“A computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games [or] a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities…”

As we’ve been pretty gung ho with all this social media lark we thought we’d get with the program and create our own funky little avatar fellows as a way to introduce you to the Chichester Design team.

By the power of Google, Ben came across a nifty little programme called Portrait Illustration Maker that lets you create a cartoon version of yourself, incorporating immense detail from hair style and skin tone to eye colour and nose shape. It was great fun creating representations of ourselves and meant that we were free to include all the things we like about ourselves and leave out all the bits that make us run away screaming from mirrors.

So here we go, introducing the Chichester Design Avatars:

From left-right: Ben, Jeremy, Kate & Simon

Not only do our avatars give all our customers a clue (I say clue, rather than wholly accurate portrayal!) as to what we look like but it also gives you a little insight into our personalities and puts a friendly(ish) face (or four) to the team.

The idea behind this master plan was to make us more approachable for the time when you want a website design consultation, advice on the right social media marketing mix for your brand or when you’re looking for someone to manage your Google Adwords campaign.

We are just people after all, and, although we spend a lot of time hidden away in our Chichester office tapping away at keyboards, we love nothing more than being allowed out to meet up with potential clients for a bit of a chat about the services we offer and what we can do for you and your business.

So, don’t be shy – and don’t be put off by our quirky interpretations that have resulted in a gang that wouldn’t look out of place in a Scooby Doo adventure- we won’t introduce you to any scary ghouls but we will get to the bottom of your design problems (See what I did there?)! Get in contact with us today.

Generation Web 2.0 has seen a mighty transformation in the way that people engage online and this is a big plus for online retailers during these times of economic difficulty. Essentially, businesses can engage with their customers and associates in a way they have never been able to before and get that little bit of extra value feedback.

What’s social networking?
Most of us are familiar with social networking sites like Facebook where we bump into old school, friends, work colleagues and meet like-minded folk online who we share our interests and ideals with. It’s a great way of keeping in touch and meeting new people but cuts out the time and expense that can be consumed by traditional socialising such as going down the pub, or out for a meal.

A social network profile will generally feature:

• Personal information- age, marital status, religion
• Groups, hobbies and interests
• Photographs
• More personality- opinions, design, applications

What is important to note here is that social networking is making the divide between personal and work life more blurred. While some companies have banned employees from Facebooking and Twittering in the office, others have embraced social media and openly encourage their marketers to recruit brand advocates via their personal and professional profiles.

What’s professional networking?
There are currently around 35 million professionals connected through networks such as LinkedIn. Professionals essentially sign up and create profiles to share information with likeminded people, whether they are in a different position within the same industry or work in a different industry and but hold a similar position. Networking is a great way to pick up tips, hints and contacts that you can use to forward your own career or build your business.

A professional network profile will generally feature:

• Your profession/job title
• Industry
• Education
• Work experience
• Specialist skills/expertise/qualification
• Geographical location

Chichester Design’s Little Gem

• Get involved on a social basis- sign up and create a social profile
• Get involved on a professional basis- sign up and create a professional profile
• Join groups and engage with people
• Understand and recognise when viral marketing opportunities arise
• Dedicate to and focus on authentic dialogue to build trust
• Assess whether your company is ready to use social media
• Go beyond a test budget and invest a little time and money in advertising
• Go beyond using banner ads and experiment other options
• Measure your ROI continually and make necessary adjustments

If you work freelance or as part of an agency and want to meet contacts and drum yourself up a bit of trade, make sure you get yourself signed up to LinkedIn ASAP. And you’ll find the Chichester Design gang already linked and ready to make your acquaintance.

Similarly, LinkedIn is a bonus contact building tool for those in the recruitment industry. You can take a look at people’s professional interests and qualifications and work out whether they would be good recruits to have on file for your specialist sector.

Why don’t you go online, have a play and see what all the fuss is about?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Remember to check out the 7 deadly spins website (http://www.the7ds.com) for more info on this years event!

