Strawberry : Leading Website Design, SEO & PPC Marketing, Hull, Yorkshire

The Cookie Law - What’s Your Plan?

2012-05-25T13:21:59+00:00

We told you a few weeks ago that it was coming, but it's finally arrived and whether you agree with it or not, the cookie law is here.

From Sunday, sites must obtain "informed consent" from visitors before saving cookies on a machine. The rules are designed to tackle privacy issues resulting from the growing use of cookies which track users' browsing habits. The issue is in the getting of the users consent - and it's something which the wider industry is failing to agree on too.

What is the law?

The new law is intended to help protect people's privacy. For example, if you search for "cars" in Google, they uses cookies to remember this. Later in the day, on another website, Google may target car ads at you because they remember who you are. This might not sound too scary until you think how many thousands of searches you do on Google, and how much they probably know about you as a result.

The vast majority of small websites don't do this of course, but they do track visitors to their website, e.g. via a tool like Google Analytics, and they use social media plugins like Facebook Like buttons. Sadly, this law appears to outlaw all of this entirely. If you think this is a heavy handed approach, you'd be right.

The law does allow an exception for "strictly necessary" cookies, such as those used to remember when something has been added to a shopping basket. These cookies would be expected by the user implicitly for the action they requested to be carried out.
The trouble is that most sites (certainly all Strawberry developed sites) use Google Analytics, which uses cookies, so even if you have a site which isn't ecommerce and doesnt have a login, the likelihood is that you need to comply to the new law.

The industry as a whole think the law is unworkable, heavy handed, hard to police and will have to change. Having said that, it is now law. It's been interesting seeing the solutions some of the bigger sites are coming up with -

BBC - they show a message at the top of the page on your first visit to the site. If as a user you do nothing, consent is assumed.
John Lewis - don't show a message at all but have placed a series of pages on the site with a link in the header called "Privacy & Cookies". http://www.johnlewis.com/Magazine/Feature.aspx?Id=567&intcmp=privacy
Amazon - have added a page in the footer - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/BIT/InternetBasedAds

I've selected these three deliberately as they are in fact, all breaking the new law. To comply, the user must be opt in and the concern within the industry is that most users have no idea what cookies are and that asking them to allow them will confuse rather than help in protecting them. It's intrusive and could risk visitors leaving your site, especially if your competitors don't do it!

Does anyone comply yet?

Yes, although none of the big sites are in a massive rush to get a solution in place and in fact, the UK Government admits that it's own sites are unlikely to be ready in time. Good eh? (Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18194235)

Some example sites which do comply:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/ (see the ugly message at the top?)
http://demo.cookieconsent.silktide.com/ - one of the "nicer looking" ways of complying

You have three choices as we see it:

Do nothing. Remember though, you would be breaking the law.
Amend your policies on the site to include cookie content. This is what we've done on our site - http://strawberry.co.uk/legals/privacy-and-cookies - and whilst strictly speaking it's breaking the law, we're comfortable that as we've taken care of the privacy of our users and supplied the information as to what cookies we use, that it is a fair compromise. There are some grey areas and we're using them to assume consent.
Add the full consent pop up and comply fully with the law.

We can't recommend anything other than 3 legally but hopefully this information will allow you to form your own opinion on how you want to proceed. If you decide on option 1, then at least it's an informed decision. If you decide that options 2 or 3 are the right way for you, then please get in touch and we can help get your site ship shape.

If you've any questions, please email and I'll do my best to help out.

James

The Cookie Law

2012-04-20T08:12:59+00:00

What should you be doing now?

Acknowledgement to Oliver Emberton, Managing Director of Silktide for much of the background information to this.

Oliver says:

"From May 2011 a new privacy law came into effect across the EU. The law requires that websites ask visitors for consent to use most web cookies. This was then given a year's grace, so it will actively come in to force on 20th May 2012.

Nearly all websites use cookies, which are an extremely common technology for remembering anything about a visitor between webpages. for example: Cookies are commonly used for login, remembering preferences, tracking visitors and more.

The new law is intended to help protect people's privacy. For example, if you search for 'cars' in Google, they uses cookies to remember this. Later in the day, on another website, Google may target car ads at you because they remember who you are. This might not sound too scary until you think how many thousands of searches you do on Google, and how much they probably know about you as a result.

The vast majority of small websites don't do this of course, but they do track visitors to their website, e.g. via a tool like Google Analytics, and they use social media plugins such as Facebook 'Like' buttons. It seems that this law appears to outlaw all of this entirely.

To comply fully you'd have to interrupt visitors and ask them permission to use cookies. This is clearly not practical and potentially very annoying."

So what are we recommending?

It's now a good time to work with us to prepare a new privacy statement to include detailed information about the cookies your site uses. Once the terms and privacy statement for your website are set correctly, we suggest you wait. We'll monitor what the big boys will be doing to comply with the law and see what, if any, fall out there is. Let's face it, if the Government really want to enforce this, they'll start with one of the top 10 sites in the UK and try and worry us all into doing it! At that point, we'll be able to recommend a consistent and usable approach that solves this problem and one that internet users and your customers will be familiar and comfortable with.

Get in touch if you want us to help you further with this.

We are also working closely with Gosschalks Solicitors for those of you who want a more belt and braces approach to the cookie law.

Read what the BBC have written about the UK's cookie tracking deadline here.

Sweet taste of success at Strawberry wine tasting

2012-04-18T09:57:07+00:00

Our Young Enterprise team, Strawberry Seeds, is delighted with the success of their recent charity fundraising event: ‘Around the World in 30 Wines’. The event, which was held at The Cellar Door in Melton on Friday 13th April, was attended by over 80 guests and was held as part of this year’s Young Enterprise fundraiser ‘who wants to be an entrepreneur?’.

Guests included members of the local business community and friends of Strawberry, along with Olympic hopeful Luke Campbell and Hull KR players Jake Webster and Ryan O’Hara, who presented several prizes on the night. During the evening, the Strawberry Seeds team held several fundraising competitions with unique prizes including signed Hull KR memorabilia and a signed Keira Knightley picture, along with wine gift sets donated by wine merchant The House of Townend.

The world wine tasting event was planned during task two of The Apprentice-style competition ‘who wants to be an entrepreneur?’, which was titled ‘The World is Your Oyster’. Following the event, the Strawberry Seeds team will enter the boardroom on Wednesday 25th April to present their fundraising efforts to David Kilburn (Hull’s very own Alan Sugar) and find out if they have made it through to the next stage of the competition!

Jade Woodfield, Strawberry Seeds’ Project Manager for task 2 comments:

“The whole team is really pleased with the event. It was well attended and everyone had a great time! To fund the wine tasting, we used our £100 seed fund from Young Enterprise and held a St Patrick’s Day fundraising event at our office, so all money from ticket sales and competitions could go towards our final profit total. It looks like we will have exceeded £1,500 profit from the event which will go straight to Young Enterprise Yorkshire and Humber, although we are still receiving donations so hope this figure will rise!

“The whole team would like to take this opportunity to thank the House of Townend for giving us a fantastic venue for the evening, Epicure's Larder for donating our cheese and the guests who helped to make our night a great success. The next stage is the Boardroom and we are all crossing our fingers we have done enough to make it through to the final task!”

You can view more photos from the event over on our Facebook page!

A chat with Courtney Wood during National Apprenticeship Week

2012-02-10T09:58:22+00:00

To celebrate National Apprenticeship Week, we thought we’d take 10 minutes to chat to our Online PR Apprentice, Courtney, about her apprenticeship and what she’s learned so far.

When did you join Strawberry?

I joined Strawberry in March 2011 after deciding to leave sixth form where I was studying Maths, Psychology, Sociology and RE.

What’s happened since you joined?

Since I’ve joined Strawberry, I’ve passed my level 2 NVQ in Business Administration and I’m currently working towards achieving a level 3 NVQ in Business Administration. Strawberry has helped me to develop skills and learn a lot about PR (which I didn’t have a clue about when I began… I wouldn’t have even been able to tell you what PR is!).

I’m also one sixth of Strawberry’s ‘who wants to be an entrepreneur?’ team, which raises money for the Young Enterprise charity through a competition in the style of ‘The Apprentice’. The tasks we’ve been given have been a lot of fun and have helped to develop our skills, pushing us out of our comfort zones and is a really interesting project to be involved with.

Is it what you expected from an apprenticeship?

Until I began my apprenticeship, I didn’t know much about them so I had no real expectations. All I knew about them is that you get to experience what it’s like in a working environment whilst simultaneously gaining qualifications - Strawberry has delivered in this respect and made me part of the team. I learn lots every day and I’m constantly challenged.

What’s the plan for the future?

I’d love to be able to continue to develop skills and work in this industry!

Would you recommend an apprenticeship?

I really would recommend an apprenticeship to anybody; it’s a great opportunity for people who are keen to have vocational training and eager to get out into the workplace. Going down the apprenticeship route, you gain qualifications, work experience and receive a wage throughout. And you learn lots too!

Online retail sales hit £50bn

2012-01-19T13:45:01+00:00

I came across an interesting article today that reported online sales had reached £50bn. This is great news for the online retail industry and very encouraging as the threat of recession once again looms over us. Here are some key points from the article (reference The Guardian and The Press Association):

Online shoppers spent an average of just under £1,500 on 39 items each last year, new report shows.
Online retail sales rose 14% last year, and a similar increase is expected this year, Kelkoo said.
Online retail sales increased by 14% last year to more than £50bn, with predictions that the growth will continue to hit high streets, according to a new report.
"We predict that British online retailers will enjoy an average rise in online sales of 14% this year."

"Over the last five years internet retailing has improved substantially thanks to the use of affordable 'always-on' internet connections, simple and secure payment systems and the increasing popularity of mobile devices, combined with the growth of mobile-based retail sites.”

"All of these factors should help online retail sales and retail sales via mobile devices to continue to thrive in 2012."

So, why has this happened? It’s fair to say that in recent years online retailers have become more creative, increasingly savvy and their service levels have improved (e.g. faster deliveries, better communication). Any online retailer will agree that competition is tough, so prices reflect that because consumers can so easily price check in modern browsers. Finally, the whole process has got significantly easier and the consumer is more familiar and less frightened to shop online than ever before.

So what's next and how can you possibly succeed in the world of ecommerce?

You've got two options:

Be niche - occupy a sales area that no one else does. Sales volume will be smaller, but your margins in comparison will be larger.
Take a competitive area and be, well, more competitive.

Both require a significant investment in online marketing to chase that all elusive page one listing in Google. This will get you the traffic and then you can make the sales. Once you've acquired the customers, you must treat them well and reward them for their loyalty.

Then you can work on the intricacies of conversion rate improvement and cost of customer acquisition. For example, we worked on one client's ecommerce website and reduced Google AdWords spend by 30% year on year whilst seeing a growth of 35% in sales – this had a huge impact on the profitability of the business.

Let's face it - online is going to play a massive part in the future of retailing - it's only going to go in one direction. Do it well and enjoy the rewards.

If you’d like to find out more about online marketing or ecommerce, you can contact me on 01482 337130 or Jonathan.Leafe@Strawberry.co.uk.

You can read the full Guardian article here.

Over 1,400 people take part in artwork to show their love for Hull

2012-01-09T11:35:11+00:00

Strawberry’s Young Enterprise team has recently hung a unique social media artwork that contains over 1,400 Facebook profile pictures of people that have declared their love for Hull. The artwork, which will be displayed in The Deep throughout January, was designed to raise funds for Young Enterprise Yorkshire & Humber as part of the apprentice-style competition ‘who wants to be an entrepreneur?’. 10 local companies at the heart of Hull sponsored the artwork, which is the first of its kind in the region, and raised a grand total of £1375 for the charity.

It was free for people to take part in the artwork and one lucky person featured will win an iPod touch. The social media campaign caught people’s attention as they shared what they love about Hull on Facebook and Twitter. The idea behind the ‘Love Hull’ campaign was to promote a positive image of the city and it has been a great success, as Strawberry’s PR Manager and member of the Love Hull team explains:

“We are delighted with the response we received to the Love Hull campaign. Over 1,400 people liked our Facebook page so they could be featured in the artwork and we were retweeted by lots of local high profile tweeters including John Prescott, Richard Garcia and Peter Levy, along with lots of local businesses. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our sponsors: Signs Express, Ultralets, One Stop Golf, Rix, GKD, BSC Solutions, MKM, 543 Dental Centre, Eltherington Group, Hanson Electrical and Airkool. A special thank you also goes out to The Deep for giving us a great location to hang the picture.

“As part of the ‘who wants to be an entrepreneur?’ competition we were told that we must raise £1000 for the charity to make it to the next round by working to the brief ‘grand designs’. We decided to create a grand design that featured over 1,000 people and knew the focus of the artwork should be about how great Hull is. We’ve been hit hard by the recession and don’t always get treated fairly by the national press so we thought it would be a good opportunity to challenge some misconceptions about Hull.

