St. Anne’s Park is a public park and recreational facility, shared between Raheny and Clontarf, both suburbs on the northside of Dublin, Ireland.

The park, the second largest municipal park in Dublin, is part of a former 500 acre (2 km²) estate assembled by members of the Guinness family, beginning with Benjamin Lee Guinness in 1835 (the largest municipal park is nearby (North) Bull Island, also shared between Clontarf and Raheny)

Facilities

The estate was named after the Holy Well of the same name on the lands. Lands were purchased over time to build up an extensive property, and a large Italianate-style mansion house was commissioned.
Sir Arthur Edward Guinness (Lord Ardilaun), who inherited the estate in 1868, was the person most responsible for expanding and developing the estate and gardens and planted wind-breaking evergreen (holm) oaks and pines along the main avenue and estate boundaries, where they remain. Lord and Lady Ardilaun had no children and the estate passed to their nephew Bishop Plunkett in the 1920s. In 1937, he decided he could no longer maintain such a large estate and negotiations with Dublin Corporation resulted in the house and 444.75 acres (1.80 km2) of estate being sold to the Corporation for approximately £55,000 in 1939. Bishop Plunkett retained Sybil Hill (now St. Paul’s College) as a private residence with 30 acres (120,000 m²) of parkland, and it later became the site of St. Paul’s College, Raheny, with extensive private playing fields.
In December 1943, the main residence of St. Anne’s, “The Mansion”, was gutted by a fire while being used as a store by the Local Defence Force and the ruins were demolished in 1968. In the meantime, just over 200 acres (0.8 km2) of the estate were developed for public housing with the central and most attractive portion comprising about 240 acres (1.0 km2) retained as parkland and playing fields.

The park has a number of features, from the small Naniken River to the Duck Pond, built by the Guinness family, a number of follies, a walled garden, grand avenue, and from more modern times, a rockery, a famous Rose Garden and newer miniature rose garden, and Dublin city’s arboretum, with 1,000 varied trees.

Follies
The follies include a Herculanean Temple on the banks of the Duck Pond and a viewing tower (once part of the estate’s mansion house) and three fortifications. An ornamental bridge high over the Naniken River had its central portion removed in the 1980s, though the Roman-style building at the landing point remains, while a “Druidic Circle” of Giant’s Causeway basalt was lost at an earlier stage. The viewing tower has been closed for many years.

Buildings
The elaborate Tudor redbrick Ardilaun stables survive, and have been modernised as the Red Stables Art Centre with Food Farmers market.

Gardens
The walled garden, including a fruit garden added to the estate by Bishop Plunkett, is now chiefly a 12 acre (49,000 m²) plant nursery for the Parks Department. Thousands of bedding plants, shrubs, trees, and floral tubs are produced annually in the nursery. There is a herbaceous garden area open during limited hours, and a fine clock tower, restored to working order in 2007. It has been proposed in early 2009 that some allotments be made available in part of the walled garden.

Sporting facilities
The park is intensively used by the public through its 35 playing pitches, 18 hard-surfaced tennis courts (some managed by Raheny Tennis Club), and a par-3 golf course. Woodland paths provide for walkers and joggers.

Visitor facilities
The Red Stables were renovated in the 1990s, and now hold artists’ residences, an exhibition space and a cafe, while a Red Stables Food Farmers Market is held in their courtyard every Saturday.

Product Research
It is vital to choose the right product that will work FOR YOU. What this means? If you come on any Irish farmers food market you could see that some stalls are busy and some are not. Why is that? – There is could be a different reasons for it: general type of market visitors, weather, season, etc. Just walk, browse and talk to traders. (*Hint. When you talk to trader it’s always nice if

you buy something off him, this way you are not only receiver but give something back.)
Try to identify the reasons why there is a queue at one stall and empty at another.
Look around, go to other markets, see what people sell, how they sell it, how product represented, price etc. This will help you to get some idea on what could work for you. Do not try just copy the product and representation. Think twice and get YOUR OWN way. From here it will be easier to promote your product on Irish Markets and get your own returning customers.

Suppliers
Once you decided what type of product you want start selling on local markets in Ireland you need to find right supplier for your market stall. Check your local suppliers and try to make a deal with them. How to start market business in Ireland?- Keep your expenses as low as possible before you get known on markets. Once you found suppliers, sit down

and put figures together on how much the product you want to sell COST YOU.