Rob Lee, of the IronHorse Extreme race team, has just announced that the Seven Deadly Spins project he and the team have been working at over the cold Winter months is ready to go live. Action kicks-off this weekend with a non-stop attempt at 7ds4 – a North to South crossing of Wales from coast to coast – and the launch of a new team and 7ds website www.the7ds.com.

New signing to the team, Dave Buchanan, will attempt to cover the Welsh C2C route that he designed in a time as close as possible to the golden 24 hours marker. He is said to be very pleased to be taking his part in the launch of the Seven Deadly Spins and can’t wait to get down to business this weekend.

The route starts outside the gates of Caernarfon Castle on the North coast and then makes it’s way across 214 miles of spectacular Welsh countryside to finish at the “Celtic Ring” in Cardiff Bay. Taking in many of the classic trails of the Welsh interior, combined with some man-made delights at various trails centres along the way, Dave hopes to have created a “must do” route that has something for everyone. Dave will attempt to ride the entire route completely unsupported and will carry everything he needs except for water, which he will collect from standpipes along the route.

Thanks to the latest project sponsors SPOT – http://www.findmespot.eu/en/ – Dave will be equiped with the SPOT Satellite Messenger and so the whole attempt will be available to watch live on Google Earth. So while you may not want to ride that far yourself in one go you may like to see just how far he’s got at some point over the course of the weekend!

Just one week after Dave attempts to ride 7ds4 across Wales, Rob Lee will be attempting 7ds2 up in the Scottish Borders. Rob will be looking to ride the 7 Red Graded trails of the the 7Stanes, and all the road sections inbetween, in a sub-24 hour time. To avoid the obvious possibility of congestion potential within the trail centres his ride is scheduled to start on Monday 30th of March and finish some time the next morning. Again, progress will be available for all to track online but, unlike the Welsh ride, will combine both Road and Offroad so Rob will swap bikes between the disciplines.

To celebrate the launch of the project the team are pleased to reveal the new website: www.the7ds.com which is being built for them by another new sponsor http://www.chichesterdesign.co.uk/. The new website hosts both the team IronHorse Extreme site and the Seven Deadly Spins and has already started attracting traffic despite being kept “under wraps” for a while.

Both Dave and Rob have chosen to use the IronHorse MKIII as their mountain bike of choice from the IronHorse stable and will each be equipped with the latest MaXx D lights from Exposure.

Keep an eye on the 7ds website www.the7ds.com for latest updates, the tracker page location will be revealed shortly before it goes live.

Even in the middle of the credit crunch, in fact even more so now than in previous years, it is still possible to reel in the cash as a result of paid online advertising. But there are some ifs and buts that go hand in hand with this wise offering.

Picture the scene, “Not so long ago in a galaxy remarkably close to this one actually… 16 million households had access to the Internet and 95% were using broadband. There were on average 10-12 billion online searches occurring each month, worldwide and Google alone received 675 million of these search queries.”
This means that Google can still be regarded as the Jedi-Master when it comes to search engines with 10.5% of UK web users favouring it. However, other search engines have their benefits and may be regarded Jedi- Knights (just go with the Star Wars references, if you will).

For example MSN has a great Return on investment and Yahoo is ideal for mobile searches. And although the reduced screen size for mobile search only allows for the placement of two ads per page, this method is becoming increasingly popular as more people rely on their iPhones to search online during the commute to work.

The success of Cost Per click (CPC) campaigns has fluctuated in the last year in key sectors, as a result of the following reasons:

• Travel (particularly holidays)is moving from overseas to the UK
• People are resorting to brand loyalty and comfort products
• People are buying more second hand goods
• Job stability is weakening
• The property market crashed
• Financial services (e.g. loans companies) have less competition
• Gambling has increased

This list shows that where some businesses such as tour operators and estate agents might have seen a decline in click-throughs, others, such as eBay and online casinos might have had a sudden increase and seen good returns on their investments.

