Give your followers value

Before you even set up a Twitter account, you must plan a campaign and set goals for what you want to achieve. What is the purpose of your profile and what will your customers gain? If you were a customer what would benefit you? If you wouldn’t want to follow the updates then most probably neither would your customers.

Keep your profile updated with regular tweets, but only if they are useful to your followers. You don’t want to tweet useless updates like “I am hungry” which nobody is interested in. Tweet links to blog posts, discounts, news stories and anything else your customers may find interesting. Once you find a topic that brings in a lot of followers or sparks discussion you can expand on this and even write a follow-up blog post.

Don’t over-tweet and clog up your followers’ profiles because they will most probably be following other companies too. There’s a danger that your tweets may get in the way of other updates and people will just stop following you.

Etiquette

Twitter is not an instant messenger. It is designed to communicate to thousands of users at once. Try to make your tweets appeal to all followers and don’t get stuck in two way conversations. Re-tweet (RT) other relevant tweets which your followers will find valuable. Reply to your followers and find related queries other users might have that you can answer.

Promotion

Use your corporate branding to style your profile so users trust you and don’t think it’s a fake profile. Find other users which are related to your industry and follow them. They might return the favour and in turn pass on their followers.

Research what other people are saying before posting a tweet. Use Twitter Search to see what key phrases are being used and try to include them in your tweets. Use hash tags before and after your key phrases. Tweet at peak times so your tweets don’t get lost. Peak times can vary depending on your industry and country but the majority of users go on just before and after work.

If you have a company blog or website, add a link or feed so that people can see your latest Tweets. Add a link in your email signature.

Tweets

When it comes to writing a tweet, don’t just write “Here is a great article http://bit.ly/crDzc.” Spark conversation by asking a question e.g. “None, sharp, crisp, strong or smooth? Which photoshop anti-aliasing works best? You decide… #photoshop #design http://bit.ly/crDzc.”

Here I have asked a question which will entice followers and hopefully get a response and create even more exposure. I have also added key phrases so it will be picked up in Twitter Search.

Getting the most out of Twitter is a matter of trial and error.  You can only find out what works for your company by trying different approaches.

Guides

Newbie’s guide to Twitter
Twitter Glossary
Hash Tags

Tools

http://bit.ly/ - Use this website to shorten your URLs/Links so you can fit more characters in your tweets.
http://twitpic.com/ - Upload and share photos on Twitter.
http://refollow.com/ - Manage your friends and followers on Twitter.

How to create a PKP traffic advanced segment

Open your Google Analytics account and select Advanced Segments.

Select  +Create new customised segment.

To create your segment, drag and drop your chosen dimensions into the statement boxes. The two you need to select are both under Traffic Sources: Keyword and Medium.

Drag Keyword into the first statement box and choose Matches regular expression from the Condition drop-down menu. Value is where you insert the key phrases, but we’ll add these in a moment.

Choose Add “and” statement, and drag Medium into the second statement box. Choose Matches exactly from the Condition drop-down menu, and choose Organic from the Value drop-down. This is what it should look like:

Now we need to add the primary key phrases in the Value box of the Keyword statement. The easiest way to do this is with a text editor capable of regular expressions such as Ultra Edit, as you need to add carat, pipe and dollar symbols to separate the key phrases.

Open the text editor and paste in your primary key phrases.

Now you need to place a ^ symbol before each key phrase and a $ symbol afterwards. In between each key phrase there needs to be a |. So it will look like this:

^keyword one$|^keyword two$|^keyword three$

To do this, go to the Search menu and select Replace. You need to replace ^p with $| and tick Regular Expressions. Then select Replace All. This is what it should look like in the replace wizard:

Now you need to replace $| with $|^ and untick Regular Expressions. Then choose Replace All again.

Make sure there is  a ^ before the first key phrase, and a $ after the last key phrase so that it looks like this:

^keyword one$|^keyword two$|^keyword three$

Now that you’ve added the symbols, select all and copy and paste into the Value box in the Keyword statement box in Analytics.

The last thing to do is name your segment e.g. Client PKPs and select Create Segment. And that’s it. Now you have a quick, easy way to measure a really important KPI.

“Over deliver” – the mantra all good digital agencies should live by and one we take very seriously here at Zeta. Meeting client expectations and delivering beyond the brief takes careful planning and consideration.

With that in mind, knowing exactly how browsers will display your design is imperative. Producing stunning visuals is a must. But if you present clients with concepts that don’t represent how the live site will look, your final delivery will not have the impact you hoped for.