“Lots of people have shared what they love about Hull with us – from their favourite places such as High Street, Hessle Road and the Marina, to their top places to eat out. However, it was widely agreed that it’s the people that makes Hull great – which is also why we wanted to feature over 1,000 local people in our artwork!”

The artwork can be found and viewed for free next to the ground floor lifts at The Deep. For more information about the campaign or to share what you love about Hull, visit www.facebook.com/lovehull.

Things we think we thought in 2011 and things we think we think about 2012!

2011-12-22T13:45:26+00:00

As 2011 comes to a close, we once again sit down with the guys and girls of Strawberry to see what they think the next year will hold. Last year we got some things right, but we also got some things wrong! (If you want to see what we thought, then quickly hop over to our 2011 predictions have a read, then come straight back!)

So, without further adieu, lets hear some predictions for 2012:

“Well, I was right in the main! Mobile commerce is picking up, although maybe not at the pace expected. It’s growing rapidly, but it’s still a small percentage of most sites web traffic. HTML5 continues its development too, which shows we were right to adopt early.

As for 2012, I think we’ll see a gulf emerge between those developers who really *get* ecommerce and those that can simply build you an online shop. Facebook Timeline will become compulsory and millions of people will moan about it, I’ll get greyer and we might even play a few games of work football without one us getting a lung clot, breaking a rib, smashing up an ankle or toe poking the ball. That last one seems unlikely.”

James Greenwood

“Alternative Social Media sites will emerge from the shadow of Facebook and Twitter. Site such as Ning and Pinterest will gain popularity as people continue to seek out new routes of self expression and community. Since 2011 was the year of Cameron’s ‘Big Society’, I feel my prediction last year was spot on and long may it continue.”

Abigail Flavell

“To be honest, I’m not far off. With the Acts SOPA and PIPA all being discussed (at the time of writing) in the US Congress, censorship of websites in The United States could soon well be a real thing. These acts will have so many negative results; impacting huge businesses (the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter could be brought to their knees) and severely hindering creativity and free speech. This will have a global impact. For any Internet loving person, you should familiarise yourself with these acts and sign as many petitions as you can.”

“The push towards responsive web design will pick up some serious pace. With the increase of usage of the mobile web, tablets, smart phones etc., the days of fixed-pixel layouts are coming to an end.”

Simon Willans

“My prediction for last year was pretty accurate, with Facebook pushing their places I am seeing more and more friends checking in and with Facebook buying Gowalla I suspect they will introduce new features and further integration into their product.”

“For 2012 I predict that we will see another ‘Vista’ fail with the release of Windows 8. I managed to have a play on the beta version and don’t believe the masses will like the changes they have made, such as the drastic change of the start menu, a core functionality of Windows for years now. One thing Microsoft will hopefully get right though will be Internet Explorer 10 that will hopefully have full support for all the latest web standards and with the introduction of their silent update system for older users; we might actually see the death of IE6 (finally).”

Stu Greenham

“My 2011 prediction was spot on and I think it will be more of the same with the rise of social media marketing. So I’ll go for Hull City back in the Premier League!”

Dominic Love

“I think generally I was right with my prediction for 2011 the only thing I didn’t fully understand was the depth of the economic situation! This year I’m predicting that those that will be successful will have worked harder, been more focussed on their areas of expertise and why they became successful in the first pace and build on that. I’m not saying don’t go out of your comfort zone I’m saying celebrate your differences, shout why you’re better, remind your customers past, current and future why they should do business with you - most of all - hang on and be brave.”

Jonathan Leafe

“I think 2012 is the year that Facebook will go on a PR offensive in an attempt to change the majority of user's opinions of the company, especially in regards to privacy and adverts.”

“In web terms, I think we’re going to see a continuation of major trends already set in 2011, adaptive design, a mobile-first development approach and heavily typography lead design, The big boom of Textures used on websites isn't going to go anywhere, but it will become more and more subtly used as the year rolls on.”

Jamie Wright

“An even bigger, explosive growth of apps in 2012 compare to 2011. Facebook marketing will take to another level with people using the social media site to create more wonderful things/projects like ‘Love Hull!’ I also think that there will be more money spent online by consumers of E-commerce sites.”

Jade Woodfield

“Google’s backbone system for ranking, links are still going to be important in 2012 in fact they may be even more so but the quality of links rather than the quantity is the key. Internet marketers will have to be more creative in link building as this is going to affect the influence of automated link building tools currently available. The value of links from automated tools are going to be looked at more closely as well as link velocity (the speed of which you gain or lose links). If you currently use automated tools you may see your rankings affected in 2012.”

“Whether it is the Facebook like button or the Google+ plus one button or Twitter tweets, social signals are going to be used more and more to separate the good content from the less than good content in serps especially in fresh ranking pages.”

Dom Lidgett

“Since arriving at Strawberry four months ago, I have seen our social media client database increase with more companies moving to online PR techniques and away from traditional communications. I believe our Internet Marketing Department will continue to grow and the staff will continue to learn new ways at enhancing the client's digital footprint and reputations in this fast developing online world.”

Jenna Lakhdari

“2012 will be the year of the mobile – it will increasingly become the core device around which major campaigns will be focussed. Detachment will rise among the population due to the widespread proliferation of mobile users and a new term; “mobile rage” will be coined by the media for a handful of isolated attacks on inconsiderate mobile use.”

“We’ve seen an increase in manual finishing such as rubber stamping, plus special paper stocks and effects are increasingly more in vogue. Like vinyl in the digital age print will have to focus on it’s strengths to survive it will become more niche but better for it. Another inventive way of using print is the Berg Cloud’s brand new Little Printer.”

Carl Pieper

“I predict social media will grow even more with Google and Facebook expanding its apps and/or services, HMV will become an online only retailer and Hull will beat Leeds on 6th March.”

Matthew Woods

So what do you think?

Have we missed something big that’s going to happen next year? or has one of Strawberry predicted something you think will never happen in a million years, nevermind 2012! Then tell us what you think on Facebook or Twitter. We'd love to hear from you!

Proudly launching herib.co.uk

2011-12-05T10:54:13+00:00

Today sees the launch of www.herib.co.uk, a site which we've talked about building on here before (Post 1, Post 2). Building a website for the HERIB clients has been one we've enjoyed and one with which we're delighted with the outcome.

We've been helped along the way by Angela and Sue at HERIB but more importantly (sorry ladies!) by some fantastic clients of HERIB who were patient with us, showed us their world and told us what needed to be better.

We're grateful to all at HERIB for inviting us to help with this project, but we're most grateful for the help offered by Sheila, Malcolm, Jason and the gang.

The site is live today and we're proud that we've managed to create a website which is visually appealing for those fortunate users who can see it but, and more importantly, fantastic to use and easy to navigate for those users using technologies such as screenreaders or zooming software.

We're committed to maintaining the site for the team at HERIB to make sure that their clients can get to the data and information that they need - and whilst I'm sure that this will mean tweaks and changes over the next few weeks as the site settles in, the site is ready for use today.

We're always learning how we can make things better for those users who need our help - this is just step one for the HERIB website but we're proud that it is now available to the clients who need it the most.

James

Thought of being an entrepreneur?

2011-11-18T10:39:29+00:00

1 million 16-24 year olds unemployed!
Not good enough. We want to do something about it and we're going to.

Have you just left University or college and are looking for a job or maybe something else? Have you a good idea for an e-commerce or internet business, but don't know where to start?

Maybe we can help.

We're offering an opportunity to a talented, go-getting, entrepreneurial individual with a good idea and help to make it happen.

Our offer is simple: we'll give you a desk, a phone, a computer and the backing and support of Hull's largest marketing and web agency - on top, we'll even pay you £1k a month for 12 months to help support yourself whilst the venture gains momentum.

You'll be actively mentored and encouraged to get your business idea off the ground and profitable. At the end of the year, the shareholding of the business will be equally held between you and Strawberry and we'd hopefully continue to support you into the future to take your business as far as it can possibly go.

Our input into the business will be your expenses, overheads and our expertise.

Your input is you!

To apply for this opportunity you need to email: entrepreneur@strawberry.co.uk

We don't want your CV, we want a personal statement and a brief description of your idea of between 100 and 200 words maximum. If shortlisted, we'll invite you in to Strawberry for a full presentation.

Remember, we're investing in you and your idea. This could be just the opportunity that'll change your life.

Spotlight on branding: first impressions count

2011-11-08T11:18:03+00:00

With so many ways of engaging with an audience, your company's brand needs to work harder than ever before. First impressions do count and it's the style, credibility and the messages conveyed that become the first impressions of what you and your company are all about.

However, the people that need to buy into your brand, first and foremost, are the people who will be representing it.

"Designing and selling a brand to a client is like convincing them to wear clothes that they didn't buy themselves." Paula Scher, www.pentagram.com

Sometimes, during the design stages of a new brand, the above quote can seem appropriate. However, taking the time to listen and develop alongside a client during the process will always produce an outcome which will accurately reflect the company, encourage them to embrace it and will ultimately ensure success.

We were recently approached by a company called Plas-Tech Thermoforming, who wanted us to design and develop a new website for them. I looked at the existing website and branding and I have to admit - it said dirty overalls and oily machines that went kerplunk.

I went to visit the client with this in mind (my first impression!) and whilst the outside of the building didn't really change my opinion, I was in for a bit of a shock!

The factory was immaculate, superbly organised and they were doing clever stuff on expensive machinery - pretty much the opposite of what their existing brand said.

I knew instinctively what was required. As well as a new website, a rethink of the whole brand would be necessary along with exploring brand pillars that more accurately reflected the organisation.

I’m pleased to say that they went for it - and now the company has a brand that accurately reflects the business. People that will never visit the factory will no longer be left with the first impression that Plas-Tech is a back-street operation. They will now view the company as top line, highly skilled, technical and creative with a team that can do simple to unbelievably difficult work.

The rebrand has been a great success. We even heard back that employees were so enthusiastic they were picking up pots of paint in their spare time to redecorate the factory with the new brand colours!

The new brand image has given Plas-Tech’s employees an identity, an idea of who they are and where they work. This will inspire them and the company to pull together to work as a whole with a shared vision. That, after all, is what a good brand should do.

When the sales team are on the phone and point potential customers to their website, the response they receive is now more a case of "okay, let's talk!" rather than "are you sure you can do what you say you can do?" and we are delighted to have helped them achieve this result.

The work doesn’t finish there - a brand with the right start and direction creates the perfect platform for a strong brand in the future.

You can view the brand image we developed for Plas-Tech in our online portfolio or by visiting www.plas-tech.co.uk.

Content Marketing - can your customers find you?

2011-10-27T11:01:35+00:00

As your customers, whether B2B or B2C, continue a mass migration online it's increasingly important that you look after and expand your digital footprint.

When the worldwide web started, it was enough to have a simple website with basic information on BUT that's certainly no longer the case - your website has to do so much more. However, for you to benefit from having that all singing, all dancing website, it has to be visited. Right?

Visitors will come one of three ways:

• Directly - they're specifically looking for you
• By chance - they're sort of looking for you
• Casual search - they happen across you

All of this starts with the search engines but there are other things that you could, and should do. That's where content marketing comes in.

We assume that you're an expert in your field, so let everyone know you are - write blogs, issue white papers, post some videos, post some images of projects, comment on forums, have a Facebook page, make sure that your LinkedIn profile is up to date and that your using it.

Whilst this may seem a lot of work (it is actually!), it really is worth it. All of this additional content will expand your digital footprint and your customers will be exposed to your brand across many different channels. We call it "elevating your brand".

This is totally tangible - give yourself some objectives and some easy to measure indicators and see what happens.

Done right, the volume of leads will be greater, the quality of those leads will be higher and your brand will be seen as a leader its field.

These activities generally take effort so you may choose to share the load with an agency (hint, hint!) who shares your goals or do it all yourself. Either way, the sooner you get started, the better. This is not an overnight fix - it's a slow burn that produces dividends in the longer term.

Dodds Solar - would you let anyone else on your roof?

2011-10-18T16:29:38+00:00

I've seriously lost count of the number of flyers that have been put through my door advertising the vast sums of money I can make by putting solar panels on my roof. So I was intrigued when we were approached by Dodds Solar to help them with their marketing.

Dodds was a name I was already familiar with - they're already well known in the building trade for roofing services and have been successfully doing that for the last 15 years or so. So when they explained that they've also been doing solar panels I was a little bit surprised but as they started to elaborate why they went down this route it started to dawn on me what a good business idea it was.

It adds up: they've enormous credibility and a reputation for quality work and many hundreds if not thousands of satisfied clients around the county; they're used to going on to people's roofs and they are going to be around for a long time.

They're already doing very well in the agricultural sector - and I can assure you dealing with Yorkshire farmers is not the easiest task, they've even done some very large installations on commercial premises for clients such as Wykeland and they definitely know how to pick good suppliers.

