August, 2009 archive
Credit Crunch - Fall of the Evil Empire
Aug
31
2009
Ideas can come from anywhere.
They make you stop, they make you think, and sometimes they make you smile.
Photo by Balakov
Website copywriting
Aug
19
2009
The beauty of my job is you never know where it’s going to take you.
Today I was on a farm in West Newton, Norfolk, taking photographs and notes to write copy for an online shop.
Click here for further information about Northstar copywriting services
Posted in copywriting | Comments
The Social Media Marketing Revolution
Aug
15
2009
Anyone over 30 will remember how funny, intelligent and entertaining TV commercials used to be, Benson & Hedges posters were almost works of art, ads in the colour supplements were usually more interesting than the articles themselves.
But times have changed, the public eye has moved elsewhere - and with it, has gone the revenue and investment in creativity.
The positive result of this shift in media, is that mass marketing is now accessible to all via the internet.
If you have ever wondered why traditional marketing is dying on its feet, here are a few statistics that will blow your socks off.
A few facts for your fingertips:
# By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
# Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
# Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
# If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
# 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
# % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
# The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
# The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
# Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
# There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
# Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
# 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
# 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
# Only 14% trust advertisements
# Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
Source: socialnomics.com
Tags: internet marketing, social media
Posted in marketing | Comments
Halko: Construction Web Design
Aug
10
2009
A new website has been launched today by Northstar, for Halko the timber construction company.
Northstar was approached by Dorrington Construction to create a website for their timber buildings created in partnership with Finlammelli of Finland.
The project involved creating a company name (Halko is the Finnish word for logs), corporate identity, website design and construction to W3C standards, domain name registration and hosting, email and email stationery.
Tags: construction web design, web design
Posted in news | Comments
Tweet Seek | Free Twitter search widget
Aug
04
2009
Tweet Seek is a free Twitter search widget that you can embed into your website or blog, giving your visitors live results on any given topic.
It was developed by some friends of mine at Blueclaw, an SEO company based in Leeds, UK.
Tweet Seek is fully customizable, with a range of skins, and you can either choose the results or add a search box so people can explore for themselves.
Go ahead try it, just type in any topic into the search box and get live results as tweets are posted word-wide.
Some pretty fancy javascript dancing is going on here.
You can customize your Twitter search results, reskin and grab the code at the Tweet Seek website.
Tags: seo, tweet seek, twitter widget
Posted in copywriting, news | Comments