Of course, Flash developers don’t need to worry about how their fonts display and neither, for that matter, do web designers. They can just turn text into images and everything will look fine. But any web designer worth their salt will care where their clients rank in search engines, so HTML text is a must. It’s beneficial to both clients and agencies to design for SEO. It also helps that we’ve got a team of marketers who keep the pressure up to produce sites that can be optimised to their full potential.

So how should fonts be displayed to clients?

When I started designing websites in the 90s, font smoothing was something Microsoft developers thought Apple designers did on a Saturday night in the privacy of their own homes. So back then, turning off my anti-aliasing altogether was the best way to display fonts to clients. Now, however, browsers cope well with typography.

For a while now, I have been meaning to test which of the anti-aliasing settings in Photoshop best represents the font smoothing in modern browsers. Well, guess what? I made some time, sat down and did it. I took screenshots of zeta.net from a Mac and a PC and compared them to the initial design files, changed the anti-alias settings and put it all together into two easily digestible tables.

Now, this is a fairly subjective exercise, so if you don’t agree with my findings that’s fine, Just have a look at the tables below and make your own mind up. Think of it as a resource to show clients how your concept will look when published on a live website. From now on I will be presenting visuals to my clients with the following Photoshop settings:

Sans-serif font – Arial

PC

Crisp for small body copy.

Crisp or smooth for large headings.

N.B. The extra transparent pixels Photoshop adds for anti-aliasing do make all fonts a little bolder on small sizes, so I would actually say the ‘none’ setting is still probably the most accurate for character width.

Mac

Crisp just edges it for all sizes for me.

Serif font – Georgia

PC

None for small body text, because it mirrors most characteristics of the browser-rendered font. With anti-aliasing turned on, the kerning seems to be different for small sizes.

Sharp for larger versions of this font. For dark backgrounds I think sharp also works best.

Mac

Strong for all sizes, because of the way Macs display fonts (a little bolder than PCs).

We want to automatically 301 redirect all requests like:

http://domain.com/anything.html to http://www.domain.com/anything.html

AND

http://www.secondarydomain.com/anything.html to http://www.domain.com/anything.html

First you need to enable the rewrite engine (you may already have this line in your .htaccess file so double check before you add it):

RewriteEngine on

For a single domain we redirect any request that begins domain.com to www.domain.com

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

If you only have one domain this is all you need to do.

For two or more domains follow this format:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^ primarydomain.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)secondarydomain.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)secondarydomain.co.uk [NC,OR]
#–> Carry on adding as many of these lines as you need

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.*)secondarydomain.net [NC]
#—————–>> Note there is no OR on the last condition^^^

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.primarydomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

It would also be wise to set the canonical URL in Google Webmaster tools.

We will post a guide on how to specify a canonical index page next week.

One way to do this is to create a new document root directory and edit your vhosts configuration, but when you’re using a control panel like Plesk you are asking for trouble if you start messing around with the file system.

A much easier way, when using Apache, is to create a splash page and redirect traffic from IP addresses other than your own while you are busy uploading and debugging.

This can be done very simply using the .htaccess file:

1.    Create a directory in your document root directory named “maintenance”
2.    Upload your splash page and all linked files (images, css etc) here
3.    Add the following to your .htaccess file:

##  DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE FOR EVERYONE EXCEPT US  ##
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !99\.99\.99\.99
RewriteRule !^maintenance/ http://www.mydomain.com/maintenance/ [R,L]

Just change the 99\.99.99\.99 for your own IP and dont remove the slashes. If you have load balanced connections, like us, or developers working from different locations you can add more IPs:

##  DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE FOR EVERYONE EXCEPT US  ##
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !99\.99\.99\.99 [OR]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !88\.88\.88\.88 [OR]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !77\.77\.77\.77
RewriteRule !^maintenance/ http://www.mydomain.com/maintenance/ [R,L]

I’ve used a 302 redirect because the move is temporary.

To help out all the people who find this behaviour unacceptable Zeta has created a simple Firefox search extension to allow us to search Google UK with the default “The Web” option selected. The addon has already had thousands of downloads and a five-star rating.

Download and rate the Google UK Search extension

Managing Director Roger Allen says, “In any business the workplace has to be fit for purpose and that doesn’t just mean practical.  People have got to feel at home, comfortable and proud of the company they work for. The graffiti art on our walls is great and I just love the process we went through to do it.”