Farmers Market Research
Now it’s time to search the markets, which will be happy to have you there as a market trader and, same time, which will make you happy with good sales. Markets are different and you should keep in mind that no every market will be good for your product. Walk around and see if there is already same product represented on market. If you see one it’s may be very risky to get on same

market. This could destroy business on both stalls. Responsible market managers always try not to duplicate stalls.
If there is no same product on market, try to identify the reason why is that? Again, talk to traders and ask them why “Product X” not represented. There is a little chance to hear that nobody even tried to sell such product on this market, if so you may be lucky. But usually some trader already tried to sell here but for some reasons left this place.
Next, you need to identify who is a usual visitor on this particular market and compare this to Portrait of Your-Product-Customer. Otherwords, think who normally will buy your product and why they will buy it and see if general visitor can be considered as YOUR PRODUCT CUSTOMER.
Finally, talk to market manager. But always trust your eyes.

Setup
Now it is time to invest some money to start farmers food market business in Ireland. You have to be a very careful here because when things going to Catering this means EXPENSIVE. Do not try to buy a top range equipment first, the best way is to get second hand catering equipment.
This will allow you to start actually generate moneyand will save you.

a good few euro. Draw your market stall on a paper and write down all necessary equipment you need to operate your stall. When buy a things for a Market business be cool, BUY ONLY NECESSARY TO START EQUIPMENT AND STOCK.
Everyone of us learn things using a method of Tries and Errors. So keep them on a minimum level.

Market Stall Design & Signs
Now you have your great product ready for sale on the Irish country food market and you have all necessary equipment. It is time to tell people who you are and what you sell. You need to design your market stall with banners and signs. Check our Stall Signs | Design page to get more ideas what can be done. (*Hint : Professionally done market stall design can increase your sales by 50% instantly!)

Stall design ATTRACT people to your stall and next it is your job to make people BUY from you. And finally if people like your product they will BACK TO YOU and will tell the others about you. This how you start build your own BUSINESS BRAND.

Is all this simple enough? – Yes it is since you understood how the mechanism called as “Farmers Food Market Business in Ireland” works.

You are very welcome to contact us if you have any questions or inquiries.

Do it and we wish you Luck!

*Important. To run your own business in Ireland you must be a registered business,
Also you might need (depends on what you’re selling) Public Liability Insurance, which can be obtained from most Insurance Companies and General Food Hygienic Course.

Traders, do you want to share your very own story of success?- You are very welcome as this will help new and inexperienced traders to get on board without typical mistakes. Contact admin to start your own blog.

Introduction to Social Marketing

Your goal in starting or promoting your food market business was to generate an income and build assets for you and your family. Using Social Marketing for food market traders will help you achieve this goal. Social Marketing is done through MySpace, Facebook and other related social networking websites. You can create a Niche Social Networking Club on these websites and invite users into it. The users that join your social networking group will be your target market which you will have to monetize by luring them into your website through incentives such as discounts, free products, promotions, etc.

Social networking is different from your typical sales promotion store. Individuals that you find via social networking are not looking forward to shopping, instead they are looking forward to communicating with the same group of people that have similar interests. In other words, Social Networking is a way of grabbing attention of your potential customers, but once you grab their attention you will have to work your way into a relationship with your group before you can proceed and tell them to buy from you. In this lesson, we will go over several techniques on how to do just that. Until you have created a relationship your social group, they will probably not buy from you.

After you succeed in building a relationship with your group, you can then market to them like you would with your regular website email list except you would be using the Social Networking tools to do it. Ultimately, your goal is for the users to register on your website, participate in activities you may have with your market business and buy products from your website.

WHAT IS SOCIAL NETWORKING?

We have all likely heard of it before, but not everyone knows what it means? If you were asked to define what social networking is, would you be able to give an accurate definition? Unfortunately, most individuals cannot, even though it is likely that they participate in some form of social networking, especially online.

Social networking is defined as the grouping of individuals together in a specific group, often like a small community or a neighbourhood. Although social networking is possible in person especially in schools or in the workplace, it is the most popular online. Unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the Internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking forward to meeting other Internet users and develop friendships.

Social networking websites are an online community of Internet users. Social networking websites are often split into niches and have online community members join them that share a common bond, whether that bond is hobbies, religion, or politics. Some social network websites have personal profiles for friends and family such as Facebook or MySpace.

Social networking websites typically have an open membership, which means that anyone can become a member, no matter what their hobbies, beliefs, or views are. Once you are inside this online community, you can begin to create your own network of friends; thus eliminating others that do not meet your criteria. Social networking websites are very popular because it brings a personalization into meeting new people. In 1995 it was AOL (America Online) which came out with text based chat rooms and got people to communicate between each other on the internet. Social networking evolved in 1999 with Friendster taking the lead. Friendster was able to put a face on an individual and create advanced algorithms to find potential friend matches. Followed by MySpace with its popularity and Facebook with its organization, social networking grew from a few million users to several hundred million users within a decade.

