Bar owner taps into online success

A Co Galway bar-owner who believed that powerpoint ’was some place you plug in a kettle’, related today how his engagement with social media has led to a turnaround in his business.

Neil Molloy, who by his own admission does not know how to edit video or how to use ’fancy machines’ told the Content is King 2010 conference in Dublin that his Hop Inn pub in Athenry has experienced a marked increase in clientele since he set up a Facebook page eighteen months ago.

Attributing his success “100 per cent” to social media, Mr Molloy told how publishing innovative comic videos online has attracted new business to his pub.

Delegates at the conference heard from business owners and media commentators how social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube can be exploited by companies as a means of extending their reach and attracting new business.

An investment of €100 was enough to spring a previously unheard of band from relative obscurity thanks to social media, the conference was told.

Crystal Swing went from performing to small crowds in Cork to being ’inundated’ with work and an appearance on Ellen DeGeneres’s US chat show after using YouTube to host its €100 video.

Capt Pat O’Connor of the Defence Forces told how record numbers of people have applied to join up since 2008 when the army first engaged with social media. While this, in part, was as a result of the recession, Capt O’Connor said it was also ’without a doubt’ partly down to social media.

Other keynote speakers included facebook.com's Rick Kelley, YouTube's Sebastien Missoffe, communications consultant Damien Mulley, broadcaster George Hook and Conor Pope of The Irish Times.