Virtually everyone who uses a computer understands that Google, Yahoo, Bing and all the other  search engines are designed to find relevant answers to the queries you make.  Type in ‘Patio Barbeque’ and you will be rewarded with suppliers from all over the country. However since you may prefer not to drive hundreds of miles, perhaps a more local search would be useful.  Modify the search to ‘Patio Barbeques in Bristol’, in my case, and this will return the local suppliers required.

From the opposite perspective if you run a business selling barbeques how will your website capture my search and entice me into your store.  OK, that’s an easy one – by having a great website and being ranked first on page one.

You’re not there?  Find out how you can apply a sharpening stone to your business website, generate traffic, website rank and sales.

1. The search engine quest
2. Key words and phrases for my business
3. The tools you will need
4. Tens, hundreds or thousands?
5. The competition
6. Winning

1 – The Search Engine Quest

A search engine’s job for life is to supply accurate and appropriate answers to people’s questions.  For example ask Google how many centimeters in a foot and 30.48 comes back instantly. Search engine companies spend huge sums perfecting the process of matching queries with answers. If you want to figure in their answers you have to help them, read on to see how.

2 – Keywords and Phrases for my Business

Researching and establishing the right key words and phrases for your business is really the first thing to be done even before you build a website and will save a lot of work later on.  However its fair to say that most site owners approach this after their site has been constructed.  It is a threefold process: 1. research relevant key words, 2. identify the amount of search traffic they generate, 3. determine the strength of the competition.  This will be time consuming but worth it when done properly.  You often see advertisements from companies asserting that they will get you on page one instantly, however, more often than not, if you probe deeper you will find these listings of little or no value simply because no-one is actually using those terms.  The first two tasks therefore are to find key phrases that relate to your business AND potential customers who are using that term, the third is to analyse just how strong the competition is for those key words.  For example, if you run a small book shop and want to rank  for  the phrase ‘books and novels’,  you’ll find your competitors for page one are Amazon and nine other massive organisations all of whom have thousands of pages on their website, millions of backlinks and mostly page rank 5 and above.  Forget it, you’re not going to get past them!  The trick therefore is to find key phrases that, to go back to my restaurant theme, are little back street gems.  They relate to your business but perhaps in a more niche area,  and Amazon is nowhere in sight. The Google Adwords key word research tool is ideal for this task.

3 – The Tools needed to help Search Engines to find You

When a search engine looks for an answer to a query, it goes through the billions of pages in its databases looking for matches and those that it finds are graded in order of importance.  Of course we would all like to know exactly how that grading process works and needless to say they aren’t going to tell us!  So common sense is probably the best measure here – if you want to find a good restaurant what do you do?  Ask your friends, look for a recommendation in a local publication, see how many stars it has, is it busy, does it look inviting.  If a restaurant passes all these tests you walk in.  Although the methods and algorithms are incredibly complex this is pretty much what a search engine does to determine whether a site is worth recommending. So apply these principles to your webpages; is the page relevant to the search, ie does it contain the search term in all the right places; does it have interesting and unique content; is it easy to navigate and are related topics all linked and easy to find; do other people find the website’s content valuable and interesting and have shown this by linking to it.

These are the basic building blocks of well optimised, professional web pages and Applause can provide help and advice for anyone who needs more information on how to achieve this, but here I want to concentrate on how to determine what those key phrases should be in the first place and how they affect your web strategy.

4 – Tens, Hundreds and Thousands

So to summarise, the essence of keyword and phrase selection is to work hard on finding those still relevant to your business with hundreds or thousands of searches per month but with less then ten large competitors.  Remember, do not be disheartened if there are a number of insurpassable competitors on page one;  like the joke about the two missionaries who come face to face with a lion, when one puts on his running shoes, the other exclaims ‘ you’ll never outrun that lion’  to which he replies ‘no, I just have to outrun you!’

5 – The Competition

So you have identified the key phrase search terms that you want to target, now you need to assess the competition.  To do this you need to consider the key metrics search engines use to determine the importance of a website and compare your competitors’ to your own.

