​​The summer travel season will soon be upon us, with notions of escape, unplugging and faraway lands.

​If you are going on holiday or working in another country, you might be worried about running up large mobile phone bills.  But roaming charges have come down in the last few years and you are also protected by EU Roaming Regulations which set a maximum cost to consumers for calls and texts, and a cap on data roaming charges, throughout the EU.
EU Roaming rules from 1 July 2014 include:

• A maximum price of 19 cent per minute  for roaming calls that you make and 5 cent per minute for calls received
• A Euro SMS tariff - a price cap of 6 cent to send a text message while roaming.  Receiving a SMS message is free of charge.
• A Euro data tariff has been introduced when using mobile internet, which will cost no more than 20 cents per MegaByte
• An automatic €50 cut-off limit to prevent you from accidentally running up very large data roaming charges using smartphones. You can remove or increase this limit by contacting your network operator. This limit goes some way to protecting you from huge data roaming bills and operators must now send you a warning once you reach 80% of your data roaming billing limit.

All of the prices above exclude VAT.
Things to do before you go awayIf you plan to use your phone outside Ireland, check with your provider if your phone will work abroad and what the charges will be for voice calls, texts and data. If you plan to access the internet through your phone, ask what the data charges will be. If you are going to the USA, Canada, Central or South American countries, don’t assume your phone will work there. In some countries it may be cheaper to buy a very basic pay-as-you-go handset.

• Use the Roaming Calculator on CallCosts.ie to calculate the costs of calls and texts while away. See if your operator has a special roaming package that might work out cheaper.
• Check with your operator what the recommended network is for the cheapest roaming charges and what network name will be displayed on your phone for that network
• If you are a pre-pay customer, top up before you go - and don’t forget you can usually top-up online while you are away.

When you are awayOnce you switch on your phone abroad:

• Choose one of two options for connecting to your mobile network:

1. automatic network selection - which will find the strongest, although not necessarily the cheapest, network, or,
2. manual network selection - which lets you select the foreign network your provider at home has recommended.

• Text, don’t call. In EU countries there is no charge for receiving a text message, and the cost of sending one is generally much lower than making a call. Ask people to send you texts instead of calling you when you are away.
• Take note of the free number that you will be sent to call your operator for roaming price information. This comes with your welcome message.
• Using local payphones to make calls may save you money. Check the rates first, and find out if the cost is reduced by using a pre-paid phone card. Avoid making calls from hotel phones - they are usually very expensive.
• Buy a local SIM card. If you travel to another country frequently, consider buying a local pre-paid SIM card for that country so you only pay the local operator’s rates for your local calls. But if you want to call home, it could be expensive as there are charges for making an international call. You could ask people in Ireland to call you on your new number so that it costs you nothing.  You might need to ‘unlock’ your handset to use a local SIM card. Ask your operator before you go.
• Be smart with your smart phone. Before you go, ask your operator if data roaming is available where you are going, and how much it costs. Some operators have special offers and reduced cost packages for data roaming, so ask how much it costs per day and decide if you think it’s worth it.
• Think about leaving your smartphone’s data roaming switched off and only switch it on when you need it. You can also use free wifi to use your smartphone when you are away. Avoid downloading movies when data roaming. Even watching a short video clip can cost a lot. If possible, don’t download attachments when checking emails.
• Consider switching off your voicemail. Receiving a voicemail while roaming in the EU is now free. But you may still be charged for listening to the message.

Using your phone on a plane or ferryDepending on your airline, it may be possible to use your phone while in the air. Similarly, if you are on a cruise or ferry, you may be able to connect to the ship’s network.
However, it will usually cost you a lot of money as both of these facilities require a satellite connection to give you a phone signal. Ask a crew member for full details before you start using your phone.
Check out more information on roaming at www.callcosts.ie
- See more at: http://www.consumerhelp.ie/roaming#sthash.gdRNKjsp.dpuf

https://blog.twitter.com/express-even-more-in-140-characters

​Over the past decade, the Tweet has evolved from a simple 140-character text message to a rich canvas for creative expression featuring photos, videos, hashtags, Vines, and more. In just the past few months we added the ability to poll your community, react quickly and cleverly with GIFs, and share and enjoy Periscope broadcasts in Tweets.
So, you can already do a lot in a Tweet, but we want you to be able to do even more. In the coming months we’ll make changes to simplify Tweets including what counts toward your 140 characters, so for instance, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer “use up” valuable characters. Here’s what will change:

• Replies: When replying to a Tweet, @names will no longer count toward the 140-character count. This will make having conversations on Twitter easier and more straightforward, no more penny-pinching your words to ensure they reach the whole group.
• Media attachments: When you add attachments like photos, GIFs, videos, polls, or Quote Tweets, that media will no longer count as characters within your Tweet. More room for words!
• Retweet and Quote Tweet yourself: We’ll be enabling the Retweet button on your own Tweets, so you can easily Retweet or Quote Tweet yourself when you want to share a new reflection or feel like a really good one went unnoticed.
• Goodbye, .@: These changes will help simplify the rules around Tweets that start with a username. New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the ”.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Retweet it to signal that you intend for it to be viewed more broadly.

