Branded 3

Visual Studio 2010 and .net 4 Beta 1 Released

Anthony Main — Wed, 20 May 2009 11:00:45 +0000

This week saw the release of the latest tools for developers from Microsoft. MSDN subscripbers (and next week joe public) are able to download the first beta release of their Visual Studio 2010 product which ships with the latest version of the .net framework (4).

Unlike Visual Studio 2008 and .net framework 3.5 SP1 the buzz hasn’t been quite so great as Microsoft gave us a lot of new features which most of the industry are yet to embrace yet. Despite this MS are ahead of their previously stated 3 year roll our schedule, which can only be a good thing.

The new features include:

Visual Studio 2010

A new Windows Presentation Foundation-based (WPF) text editor
More “modern,” with more of a WPF look and feel throughout the suite
Smaller in size (in code and data) than Visual Studio 2008
More reliable and modular

Frameword 4.0 improvements

Programming Languages
Common Language Runtime (CLR)
Base Class Libraries
Networking
Web
Client
Data
Communications
Workflow

Just means that us dev’s who have been supporting .net 1.1 and .net 2.0 applications had better pull our certification fingers out as we have a lot of upgrade paths to follow!

Post from: Branded 3

Twitition - The Social Experiment Continues …

Steve Shaw — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:50:35 +0000

We are now just over 2 months from when we launched Twitition and the numbers are still growing steadily. With 81 active Twititions containing over 1116, the site has been using Twitter to grow. The most popular Twitition at the moment with 279 is actually a french one with regards to their Privacy Laws and the Internet!

Why not create your own and get all your friends to join in and sign, I’m thinking there should be a Bank Holiday every month, who’s with me?

Post from: Branded 3

Internet World : Day 2 : Twitter

Steve Shaw — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:18:24 +0000

I was down at Internet World today and the definate buzz word was Twitter along with the use of Social Networks to boost brand awareness. From around 95% of the people I spoke to on the stand said they wanted to know what Twitter is all about (”I just don’t get it was the main point”) and how it can work from them, the hardest part of this is that with any social tool it’s usefulness and effectiveness will vary for every single person or brand.

Branded3 Search doesn’t just set up a Twitter profile for people and leave them to sit there, there is a strategy and plan of action to how often it will be used, the brand tone of voice and the messages that will be tweeted, it seems like there might be more to this micro blogging than posting “I’m drinking my tea with biscuits”.

All in all it was a great day and we met some very interesting people all doing different things online. Hopefully we will get chance to pick up the conversations further with everyone we met and soon they will be tweeting about their brand all day long :)

Post from: Branded 3

The future of .Net development

Anthony Main — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:33:26 +0000

Recently MS announced at MIX09 their new framework for web development - MVC (Model View Controller). According to the official blurb the benefits are:

Clear separation of concerns
Testability - support for Test-Driven Development
Fine-grained control over HTML and JavaScript
Intuitive URLs

I’ve been using it now for about 6 months on various projects during the beta and RC phases and I must admit I love it. Gone is the awful page lifecycle that plagued us with Web Forms so is ViewState, instead of have a really clean development environment.

Whilst its still immature there is a lot of community support for it and plenty of blogs and tutorials. Controls are still a little lacking especially when it comes to grid style editing, but the MVCContrib project has made some major headway there. Web 2.0 style sites are now a breeze with full native support for jQuery and Ajax libraries.

If you are starting a new project I seriously recommend taking on the learning curve as the benefits and reduced time to release are well worth it.

Post from: Branded 3

Northern SEM Meetup

Zoe — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:42:27 +0000

The second Northern SEM meetup takes place next week, 6pm on Tuesday 5th May in Mr. Foleys, Leeds. It’s a social event so there won’t be any talks, just beer and chat with some nice search folk. All are welcome whether you’re a search marketer or just interested in the subject. According to Dom the organiser there’ll be some free stuff too :)

Drop by whenever you can, it’s well worth going to.

Post from: Branded 3

Call Metrics - Phone call tracking for your PPC & SEO campaigns

Branded3 — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:56:57 +0000

After a lengthy period of testing we are pleased to launch a new product which allows companies to track telephone sales with the same accuracy and detail as e-commerce transactions.

The Call Metrics software integrates telephone call monitoring with popular web tools such as Google Analytics & AdWords conversion tracking as well as client CRM systems to provide the ultimate marketers dream - the ability to track ROI for marketing spend.

By setting up different telephone numbers for each marketing channel or sub-channel we can determine the source of your telephone sales and use this information to measure ROI more accurately than ever before.