• Age of website
• Page rank
• Amount, relevance and uniqueness of content
• Presence of key words in domain, title, description, meta tags, head and content of the web page
• Links within the website
• External links
• Links to recognised web directories such as DMOZ

Take each key phrase, if you find the competition is too strong move to another until you find competitors who are within range. Do not spend months optimising your website for a key phrase where you have little prospect of surpassing the competition.

A valuable tool for this analysis is Market Samurai or the SEOMoz toolset amongst other alternatives.

6 – Winning

Finding and competing for the right key phrases is critical. Even if many hours of work moved your site from position 100 to position 20 for a given phrase it might look, and is,  a huge achievment but it is unlikely to generate any return for the investment of time and energy. Spend your time building site performance in less competitive areas, once you have successfully built page one status, traffic will increase and generate links.  As the relevance of your site builds so will page rank and soon you will be able to compete at a higher level, taking on the competitors who, at the outset, were considered to be out of reach.

I hope reading this article will give an insight into what you need to do to give your website a competitive razor edge. Applause is an small independent business specialising in digital media and marketing.  If you would like help or advice on any of the aspects of the above article please call 0117 933 4416 or browse these web pages for more information.

Search Engine Optimisation
Using social media in marketing
Website design and build
SEO in Bristol

The problem arises when you produce graphics with a background that graduates to black  in say Adobe Photoshop and then import those graphics into page layout programme Adobe InDesign in this case, which also has a black background.  The two black merge and create an invisible join and the job is done… right? ….wrong!  Whilst it might look OK on your screen when printed or output to pdf the Photoshop black is grey and sticks out like a sore thumb.  See example below.

As you can see the oval Photoshop vignette to black is visible against the background black in InDesign. The problem relates to the way the two programs create their black swatches and the final image processing when creating the final pdfs for print. (If you don’t see a difference increase the brightness on your monitor)

However help is at hand, if you have experienced this problem and been tearing your hair out trying to fix it, here is a simple step procedure to remove the problem.

In Photoshop or other image editor

1. Make sure your file is using the CMYK colour space.
2. Ensure the printer profile  is the same that to be used in InDesign (I use the default setting)
3. The black swatch that you use to create black needs to be set to C100, M100, Y100, K,100

In InDesign
In preferences set ‘Appearance of Black’ to rich black
Do not use the default black swatch in InDesign to create your background.  Create a new black swatch in the swatches tool panel and as in Photoshop set its CMYK values to 100 each and use to set the background colour of the piece.

I hope you found this short article useful.  If  Applause can help with any of the tasks in your digital day please call.

In my own experience, it’s a huge benefit to  have  manuals, tutorials, video all at hand so I can instantly cross reference from one media to another,  mix animated demonstration or video with detailed study in text form and listen to audio description without having to consider the Internet. As, whilst an almost inexhaustible library of research material, it can also be quite frustrating.  Setting aside the issues of connectivity and bandwidth, for the provider the cost of delivering constant access to such large quantities of media rich applications on a continual basis going forward can be prohibitive.  For the user constant online access over a long period of time to media rich material can also be expensive consequently the benefit of  having everything on your hard drive in your own computer is clear.

A company with huge expertise in this area is International publisher Macmillan Education. With over 150 years of publishing experience and operating in over 130 countries they work with local teachers, students, institutions, and educational authorities to develop high-quality coursebooks, supplementary materials and digital products to suit the needs of classrooms around the world.

At the end of 2010 Macmillan asked Lemon Digital and Applause to provide an interactive DVD resource for two of their forthcoming projects;  ‘Learning Teaching’ a training manual first published in 1994, now revised as a third edition and to be complemented with a DVD training video produced by MTJ Video in Oxford and a range of digital publications provided in pdf format;   ‘The Business’ a DVD resource bank  at pre-intermediate to advanced level, containing a massive resource of video, worksheets, teachers notes, authentic listening activities, Powerpoint and more.

Both interactive Enhanced DVDs were to be distributed world-wide and required accessibility across a wide range of media platforms, basic DVD player, PC and Macintosh computers Applause were asked to develop the programmes which would then be exhaustively tested across virtually all known combinations of hardware and software  by Testronic Labs in London.  Both titles passed out with flying colours and are now available on Macmillan’s website.