More recently Dodds have been looking at the residential market. Unfortunately that market is crowded with many cowboys offering all sorts of promises. All I can say is that If I was going to invest a substantial amount of money in solar panels it would be with Dodds - unfortunately my house isn't suitable for panels - how many of these cowboys installers would tell me that before walking away with a big fat cheque of mine?

Using a reset stylesheet? Be careful with your :outlines!

2011-10-18T14:49:05+00:00

We've talked about our work with HERIB in a previous blog post - we're proud of the work we're doing and finding it incredibly rewarding as it's challenging our thinking and ways of working. A good thing.

Most web developers use a thing called a "reset" stylesheet and most web guys use one which is widely available and well adopted. However, there is a line in the reset stylesheet which, unless careful, can hinder the use of the site for some users.

The guilty party? Well, its - outline: 0;

This removes the default outline of an element - seen usually when a page is "tabbed" around.

The issue lies in people using a default reset stylesheet and then not setting an a:focus state to replace the default browser handling of the outline. Yes, sometimes it is ugly - but it's only really there and used by those people who need it. To ensure this works for those users, you can either remove the line from the reset stylesheet (which allows the browser to deal with it by default) or add some CSS for the a:focus state, such as:

a:focus { outline: dashed #000 thin; }

Try it on this site. Hit the tab key a few times and you'll see an outline appear around the currently selected item indicating which element on the page is currently selected. It's not the prettiest thing but helps those that need it.

I realise this might be teaching a few to suck eggs but I think the masses forget that this is one of the little things that make a big difference and highlighted by our work with the guys at HERIB.

James

PS We've been guilty of this too in the past - it's an easy thing to miss but an easy thing to fix.

Good legal advice from Gosschalks in conjunction with Strawberry

2011-10-13T08:21:44+00:00

It's no surprise that a good business would get good legal advice and that's why I want to recommend Gosschalks. We're currently working on a workable response to a legal question which will affect nearly every website owner.

We're talking about the 'Cookie' law. In really simple terms websites use cookies to monitor what a user is doing as they interact with a website. These cookies then stay with the user in their browser.

The spirit of the law is to protect people from advertisers who use the cookies to display related adverts to them based on which websites they've been visiting.

Well, that's right of course - we would all see value in privacy. However, a blanket cookie law misses the point, as almost all websites actually need cookies to function properly - especially ecommerce websites. And if you want to use any monitoring packages such as google analytics - you need cookies too.

This law is in force now but they've given a stay of execution until May next year before they start taking people to task.

So what should you be doing in the meantime? Nothing at the moment as the industry is working on a response. But rest assured we, in conjunction with Gosschalks, will be advising our clients as and when we know what to advise!

LinkedIn…should we, shouldn’t we?

2011-10-11T13:35:13+00:00

LinkedIn - is it right for brands? Some will say it’s a must but others will say it’s just for business professionals who want to build a personal brand rather than one of a company. So is LinkedIn a social platform we should add to the Marketing Mix?

A common view, and one which I agree with, is that this network is for high-value professionals that want to connect with each other on a business level – extending a personal brand through a well-written profile, recommendations from other professionals and participating in group discussions.

For brands selling to consumers, I don’t believe this platform is the correct one to add into the mix. Customers want a personal touch and want to be able to connect to the personality of a brand and there are other social tools that can deliver this perfectly i.e. Facebook. LinkedIn was built for business jargon and all content is created for a professional rather than a personal environment.

However, one cannot easily dismiss the idea that it can be used effectively for the business-to-business sector. The network is built upon trusted connections and relationships. Companies have the ability to create ‘company pages’ which contain a descriptive profile. This in-turn becomes a very powerful sales tool when trying to speak to other companies or authoritative individuals you are interested in working with.

A company page communicates who works for your company (it’s a good idea to encourage your staff to link their profile to your company page), company information, location and insights into the type of experience your staff have. You can also include a link to your recent blog posts on a company profile which allows people to read your recent news and find out more about your operations.

In addition, LinkedIn allows you to create groups. This function could be useful when trying to connect with other individuals or businesses on a professional level. Groups can be ‘closed’, which means that people need to request to join, or can be open for anyone to get involved with.

So it is right for a brand? To build your professional personal brand, yes. It may open doors to future job opportunities and allows you to network with people you may never get the chance to meet face-to-face. However, for it to be added to a company’s marketing mix, in my opinion, it largely depends upon what business sector you are in.

As with all marketing campaigns, activities that work for one company may not be right for another. When embarking upon any type of social media activity, whether Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you must review your business aims and objectives and what you would like to achieve. If companies go ahead without thinking about it first and it’s done badly, then this can be more damaging than not doing it all!

Strawberry team takes up the ‘Who Wants to be an Entrepreneur?’ challenge

2011-10-10T16:13:23+00:00

We are pleased to announce that we are putting forward a team of young professionals to compete in this year’s Young Enterprise fundraiser: ‘Who Wants to be an Entrepreneur?’. The competition is inspired by BBC1’s ‘The Apprentice’ and will help our team members to develop their personal and professional skills whilst undertaking a variety of business tasks over the next year – providing they don’t get fired!

Strawberry’s team is headed up by project manager Stu Greenham and also includes Jenna Lakhdari, Sarah Roustoby, Adam Gilleard, Jade Woodfield, Courtney Wood and Abi Flavell. Each team member brings different skills to the group ranging from graphic and website design to public relations and event management.

We decided to put a team forward for this year’s competition because it fits perfectly with the ethos of the Strawberry Academy, which focuses upon helping to develop young creative and business talent. In addition to helping young students gain work experience, the Strawberry Academy also helps Strawberry employees to learn new skills to move forward with their careers.

Jonathan Leafe, Strawberry’s Managing Director takes up the story:

“Strawberry has close links with Young Enterprise Yorkshire and Humber as I have mentored local school teams in the past, so when we were approached to take part, we jumped at the chance! We are always pushing our staff to excel both in their everyday jobs and personal development. I think this competition is an excellent opportunity for teams to build relationships, have fun and ultimately raise money for a very worthy cause. Young Enterprise helps to develop the entrepreneurs of the future, which is vital for the economy both on a local and national scale.”

Following the first project briefing on Wednesday 5th October, project manager Stu Greenham explains that his team is looking forward to getting started:

“The first brief is simply two words: Grand Designs. We have to raise at least £1000 to make it to the next round so there is definitely pressure to succeed. Our team is very creative so design is right up our street and we have already discussed several ‘grand’ ideas! Everyone is really keen and excited to be taking part in this competition. We want to have fun but are also looking forward to getting involved with entrepreneurial activities that we wouldn’t normally get chance to do in our everyday jobs.”

Young Enterprise is the UK’s largest business and enterprise charity and was established in 1963. Young Enterprise Yorkshire and Humber helps to inspire 15,000 young people to learn and succeed through enterprise every year and ‘Who wants to be an Entrepreneur?’ is designed to help raise funds for the charity.

Steve Jobs: 1955 - 2011

2011-10-06T15:33:04+00:00

This morning the world woke up to the sad news that Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, had passed away overnight after losing his battle with cancer.

Strawberry would be a different place without Apple products. Here's the thoughts of some of our team...

"RIP Steve Jobs. I bought my first Macintosh back in 1989 and have bought at least 100 since. They always were and still are the best. People talk about how they look as being the most important thing. That's partially true, as they still look the best as does the iPad, iPhone and iPod. But what sets Apple apart from all other computer manufacturers is that they just work. All Apple products are a triumph of both form and function. Thanks Steve Jobs, you actually did change my life and for that I shall be forever in your debt, your memory will live on for generations to come."
Jonathan

"Our industry would be very different were it not for Apple, and of course Steve Jobs was a phenomenal influence on the company and its products. In the 1980s Apple's computers helped to revolutionise design and publishing, and the original Macintosh was the first commercially successful machine to feature things all computer users today take for granted – such as a graphical user interface and a mouse. Under Jobs' direction, Apple excelled at taking familiar, everyday products – computers, mobile phones, MP3 players – and refining them into intuitive, elegant devices that are a pleasure to use."
Mark

"I've not always been a "Mac Fanboy" but over the last few years I've become very much an Apple convert - even my home is an iHome with multiple iPhone's, iPod's, iPad's and Mac laptops. Watching my son who isn't quite 2 yet using an iPad highlights how much Apple have gotten right over the last few years. He can pick it up, slide objects around and start his Elmo videos. It's both an intuitive interface and a lovely object to hold. Steve's vision changed not only our industry but our homes and everyday lives too. Some feat and one which I doubt will ever be repeated."
James

"Taking a company he started in his garage with a school friend to what Apple is known as today is something most people can't even dream of. Many aren't aware of how after forming Apple, he was then kicked out after a power struggle to later return and be its savour; inventing game changing devices like the iPod and iPad. He even bought Pixar, turning it into an award winning animation studio, that was eventually bought by Disney - you wonder where he got the time to do all of this from! Steve Jobs was and still will be an inspiration to me and to thousands of others and I hope the rest of the Apple team do him proud in the years to come."
Stu

The artwork on this post is by Jonathan Mak and can be viewed on his website - we liked it so much, we borrowed it.

Online Reputation Management

2011-09-28T14:42:30+00:00

Have you ever put your name into Google? It’s interesting to see what comes up...however, when dealing with a large brand or company it can be quite damaging if the first thing a potential customer sees is a website containing negative comments.

Obviously good companies need to pay attention to their customer base but on occasions, rightly or wrongly, a disgruntled customer may post a negative comment. However, an honest business and one that responds will win the respect of their customers.

Nowadays, it is becoming more crucial to add Online Reputation Management to the marketing mix, as the internet develops and individuals become more savvy it is vital to monitor all aspects of the World Wide Web. Businesses work hard to build a brand and a great reputation but this can be damaged should they not be in control of their online presence.

By being one step ahead and being aware of what people say about your brand online, will give you the awareness and the opportunity to suppress negative mentions entirely and with a variety of SEO methods, push them lower on the search engine results page to decrease initial visibility. But the key is to deal with these customers and transform them from your biggest critics into your biggest fans – but this doesn‘t happen overnight.

Strawberry feels very strongly about this procedure and urges businesses to be aware of their online reputation. What’s the solution? You might not like the idea of social media but if people have something negative to say, they will say it whether you're there or not.

Some of our clients have experienced this problem recently and following research we think the people putting their brand down aren’t even customers. Therefore as part of our services we have developed an Online Reputation Management process which constantly monitors key word searches, news websites, blogs, forums and a number of the social networks to assess general comments and make sure people find YOU for your key search terms, not negative comments or rogue websites.

This also involves blogging, social media and other SEO activities, which should form an integral part of your marketing plan.

As we understand this procedure will change case-by-case we are happy to develop an Online Reputation Management process unique for you.

Do you need a mobile version of your website?

2011-09-28T13:14:45+00:00

The quick answer is yes, however think about it - are people really going to be actively browsing the web on a smart phone for your products and services?

• If you're a restaurant - definitely.
• If you have an information website - probably.
• If you have a B2C ecommerce site - maybe (price checking probably although mobile commerce is clearly rising).
• If you are B2B then probably not - you could make assumptions that they want specific information (such as your address).

So taking that into consideration what should you be doing now?

Well, if you're lucky enough to have an analytics package on your existing site, what does it tell you? You can find out if mobile devices have been accessing your site easily enough. It'll probably be a low percentage of overall visits, but the key thing to investigate would be the growth of the percentage. Is it growing rapidly month on month?

Most relatively modern websites will degrade and work, of a fashion, in a mobile browser. (I'm not including tablet devices in this as they work pretty much the same as a laptop does although the Apple iPad won't display anything using Flash). Why not check your website later on your smart phone? You may want to consider a few tweaks here and there.

The key is to ask yourself "what's important to a mobile user?" and then present your content accordingly or if you have the budget; the Holy Grail is to create a complete version of your website which is mobile friendly in its entirety. When a mobile user lands on your domain name the device being used will be detected and the user directed to a specific version of the website.

The latest industry thinking is to design for mobile first and use clever technologies to enhance rather than using technologies to degrade to a phone.

However, the advice given today may be totally different in the near future. Web browsing habits are changing, the internet is getting faster and what people do today will undoubtedly be different tomorrow!

The Quays at Burton Waters, Lincoln - A Launch Worth Seeing!

2011-09-28T10:33:05+00:00

I lived in Spain for 4 years and this type of development was pretty common place, especially where I was in Sotogrande. However, I'd struggle to find anywhere close to this in England, especially inland. And that's the point, it's unique. The ambiance is unique, the setting is very special and the styling and quality is there for everyone to see.

If you've got a boat - even better - but don't let that dissuade you from looking. I can just imagine getting home from work, sitting on the balcony enjoying a glass of wine watching the world go by, or popping to the bistro for a bite to eat. Heaven!