TOP SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITES

Ranked by unique worldwide visitors November, 2008; comScore

1. Blogger (222 million)

2. Facebook (200 million)

3. MySpace (126 million)

4. Wordpress (114 million)

5. Windows Live Spaces (87 million)

6. Yahoo Geocities (69 million)

7. Flickr (64 million)

8. hi5 (58 million)

9. Orkut (46 million)

10. Six Apart (46 million)

11. Baidu Space (40 million)

12. Friendster (31 million)

13. 56.com (29 million)

14. Webs.com (24 million)

15. Bebo (24 million)

16. Scribd (23 million)

17. Lycos Tripod (23 million)

18. Tagged (22 million)

19. imeem (22 million)

20. Netlog (21 million)

UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL NETWORKING & SOCIAL MARKETING

Millions of people use social networking websites, and you’ll find hundreds, even thousands that fit your target market. You probably have great expectations and think it’s going to be an easy task to get them to become your friends, and then become your customers. Many people get a “Wow” feeling when they see how transparent the social networking website is and how many members are on it. There are several things these individuals don’t understand:

• Just because it is so easy to contact the members of these web sites, doesn’t mean they are your friends and will do what you tell them to do.

• If you think you’re alone, you should join the thousands of spammers who think just like you and spam the hell out of the social networking sites. You will have better luck trying to get a stranger walking down the street to listen to you, then sending out a cold message to someone on the Social Networking website and getting a response from them. Keep in mind that telephone solicitation is on the decline. New techniques must be used for Social Marketing. Your shout outs, “BUY FROM ME, WE HAVE THE BEST PRICES” will only work at flea markets, not on the internet. Do not start your typical shout outs and spamming of your potential customers, or you will lose more potential clients than you will gain.

Individuals on Social networking websites are not interested in your products or buying from you. They are on the social networking websites to share pictures, talk with friends, gossip and communicate with NON-TELEMARKETING PEOPLE. Imagine yourself on the social networking website sharing photos with your family and someone sends you a message with “CHECK OUT MY SITE, I SELL PARTS FOR YOUR CAR”. Are you really going to check out that website after this individual has intruded on your personal space and came to your personal profile to pitch you something to buy from them? You will be annoyed, violated and will probably have the message deleted before you even finish reading it.

Read also How to approach social networking to promote market business

Now let’s take a look at how you are suppose to approach social networking and how you should be executing the social marketing business plan.

1. Communication – The most effective way to communicate with members on the social networking websites is through direct messages or emails. When you mass email or spam email, you direct your message to the masses. Most spam messages never even reach the inbox of your recipient in the first place. In my opinion, if you send an email to 1 million people you can expect 5,000 to read it and 500 to convert. If you send that spam message to 100 people you will probably get no replies.

The goal is to build a relationship with the members on the social networking websites. Here is a plan of execution.

a. Before you contact a member, review their posted information and decide if they represent a potential customer or someone who could help you reach your potential customers. Send a direct personal message inquiring about the member’s profile or the member’s interest.

b. Build trust by communicating with the member for 2-3 times through the direct message before offering them anything.

c. Friend the member and have them on your friend list.

d. Get that member to help you with your business through incentives, offer the member advice on a subject or direct the member somewhere which in return, they will be loyal to you for your help. For example, instead of asking the member to promote your food market business, you can start a group specializing in the niche market that you are in and ask the member to help you promote that group. Members will usually be more interested in promoting a free service versus a paid service.

e. In a worst case scenario, if you took the time to communicate with a member to help you with your business and they decline you are still benefiting from this communication. The member you started communicating with will now know about your food market business. In result, they might deal with you in the future or refer their friends to your market stall. In a best case scenario, the member you communicated with will actually join you and help you promote your market business.

Use Social Networking to gain friends, not customers. People prefer to deal with people they know and trust rather than impersonal companies they find on the web.

2. Groups – By being a part of a group or creating a new group and naturally waiting for people to join it due to their interest in that group will get you a good head start with establishing communications with your members.

3. Value – Understand your value proposition.

a. Why would someone listen to you?

b. Is your offering really valuable to someone who never heard of you before?

c. Are your views inspirational to your prospect?

d. Will you write about your views and actually interest your prospect?

e. What kind of opinions do you have towards a particular topic?

f. Will you write about your viewing about the particular topic and actually interest your prospect?