Learning Teaching

The Business

Guy Jackson at Macmillan commented “The Enhanced DVD was a steep learning curve for us but Applause worked tirelessly and patiently on both projects taking complete responsibility for the builds. We handed over the assets and let them get on with it!”

Photo real image creation has been a specialism at Applause since the days of ‘comping’ colour transparencies, working with such clients as Westland and Racal (now Thales Group) to provide visual representations of complex projects under development.  More recently we have worked in the events industry providing pre-build 3D simulations of conference and exhibition stand creative concepts. And now expanding the skillset to cover a wider range of applications, delivered as high resolution still images, HD, standard or streaming video.

Clients are often not really sure  if they like an idea until they see it; also with complex long term  projects it may be necessary to demonstrate work in progress as a final situation. In these circumstances it can be a real advantage to be able to show exactly how things will look. Illustrating packaging in variety of colours and label designs, showing how seating will work in a particular event venue or just how good stainless steel, glass, acrylics and marble can look in a new build are just some of the ways photo real 3D can help. A particular advantage in high value projects where expensive materials and high labour cost will be involved.

Take it a stage further and add animation, fly your customers Peter Pan style, take a micro journey through places a camera wouldn’t fit, create the ‘impossible’ to interest and engage your customers.

Here are just some of the potential applications:

• Confex & Event Visuals
• Architectural Photo Realism
• Product Simulation
• Photomontage and Digital Retouching
• Packaging visuals
• Video Wall and Studio Backdrops

How you can create a professional visual presence for free.

Once upon a time to market your business all you needed were some business cards a telephone and perhaps if you were flush with start up capital – a brochure and an ad in yellow pages.

How times change; in today’s multi channel marketing world a whole variety of tools are at your disposal each requiring it own discipline.  And, the pace of change gets faster and faster new technologies are almost tumbling over one another to gain ascendancy.  One of the newest, and probably most controversial, is Social Media Marketing sometimes referred to as Socialnomics, only a few years old but now experiencing huge exponential growth, and whether you believe they are a complete waste of time or valuable tool enabling direct contact with your target audience one thing is certain, this style of communication is here to stay.

From a business perspective, although there are a host of browser based software options, the recognised front runners are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn (use these links to connect if you like !) and although these are very different marketing platforms they have one thing in common – the ‘Avatar’ or the little square picture sitting top left of screen.  This was the point during your signing up for an account with one of these social media vendors when you were presented with an ‘upload your photo’ button, and thought, “Good grief, where can I find a photo”. Rummaging in the attic and finally resorting to the one of you grinning at the camera whilst in the Costas.  Much in the same way as in the past you might have thought “I need some business cards” and nipped down to the local copy shop.

The result is largely the same – unprofessional, creating negative impact and damaging the perception of you and your business.

Why so?  When you are having a face to face communication, you have an opportunity to build rapport and create a good impression, the business card is secondary, albeit still important.  Not with #SM when someone links to you that little picture is all they’ve got.  That’s why it is important.

So I thought it might be useful to provide a few hints and tips on how to create an Avatar that will give a professional impression and it won’t necessarily cost a bean.

Firstly consider how want to use Social Media and what you think the viewer will be looking for.  If you are marketing  a product you manufacture – a picture of it; a service that you provide – a photo of you; an abstract, like a community or charity could be an iconic image or logo.

Secondly bear in mind size.  Avatars are a tiny squares and you want yours to convey your message. A photo of you in front of your wonderful new premises looks great on the website and press release but will be reduced to unidentified blobs at this size.

Here’s how – First off, get out the digital camera and take your picture. Now I did say ‘for free’ so YOU have to take the picture but if you really don’t get photography then employ the family camera enthusiast or bring in a professional there are super people around who will do this for less that £100 and provide you with range of shots you can use in a variety of ways. Here are some I hadshot by Blue Skies Photography in Redfield, Bristol [OK it did cost me something!). Note the composition and usage of a plain grey or my brand colour background to provide a space to superimpose a logo or keyword.