The only drawback is that it's not close to where I work. I suppose if you had the funds it's also a perfect weekend getaway. The yachties tell me that you can get to Lincoln very easily and if you want to, it's also possible to get out on to the open sea as well. I'll leave that to them though.

I congratulate Beal for having the courage to follow the dream and put their full effort behind the The Quays, Burton Waters project, it certainly deserves full marks at every level. We are delighted to have helped Beal Homes to support this stunning development with creative advertising and promotional literature.

Please find a location on the North bank of the Humber - it'll be just as successful!

Accessibility development and testing taken seriously

2011-09-08T14:37:56+00:00

Anybody reading this post who currently works in the digital industry will surely agree that website accessibility standards for the visually impaired could be better. I got the opportunity to wear glasses that simulate the experience of being blind recently. It's a weird experience having one of your senses removed.

Strawberry has just been appointed to design and build a new website for the Hull and East Riding Institute for the Blind (HERIB) and it has to be perfect for all of the charity’s clients, from those with a slight visual impairment to those that are fully blind and lastly, those with full vision. It's not an accident that those with full vision are last on the list of importance.

The experience of wearing the simulation glasses was enlightening to say the least and I recommend that EVERY web developer try them to truly empathise with the needs of the visually impaired. Isn't it being arrogant assuming what it's like? I think so, and frankly, I've been guilty of it too. To try and help our team during the development of the site, I arranged for HERIB to visit our office on Friday 26th August to let the whole Strawberry team try out the glasses and experience what it’s like to be blind themselves.

Each team member wore the glasses and completed various tasks such as using the web or even just walking around the office wearing them. We're fortunate to have a good development team who are experienced in using coding techniques which aid the visually impaired but wearing the glasses really helped us to understand the challenges that people with a visual impairment face.

We all now want to do as much as we can to make browsing the internet a more enjoyable experience for people that are visually impaired. We have never performed this level of testing before (we're in the middle of heavy user testing) and are confident it will help us to do a better job.

After interviewing some people with a visual impairment recently (thanks go to Sheila, Malcolm and the gang!), I discovered that some big brands are simply getting it wrong. I discovered that little brands are getting it wrong. I realised that we were getting it wrong.

Ideally, I’d love to see the introduction of an ISO standard (or something similar) for the quality of websites. Anything that is more than a bunch of best practice guidelines that are complicated to read and that are wrapped up in internal politics. Equally, I appreciate this would be virtually impossible to implement and police and so is never going to happen - it's therefore got to be left to the industry, agencies and each individual web developer to make a difference.

We're working hard to make this a project to be proud of – a project that we can learn from and through sharing some of those lessons with you, a project that maybe readers of this blog can learn from too.

Myself and other developers will be writing little tips for developers who've not got access to the resources we have had on this project, publishing videos of user testing we've done and sharing any links and external resources we've found useful during this project – make sure you bookmark us (or use the RSS feed) to avoid missing any....

A conversation with Jenna Lakhdari

2011-09-02T16:16:08+00:00

Tell us a bit about yourself

I have always lived and studied in Hull. I attended Hull University many years ago and completed a BA in Business Studies as well as progressing further to achieve an MSc in Marketing.

I am a very dedicated person, always looking for new challenges and to achieve new goals within work and my personal life. Then on the flip side I am a very fun loving individual who loves to socialise with friends whether that be going out on a night out, going to the cinema or going to the gym. I also have two dogs therefore love spending time with them and my partner.

How did you get here?

After leaving Hull University, I was given the opportunity to work for a Lincolnshire based Marketing Agency – where over the past four years I have learnt a great deal about traditional PR and a number of other various communication and marketing tools.

However, I was looking for a change and a new challenge, something to develop me as a person further and Strawberry looked like a great opportunity for me. I loved the look of the team, the company as well as their forward thinking processes…..so here I am!

What do you love about working in marketing?

Marketing captivates me, how quickly it moves and how one day it is completely different to the next. It is always changing especially with social media platforms developing and becoming great online marketing tools.

One form of marketing communication may be right for one client but not for another. We need to understand our clients’ businesses and where their customers are. Working with a mix of clients and communicating tools on various platforms fascinates me.

What attracted you to Strawberry?

Strawberry is very well known in the Hull area and one of the best at what it offers. Therefore when thinking about working closer to home, Strawberry stood out as a very impressive agency and one that I would love to be a part of.

I am very dedicated to helping clients grow and understanding them and their goals – if they succeed we have done our job correctly therefore I could relate to the Strawberry strap line – Listen, Think and Create.

How are you enjoying it so far? Are there any projects you are looking forward to working on?

Everyone seems really nice! I am looking forward to getting up to speed on the systems used, client database and what we offer as well as getting to know and being a part of the Strawberry way of working.

What inspires you?

Individuals above me, those that have succeeded and developed their own company from scratch. I find I can learn a lot from them and I am always open to learning.

New changes to the way Google Analytics tracks session data

2011-08-31T10:13:20+00:00

Google recently made several changes to the way a ‘session’ is defined in your website’s analytics. We like to study our clients’ Google analytics data, because it helps us to measure the success of any internet marketing campaign. It also helps us to understand how visitors interact with a website.

So, when we heard about the changes, we naturally wanted to find out more and make sure we knew the impact they would have.

What actually changed?

To understand the changes, it helps to know how Google Analytics previously tracked session data compared to how they are tracking session data going forward.

Before today, Google Analytics ended a session:

• When more than 30 minutes elapsed between page views
• At the end of the day
• When a visitor closed his or her browser

If the visitor returned to the site after one of those events occurred, a new session would begin.

On 12th August 2011, the following changes have been made to session tracking:

• A session is no longer ended when a visitor closes his or her browser window (which means a visitor can leave and come back within 30 minutes on a given day, and their session will continue, even if they change browsers)
• A session will now end when the traffic source for the user changes. This means that if an organic search visitor leaves the site and comes back through a Google AdWords or Pay Per Click ad, his or her previous session will be ended and a new one will start.
• As before, the end of a day, or the passage of more than 30 minutes between page views, will cause a session to end.

The impact

Google has stated that this change may slightly increase the number of visits tracked to a site, but based on their research, “most users will see less than a 1% change”.

This latest change also allows Google Analytics to track attribution data more accurately following the recent ‘multi-channel funnel advanced tracking data change’. This allows you to track the attribution of a conversion from the first-click source e.g. Google AdWords to the last-click source e.g. Google Organic. This is extremely useful when recording the effectiveness of pay per click marketing as it tells us from which source a customer originally found your website.

If you’ve seen any changes in your analytics data since this change was implemented, please leave us a comment, or drop me an email at dominic.lidgett@strawberry.co.uk and we can discuss this with you in more detail.

Twittero: An ExpressionEngine Twitter Plugin from Strawberry

2011-08-12T11:11:42+00:00

We can already hear you thinking “not another Twitter plugin?!” Don’t worry – this is one with a difference.

A few weeks ago the Strawberry team ran into a problem when requesting Tweets on some of our websites that pull in their respective Twitter feeds. The problem was that unauthenticated calls are permitted at just 150 requests per hour; unauthenticated calls are measured against the IP of the server or device making the request. We have several servers but inevitably each server hosts several sites which leaves us with some sites having the same public facing IP. With the ever growing amount of our sites that involve Twitter feeds, we were starting to reach the 150 requests per hour limit fairly often.

So what was the solution? The fundamental solution behind it all was to use OAuth; Twitter's API authentication method. This would allow 350 requests, per hour, per authorised feed. Basically, it means that once authorised, each site could make 350 requests per hour. You can read more about rate limiting in the Twitter documentation.

My first thought to solve the problem was to find an ExpressionEngine plugin that uses or allows OAuth authentication. Unfortunately, there isn't one. I then thought, could I take the existing first-party Twitter Timeline plugin from the guys at ExpressionEngine? There laid another obstacle - after looking through it, it lacked features we needed and I felt that I could do a better job myself.

Features Missing from Twitter Timeline

There were several things that the Twitter Timeline couldn't do ‘out of the box’ (including working all of the time):

• Use the OAuth method to pull in tweets.
• Support custom cache expiry time (if you don't get much traffic, you could even disable the cache).
• I found that the Twitter Timeline sometimes didn't link certain parts of a Tweet. Sometimes link URLs, usernames and hash-tags were not linked.
• Allow the user to flip between time/date styles (I wanted the ability to flip between date wording like 'About 3 days ago' and regular date formatting).
• Offer the ability to disable retweets.

Required Features

After discussing requirements with the team, and through several iterations of the Twittero plugin, the final feature list includes:

• Ability to exclude retweets.
• Show replies.
• Custom cache expiry time (and have ability to disable cache during development).
• Custom time formatting as mentioned above.
• Number of tweets to pull in via the API, and number of tweets to show (due to the structure of the Twitter API, and to prevent multiple API requests, this may need to be different depending on the showing replies option as this cannot be exlcluded via the API).
• Custom HTML formatting using standard EE-like template tags, i.e. <li>{twittero_tweet} {twittero_time}</li>.

The Build

Credit where credit is due, the initial base of this project uses @abraham's ‘PHP twitteroauth Library’, as recommended by Twitter. This library allowed me to dive straight in and build the plugin. Previously I had built a few small ExpressionEngine plugins and have had years of experience tinkering with PHP, so I was already familiar with the setup of it all.

One of the main things I wanted to get right was the caching of the Tweets. A really popular website could easily eat through 350 requests per hour. I took the approach of creating a simple text file and storing the Tweets in there. The plugin then compared the cache file timestamp to the cache limit set by the ExpressionEngine tags within the templates.

The plugin has turned out a lot better than I had first planned, steadily getting better and better. Now it is at a stage where we at Strawberry feel it can benefit other ExpressionEngine developers. Don't worry, it's free.

You can download Twittero and keep up to date with its development on GitHub. Let us know what you think – your feedback is always appreciated!

Note: This plugin can only be used once per page.

Hull City Programme - End of an Era

2011-07-22T05:14:37+00:00

It's with great sadness that we have to announce that after 21 years of designing the Hull City programme and after over 500 editions, we're no longer being retained by the club to produce it.

After a tendering process that went on for some time and despite our very best efforts we were unable to meet the prices quoted by others nor come to an arrangement including sponsorship that was acceptable to the club.

Needless to say, we want to have it on record that we've enjoyed every season of working with the club since 1990/91 despite some very challenging times along the way.

We wish the Allam family the very best for the future and we'll now enjoy watching the football looking from the outside rather than being at the heart of the club which we enjoyed for so long.

Best of luck to the Tigers!

Jonathan, Dominic and James

What does your online profile say about you?

2011-06-17T06:41:07+00:00

As part of our Strawberry Academy, we are focussed upon helping potential designers, PR professionals and developers to make it in the industry. We help them to choose the right qualifications, gain relevant work experience and learn how to showcase their work to best reflect their talent. We basically tell people how to ‘market’ themselves for a career in marketing!

The internet can obviously help with the latter and social networking websites and blogs offer fantastic opportunities to make you attractive to employers. Unfortunately, they also have the potential to make you unattractive to employers too!

So, we are now asking our Strawberry Academy students to consider what their ‘online profile’ is like and whether it genuinely reflects them as a person. Twitter accounts, blogs and some Facebook comments are public and can easily be found with a quick internet search. Yes, we may all have a rant about a TV programme or a sporting team every now and again, but people looking and applying for jobs need to be more careful than ever before about what their online profile says about them.

In effect, social media profiles and blogs act as a ‘digital CV’ and just one look can turn an employer off for good.

Social media is all about sharing opinions but it’s a good idea to take a step back and think before posting. Here’s a little exercise that will get you thinking. Look at your Twitter account – would you like your employer, or potential new boss to read everything that you have posted? What about your Facebook account – are all of your posts suitable for all of the people on your ‘friends’ list?

These issues are highlighted in an article we found titled Facebook: Five Things To Avoid. We’re pretty sure none of you will get yourself arrested due to your social networking habits but the article provides food for thought!

New Facebook photo-tagging settings

Another thing to be aware of is the new ‘face recognition’ update that Facebook has rolled out recently. When users upload photos to Facebook, suggestions are now made to encourage them to tag their friends in the photos.

Whilst people aren’t automatically tagged, Facebook is urging people to do so more than ever before, which could unfortunately mean you are tagged in more embarrassing photos than ever before! Yes it’s clever, but some people feel this feature is one step too far!

This feature has been turned on automatically, but for those of you who are worried about it, don’t worry, as it can be disabled. Simply follow these instructions to switch it off:

1.Log-in to your account and visit your privacy settings
2.Click on customise settings
3.Visit the ‘things others share’ section
4.Click ‘edit settings’ next to ‘suggest photos of me to friends’
5.In the box that appears change ‘enabled’ to ‘disabled’ and click OK

A month in the life of Courtney Wood, our Online PR Apprentice

2011-05-25T07:39:30+00:00

Our new PR Apprentice, Courtney Wood, joined us at the end of March 2011. To help her develop the writing skills she needs to make it in the world of PR, we asked her to write a blog post about her first month with us. We think she did a great job and we are sure that by sharing her experience, Courtney will help to inspire future Strawberry apprentices. So here it is: a diary of Courtney’s first month with us!