The bottom line is why would someone find you interesting and listen to you? For example, if you sell bread or hamburgers on a periodic basis, and they are interesting to a potential member, that member will be your friend and follow what you say.

You must give something to the community before you can expect something back.

This article explains how you can use Twitter for Business generally but read it – this is could be right things for your Food Market Business is well.

First Steps

1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
2. Add a picture. We want to see you.
3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
5. Share links to neat things in your community.
6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead.
7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories.
9. Throw in a few humans.
10. Talk about non-business, too.

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

11.  Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”

12.  Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.

13.  When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.

14.  Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.

15.  Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.

16.  Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”

17.  When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.

18.  Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.

19.  Don’t toot your own horn too much. (Man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I do it all the time. – Side note: I’ve gotta stop tooting my own horn).

20.  Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

Some Sanity For You

21.  You don’t have to read every tweet.

22.  You don’t have to reply to every tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).

23.  Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation

24.  Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.

25.  3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.

26.  If you tweet all day while your coworkers are busy, you’re going to hear about it.

27.  If you’re representing clients and billing hours, and tweeting all the time, you might hear about it.

28.  Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.

29.  If someone says you’re using twitter wrong, forget it. It’s an opt out society. They can unfollow if they don’t like how you use it.

30.  Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

The Negatives People Will Throw At You

31.  Twitter takes up time.

32.  Twitter takes you away from other productive work.

33.  Without a strategy, it’s just typing.

34.  There are other ways to do this.

35.  As Frank hears often, Twitter doesn’t replace customer service

36.  Twitter is buggy and not enterprise-ready.

37.  Twitter is just for technonerds.

38.  Twitter’s only a few million people. (only)

39.  Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing.

40.  Twitter opens the company up to more criticism and griping.

Some Positives to Throw Back

41.  Twitter helps one organize great, instant meetups (tweetups).

42.  Twitter works swell as an opinion poll.

43.  Twitter can help direct people’s attention to good things.

44.  Twitter at events helps people build an instant “backchannel.”

45.  Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).

46.  Twitter gives businesses a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. Remember presence in the 1990s?

47.  Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks).

48.  Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.

49.  Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are).

50.  Twitter can augment customer service. (but see above)

Organic Farming in Ireland is regulated by standards requiring the highest level of respect for the environment. So why buy organic food? Organic farming uses sustainable methods of food production and embodies the respectful use of the countryside and concern for animal welfare. The organic sector in Ireland is regulated by the Department of Agriculture and Food.

First of all we need to understand what should we expect when try to improve food market business in internet.

What steps must be done and how we do it. Some of us already have their food market business website but not everyone can give a clear answer how this improves their own food market business, many of us unable even to tell how many visitors their website gets and who are these visitors.
When we talk about Irish food market business there is only two main components of it exists:

• Food Market and it’s manager
• Market Trader and his product

Supporting of each other, both market and traders doing well. Market gets constant visitors traffic and market trader gets returning customers. Same will happen if we think to improve food market business online.
How exactly IrishFoodMarketTraders.ie members can improve market business online:

Register with IFMT website

More and more market visitors search internet for available food markets and stalls they have there. Providing nice and clear information about yourself you make it easier for potential market visitor to choose the market WHERE YOU ARE. This way it makes good for food market and market trader is well! Free registration. Simple isn’t?

Make sure you listed on market website

Check if the Market you do has business website and try to get listed there. Normally they should not charge you for it. You can obtain link to your existing market business website if you have one. If you don’t- no worries, IrishFoodMarketTraders.ie offer Food Market Trader Webpage FREE

Market Business Blog

Social Media business marketing became an extremely important part of any type of business but not many of us realize it or have no idea how to use it. Why is that? Before people were looking for business but now business looking for people, at my point of view this is a great transformation between business and consumers. Read about Social Marketing in plain English.

Blog is a simple way to tell people about yourself and your business. People are always look for something new and this how you can improve your food market business. From other hand articles are the best at this moment way to promote web resource. Google loves the articles! Really, this is a proven way to bring your page on top google search position, which means more visitors to your page and at the end, more customers.

Twitter

Shorter than a blog posting, a “tweet” consists of a concise sentence or two and essentially answers the question: What are you doing? We really can’t deny the fact that businesses are testing out Twitter as part of their steps into the social media landscape. You can say it’s a stupid application, that no business gets done there, but there are too many of us (including me) that can disagree and point out business value. Read how to use Twitter to improve food market business

Well, old rule works fine all the time- before you get more, give away something first.

