The Do Lectures, which enjoyed its latest ‘village of ideas’ over the weekend, attracts thinkers and doers from a range of backgrounds. While I haven’t made it along to one of their annual events yet, it seems an energetic place, and this year’s attendees shared something very precious to them: their own ideas.

This openness and sharing of ideas, which led to the launch of a few successful projects, has been talked about over on Twitter. It’s also encouraged me to raise awareness of a recent Do Workshop that Jonathan and I went along to.

The day-long session really helped me to shape our plans for the forthcoming year, and prompted me to share my ongoing learnings, which I’ll be writing about in an upcoming series of articles on design and digital strategy.

My workshop experience

Do Workshops can be tapped into throughout the year, giving people a chance to learn about anything from making photofilms and creating technology to generating ideas and developing them.

A little over two months ago we took ourselves on a wee road trip down to Cardigan to learn more about “how to build a great brand”. David Hieatt (Founder of Howies, Founder of Huit Denim So and Co-founder of Do Lectures) led the workshop and, with experience in creating and building strong brands, shared some some simple ideas, three of which stuck with us:

• How to identify a niche before others
• How to put a moat around your idea
• How to tell your story

David’s thoughts, the support from other attendees and the lessons we learned, came at a valuable time. Just 12 months ago, living in Leeds and running Creative State from a home-based studio, we were (and this is the short version of events!) offered the opportunity to acquire another design studio, one I’d looked up to since starting out.

Now entering our second year of running both businesses, we’re a combined team of five, collaborating with a range of talented people, and I’m living back in my home town of Edinburgh. It’s not a long time in which to relocate, move into a studio and reposition your passions, but with dedication to a solid vision, it feels like time well spent.

That’s not to say that the process has gone without a hitch. Sometimes plans fell down where I thought they would hold up. Occasionally issues we thought we couldn’t fix challenged us. And it’s taken longer to shape our businesses than I expected. Patience isn’t one of my virtues!

Putting thoughts into action

Since the workshop, which gave us a chance to get away from it all and really reflect, we’ve worked incredibly hard on developing our strategy; a strategy that truly sets us apart, gives us an advantage and helps us to move fast, adjust quickly, and adapt well to change. We’re owning the challenges that come with running a business, creating positive outcomes, and are ready to launch two much stronger companies.

So be it creating a design brief, giving your brand a voice or joining the dots in digital, my aim over the next 12 months is to develop a series of articles that enable me to share my findings. As we launch our new websites, projects and products, I’m keen to continue on this learning curve and highlight the experiences, good or bad. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the best way of continuing to learn from an experience is to share it.

For more information about upcoming events check out The Do Lectures.

This is what MiH had to say following a weekend spent with them and a group of volunteers at the first ever Impact48 challenge. It’s just the kind of response that helps volunteers realise how valuable their time is, and motivates them to continue devoting what they can to worthwhile causes.

The challenge

Impact48 supports charities without the necessary resources to solve a problem, and coordinates a team of volunteers with the skills and energy to provide a solution. The end result is to provide a complete and workable end-result that the charity can take advantage of.

MiH was the chosen charity and our challenge was to help them reach a wider audience, a younger demographic in particular, and find ways of supporting the roles of their Marketing and Fundraising Coordinators.

The deliverables

Following a Friday night presentation from MiH, where they shared their hopes to encourage musicians, supporters and sponsors to show their support for the charity, the team we joined set about creating promotional badges and widgets.

These were designed to help the charity promote some simple tools that would direct traffic to its website. The badges and widgets make it easier for people to demonstrate their involvement and will reach those who have not yet come into contact with the charity.

We also supported the wider group with a range of website changes, including implementation of a revised content strategy, new navigation tools and an improved facility for data capture. The latter will prove particularly helpful and help to increase the visibility of the charity’s email campaigns.

The response

One of the most interesting parts of any digital project, be it a refresh or the delivery of new features, is understanding the impact it’s had on internal and external users. While we await the impending relaunch of the MiH website, we thought it would be great to find out how useful tImpact48 has been to the charity so far.

Sarah Bax, Marketing Coordinator for the charity, had this to say:

“A huge part of the weekend, for me personally, has been an unexpected and invaluable 48 hours of intense personal development. The buzzing and collaborative working environment was highly motivating and I’ve learnt a huge amount from every member on the team during the weekend. The team have given us the tools to connect with people…as well as the skills and confidence to use them. We can only thank them enough by now making it work!”

Barry O’Kane, Founder of Impact48 commented:

“Our first Impact48 weekend was a huge success. Everyone that took part immensely enjoyed the weekend and gained something from taking part. It was inspiring to see so many people giving their time and expertise to have a real, positive impact. I am very grateful to everyone who was involved and am looking forwarding to finding out exactly how much of an impact we managed to have over the coming weeks and months.”

Watch out for our next Impact48 blog where we’ll measure the impact of the changes.

The studio closes 21 December 2012 and re-opens 3 January 2013. For technical support over the holidays please email us.