Background

When Zeta moved no one could begin to agree on art for the offices. Sometimes an outside view can give a better perspective of the strengths and USPs of an organisation.  Zeta does it for others so why not have someone do it for us?

Then there was that great weekend in Shoreditch and down Brick Lane.  A party in an old warehouse and sight of the most amazing street art spread across one whole wall in the warehouse.  That’s where we met Jay Gawronski.  The next morning Henry Waterfall-Allen announced that Jay was coming to Poole.  He would be looking at Zeta… who we are… what we do and then he would create his own street art on our walls.

Flowers and plants are important to Zeta, we’ve had the same plants from day one. They are part of our identity.  Interconnection is another theme in the world of digital, web, email and mobile.  That was it really so Henry started moving the furniture and three days later they were done. This part of the process has been documented with pictures and comments on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zetadigital

The Result

The finished designs incorporate Zeta’s logo, colour palette and the words analyse and create - lead words in Zeta’s business strategy. Everyone agrees the office walls finally reflect the characteristics of Zeta and have made it an even better place to work.

View the complete photo album.

Contact:

Jay Gawronski
+44 (0)7760406574
fanakapan44@hotmail.com

You can read the article on the Design Week website.
http://www.designweek.co.uk/let-weymouth-beach-group-boost-the-resort/3001720.article

Over a two year period every time Weymouth got its bid ready, SWRDA would say “hey wait a minute you should increase the bid” so Weymouth would re-visit the application and duly increase the parameters. Just imagine the processes involved, engaging with architects, designers, artists, lighting specialists to say nothing of the consultation processes with the locals. Not once or twice but three times Weymouth has been encouraged to raise its expectations and re-submit proposals. The value of the bid increased from around £2.2 million to potentially around £8 million with SWRDA agreeing in principle last November to grant funding of £6.6 million.

The Weymouth scheme wouldn’t have just been good for tourism in the usual way. It was to be ground breaking, an ambitious development not tied to a retailer but firmly committed to excellent design. You have to know Weymouth to understand the issues. It has a fine original Georgian seafront. Arguably “the original Georgian seafront” as George III built his summer residence in Weymouth and made sea bathing fashionable there. George’s “Bathing Machine” still stands in front of his statue, one of only two painted statues in England.

The “George III” square was to have been absolutely pivotal to the whole scheme with fine sculptures and inspirational road planning. The lighting and the entire project had sustainability at its very core. Not just for the materials used but working practices, transport and waste disposal.

Does Government understand the economic benefits of great creative projects? Politicians still don’t even appreciate the huge value of music and the creative arts to the economy. SWRDA totally failed to appreciate the real value of the Weymouth Seafront Project and the consequent damage their betrayal will cause.

Anyone can upload a video onto YouTube and thousands of people do this every day making it increasingly harder to get noticed. Uploading a clip while thinking it will automatically reach a wide audience just isn’t the reality and unless you do it with SEO in mind you may find that it just slips into the YouTube sea of useless information.
Appearing on page one for any chosen key phrase is essential to achieve maximum results. Applying SEO can get your video on the first page of YouTube and if you get that right you could also see yourself appearing on the first page of Google for the same key phrase. This will all depend on how competitive the key phrase you are targeting is and how well your video is produced, because at the end of the day you will need to create something that is visibly pleasing to the eye with relevant and useful information.

A good example of this is the video for the Magicard HoloKote Tool that I recently uploaded onto YouTube. After applying traditional SEO techniques I have got the video to appear number one on YouTube for its chosen key phrase “ID Card Security” and just recently it has started to jump between page one and two on Google.com.

Below is a screenshot I took today which displays the video at position one on Google.com

Alternatively search for [ID Card Security] on Google.com

Using traditional techniques like optimising the title, description and tags, have laid a solid foundation for us to build upon. Our next step is to create a newsletter that we can send out to all of the Magicard dealers. This will detail how they can embed the Holokote video into their site. Doing this will bring further exposure to the YouTube channel and move us up the SERPs. If we can get 30% of Magicard dealers to embed the video on their site then that’s a job well done and we should see the video move into the top five positions on Google.com regularly.

So in conclusion, using video as a marketing tool can bring a great return if you can achieve a first page ranking in any top search engine. And with more people turning towards the internet for video/media whether it is on a mobile device or through traditional means you may want to decide if this is something that you need to get involved in.

YouTube if you want to.