If DIY is your choice here are some handy hints:

• Use natural light but not direct sun and not flash (window light is good for portraits)
• Make sure the background is uncluttered (there won’t be room for much background anyway)
• Wear clothes that contrast with the background and convey your style (professional, trendy etc)
• Make the subject occupy at least a third of the picture area (cameras today have plenty of resolution for this purpose but bear in mind you might want to use this shot for other purposes)
• Consider using some bright colour (background, clothes flowers perhaps)

OK so now you have your picture and imported into the computer the final stage is to prepare the image for upload.  You will need some image editing software to do this, if you are lucky enough to have a copy of Photoshop or Fireworks you are good to go. But there are many free applications you can use, GIMP is a good example that will do all you need (‘FREE but do make the donation).

The task is to adjust and crop the image to the size required so that you have exactly the right image to upload.  If you have Photoshop likely you’ll know what to do so I’m leaving you to your own devices.  If not download and install the GIMP from here http://www.gimp.org/ .  Here’s quick ‘how to’ adjust and crop a photo for your avatar:

1. Open a photo file, I’ve picked a flower photo so we can assume this is for a florist’s Twitter avatar photo.

2. Often the exposure or colour of the picture isn’t quite right so you have a complete range of tools under the <Colours> menu to adjust the image to your liking.

3. Now you crop the area to select the portion of the image you want to use.  On the tool panel on the left find the ‘craft knife’ icon (I’ve ringed it red on my screen image) and select it, you can now draw an area over the image, you can also fine tune your selection by dragging the corner handles (remember you want to end up with a square format).  Once you are happy hit <enter> and save your image (use a different filename if you want to keep the original.  All that remains is to set the image to the correct size, most Social Media programmes use 100 x 100 or 200 x 200 pixel images for avatars. Go to the <Image>/<Scale Image> menu to adjust the size of the final image the whichever size you require and do a final save.

This is clearly a very quick snapshot and there are a host of tools and features within the software that will allow you to manipulate your avatar photo in a host of ways.  Have a play and see what you come up with – but remember the final photo will need to reflect the professional image you want to portray so don’t get too carried away!

Inurfacemedia were commissioned to provide a range of digital signage display units and teamed up with Applause in providing media rich product information to customers and visitors browsing in-store and viewing  street side.  Banham said ” We have found the signage systems an invaluable resource to introduce customers, who traditionally purchase one type of security product, to other areas of our our business such as fire protection, garage and window security and cctv monitoring. In addition we have noticed  increased footfall due to the window display units which engage and interest street browsing.

For more information:

Inurfacemedia Digital Signage Systems
Applause Signage Media Solutions

Whether you are tasked to present on behalf of your company or running the whole event here is a handy check list to help ensure that you don’t miss a trick and if you need a hand call us Applause 0117 933 4416.

Some questions to ask yourself.

1. What do I wish to communicate and why?
2. What style of event would be most appropriate?  Conference, road show, exhibition, seminar, a combination with interactive zones.  What did you do last time?  Do you need to do something different?
3. What budget been allocated?
4. When will the event be held and will your date clash with another event?
5. Where will the venue be, is it national or regional and which locations will be easiest for delegates to attend?
6. What type of venue is required and how much notice will they need?
7. Will keynote speakers be required, how far in advance do invitations need to be sent?
8. Are people with the required skill set in place to support the event?
9. The target audience –making sure they will attend?
10. How many delegates will there be and appropriate room sizes and layout.
11. Has a full technical check of the venue been carried out.
12. Am I secure in the knowledge that  the event is safe – for crew and staff and for delegates
13. What event media will be required, stage design, audio, video and presentation and display graphics.
14. Has a technical equipment check list been formulated.
15. Will a logistics team be required to rig and de-rig the event

Here are some tips to help your event run smoothly.

1. Create a master event schedule, so that everyone will clearly know, who is doing what, when and where.
2. When checking venues, walk through the entire show.Try to visualize the event experience from the delegates point of view.
3. Make sure that venue room specifications are accurate.
4. Ensure the venue has cleared your plans for  health & safety and conducted a risk assessment.
5. Catering, 500 delegates wanting coffee at the same time!  Think through the logistics and ensure sufficient venue staff to cope.
6. What other events or venue operations (eg kitchens)  are happening in adjacent areas.  You need to know if a rock concert is next door!
7. Work with a professional partner to look after health and safety specialisms of your event

