea 2 Scale, a platform that gives entrepreneurs and founders the resources they need to get their businesses off the ground and Business Barn, a co-working space in Kildare. I sat down with Danny to hear his story, understand what a typical day looks like for him and discuss his views on risk in business.

Should I start a blog for my business?

This is a common question for a lot of small business owners. When running a small business there are so many moving pieces and priorities

that you need to focus on that blogging can seem like a waste of time. However, blogging is a long term time investment that if done properly will bring you a huge amount of value.

Creating a website for your business is now easier than ever.

You don't need to be overly technical to create a really visually appealing site. Tools like Squarespace allow you to create a really slick website with an easy drag and drop layout. 

In 2018 it’s been predicted that we’ll see the rise in new ways of reaching your audience like Facebook and website bots and along with them the death of email marketing.

But despite recent predictions, email is still playing a massive part in most digital marketing strategies.

A business founder has to wear many hats.

That's true now more than ever. As a small business founder it's likely that you won't be able to afford to pay a digital marketer to work with you for a long time. If you end up outsourcing this to a freelancer or agency it can become quite costly. 

So you end up doing it yourself. Unfortunately when it comes to marketing it's no longer good enough to be able to write blog posts, schedule social media posts and dabble in Photoshop.

In order to really bring value to your business' marketing, you need to be able to borrow the skills of a developer and of a designer on occasion.

Every so often a really great business idea comes into your mind. It hits you like a eureka moment and you convince yourself that this is going to be the one. This is the idea that finally makes you rich. Other times you come up with something you think may work but you're not too sure. No matter the situation the first thing you have to do is start researching your business idea.

Karl Murray is an entrepreneur who has founded Irish essential oils company, KOTANICAL.They are the first company in Ireland to distill essential oils and use 100% natural sources. I spoke with Karl about his production process, how he markets his products and the importance of mentorship in the success of KOTANICAL.

Will Monaghan from Trim, Co Meath along with his co-founder Max Dehne, have achieved something many Irish start ups only dream of. They fully funded their Kickstarter campaign in under 24 hours. I spoke to Will to hear about his experience of starting Toc Watch and his advice for making your own successful Irish Kickstarter campaign.

One of the biggest challenges to starting a business in Ireland is the money you need to get started. For first time entrepreneurs there can be a lot of costs that you didn't realise were going to creep in. You need to pay for your initial product, packaging, storage, distribution, your website, marketing and more. One way to alleviate a lot of this pain is through a process called drop shipping.