My first month as an Online PR Apprentice, by Courtney Wood

When I left school, I was fixed on going to Sixth Form and presumed that I’d carry out the whole two years there, but after a few months, I soon realised that it just wasn’t for me! I attended St Mary’s Sixth Form studying Maths, Psychology, Sociology and Religious Studies for six months. Although I really enjoyed the social aspect of college, I found the learning aspect of college not so enjoyable and just a bit too much like school.

Studying at St Mary’s School for five years and being at the Sixth Form there for six months resulted in it becoming a bit too familiar; it wasn’t exciting or fresh anymore. I wanted to experience something different; I was eager to have a change. Although I was cautious about stepping out of my comfort zone, I decided that I had to leave college. I stepped off the educational path and started to head in a different direction. It was important to me to find something that I would enjoy more, yet would still be rewarding and beneficial to me.

After I decided to leave college, I applied for several full-time positions in administration while working a couple of extra days a week at Tiger Leisure – my Saturday job. After a month job-hunting I soon recognised that this wasn’t the right option for me at the moment, mainly due to the fact that I’m inexperienced, young and don’t have a lot of qualifications. It soon became apparent that a job wasn’t going to be an option for me, so I was forced to go in a different direction… again.

Plan C: apprenticeship. I’d never really known about apprenticeships before I started looking for one for myself. I was under the impression that all apprenticeships were for more manual jobs such as engineers, hairdressers and bricklayers! However, I soon realised when I went to Hull Business Training Centre that you can get apprenticeships in more office-based jobs such as business administration, customer service and IT. This was ideal for me and it was exactly what I was looking for.

Within a week at Hull Business Training Centre, I’d had two interviews and had secured myself a position at Strawberry. Fantastic! It had all happened so quickly that I didn’t really have time to be scared about it; I was more relieved that I had finally gotten a job! Naturally, I had a few nerves but they were soon gone after I realised how supportive Strawberry are and how they cater for people like me with the Strawberry Academy.

Before I started, shamefully, I knew absolutely nothing about Strawberry. However, once I’d had an interview and did a bit of research, I saw what a huge impact Strawberry has on the local community through the various charity events they have organised such as the 24 hour website build for The Smile Foundation. My first impression of Strawberry was that it had a nice working atmosphere and that it would support and help me to learn. During my interview with Strawberry, the company seemed very friendly and came across as very professional.

Week One:

I was clueless about what PR was when I first came to Strawberry, so on my first day I was unsure of what I would be doing! Naturally, I was apprehensive about that aspect, but I was looking forward to learning about it and I’m eager to learn more in-depth about it.

Attending Hull Business Training Centre half a day a week allows me to learn everything I need to know to achieve a level 2 NVQ in Business Administration. In my first week there I learnt about the postal system and communication. I wanted to do this course because it will help me in the future and if I keep progressing with it I could even get into university (although currently I don’t want to go to university, it’s still nice to know that the option is still there if I change my mind).

An apprenticeship seems the perfect balance between college and the workplace, because you receive the benefits from both - qualifications, work experience and a wage. I’m hoping that my apprenticeship will give me skills that I require for a job in the future. Apprenticeships are like a stepping stone into the world of work.

In my first week I was getting to know the staff and their roles within Strawberry; I learnt about all the different departments, not just PR. I’d never even heard of some of the jobs that the staff do before, I didn’t even realise that some of the jobs were done by people, for example with Google AdWords, I thought Google just decided which website went on which part of the search engine - I didn’t know that people could influence their rank on a page. I didn’t even know people worked for Google! I thought Google was just a massive clever computer!

During my first week at Strawberry a large majority of my time was spent researching the clients, finding out what work we do and who we do it for. It was important to get a good understanding of these companies so I knew a bit about who we were writing Facebook statuses and tweets for. During the induction process, I learnt about a lot of new things and found it all very interesting!

Week Two:

In week two I was starting to get used to working full time and I was familiarising myself with the social media accounts that I help to look after. I carried out a lot of research and created a few spread sheets.

My second week at Strawberry included being introduced to Jade. She has had a similar experience to me as she too was an apprentice at Strawberry, worked part-time at Tiger Leisure and went to Hull Business Training Centre. It was good to see the success that an apprenticeship can bring you and it motivated me.

Since my role at Strawberry involves Twitter, I even joined Twitter myself to help me understand more about it! I followed lots of interesting celebrities which resulted in me understanding the world of Twitter and the different language and hashtags that are used. I got to know all the do’s and don’ts of twitter and I gradually started to get my head around it all. I read an interesting book called ‘Twitter Power’ which gave me an even better insight into the complicated Twitterverse!

Not only did I look at Twitter, I also looked at Facebook. I found it very strange to look at Facebook from a business perspective rather than a personal outlook - it was no longer just a place where you talk to your friends, it was a place where businesses would market their products and reveal the latest in company news. I also learnt a lot about blogs and did online research to help out Sarah, Strawberry’s PR Manager.

Researching Google AdWords was another key task of week 2, I was learning about click-through rates, keywords, campaigns, search engine optimisation and quality scores. This obviously took up quite a bit of time because there is so much to learn!

I wrote a press release during this week as well about my appointment at Strawberry and had my photograph taken by a photographer to go with my press release and to go onto the Strawberry website.

Putting my postal skills that I learnt from Hull Business Training Centre the previous week into action, I learnt how the postal system at Strawberry works. I used these skills to post bottles of Rio Rosa Mosqueta beauty oil to reviewers in order for them to give their verdict on the product over Facebook for others to see.

Week Three:

I really started to get stuck in during week three, I was writing draft tweets and statuses for the social media for a brand new client. I was handed the responsibility for posting regular updates on Twitter and Facebook, which meant that I had to manage my time and monitor activities on the accounts. I learnt how to use new software and technology such as TweetDeck. In week three I’d been given more responsibility over administration duties and I had to think about writing skills and how to write for different audiences.

In my course at Hull Business Training Centre that week I learnt about what duties a receptionist has such as answering the telephone and how to deal with customers. Also, I learnt about waste in a business environment, how to reduce the amount of waste that you make and what alternatives there are to using paper in an office environment such as emails and using scrap paper instead of fresh paper.

I had my first client meeting in week three; I was quite nervous as I’ve never been to a meeting before but I found it very interesting and learnt a lot about the company we went to meet. It was exciting to see a company in the early stages of starting their social media and was great to hear the ideas both Sarah and the company had – it gave me a fantastic insight into the social media aspect of PR.

Week Four:

This week consisted of me keeping on top of updating the Facebook and Twitter accounts for companies. As Sarah was on holiday this week, I had to reply to the public’s social media enquiries to our clients which I was a bit nervous about because I didn’t want to make any mistakes or give out any wrong information!

I also made my first phone calls to the companies during week four which I was apprehensive about because I was nervous that they’d ask me something that I didn’t know the answer to. But it was absolutely fine and I realised that I didn’t really have anything to worry about.

At Hull Business Training Centre that week, I learnt about different types of office equipment, how to use them, what to be aware of when using them and what not to do when using them. I also learnt how to write documents such as memo’s and letters, this involved trying to improve my typing skills. Everything I learn at Hull Business Training Centre is relevant to my job, this is another perk to having an apprenticeship because you’re learning about stuff that you actually need to know and will become useful to you, rather than at college where you’re learning things that you perhaps won’t need in the future.

I’d been studying online for my diploma in social media marketing and had completed the studying for it in week four, so I took the exam, and passed it! This diploma will help me at Strawberry as it showed me how to use various programmes more in depth such as Facebook, Twitter, WordPress and Audacity.

My first month at Strawberry…

Obviously starting anything new is going to come with an element of apprehension but I’ve really enjoyed my first month at Strawberry. I learnt lots about PR and find it very interesting and I’m enthusiastic to learn more. I’m glad that I’ve come to Strawberry for my apprenticeship and I’m looking forward to see where it’s going to take me.

Strawberry Web Workshop

2011-05-23T15:25:48+00:00

As part of our successful Strawberry Academy and continued commitment to helping develop local talent, we have decided to hold a Strawberry Web Workshop on Wednesday 22nd June 2011, 6pm - 8pm.

The Workshop is designed to give you a taste of agency life and specific training on the tools you will need to make it in the highly competitive web design and development industry.

Held at the Strawberry offices this summer, our Web Workshop will give you the opportunity to chat with our New Media Director, James Greenwood, who will lift the lid on the Strawberry process and give you a real taste of agency life. This will include discussion on the proposal stage, wireframing, design and the all-important build phase.

Who should come?

Anybody is welcome, however we think this event is suited to the following individuals:

Students currently on web related courses at either a college or university.
Graduates who have recently completed a web related course at either a college or university and are currently applying for work in the industry.

So get in touch today – we look forward to hearing from you and sharing some of our specialist knowledge! You can enquire by emailing our PR Manager, Sarah Roustoby, at sarah.roustoby@strawberry.co.uk or via twitter.

Strawberry MD joins group of local entrepreneurs to improve Hull’s economy

2011-04-15T12:09:33+00:00

Our Managing Director, Jonathan Leafe, has committed his time and resources to a fantastic local initiative called For Entrepreneurs Only, which is designed to help boost Hull’s economy.

For Entrepreneurs Only is a group made up of like-minded entrepreneurs from the Hull and East Yorkshire area. Each member has founded and runs a successful business and is passionate about improving the state of the local economy through motivating, educating and passing on their valuable knowledge to other aspiring entrepreneurs.

The aim of the group is to help and support entrepreneurs that want to set up a business and create employment in the Hull and East Yorkshire area. Each member of the group has a specific area of expertise that they can provide support with, in Jonathan’s case, he is on-hand to provide specialist advice about advertising, business strategy, internet marketing, joint ventures, media relations, public speaking, staff development, hospitality, marketing, social media, web design and training.

Jonathan comments: “It’s great to be involved with a group of individuals that are motivated to help improve Hull’s future. Together, I genuinely believe we will be able to make a difference and if jobs are created thanks to our help, that’s a great achievement!

“I’m a big believer that passing on your first-hand knowledge to help those in need is one of the best ways to learn. That’s why I was so keen to develop the Strawberry Academy – so young people could learn and kick-start their careers by following the advice of other team members. For Entrepreneurs Only follows the same principle.

“The local economy has been hit hard in recent years and needs as much help as possible to get back on its feet. I know that there are some very talented potential entrepreneurs out there who just need a push in the right direction to help achieve their goals.”

You can view Jonathan’s profile by visiting the For Entrepreneurs Only website.

A conversation with Jenny Bendelow - our Publishing Manager

2011-04-14T13:42:47+00:00

How long have you worked at Strawberry and how did you get here?

I have been employed at Strawberry since 1996. After working for two large corporations previously it was refreshing to come to a small company where decisions could be made quickly so you could get on with your job and cut through red tape. I was being made redundant and just applied on the off chance to see if there were any jobs going. I was interviewed on the Monday, offered the job on the Wednesday and started work the following Monday!

What’s changed about the company since you started?

The size for one - when I started there were only four other people in the company, now there are 25. It has been good to see the company grow and achieve success over the years.

Like everyone, the biggest change I have experienced in the last decade is the digital revolution. When I started this job if someone hadn’t sent their copy for an advert we would have to ring them and wait for the post to arrive the following day. Sometimes it could take a week to get copy and for an advert to get approved. Today it can be emailed to us in the morning, sent on proof several times and approved within an hour or so. The wonders of technology! We can even design adverts based on the content of a company’s website, so they don’t always have to send us any copy either – we literally do everything for them providing a service that is second to none.

What tips would you give to aspiring designers trying to break into the industry?

You might have to start off as an apprentice or on a trial basis, but I’d say 95% of our juniors started this way and were taken on within a year. One of the good things about a small company like Strawberry is that if someone sends in a great CV that impresses Jonathan they can be given a chance straight away, they don’t have to wait until an actual position is advertised as we are expanding all the time.

What projects are you currently working on?

We have just finished the advert sections of the 2011 Bridlington Guide and 2011 Visitor Guide for VHEY which we have done for the last few years and are working on the VHEY Mini Guides for Bridlington, Beverley and Hull as well as their annual Hull & East Yorkshire Attractions Map.

We have been producing the monthly magazine, 24seven lifestyle, for the last 3 and a half years which has tight deadlines and the last few days of production are always extremely hectic. We are constantly raising the bar in the quality of the design and all rise to the challenge to ensure the magazine looks fab and is error free. The whole mag has just been redesigned to steer it more towards a ‘lifestyle’ type magazine that will appeal to more people hopefully.

We produced the Rowley Manor wedding brochure last year and we’re starting work on a couple of other wedding brochures shortly. Usually, the publisher sells the advertising space and we do everything else from designing it, writing it to liaising with advertisers to get their adverts designed and approved.