Useful links:
Delegate website registration
Interactive and presentation media for conference events.
Exhibition display graphics, pop banners.
Digital signage display.
Print & Design
Post event feedback, DVD & CD materials
Health & Safety – In Any Event

Until recently if you wanted to send a simple form for a client or potential customer to complete and return to you there have been four broad options

1. send a word document – pretty much works but difficult to design and layout properly; and your carefully crafted fonts will disappear on receipt, usually screwing up the layout at the same time.
2. send a printable pdf -  this works, design and layout are retained but can’t be electronically completed and returned thus taking you back to fax or post.
3. create a web based form – works well but a lot more work, requires technical staff to manage or outsourcing to developers.  Either way it is expensive.
4. create an xml coded pdf – again this works well but as in 3. above needs qualified people to administer.

For large businesses or systems using standard forms on a mass scale clearly the web route works best, but for SME’s the cost of this route can be prohibitive.  For smaller operations MS Word or resorting to print and fax has been the answer, and anyone who has ever tried to creatively brand and format a Word document will be aching for a better way . . .

. . . and so here it is.

With the latest upgrade to Adobe Acrobat the age old problem of not being able to save edited pdf has now been removed. It is now possible to create forms  in a design programmes such as Quark, Illustrator, InDesign using creative design, images, logos, brand fonts and typographical design export these to pdf and then add all the data fields you want the recipient to complete and return to you.  The finished pdf can be easily managed by non technical staff who simply email to the recipient who complete the form and email by return.

Hey presto, clear, well designed forms that retain brand identity and professionalism managed simply.

Adobe haven’t exactly made this crystal clear but here is the method to produce editable AND saveable documents

1. Create your branded form in your preferred software package and export to pdf
2. Using Acrobat Professional ( you can’t do this in the Reader sadly) open the pdf

3. In the menu bar below the main menu find and select ‘Forms’ and ‘Start from Wizard’.  Go through the wizard process Acrobat will create a new version of your pdf and will have tried to insert all the forms fields guessing where they should be.  If you’ve made your form field areas pretty obvious the wizard is pretty good and will have sorted it all for you.
4. Now you can fix the fields where the wizard has got it wrong, adjust and edit to suit or add more as required.
5. Save the form using a different name and reopen.  Youl will now see all your field areas, check boxes  etc. (important to Save as a different file name as you can’t go back to the original)
5. The final step is to make the form editable and savable in Reader. Go to the ‘Advanced’ menu and select ‘Enable Useage Rights in Adobe Reader.  Now you have a form that can be emailed completed and returned

Send a test email to a colleague, get them to complete and return to check all is OK.

Job Done

If you need any help with this process please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Call 0117 933 4416 or 07770 750327

Well although you might be more used to a screensaver displaying a personal photo or some excessively garish cartoon, and  of course its original purpose was to prevent ‘image burn’ on old cathode ray tube monitors.  Nevertheless in one sense they both provide a similar function  in delivering information to anyone in the vicinity or walking past.

The potential to use these screens to reach out and inform has been utilised by Active Assistance a company working in the live-in care sector who’s purpose is to create choice and independence for those they care for.  Working with their designers Soap Marketing based in Portishead near Bristol they created a series of images specifically designed to attract attention combined with key messages (chocolate cake always gets our attention!).  Soap then commissioned Applause to turn these images into interactive Flash screensavers combining animated sequences of imagery and messaging. The finished screensavers where delivered as a simple 10 second install program in a range of computer screen formats to suit all types of machine.

Active Assistance’s computers throughout their offices and public areas now reinforce the company brand message of personal choice in care.  In addition the visual reminders of cake and latte may potentially also improve sales in the local fitness centre!

Formed in 1993, London Wharf PLC has forged a reputation for developing high quality homes in and around London and is one of the capital’s leading niche property developers.

Through meticulous detailing from the initial concept stages to final completion, bold innovative design, and the fusion of modern and traditional building techniques, has resulted in recognition by numerous industry awards.

Director David Lewin said ” We were delighted with the clean design and clear message of the original site but wanted to take advantage of the latest modern search engine optimisation techniques and the larger screen sizes now common.  Applause have now refreshed the site and provided advantage in design and optimisation.”