In fact potential visitors search internet for Food Farmers Markets first and then look what they can buy there, so if they find good selection of food and some other activities in addition people will visit the market and probably will buy from you.

More people on Food Market = Better Business for you.

Same is for the Market Manager. Telling potential visitors about traders who do this market give people more information on what the get there. It works BOTH WAYS!

Example on how to promote market business online:

Data:

• Food Market: has own corporative website [Market Site]
• Market Trader: has own web site or web page [Trader Site] FREE business page for markettraders

Market site is promoting its own services in order to bring visitors on the Food market. For this he must have top Google positions for specific search term (keyword) – ex. Dublin City Centre Food Market

To have top google positions the site content must be:

a)    Unique

b)    Optimized for search engines

c)     Have other resource link to it

So, this way we have 1 page sharped for a keyword: Dublin City Centre Food Market

To get more traffic from Internet Market Site will list all market traders who attend this market. Why? Let’s consider stall selling Organic Vegetables. If trader provide Market site with his good business description, Market Site will get another high google position for term: Organic vegetables at Dublin City Centre Food Market

So, now Market Site has 2 well positioned pages in Google. In first case someone look for market with desired location and in second case someone look for organic vegetables in Dublin city centre

Market Site and Market Trader are both happy as Market got an extra visitor and trader got customer who wants to buy organic vegetables.

What if Market Site will have 20 trader’s business pages?- This is exactly how business promoted in internet.

What else:

If trader has his own webpage optimized for specific keyword, he is definitely will get some visitors (not much) on this page and there is only 3-5 seconds takes for visitor to stay or go away. This is why absolute majority of small business websites do not help food market business at all.

Why is that?

Ok, we will skip design and tech performance aspects and focus on main fact- There is PRODUCT represented but there is no clear direction WHERE AND WHEN TO BUY this product. If visitor feels uncomfortable he leaves…

Always tell your visitors Where and When they can buy your Product- link to Market Website, name it and give short market description.

This way your page will be ranked for your own keyword and for keyword contained Market Name.

Again, it works BOTH WAYS. In addition Market Site will get higher Google Page Rank and at the end this will bring extra traffic on market, which means BETTER BUSINESS FOR MARKET TRADER

IrishFoodMarketTraders.ie can do complete business webpage for Market Traders FREE. Learn more

The inaugural SMITHFIELD FESTIVAL will take place on August 15th and 16th in Smithfield Plaza, Dublin 7. The SMITHFIELD FESTIVAL brings together two highly successful and popular events EUROCULTURED and URBAN GARDEN which look at life in an urban context.

EUROCULTURED celebrates the diversity of modern European Culture via live street art, dance, music, performance and interactive workshops working with the best street artists, installation artists, bands, DJs, dancers, cabaret and inspirational folk from all corners of Europe while URBAN GARDEN takes a concrete canvas and turns it into a gritty urban garden with architecturally salvaged planters (baths, prams etc), quirky flower boxes, interactive performers, interactive play area, musicians (inc renowned Urban Strawberry Lunch, using a wide range of recycled percussion instruments), street artists, circus skills workshop area, staging area, eccentric planting workshop area, picnic area and markets area.

If you want to get a trading space on SMITHFIELD FESTIVAL contact Des Vallely ( info at irishvillagemarkets.com ) or check our Markets Page for more contact details

Irish Farmers Markets are down at the moment, so I got a little more time to think about something else. All market traders know that time after time the conflicts could take a place between market trader and farmers food market manager/s.

Trader has two options to act:
1. Give up and follow what’s the manager said. Be prepared next time to be treated same way.
2. Try to protect your own business interests. Do not be surprised if you will be “fined” by canceling your next market | event or even been asked to leave a market.
Sure, such situations are not normal for Irish Farmers Markets but as all we know, “This” happens.

So what we see is that the Trader is completely unsecured. Well, is there any way to cover your back and eliminate most common conflict situations?- May be it is too simple but yes, we can- SIGN an AGREEMENT between Irish market trader and market management. Is this How to protect Irish market trader rights?

When you rent retail unit you can not get it before you signed a Contract. Just think why this practice not used with Irish farmers markets?
Every trader knows what he obliged for on the market:
• Attendance
• Public Liability Insurance
• Keep a trading spot clean
• Follow all HAASP rules etc
But how many of us know exactly what Market management must provide to traders and in what volume.

I do believe that the signed Agreement will make a “must” and “can” things absolutely clear either for trader and manager.

What you think about?