Our last guest blogger gave a good overview of what’s required to produce effective online copy. Now, Chris Terry of internet marketing agency Occupancy Marketing, shares his tips on optimising your content.

“Once you’ve created some A-grade content, presenting this in a way that attracts both Google’s, and potential customers’ attention, requires a bit of a balancing act.

Focus too much on catching the wandering eye of search engines with (arguably) antiquated techniques such as ‘keyword density’, and you’ll quickly have your visitor hitting the back button. Likewise, ignore the key elements that Google and its search engine friends are looking for in your web copy, and you won’t be getting many visitors to dazzle.

So what can you do to find this sweet-spot for both human and Google-friendly content?

1. Know your audience

Like all forms of marketing, knowing who your audience is, and how they behave (or in this case, what they search for), is a big step in giving them something they’ll want to read. Knowing who you’re trying to reach will allow you investigate how they’re searching.

2. Spy on your audience

Tools such as Google’s Keyword Tool and Wordtracker will allow you to go a little bit James Bond on your audience. By researching the search phrases being performed relative to your product, as well as the popularity of theses searches, you’ll have a good idea of which themes and keywords are worth focusing on in your web copy.

3. Aim for your audience

Nothing tells a visitor that they’ve just landed on a spam website more than a page filled with content containing repetitions of keywords and phrases exactly matching the term they searched for. Although this technique worked well in 1997, today’s visitor is unlikely to be fooled that this page is relevant and will view the website with distrust. Similarly, search engines have become wise to this ‘keyword stuffing’ technique – and will more than likely penalise a page (and/or site) employing this tactic. Instead, aim your copy at the human audience first, and search engines second, using the insights gained from your keyword research to direct the theme of your content. Ensure relevant keywords (and synonyms) make an appearance at some point, preferably towards the start of the copy – although this is likely to happen naturally anyway, as a general rule of thumb when copywriting is to mention the most important points first.

4. Offer your audience some signposts

Where your page mentions products or topics covered in more depth by other pages on your website, it’s good practice to add some anchor text to direct the visitor by linking that keyword to the relevant page. Done correctly, this will add visitor flow to that next page of your site, while also giving an indicator to search engines concerning the relevance of your other pages. Done incorrectly, by filling your page with anchor text links, the copy will quickly diminish in readability, while also signalling a red flag to Google that your site is indulging in some manipulative methods.

5. Make use of your page’s metas

While your content should be targeted at your audience, your page’s meta elements provide an opportunity to give Google some special attention, in particular:

Title tags

These are the blue text links in search results, and are a big indicator to search engines regarding the content of that page. Tailor these title tags by seasoning with keywords from your research. Again, don’t overcook it, and bear in mind that humans still need to read this before deciding on whether to click through to your page.

Header tags (H1, H2 etc)

Most content management systems allow for headers and sub headers to be tagged as H1, H2 and so on. To the visitor, these inform what the proceeding text will be about. To search engines, they offer further insight as to the theme of the page.”

Find out more about Occupancy Marketing and the work they do to support the travel industry.

With the relocation just around the corner, we’d like to point you in the direction of our new contact details, and offer a bit of background on the former Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies.

Open to the public all year round, Summerhall offers workshop spaces and hosts events in all the city’s major festivals. It’s a new kind of community: a cross-cultural village where arts and sciences talk to each other, where high tech rubs shoulders with all the arts, including film and television, and a craft brewer has revived a 300-year-old tradition of brewing on the site.

It’s a great spot for meeting and collaborating with like-minded people and we’re looking forward to supporting Summerhall’s growing neighbourhood of creatives.

Our partnership with IfLooksCouldKill is also creating some exciting opportunities. Having got to grips with the team and its clients over the past five months, we’re excited to announce that it will become a full-service branding studio, supporting Creative State’s repositioning as a design and marketing consultancy.

This move gives Jonathan and I greater opportunity to collaborate, while continuing to offer the kind of service our clients enjoy. It also allows both businesses the chance to focus on their strengths and bring more benefits to our clients going forward.

We hope you’ll agree this is an exciting time and we thank you for continuing to support us!

We’ve enjoyed a close relationship with Michelle since mid 2011 when she approached us to design and develop her new brand identity and website. Now we collaborate on a range of projects, from client newsletters and blog development, through to printed material and websites.

Having worked in PR & marketing, as a national newspaper journalist and as a copywriter, Michelle has always been interested in words and how we use them. Writing for business is a different skill from writing for newspapers and magazines – and writing online copy is different from writing for print.

Here Michelle enlightens us.

What does a copywriter do?
A copywriter’s job is to craft words that will sell your products and services. A good copywriter will write sparkling copy with the correct spelling and grammar and a consistent style.

Writing is a skill
A good sentence is crafted, not dashed out at the end of a long day when your printer or website designer is clamouring for the copy you promised them two weeks ago.