The moral of this cyberspace epic is that even when economic pressures are looming there are some businesses that will thrive and others that will suffer. There are also some marketing efforts that will do better than others, and this time round the Force has most definitely been with digital marketing, particularly paid search. Yoda might even say “Paid search, the salvation of many businesses it has been mmmmmm” and that little green guy knows his stuff, let me tell you!

Chichester Design’s Little Gems

All we can say is if you want to achieve successful paid advertising then there is a simple mantra which should mutter to yourself and follow religiously:

• Know your customer
• Know your market
• Know your company

If you know where you are and what you’re doing then you’ve won half the battle. This may seem obvious but you would be surprised how many people proceed with online advertising without covering these basics.

Also, make sure that you use the tools that are freely available to you such as Google Trends to see what keywords are coming up most frequently in a particular region/sector and the Google Adwords Keywords Tool, which will help you decipher a comprehensive list to start you off.

But remember, that the Chichester Design has Google Adwords Professionals on hand to take on your Adwords accounts and advise you on your other paid advertising options. Don’t be shy, let us help you make a bit of money during these troubled times by contacting us today.

According to a recent survey, 92% of adult Internet users are still sending or reading emails far more regularly than visiting social media sites. Also, marketing emails from companies are considered the most trusted source of information from companies. So why not combine the old trusted medium of email marketing with trendy and effective social media?

With the advent of the social media explosion, email marketing is being refreshed. Links to corporate social networking sites are being featured prominently in marketing emails which is pushing those on the mailing list to click through, join up and engage with the brand.

By definition, social emails are being reformed as the new and effective strategy for viral marketing. The brilliant thing about this strategy is that as social media becomes more prolific you will find that the customers you prompt to join your networks will share the information by forwarding your marketing emails to friends and colleagues or chatting about it the old fashioned way. They’re even more likely to comply if you offer them some sort of reward like a white paper in your specialist area or a discount on your goods.

Just to refresh…
There are many advantages of including the familiar little icons that click through to your Facebook, Twitter and MySpace profiles as part of your email campaigns, such as:

• Reaching new audiences and continuing to build your contact list
• Generating viral buzz and increasing brand awareness
• Increasing Return on Investment
• Identifying high value sharers and rewarding them with special offers to keep them sweet
  

Chichester Design’s Little Gem
How about turning things on their head and using social mediums as a conduit to reach your audience?

Just think about how many new contacts you’ll have access to when messaging fans direct from your corporate Facebook account- potentially thousands! You’ll also be able to create email messages simply and super quick- it’s genius!

Contact Chichester Design to discuss your best marketing solutions today.

Chichester Design came to the rescue and suggested that they jump on the social media band wagon and hold an online wine tasting event, live on Twitter. The main idea was to raise brand awareness for WineBeerExpress.com online and via word of mouth through social media and eventually increase website traffic and conversions.

WineBeerExpress.com were sold on the idea that a Live Taste and Tweet would be a great way to get to know their customers and discover what wine they like and why, where and when they like to drink it, what and who they like to drink it with. The main advantage of posting comments on Twitter is that customer insight and feedback has never been so accessible.

On Tuesday 24th February at 8.00pm there was a pilot of this exciting new marketing venture, which brought together one old favourite, drinking wine with a new favourite, social networking.

The pilot of the live tasting involved friend and family groups of the Chichester Design and WineBeerExpress.com crews and totalled more than 40 participants. Prior to the tasting, each group was sent a box containing two contrasting wines to savour on the night: Louis Jadot Mâcon Blanc 2007 and Hope Estate Cracker Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot 2006.

Sheer popularity of the event brought over 360 posts from just a handful of participants and live tweets were still being posted two hours after the start of the event. In fact, comments on the success of the pilot are still being made now.

Availability of RSS Feeds made it possible look at all posts and identify trends, results and objectives for future events. The most popular topic area, unsurprisingly, was tasting notes including comments on colour, smell and taste of the wine. Many also tweeted about the food that they were munching while they sipped their wine and made recommendations for winning combinations. Pancakes were mentioned a lot! (Well it was Shrove Tuesday!) However, the evening’s wild card was a rather lively debate on the best type of corkage- traditional or screw top?