You can allocate different telephone numbers to as many channels as you like, the following are some common suggestions:

Organic search
Paid search
TV ads
Referrals from a partner site
Referrals from a super affiliate
Banner campaigns
A specific generic keyword

For a brochure please call 0113 281 4100 today.

Post from: Branded 3

Internet World: The week ahead

Steve Shaw — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:29:00 +0000

In case you have been living in a cave or just not reading our blog enough you would know that this week at Branded3 is going to be a busy one. We have been named “Official Social Media Partner of Internet World 2009″ which is fancy in it’s own right but more importantly we will have our stand at Internet World for the full 3 day exhibition.

Our team will be at the event to discuss how Branded3 can help you gain better performance and increase efficiencies in your Digital Production or Marketing as well as our SEO and Social Media tips. I will be at the event on Wednesday and will hopefully be able to help with and Interactive campaigns you may be thinking about such as Microsites, Flash games and Banner work.

You can register for FREE entry to Internet World and you get the chance to mingle with some of the countries top Internet gurus.

All in all we are hoping that the 3 day event will be an excellent chance to meet new clients and get the message out there that when it comes to Digital Production, Branded3 are the people you need to talk to.

Post from: Branded 3

Proactive Digital Marketing Agencies

Antony Robinson — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:30:44 +0000

As the newest member of the Branded3 team, I’d firstly like to thank all the team for the warm welcome. I would also especially like to thank Vin (Branded3’s MD) for getting my kids an Easter Egg each. It’s odd that such a small thoughtful act can have such positive effect… Again thanks for that Vin!

Ok, to my post….

Proactive Marketing Agencies

I think that the most successful agencies irrespective of service offering are those that both educate and proactively promote quality marketing ideas to their clients.

A great example of this “proactivity” was recently recounted by Martin Sorrel, the CEO of WPP on Radio 4’s Today program, about a mobile campaign one of their agencies suggested and crafted for one of their clients, a German tyre manufacturer.

“In Germany, by law you have to have snow tyres when it snows, so what they did when it started to snow was, they SMS’d their client database and said “It’s snowing - you’d better go and get your snow tyres”

That increased their like for like sales by 36%.

Having recently moved to Branded3, one of the things I wanted to introduce was this kind of proactive philosophy, thankfully I’m glad to say that I don’t have to, as it already here!!

I would like to suggest that we can take it a step forward though, one idea I’ve had is that, on a weekly basis we choose/focus on one client, and as a team we come up with two fantastic ideas how that client can use digital marketing more effectively. Does anyone have any other ideas how we can take a proactive step forward?

Post from: Branded 3

What’s your inspiration?

Andrew Ellis — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:32:52 +0000

Being a designer, I draw inspiration from most things in life. An experience, an image, a person, or simply something tangible can get my creative juices flowing. I do consider myself a connoisseur of most things creative, and find myself regularly on the look out for an enterprising new website, engaging advertising campaign, or dynamic new technology.

The majority of flash based web material is rich in creativity. Flash opened the door to a whole new world of design for the web and gave developers the opportunity to evolve the way that website design manifested itself on the Internet. There is literally no limit to how a design can be interpreted from Photoshop through to Flash and in turn through to the web, its limitations are boundless.

One site that I would like to bring your attention to if you are not already an avid user is the Favourite Website Awards or theFWA for short. I find this to be a great source of all things new and exciting, often market leading, and find masses of inspiration in the cutting edge design on show.

Now theFWA may not be your thing, it may be a bit too specific for your tastes but its sister site may be more your cup of tea and the reason why i’m writing this. fwaphoto is a new service offering a photo a day, a highlight of some of the most inspirational imagery from around the world. Take a look, let me know what you think, I hope it offers a chance to find your inspiration.

Post from: Branded 3

Branded3 Official Social Media Partner of Internet World 2009

Antony Robinson — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:24:40 +0000

Branded3 have been awarded the honour by Internet World 2009 as being their official “Social Media Partner”. They have also asked our Twitter Brand Management Team to write the show’s guide on how Brands should be promoting themselves using Twitter. A copy of the Twitter Guide is available to download in pdf format.
Clearly, as an Internet World partner, we are exhibiting at the expo, so if you are going to the show please drop by our stand for a drink on the Branded3 beach stand, number E2062.
If you are going to the show, in order to make the most of your time, Patrick Altoft’s guide to the top 16 things to see at Internet World is a must read.

Post from: Branded 3