Cost-effective copywriting
Many companies invest a lot of money in website design, trusting the work to a professional in the field. But they don’t invest the relatively small amount needed for professional copy. Writing your own copy is often a false economy. Even asking the printer, website designer or SEO expert to write copy isn’t always a good idea: they may be specialists in their field but they don’t tend to be professional copywriters.

Professional copywriting
As well as spending time on the content and style, it’s important to present your copy in a professional way, without basic errors of spelling and grammar. As a national newspaper sub-editor, I became attuned to sifting through copy for errors and now I do my best to proof everything I write.

Words have meaning

Some great mistakes I’ve seen:

• Working in book publishing, I often saw display material that said an author would be “singing” instead of “signing” at a venue.
• Recently at a business conference, a company was offering a “Prize Drawer” on their stand (presumably it beat a sideboard into second place).
• A recent LinkedIn post proclaimed “Don’t let me do this in vein”. Warning: intravenous drugs can lead to homophones.

Five common mistakes when writing copy

If you are still committed to writing your own copy, it’s helpful to be aware of the most common mistakes people tend to make. Here are my top five:

• Points of view: Writing what you want to say rather than what your client needs to know.
• Less is more: Using sentences that are too long and paragraphs that are too dense.
• Margin of error: Insufficient proofing, spelling mistakes, grammatical errors (they’re, their, there) and the rogue apostrophe (MOT’s).
• They snooze you lose: Dull headers and boring prose that don’t engage your reader.
• Everything in its place: Putting information in the wrong order, making it hard for the reader to find a natural flow of information in an article, press release, blog or website.

For more information about Michelle’s services visit the Key Words website.

I’m therefore pleased to announce a new partnership with IfLooksCouldKill, an Edinburgh-based web design and development company.

This partnership will strengthen both studios and allow us to combine our knowledge and expertise to form a stronger collective of graphic designers and web developers. As creative director of both companies, I’ll be looking at ways to bring the benefits to our clients going forward.

This is an exciting time for us and our clients and we really appreciate your support as we get everything in place to join forces.

Fully integrated with their existing website, which we designed and developed with WordPress last year, the mobile site allows the client to tailor content to fit their needs. The main features include an offers area and location page that taps into a smartphone’s own mapping system. And in true collaborative fashion, we’re continually working with The Lovat to keep developing the site, which will see a slick gallery feature launch this week.

Working with a forward-thinking client like The Lovat has been a really enjoyable experience for us, and we’re delighted that Caroline, Managing Partner at The Lovat, is happy with the way the partnership is going too!

“A brand new website, closely followed by a mobile site, is an achievement that couldn’t have been completed without your dedication and professionalism.

Your foresight and flexibility has made the whole experience painless! Thank YOU!”

View The Lovat case study.

The ICO’s guidance document suggests that a website must:

• Tell users that the cookies are there,
• Explain what the cookies are doing, and
• Obtain consent to store a cookie on their device.

In recent weeks we’ve been monitoring the situation to see how other websites comply and how digital marketing communities such as Econsultancy respond.

Based on our findings we recommend taking the following three-step approach:

1. Audit to determine which cookies are running on your website
   
2. Creation of a privacy page on your website (or alteration of an existing privacy page) to state what these cookies are and explain what they do
   
3. Implementation of one of the following methods:
   Level 1. A prominent link to ‘privacy policy & cookies’ and improved information within the policy itself. See example on John Lewis website.
   Level 2. A bespoke plug-in, which ties in with your branding, asking the user to opt-out of cookies. This will link to your privacy page, the user’s browser settings and an opt-out button, enabling them to make an informed choice. See this example on the BT website.
   Level 3. Introduce an active opt-in to your bespoke plug-in.

Regardless of the Directive, an audit is a useful thing to perform because there may be scripts or tracking on your website that you don’t use or need. A fresh privacy page will also allow site owners to educate users by offering information on privacy and providing clear policies.

While the  ICO’s guidance document is unclear in places, and therefore open to interpretation, the ICO has indicated that it is “highly unlikely to prioritise first party cookies used only for analytical purposes in any consideration of regulatory action”. As such, if you have no other cookies on your website besides analytical cookies, you may be safe to adopt the Level 1 approach. If other cookies are used then we would recommend implementing Levels 2 or 3 depending on the cookies used.

There are a number of third-party plug-ins being offered for Levels 2 and 3, however these may affect the look of your website, and some clients have rightly asked if users will trust the message on a third party plug-in. User interface design has an important part to play therefore we recommend tailoring the style of any plug-in to fit with your website design, which should reduce opt-out rates.

We hope these practical suggestions support you in deciding how you would like to approach this.

Please get in touch if you’d like to chat to us about this in more detail.

Clean, bright and modern in style, but with a traditional edge, we selected a fine cream paper and gold ink for their printed material. The letterpress method of printing gives a crisp, tactile finish compared to other printing techniques, an ideal accompaniment to the Regency brand.

Keep an eye out for their new website, due to launch shortly!

Read more about Regency Decor of Edinburgh.