Last year we designed various event leaflets, flyers, invites, newsletters and posters for Dove House Hospice free of charge. We are carrying this partnership on into 2011 so are providing all the design work they need for this year too. They are currently planning to open Dulcies café onsite at Chamberlain Road that will be open to visitors, staff and members of the public. We are designing the logo, branding and other marketing material.

We also produce artwork for perimeter boards at various football and rugby clubs across the country.

What do you enjoy most about working at Strawberry?

I enjoy the variety in my job. No two days are the same. There are always different brochures we are producing with different target audiences so adverts have to be designed accordingly and no two adverts are the same. Over the years we have produced brochures for car showrooms, hotels, restaurants, wedding venues, golf clubs, racecourses and magazines amongst others. Another thing I like is the ‘no blame’ culture that Jonathan fosters, everyone gets on well and there is always someone to help if you are stuck with something.

What inspires you?

Music. Great photography.

A conversation with Courtney Wood – our PR Apprentice

2011-04-14T12:53:40+00:00

What attracted you to Strawberry?

Before I started looking for an apprenticeship, admittedly, I’d never really heard of Strawberry! However, when I did a bit of research, I realised what a fantastic opportunity it would be to work here. Through research, I found out about all of the work Strawberry does for organisations like Dove House Hospice and The Smile Foundation, which presented Strawberry in a good light. The Strawberry Academy further attracted me to the company, as it is obvious that the team puts a lot of time and effort into training young people and helping them to learn.

What did you do before Strawberry, how did you get here?

Before Strawberry I went to college for approximately 6 months at St Mary’s Sixth Form – but soon realised this educational path was not the one for me. So naturally, I started job-hunting, which eventually lead me down the apprenticeship route. I didn’t really know what an apprenticeship was, but after being told a bit about it I was extremely keen to pursue one! So I got in touch with Hull Business Training Centre and a week or so later I found myself at Strawberry!

As a student in the Strawberry Academy, what have you learned so far?

At Strawberry so far, I have learned about social media marketing, what PR and marketing is and I’m starting to learn more about Google AdWords. I’m extremely enthusiastic about my future in the Strawberry Academy and can’t wait to see where it’s going to take me.

Would you recommend the Strawberry Academy to other aspiring marketing professionals? If so, why?

Of course, it’s a fantastic opportunity to gain some work experience and the Academy provides you with a chance to learn and start your career whilst giving you support and guidance.

Why did you decide to go down the apprenticeship route?

I decided to go down the apprenticeship route because it gives you on-the-job training, a rate of pay, work experience and qualifications. I regret that I didn’t do it sooner!

What’s most enjoyable about working for Strawberry so far and what are you looking forward to doing most?

So far I’ve really enjoyed my time at Strawberry (even though at the time of writing this it’s only been a few weeks!). The team is lovely and very supportive. I’m looking forward to getting stuck in and to see where this opportunity is going to take me. I’m enthusiastic to start writing tweets, Facebook updates, press releases and helping out with the PR duties.

What inspires you?

It’s inspiring how at Strawberry, some of the experienced team members are former Strawberry Academy ‘goers’! It shows me how Strawberry has moulded them into their roles in the company and helped them gain the skills they need. It also shows me how good Strawberry is if they’ve continued to work here after their apprenticeships have finished!

Strawberry expands team with the appointment of a PR Apprentice

2011-04-14T10:09:03+00:00

Following our successful intake of web and graphic design apprentices last year, we have recently appointed a new PR Apprentice to our growing team! Courtney Wood took up the role in March 2011 to help support the Internet Marketing and Online PR team, liaise with clients, provide social media support and learn all about marketing and PR. Alongside her job at Strawberry, Courtney will also work towards a level 2 NVQ Certificate in Business Administration at Hull Business Training Centre.

Jonathan Leafe, Managing Director of Strawberry takes up the story: “Apprenticeships are in the spotlight at the moment as more employers recognise the value of giving young people on-the-job training. We have always been committed to giving young people work-place experience and last year appointed our two most recent apprentices to full time positions once they had finished their courses.

“In fact, we have developed the Strawberry Academy to focus on giving young people a chance and to help them take their first step into the design and marketing industry. Courtney is already showing great potential and is grasping the skills she will need for a career in PR. She is already confident and we will help her to develop her career throughout her apprenticeship and hopefully beyond.”

The Strawberry Academy offers students aged 14 years and older an opportunity to gain work experience and kick-start their careers either through a school programme of work experience, an apprenticeship placement, a graduate placement or graduate traineeship.

Courtney Wood comments: “I chose to go down the apprenticeship route and to pursue a more vocational path as I prefer a more hands-on learning style. This is a fantastic opportunity for me to gain qualifications and work experience. I’m enthusiastic to see where my apprenticeship will take me and would recommend the apprenticeship route to anybody. PR seems like a very interesting industry and I’m thoroughly looking forward to learning lots more about it.”

Our PR team was set up as a result of clients recognising the importance of offline PR, online PR and social media, and it is becoming increasingly busy. Courtney’s help will prove invaluable in helping to grow the department further.

Strawberry web team takes part in 24 hour website build-a-thon

2011-03-31T15:27:05+00:00

The challenge: Local charity, The Smile Foundation, required a new website.

The problem: They needed it quickly, but we had a very busy production schedule.

The solution: We decided to build the website, free of charge, in just 24 hours …

Yes that’s right, we’re not kidding! On Friday 25th March, the Strawberry web team took on the challenge to not only stay awake for a full 24 hours, but to during that time create a full multimedia website from scratch that looked great and met all of the client’s requirements.

We are pleased to say that we did it! It was a hard slog and it took the web team a couple of days to recover afterwards, but the results we achieved were fantastic. The charity was over the moon with the end result and we received lots of positive feedback via our Twitter and Facebook profiles.

So, how did we do it? As many of you reading this post will know, websites usually take at least a couple of months to develop from scratch, so to produce one in just 24 hours is certainly challenging. We won’t lie, coffee, Red Bull and a mountain of goodies supplied by The Smile Foundation helped us to get through the day (and very long night!).

Our New Media Director, James Greenwood, takes up the story: “The 24 hour website build was certainly one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done and I’m sure the rest of the web team would agree! At the start of the day we had to set up the hosting and crack on with the design immediately. The client loved the design we came up with so we managed to get this signed off quite quickly, which allowed us to create the HTML5 templates by mid-afternoon.

“The templates were separated into different sections for coding including the header, footer and content area. The CSS work was then started whilst the content management system was plugged in. Styling whilst editing the content and making the content management system was a nightmare – but we got there in the end! This was all taking place with radio interviews and photographs being taken around us – it was probably one of the most hectic days we have had in the office for a long time!

“At about 6.20am we had an hour off – some of us caught 40 winks, some of us watched TV, the rest of us played with our kids who had decided to wake up at the crack of dawn! We returned to the office for 8am to check our work, upload photos and check for any dead links. Then, the website went live!

“Those of you who are reading this that also follow us on Twitter will know that we tweeted about our progress throughout using the hash tag #smile24. You will also know that we celebrated the site going live with a cheeky glass of Pimms! Following that, we went home and slept. All weekend.”

So there you have it – that’s how we managed to build a website in just 24 hours. No, we didn’t develop any time stopping skills like Hiro Nakamura from Heroes, we simply worked as a team, planned for any problems that could arise and drank lots of caffeine. You can see the full website in all of its glory by visiting http://heysmilefoundation.org/. You can also see some photos of the team from the day (and some more unflattering ones the following morning) on our Facebook page.

Google AdWords

2011-03-03T07:31:02+00:00

Good thing or bad thing? It can be expensive too, but in the history of marketing and advertising there’s never been anything so accurate and so transparent. Lord Lever famously said “I waste half of my advertising budget. The only problem is I don’t know which half.”

Well, now you know. The only trouble is the journey to get to the stage where you actually spend less than you earn is a long and hard one. Poor account management often ends in tears. There are no tricks or tips that make it any better either. I’ve read countless books on the subject and they all go around in circles.

In reality it’s quite simple – match the search term with your AdWord advertisement and send them directly to what they’ve asked for – simple. Well not really, as the amount of work to do all of that would mean that you actually can’t get on with your day job or go home to see the family.

You need to feel your way slowly into it and see what works and what doesn’t and adjust as you go along. And then maybe, just maybe, you’ll make some money using Google AdWords.

Search Engine Optimisation

2011-03-03T07:22:01+00:00

Don’t believe what the experts tell you. This is not rocket science or a dark art. Play by Google’s rules and you’ll get your website up the rankings. Simple.

Google has for as long as they have been around left us all baffled as to how you get on the first page. And let’s face it, if you’re not on page one – you’re nowhere.

In reality it’s a quite simple but laborious process. It all starts with having realistic expectations. Being on Google’s first page with a highly competed search term isn’t going to happen to all but those who put the maximum effort in. And even then it still might not happen.

What we believe is that to get where you want to be, it’s all down to quality. A good website build with the right level of keywords and content backed up by a SEO plan of link building will do the trick.

The link building is the difficult bit – this means social networks, blogs, and articles around the internet, plus directory listings.

In the not too distant past, some less than honest companies used to claim that they’ll get you to the top of Google. What they didn’t say is, they could do that providing your keyword search was along the lines of ‘white cat on a red road in Goole’.

Social Networking

2011-03-03T06:40:32+00:00

This is not a fad. It’s here to stay. And as Generation X takes the reigns from the Baby Boomers, the following Generation Y seem to be hard wired into the social network – like it or not.

Don’t fight it, embrace it. You don’t even need to get involved. That’s the beauty of it. You can be totally passive and just see what the rest of them are up to.

However, I really still don’t care what Chris Moyles is having for dinner. And that’s my main point. Cut out the rubbish and be clever.

So, how is it good for business? If you can get people who like or potentially will like to engage with you on your social networking sites then they effectively become your ambassadors and they should be treated as such.

They should be notified about all the inner circle stuff that’s going on with your company or brand. And rewarded from time to time. They’ll reward you back by recommending you to their friends and probably continue to buy from you. They’ll even tell you when you’ve done something wrong, and if you’re smart, you’ll be able to put it right in front of all your loyal customers – so even more brownie points there.

But please, if your are going to do it, then do it. I can’t stand Facebook pages that had a last post from over one month ago or worse. You must engage – that’s why it’s called social ‘networking’.

E-shots – do they still work?

2011-03-01T15:28:02+00:00

I’ve thought long and hard about this. We’ve been advising clients for years on direct marketing and the e-shot is the modern incarnation. Direct marketing lost its sparkle some time ago with the advent of the MPS (mail preference service) and just too much being sent and ending up straight in the bin.

Enter e-shotting – a quick and cheap way to send out to a mass audience of email addresses. Which also worked fine until everyone started doing it. Not only that, unscrupulous operators started spamming. So the end result was too much email, lack of relevance and annoyance from people who just saw their inboxes filling with crap.

This seemed to be calmed somewhat with better mail programmes and providers extracting what they considered to be spam. The only problem being that it would invariably take some important emails with it.

Then it should have got better still with legislation indicating that before marketers started sending email out ‘willy nilly’, they had to have people’s permission to send it to them. So the reverse of opting out – they had to opt in before you could send them an email.

Where does this leave us? Well you need to be accurate and smart. You need to make sure that the emails you send out are targeted and have great content.

Then you may just, but only just, get some response from it. However, as part of the marketing mix, if you’re preaching to the converted, i.e. your existing customers, then you should definitely be doing it. But please do it well and don’t fill my inbox up with rubbish anymore.

Ten tips for successful email marketing

2011-02-17T06:21:03+00:00

We understand the importance of successful email marketing – especially for those that operate ecommerce websites or websites that rely on visitor numbers. It gives you an opportunity to talk directly to your customer base and present important information, products and special offers to them.

Whilst it’s vitally important to spend time getting your message right and making the design look appealing, there are also several other factors that come into play when creating a successful marketing email. From our research, we have compiled a list of ten top tips that should be taken into consideration before embarking upon a campaign.

Content

1. Content: Generally, recipients will judge the importance of your email by the title. If you get them to read on, the initial text/ image MUST give them an idea of what’s in the rest of the email or they will hit the delete button. If they are interested they will read on. Remember the old advertising adage: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

Technical

2. The ideal width is 500-600 pixels. This allows the email to be viewed correctly in the majority of email viewing panes.

3. You should think about and give special consideration to webmail services, for example Hotmail.

4. You should include a ‘view in browser’ link.

Design

5. Simple layouts and tables work best – you don’t want to confuse the reader.

6. Whilst design is important, you need to make sure that your design will work in an HTML email.

7. The design should be able to get around anti-spam filters and what they are looking for. The content of the email should be written to avoid spam filters too.

Legal

8. You should give people the opportunity to unsubscribe if they wish. There’s no point in continuing to send information to people that don’t want to receive it – let’s just focus on the warm leads!

