Mar 31st, 2011

Facebook launched the new page layouts on the 10th of March to bring the ‘Pages’ design in line with Profile pages. The two biggest changes to note are that tabs have moved to left hand side, and there are now a selection of images across the top.

Static FBML is now being phased out in favour of Facebook Apps, which means you can build apps with HTML, CSS and Javascript using the Javascript SDK, or with PHP, CSS and Javascript using the PHP SDK. These files are hosted on your own server and then pulled into Facbook via an iFrame.

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Jul 29th, 2010

Getting your own blog is as easy as pie these days. There are so many platforms to choose from: Blogger, Posterous, WordPress, Tumblr to name but a few. But once you’ve set it up, what can you do to improve website traffic and earn your rights as a respected blogger? My introductory guide will show you a few tips and tricks to get you started…

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May 20th, 2010

Facebook is the most popular social networking platform with over 400 million active users. It is a great tool for free promotion and engaging the general public, and due to this the Facebook Pages have become very popular with all types of organisations and celebrities.

The Static FBML application enables you to add custom boxes and tabs to any Facebook Page, allowing complete customisation of sections using Facebooks markup language; FBML, which is based on HTML. In this post I’ll explain how to install Static FBML and implement it on your very own Page.

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Apr 28th, 2010

Last week saw the start of a two part series of posts entitled “An Introduction to Digital Marketing” whereby we began talking through some of the slides that we presented at the University of Huddersfield Barnsley Campus a few weeks ago. Part 1: Social Networking discussed various social media platforms and what they can be useful for, as well as going into detail on how to get your work seen by as many people as possible.

As we mentioned last week, this series is designed to educate newcomers to Web about the easiest ways to market themselves online, and probably won’t tell all you hardcore Internet geeks anything you don’t already know…

This week we will be talking about the benefits of blogging, and how sometimes, if done correctly, it can be even more effective than using the likes of Facebook and Twitter to draw attention to your creative output.

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Apr 20th, 2010

A few weeks ago we were asked to visit the University of Huddersfield Barnsley Campus to give a talk on digital marketing. The group that we presented to were a mix of creatives from a range of backgrounds, but none of whom had much experience in trying to sell themselves online. There were jewellers, potters, fine artists, photographers, graphic designers; basically everyone except web designers / developers.

We had a three hour slot that was split into two halves: ‘Social Media’ and ‘Online Portfolios’ – but we covered far too much to fit into one blog post so we have decided to split it between two articles over the next couple of weeks… Seeing as though we recently wrote a post on Online Portfolios we aren’t going to bother with that, and instead split Social Media in half: ‘Social Networking’ and ‘Blogging’. In these articles we will be showing a selection of the slides that we used for the presentation, along with some expanded slide notes to elaborate on each point.

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Mar 16th, 2010

All creatives, be it web designers, illustrators, photographers, fashion designers, artists, and all the rest, need to be able to get the things that they create out into the big bad world, or Internet as the case may be. For some of us (namely web designers / developers) it’s a little easier than others, because it’s our job. But no matter who you are or what your profession, we could all do with a little help to make life a bit easier.

In this post I’m going to talk about 4 of the best new and up-and-coming websites designed to help us creatives get our content out there. Some of them are so new in fact, that they are still in BETA testing, but they are definitely ones to watch out for…

Flavors.me

Flavors.me has been publicly available for one or two months now, and it’s a great way to collate all (or most) of your social networking information. It’s fantastic for someone who is active all over the web, but doesn’t have, or is struggling to get a solid online portfolio together.

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Dec 18th, 2009

There are so many articles about social media all over the newspapers at the moment: companies personally addressing customer complaints, celebrities taking over Twitter, books being published in excerpts of 140 characters…but what does social media mean for your company? And do you need it?

If you’re considering social media, you should think carefully about what you want to achieve from using it. The primary reason to use it is to engage the customer; creating two-way communication shows you care about the customer and want to listen to them. Although their feedback may not always be positive, it’s important to handle the rough with the smooth and provides a valuable lesson in PR.

Timely and regular communication is expected in what has become an extremely fast-paced society. Ensuring you update at regular intervals means your community can begin to grow organically as more people find out about you. I’ve seen too many campaigns started without forward planning and abandoned after a couple of months. Key campaigns that are marked in the calendar should have social media planned into the list of activities surrounding them.

So what types of social media do you need? Let’s consider three of the most popular ones: blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.

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