These updates will be available over the coming months. Today, we’re notifying you and our developers, so that everything works as it should when we roll these changes out. The updates have a significant impact on Tweets, so we want to provide our developer partners with time to make any needed updates to the hundreds of thousands of products built using Twitter’s API.
In addition to the changes outlined above, we have plans to help you get even more from your Tweets. We’re exploring ways to make existing uses easier and enable new ones, all without compromising the unique brevity and speed that make Twitter the best place for live commentary, connections, and conversations.

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​“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
Oscar Wilde
You may have noticed when you search for a business the results will sometimes have Facebook or Google plus as some of the top results: especially Facebook.
“Social is the way our work gets discovered. Content that is truly exceptional, unique, and useful can earn tremendous awareness through social media, and that social amplification often leads to great links, which leads to great rankings.” ~ Rand Fishkin, CEO/Co-Founder, Moz
The social media aspect of your business will have an impact on your business’ search ranking, it is vital to make the most of your Facebook page using some good SEO, and cosmos.ie have some good old fashioned SEO service tactics.


SEO Services Ireland Cosmos.ie Tip#1: 
Ensure the Brand Name/URL Match
No doubt when you started your business website you made sure that the name closely followed with the website name:
The same should apply to your facebook page to help search engine optimisation. Quite simply if you are selling penguin flippers your website will no doubt be penguinflippers.com:
Same for Facebook, it should be treated similarly to a new website.  It doesn’t make much sense to advertise your brand on social media and then make it difficult for visitors to locate you.  

SEO services Ireland provided by cosmos.ie help by making sure your brand or company name and Facebook Page address match, increasing the chances of being discovered on search engines(search engine optimisation) and Facebook, as well as informing searchers what you’re all about.
For example, if someone is looking for penguin flippers, then it’s safe to assume that this would be a site selling penguin flippers.

Cosmos.ie SEO Services Ireland Tip#2:
Make sure you are categorised correctly
This is an area often set up incorrectly by beginners and never corrected, and of course, please make sure that you select the proper category for your Page. So, penguin flippers, you would want to select the correct on-line business category. Having said that, however, don’t neglect the subcategories such as shop etc. This will allow your business to show up for the most accurate searches, and thus helping with Search Engine Optimisation.

SEO Services Ireland Tip#3: 
​Full Profile
Many business owners as you can imagine are so excited about the new product/idea or indeed invention that they neglect the details: but, just as it is in retail clicks and mortar businesses, “retail is detail”.

Customers need to know details about where the business is , such as, where you’re located, what are opening times, what products or service you offer. In other words, it helps to highlight the best qualities of your company/brand and makes it easier for potential customers to locate you outside of Facebook.
Don’t forget the “About” section on Facebook.  This also plays a key role in search queries.
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“It is essential that marketers dig deeper into search, social, local mobile data to understand how they all work in tandem to impact ranking” ~ Jim Yu, CEO, BrightEdge
Marketing.ai found that the majority of searches were pulled directly from the About page on the Facebook Fan Page. This was around 60-80% of all cases. The majority of other cases came from the Company Overview and Location fields. This accounted from almost 95%+ of all searched cases.(Greg Marlin:marketing.ai)

SEO Services Ireland Tip#4:
​Content Focussed
It’s all about content when it comes to online digital promotion and self promotion.
One of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimisation are from social media. In short, if you want to rank higher in search engines, then you need to have a lot of Likes, Shares, Tweets and/or +Ones.

Yes, all very well but how?
As SEO service provider & consultants, we will help inprove SEO: our advice is to be always sharing interesting content on your Facebook Page, and always using all available descriptive fields on each type of content shared. When posting photos, use those all important keywords without keyword stuffing. When posting events, take the time to include keywords in the event description field, if suitable a discussion forum to your Page.

Facebook makes all of the content shared on Facebook Pages indexable by search engines, so use the tools Facebook has to its fullest.  If you are a frequent ‘poster’ and ‘sharer’ of content on Facebook, you’re engaging with your fans, which makes you more visible. And no it doesn’t have to be funny videos it can be content that relates to your brand/company and provides value to your clients or customers will help get your page noticed.

While creating quality content is a great way to get your audience talking about your Facebook Page, there are plenty of other ways to engage with them and thus helping your SEO ranking.  Wishpond also suggests trying out formulas like solving a problem, filling in the blank, caption this, or embracing nostalgia to engage with your audience.

SEO Services Ireland Tip#5:
Improve Engagement
Consider Using Facebook Apps
As Social Media Examiner points out, you can use apps to keep customers informed, connect them with customer support, make appointments, promote events, reward them, or gain feedback. All of these apps are in turn indexed by the google bots, thus again raising the Search Engine Optimisation level further.
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SEO Services Ireland Summary:
Social media is a must for businesses looking to grow or indeed survive in the digital age. Facebook is the most powerful tool to connect with customers, provide customer service, and to rank in search engines. Take the time to ensure your profile is optimized in order to get the most out of your Facebook pages.