9. You should stay abreast of the law when it comes to email marketing and be aware that if you are found to be a ‘spammer’ you can get fined! This could also result in you being blacklisted.

Follow-up

10. Once you have designed and mailed out your email, the next (and arguably the most important) phase, is to measure performance! How many people opened it? Did your sales calls increase? How many people took advantage of your special offer?

So what shouldn’t you do?

Whilst looking for some examples of best practice, we also found some marketing emails that didn’t make the grade. You obviously want as many people as possible to open, read and take in your message and you also do not want to be marked as spam. So, whilst following our advice above, you should also strictly avoid the following!

1. Writing in CAPITALS – this can be viewed as spam and let’s be honest, can make you sound a bit ANGRY!

2. Using too many different font sizes, styles or colours

3. Using the terms URGENT! and IMPORTANT!

4. Including ‘dead links’ that do not link to anything

5. Sending email campaigns from your personal email address

6. Including too many images

7. Including text in images

8. Using background images

9. Making spelling mistakes – always get a fresh pair of eyes to check the email before you press send!

10. Finally, you should make sure that you clean up your email lists regularly to ensure you are not emailing incorrect address.

Strawberry industry predictions for 2011

2011-02-14T05:46:11+00:00

So what are the key developments that will take place in the marketing and design industry in 2011? Instead of just finding out what our Directors have to say, we wanted some words of wisdom from the rest of the Strawberry team too. They’re a clever bunch you know ...

Abi Flavell, Graphic Designer

“I think designers and those in marketing have a keener sense of their social responsibility. The state of the economy is causing us all to take stock of what we have, be grateful for it and more aware of worthy causes that need us to get behind them and champion them.”

Donna Helmore, Account Executive

“I believe that in 2011 more business will invest in internet marketing. If they haven't got a website they will get one and companies that do have a website will put more money into it. Also, I think that mobile advertising will increase.”

Jonathan Leafe, Managing Director

“This year is all to do with balance. Making sure the communication to customers, both new and old, is slick and to the point. A combination of advertising, direct mail, emails and a great website to direct them to and onwards to a sale is the way forward. Spend well and keep it simple.”

Dominic Love, Creative Director

"2011 will see an even greater change in the way we all 'engage' customers when creating brands and marketing campaigns - a clever mix of creative, clear and memorable and of course communicating on a 'social' level - this is something we can't ignore."

Carl Pieper, Creative

"With the technological advances which gather pace every year - it's really changed the way we look at print design and gaining the most impact from using or simulating creative techniques which we haven't seen for decades. 2011 will be the start of the revolution!"

Jenny Bendelow, Publishing Manager

“I predict that the use of QR Codes will become more commonplace everywhere.”

Matthew Woods, Web Designer & Developer

“I predict there will be an increase in group buying websites like Groupon. We will also see an increase in mobile web usage and mobile accessible websites.”

James Greenwood, New Media Director

“I predict the rise and rise of mobile ecommerce, increased adoption of HTML5 and surrounding technologies.”

Simon Willans, Web Designer & Developer

“I think that by the end of 2011, the US military will begin ‘invading’ social networking sites for ‘anti-terror’ measures. I also think website censorship (China-style) will creep in within the UK by the end of the year.”

Stu Greenham, Web Designer & Developer

“I think that location based services will really take off, be it augmented reality type apps or just the continued rise of things like Google, Facebook places, Gowalla, Foursquare etc. I think as more apps/devices integrate these features it will become more mainstream!”

Sarah Roustoby, PR Manager

“The popularity of social media will continue to rise. We will see more social-media orientated marketing campaigns and may even see the emergence of new social sites – such as Quora.”

A conversation with Donna Helmore, Account Executive

2011-02-04T08:22:56+00:00

Tell us a bit about yourself

I’m originally from Queensland, Australia, and have been in the UK for 3 years now. I came to Hull with my boyfriend who plays for a local rugby team and I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent here so far.

When did you join Strawberry?

I officially joined Strawberry in January 2011, however I spent a month doing work experience here in December. I was really keen to get into the local marketing industry so doing work experience was a great opportunity to learn more about the company and what the role would involve.

How did you get here?

Back home in Australia I developed a passion for marketing whilst at college completing courses in sales, marketing and event management. I managed to get some good work experience whilst I was at college which spurred me on to get a job in event management for a leisure firm. This involved arranging one-off music events product launches to fashion shows and 3 month dance competitions. When I arrived in the UK I spent some time working in a local beauty salon as Assistant Manager and at a local gym, then at the end of 2010 decided it was time to get back into marketing, so gave Strawberry a call!

What attracted you to Strawberry?

When I made the decision to move back into marketing, I did some online research into local agencies. Strawberry appeared to be one of the best in the area and I was really impressed with the company’s attitude to work experience and giving people a chance. I initially thought I’d be able to come and get some experience for my CV, however true to their word, they gave me a chance and took me on full time a month later!

How are you enjoying it so far? Which projects have you been involved with?

I love it! Each working day is different and I’m getting the opportunity to work with a wide variety of clients. My role is to support key accounts and the rest of the team so I’m learning lots at the moment. I’m currently working with MKM, PPH Commercial and Gemtec, however I’m sure this list will grow quickly!

What inspires you?

I’d have to say that I’m inspired by seeing how other people have achieved their success. Some people at Strawberry have worked their way up right from being a junior, or work experience student, and achieved great things.

Strawberry welcomes new Account Executive

2011-02-03T11:34:12+00:00

We have recently appointed a new Account Executive. Donna Helmore took up the role in January 2011 to help provide sales support and key account management. She joined Strawberry following a month’s work experience, where she was given the opportunity to learn more about the business.

Donna is originally from Queensland, Australia, and has previous experience in event management, in addition to qualifications in marketing and sales. Having not worked in the industry since she arrived in the UK, Donna decided it was time to get back into marketing and contacted Strawberry with a view to gaining some work experience for her CV. Donna explains:

“After leaving Australia I worked in the leisure industry and also as an Assistant Manager at a beauty salon in the local area. However, I soon decided that I missed event management and marketing so started to do some online research to find out more about local agencies.

“I approached Strawberry to gain some work experience because the company displays a real commitment to helping people progress their careers – through initiatives such as the Strawberry Academy. I was delighted when they welcomed me into the business for a month’s work experience and this worked out so well I was offered a full time position."

Donna concludes: “I’m now working on some of Strawberry’s key accounts and loving every minute! I have never worked in an agency environment before so it’s great to be working with such a diverse range of clients – every day is different.”

Jonathan Leafe, Managing Director of Strawberry, comments: “We are pleased to be starting 2011 by appointing a new member of staff. When Donna joined us for work experience at the end of last year, we immediately recognised she would be a great addition to the team. She’s enthusiastic, a keen learner and great with our clients. She will play a pivotal role as we continue to grow over the coming year and respond to an increasing number of new business enquiries.”

A conversation with Graphic Designer, Abi Flavell

2011-01-17T16:03:54+00:00

What attracted you to Strawberry and how long have you been here?

I started at Strawberry straight out of University almost 5 years ago. I wanted to be the best and work for the best. Strawberry stood out head and shoulders above other agencies of this type in the area.

What’s new with design? Have you noticed any new trends in client requirements?

Design is embracing and working with a new economy. Chic simplicity is a big look at the moment, a paired down feeling that celebrates the essentials; colour, typography and sleek photography. Clients have a lot less money to play with which causes us designers to listen hard to what the client needs and be really inventive with our skills and expertise.

What’s most enjoyable about working for Strawberry?

My colleagues and the varied work. Every day is different.

Do you have any advice for aspiring designers trying to break into the industry?

Get your CV/Portfolio right. First impressions count. What makes you different from everyone else?

What projects are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on a catalogue redesign for Hider Foods, advertising for Beal Homes and a new corporate identity and website for the Sunderlandwick Estate.

What tools do you use?

Photoshop / illustrator / quark / indesign.

Finally, what inspires you?

Great Typography. Colour. People. God.

A conversation with Strawberry Web Developer, Jamie Wright

2011-01-12T16:48:21+00:00

So, how’s it going so far? Are there any differences from your old job?

Things are going really well. It’s great being part of a big team and having the back-up and support of other people highly skilled in the industry and the software I use. I work with 4 other designers and developers and we all give each other ideas and advice. I also have a training budget at Strawberry, so attended the Dibi Web Conference last April.

What tools do you use?

I code in X/HTML and CSS, alongside the JQuery library and ExpressionEngine.

Have there been any big developments in the web design industry over the past year?

Yeah, most browsers are now starting to support CSS3 which is great news. CSS3 makes web design much easier and allows developers to be more creative without generating extra workload. It helps us to come up with better designs and can also make client amends much easier and quicker!

What will be the next big thing?

Definitely the introduction of HTML5. Browsers will be starting to fully support it in the next couple of years and should make the web development process more efficient.

Have you noticed any trends recently?

More clients are requesting bigger footers for their website. As more companies undertake social media marketing, they are asking for links to their blogs, twitter and facebook pages to be more prominent. Traditionally, footers weren’t styled in this way, but the space has definitely become more valuable in the past year. Clients are also asking for large RSS icons to be added to their sites too, so visitors can be kept updated about new content.

What projects have you/ are you working on?

The first project that I completed at Strawberry was a website for Hull Women in Business. I also worked on the new KC Stadium website.

Is there a website that has inspired you lately?

Yeah – the CSS3 effects on this website are amazing http://desandro.com/articles/

Visit Jamie’s website at http://www.iamjamie.co.uk

A conversation with Strawberry Web Developer, Simon Willans

2011-01-12T13:49:59+00:00

So, how’s it going so far? Are there any differences from your old job?

I’m really enjoying working with a larger team and collaborating on projects –whereas in my previous role I would be the sole designer and developer. I’m getting on well with the team and I’m learning more about the software programmes we use.

What attracted you to Strawberry?

There are a variety of reasons! The main reason being the opportunity to work as part of a larger team on some new and exciting projects. Until recently I was living in Scarborough and working at Strawberry gave me the chance to live and work in a bigger city too!

What tools do you use?

As you would expect, I use a variety of tools. For my coding I use Notepad++ and for further development assistance I use various plugins and extensions in either Firefox or Google Chrome. The majority of my design work is carried out in Photoshop, although I do use Illustrator from time to time.

Have there been any big developments in the web design industry over the past year?

The main thing I’m keeping an eye on is the development of HTML5 and CSS3, particularly CSS3 – because it’s making a lot of useful design elements easier to create which ultimately enhances the user experience.

What will be the next big thing?

It will be some time before all of the main browsers fully support CSS3, but when they do it will be pretty awesome!

Have you noticed any trends recently?

I have noticed a lot more designers focusing on graceful degradation for older browsers, instead of making them look exactly the same. In my opinion, modern technology shouldn’t have to suffer to cater for the likes of the older technologies.

Is there a website that has inspired you lately?

Fellow Strawberry colleague Jamie Wright’s website was quite amazing to look at. It just shows some of the power CSS3 has to offer. The colours may be a little extreme, but it still looks funky!

A conversation with our New Media Director, James Greenwood

2011-01-12T13:14:43+00:00

How long have you worked at Strawberry and how did you get here?

7 years I think! I came here as an employee having worked at a few local web based companies. I started life as a ‘proper’ software engineer writing point of sale software for a national retailer. The retailer wanted to sell online (early ‘Naughties’) and my interest in working with the web was stirred! I eventually left the software house I started my career at and proceeded to work at another agency for 2 years before spending a whole 11 days contracting. I saw the role at Strawberry advertised and ended up here. After 3 years, I was invited to invest in the company by Jonathan and I became a director. It’s been a bit up and down (like all jobs), but I love it here.

What attracted you to Strawberry?

Strawberry has worked with Hull City for a long while and I knew Strawberry did the ecommerce store for The Tigers. I’d spent a lot of time working on various ecommerce stores and thought it was about time I combined my love of Hull City and ecommerce!

On top of that, after meeting Jonathan, it was clear there was a desire for Strawberry to become a leading web agency – it was too good an opportunity to turn down.

Did I mention we work with Hull City too?!

What’s changed about the company since you started?

Loads! The web team was initially me – and now we’re up to 13! No longer do we just employ web developers, we also have a dedicated support team as well as online PR and online marketing specialists. To be honest, it’s virtually a different company now to the one I joined.

What tips would you give to aspiring web designers and developers trying to break into the industry?

I think the key thing is to have a ‘personal brand’. Have your own website, have a twitter account and blog about industry stuff (as well other stuff that interests you). This shows the people who do the hiring that you’re enthusiastic, that you keep up to date and that you’re interested in the industry as a whole rather than just after a job.

A good agency gets lots of CVs and job enquiries so it’s important that you’re armed with more than just a Hotmail address.

What are the latest industry trends? What will be the ‘next big thing’?