WineBeerExpress.com has now decided to start-up their own wine club, which incorporates the online Taste and Tweet. Every month Julie, the buyer for WineBeerExpress.com, will carefully select different wines as the Live Taste and Tweet wines and these will go on sale to wine club members at a discounted price. Then, on the last Thursday of every month at 8.00PM, a Live Taste and Tweet will take place involving all members of the wine club who have their wine in hand and are ready to tweet lyrical.

The future might even bring a WineBeerExpress.com and BritishLarder.co.uk collaboration, which will see Food Fanatic, Madalene Bonvini-Hamel, making culinary delights in a live cook-a-long while the online wine tasting takes place. Keep your eyes peeled on our blog for more details.

More information about the Live Taste and Tweet, the wine club and wine of the month are all available at WineBeerExpress.com, as well as on their Twitter and blog posts.

Don’t miss out on all the action! Chichester Design is here to consult on social media, no matter how small your budget or how big your vision. Get in contact with us today and we’ll advise on the best ways that you can use social networking sites to create more brand awareness and maximise your place in the market.

During a time of such financial uncertainty, it is important for businesses to engage with their customers and get a real insight into their thoughts and feelings. There were 581 million of you making the most of social media outlets at the end of last year, and this figure is rising each day as you continue to build your friend lists on Facebook and sites like Twitter become more prolific in the news.

The thing about social media is that it is as a means to an end. By opening a gateway of communication between the people at the core of the business (the retailer and the customer), the barriers are smashed and networkers get straight to the point.

Blogs are particularly useful for helping the customer to help themselves. Many companies, such as computer giant Dell, have found that by blogging they can achieve an official voice on their own product. By chatting via blog entries, product experts troubleshoot their customer’s problems and find solutions with the input of the rest of the network. The experts communicate directly with the masses, creating something like a live FAQ page, and the solutions to common problems can be easily diluted by communicating them publicly through blog posts.

As the wise old proverb says, a problem shared is a problem halved. By using social mediums, not only are problems diminished quicker and more easily, a huge bonus for the anxious customer, companies also save a lot of money on support services.

Writing a blog post is less daunting and less frustrating than getting in a queue of callers with a company’s customer services department and consumers tend to give a far more accurate and open account of things. Blogging is a great way for companies to ask people what they do and do not like about their brand and get the real opinions and feedback they need to make positive changes.

There is a common belief that the British love to queue and were you to go anywhere with a big queue and watch as tens of Britons merrily join the end of said queue you may well believe this to be true. However, the fact is, as the computer age makes everything so whizzy quick, our patience wears ever more thin. This means that when it comes to finding out what you can do to improve the performance of your Dell laptop you’re not always so happy to wait in line.

Social media enables you to lend yourselves a helping hand. Not only are you more than happy to have a chinwag with like-minded folk, you’re also delighted to get to the route of your consumer queries with speed as a networking team.

For more details on how social media can help you as a customer and help to build brand awareness at the same time, contact Chichester Design today.

The idea behind this business venture is that by offering fashion watches and jewellery at prices of up to 50% off of their high street competitors, Max Watches will continue to satisfy their loyal customers and build a happy new customer base as well.

By importing the majority of his collection, which includes designer labels such as Ben Sherman, from Europe and the Far East, Philip believes that he will be able to give his customers excellent prices for the products he has on offer:

“I think we’ll ride the recession. The good thing about my products is that everyone wants to treat themselves at the moment.”

The Max Watches shop will be making an appearance in Chichester in the spring and will be accompanied by a fantastic new website crafted by the guys and girls at Chichester Design. The website will showcase the collection with a fresh and funky vibe and make it easy for customers to view and purchase online.

Chichester Design has taken on a number of local projects during this hard economic climate and is continuing to pull in a healthy portfolio of work.

Click here to find out how you can make the most of your business during the credit crunch.