As soon as I write this sentence, it’ll have changed! The web industry is moving so quickly……

Having said that, I think the opportunities that HTML5 and CSS3 are bringing to developers will be at the root of the ‘next big thing’.

I’ve a feeling that the way we consume the web is about to change again – I don’t think it’s going to be long before Web Analytics are saying that most of a sites visitors are coming from a mobile browser (iPhone, Blackberry, iPad, Android Phones etc etc.)

What projects are you currently working on?

We’ve lots of ecommerce sites on the go at the moment – our ecommerce in-house software was started in January 2009 and we’re racking up clients at a pretty good rate. I think clients like the fact that it’s totally bespoke to them and not an ‘off the shelf’ solution which is what other agencies and freelancers provide.

Is there a website that has inspired you recently?

At the time of writing, there are a few.

It sounds cheesy but our Strawberry site got the creative juices flowing – it uses HTML5 and CSS3 (mentioned above) and was a real collaborative effort amongst the development team.

Other notables are: http://shoeguru.ca/ (stunning design), http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport (the way information is categorised and ease of use) as well as http://www.bountybev.com/home.html (clever one page design) and http://www.nytimes.com/timesskimmer/ (lots of info, driveable by the keyboard)

What do you enjoy most about working at Strawberry?

There isn’t a way of saying this that doesn’t sound cheesy but here goes….

It’s a team of creative people working in a creative environment at the time of a digital revolution.

What’s not to love about that?

Read James' personal blog at www.jamesgreenwood.co.uk

Strawberry named in RAR Top 100

2010-12-21T03:21:11+00:00

We are delighted to have been named in a list of the UK’s top marketing ‘powerhouses’ outside of London. The list, which was compiled by the Recommended Agency Register (RAR), identifies marketing agencies that have been highly recommended by their clients and demonstrated growth and profitability over the past two years. Strawberry was ranked number 76 in the list and we were the only marketing agency from East Yorkshire to be featured.

The Recommended Agency Register is designed to help businesses source marketing agencies that are recommended by their clients. It’s prestigious ‘Top 100’ list is a round-up of the best agencies in the UK to deliver a high level of customer satisfaction. More than 400 agencies were considered for the list and 22 companies from Yorkshire made the grade.

Jonathan Leafe, Strawberry’s Managing Director comments: “Being featured in this year’s RAR Top 100 is a fantastic achievement for Strawberry and a great way to end a successful year for the company. We have appointed five new members of staff this year, won a selection of exciting accounts, introduced new services and were nominated for our first ever national marketing industry award. It’s safe to say that we intend to build upon this success in 2011 and make our way even further up the RAR Top 100 list!”

To be included in the Recommended Agency Register, agencies must receive a high rating from a minimum of three clients via the online RAR process. The ratings are spread across pre-defined criteria including client service, creativity and value for money. Only agencies which pass this quality threshold make it into the register and only these companies are invited to appear in the Top 100.

Hard work pays off for Jade as she wins business award

2010-11-30T09:09:48+00:00

Jade Woodfield, one of our talented graphic designers is celebrating after she was named the Mail News & Media’s ‘Young Achiever in Education and Business’ at a glitzy award ceremony last week. She faced stiff competition from the other finalists in her category who have both set up their own businesses. However, Jade’s commitment to furthering her career through education and on the job training, plus her role on the Humber Apprentice Panel shone through.

Jade joined Strawberry as an apprentice after she left Sixth Form and worked so hard that she finished her apprenticeship in ICT two months early. Her determination to succeed resulted in her full time appointment as a Trainee Graphic Designer with us earlier this year.

Winning this award is the icing on the cake for Jade, as she comments: “It’s such an achievement to be recognised for the work I’ve done since I joined Strawberry. My willingness to learn and enthusiasm has really helped me to develop the right work-place attitude and improve my skills since I started my apprenticeship. I hope other young people will look at the route I took and realise that you can achieve success through apprenticeships – you just have to work hard and be committed.”

Jonathan Leafe, our MD concludes: “It has been a great year for Jade and we are all very proud of her at Strawberry. She has learnt a lot since she joined us and her role has now been reversed, as she is now responsible for providing guidance to the work experience students that come through the Strawberry Academy.

“We are always keen to give young designers a chance – whether that’s one week of work experience, a month long placement or a full time trainee position. Jade’s success just goes to show that working hard and gaining work experience can help you to achieve great results.”

Watch the video of Jade and her fellow finalists that was shown just before the award was announced below:

Landing page conversion rates

2010-11-22T06:19:21+00:00

Our ecommerce websites are growing from strength to strength. Good design combined with a strategic approach to SEO, digital marketing and online PR has helped our clients to achieve sales success and conversion rates beyond their expectations. In fact, by working as a strategic partner, we have helped our ecommerce clients to achieve, on average, a conversion rate of 4.5%.

Dominic Lidgett, our Internet Marketing Executive talks us through some of the useful techniques we adopt to help our clients with conversion rates:

The landing page – the first impression

The success of paid search marketing campaigns is directly related to the first page (landing page) a visitor sees after clicking on an ad. It can be a home page but with paid search, this isn’t advised, as another, more targeted page on your site would have a greater benefit especially for ecommerce sites. The correct look, layout, copy and sign up or purchase options are all key to optimising landing page results and increasing conversion rates.

The landing pages of a site serve as the introduction to your organisation and provide the first pieces of information about the site and the products or services you offer. They also help the visitor to decide if they should proceed to the next step – whether that’s to purchase, make a phone call or sign up. The site needs to quickly show the visitor signs of credibility that instils trust to the visitor.

The right paid search structure

Account set-up:

The correct paid search account structure is key to the success of a site and healthy conversion rates. An incorrect paid search account structure can potentially waste a lot of money before mistakes have been realised.

Tips:

Set your goals
Think about your budget before you start
Undertake competitor research
Use multiple campaigns with different daily budgets
Group your keywords and ads into tightly formed relevant ad groups relating to a unique product/service relevant to the targeted landing page
Perform keyword research
Decide a keyword bidding strategy
Make use of keyword insertion in ads
Experiment with keyword match types
Geo targeting
Test day parting to find your most successful part of the day
Make use of negative keywords

Finally, analyse your account data constantly and TEST, TEST, TEST!

Landing page conversions

The goal of the landing page is determined by what you would like the visitor to do. If you have an ecommerce site, your primary conversion would be a sale, although there are a variety of other conversions you could measure. These include the addition of a product into your shopping cart, which will help you look into how you can decrease shopping cart abandonment rates.

For example, let’s say you sell tennis shoes, meaning your conversion is the sale itself. So your primary landing page conversion rate would be the number of purchases divided by the number of visits to the landing page or unique visitors. This can also be segmented down to the campaign type itself, meaning you can look at conversion rates from natural traffic from SEO campaigns vs. email campaigns vs. any other campaign type you could be running.

Whatever your goal, be aware that the effectiveness of the landing page can be measured, allowing you to better allocate where you spend your advertising budget.

Increase landing page conversion rates

Once you’ve chosen your keywords, created your paid search campaigns and are driving visitors to your landing pages, what if they aren’t converting? You’re paying for their traffic, but not getting leads and/or sales out of it. How do you increase your site’s landing page conversion rates?

Test, test and test again! We cannot stress enough how important this testing phase is. Design, layout, copy, and page elements are all extremely important for landing page optimisation. A few changes we test to increase landing page conversion rates include:

The addition or removal of images. Image quality is extremely important especially for ecommerce sites.
Testimonials and symbols of credibility
Calls to action
Long copy vs. short copy – find out which works best for you
Layout/navigation
Sign up/ purchase buttons
Personal or professional styles
Colour schemes
Relevant copy and messaging by source type

Wear it Pink fund raising a great success!

2010-11-05T12:12:27+00:00

For those of you who spotted our website’s pink makeover last week, you will be pleased to find out that we managed to raise a total of £1,400 for Breast Cancer Campaign’s Wear it Pink day on the 29th October. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who donated, including our six clients: Gosschalks Solicitors, MKM, Dee, Atkinson & Harrison, Green Planet Solutions, Abbey Medical Group and BSC Solutions, who all agreed to turn their website bright pink for the week.

On the day in question, our efforts attracted the attention of several high profile tweeters and reached a massive twitter audience of more than 187,000 people! These included England footballer Kevin Davies, England cricketers Jimmy Anderson and Matthew Hoggard, The Drum magazine, Inspired Mag, Hull City footballer Ian Ashbee and Politician John Prescott. Karoo also got involved by encouraging visitors to its website to turn it pink and visit our website to find out more about the Wear it Pink campaign.

In addition, the Strawberry team managed to collect over £100 on the day by dressing up in pink clothes and selling pink cup cakes. Some of you may have seen the pictures on Facebook. James Greenwood, Strawberry’s New Media Director comments:

“We are delighted with the amount of money we raised and would like to thank all of our clients for taking part. We really wanted to get involved with the Wear it Pink day because breast cancer is a subject close to many of our hearts here at Strawberry. The whole team got involved and helped to make the day a success.

“The money we raised is a mixture of client donations for turning their website pink for the week and public donations. We decided to spread the word through Twitter and Facebook and by lunchtime we had been re-tweeted by the likes of Jimmy Anderson! The amount of attention we received via Twitter just goes to show the power of social media and how quickly messages can spread. We even saw traffic to our website increase by an astonishing 500%.”

Strawberry and friends support Wear It Pink for Breast Cancer Campaign

2010-10-28T04:44:18+00:00

We are sure you will agree that this is a fantastic charity that deserves our support, as it’s a subject close to many of our hearts. Our clients have kindly agreed to donate funds to the charity in return for their pink transformation and will be inviting their customers and staff to donate too. As you can see from our website, the effect is quite dramatic! If you want to see what the other pink websites look like – see the links below:

Green Planet Solutions (or should we say ‘Pink’ Planet Solutions?!)
MKM Building Supplies Ltd
BSC Solutions
Gosschalks Solicitors
Abbey Medical Group
Dee Atkinson Harrison

The whole Strawberry team is in the ‘pink’ spirit today. We have paid to wear some rather fetching pink hues and several members of the team are selling pink buns – check out our Facebook and Twitter profiles to see some of the pictures from our office throughout the day!

Please get involved!

If you would like to donate some money to this charity and help to fund some of the world’s most innovative and promising breast cancer research projects, visit our Just Giving page. We will be picking one of today’s donators at random to win a gorgeous pair of silver earrings too!

Click on the banner below to donate...

A conversation with Jade Woodfield – one of our Graphic Designers

2010-10-08T07:34:05+00:00

What attracted you to Strawberry and how long have you been here?

I used to work part-time at the Hull City shop as a Sales Assistant and that’s where I first heard of Strawberry. I saw some of the great design work that Strawberry had done for Hull City, including the match day programmes, and thought it would be the perfect place to do my apprenticeship after completing my A-Levels.

I have always had a passion for graphic design so decided that instead of attending university, I would aim to get some on-the-job experience at a local creative agency. Strawberry offered me the opportunity to enhance my skills with no major restrictions and I can safely say that in the time I have been here, I have never looked back! I was recently appointed to the full time role of Graphic Designer after completing my apprenticeship and I’m enjoying all of the new challenges that come my way!

As a Strawberry Academy graduate, what did you learn from the experience?

I have learnt things that I didn’t even know were possible. I have learnt how to use six new software programmes from scratch and feel very confident with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Quark Xpress, File Maker (our internal admin software), Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Distiller. Also, experiencing life at a competitive and successful marketing agency has given me the opportunity to develop good interpersonal skills and learn the complex operation of a company.

Would you recommend the Strawberry Academy to other aspiring designers? If so, why?

Yes - without a doubt! It provides you with a great start to your career and the means to go further in the marketing industry. The graphic design job market is very competitive and the experience gained in one year of being an apprentice can kick-start your future and open many doors.

The academy route provides you with full time employment, a rate of pay, plus enjoyment and accreditation. As I gain more experience, I am looking forward to passing the knowledge I have gained over the past nine months to other Strawberry Academy students. I would love for other young individuals in the Humber area to experience this and improve their skills and future!

What projects have you enjoyed working on?

I really enjoyed working with a local Young Enterprise Group to help them design their company report and I’m looking forward to working on similar projects. I also enjoy designing for Dove House, a local charity that we support. Dove House always holds fun events, which I can produce fresh, distinctive and unique designs for with my own individual style.

When I first joined Strawberry, I was surprised to be ‘let loose’ on projects but that really is the best way to learn. I treat each project as ‘my baby’ if you like, which taught me to be efficient, thorough and perform to my highest ability. When you see the finished print product, it really makes you proud! I also thrive on designing fashions spreads for 24Seven Magazine. I am in my element with this!

What’s most enjoyable about working for Strawberry?

Hearing positive feedback for my designs is always very enjoyable! Most days are different and I really love the diverse nature of the job. Getting a behind the scenes view of a marketing and advertising agency is very interesting and the team at Strawberry has made the first year of my career very special.

You are involved with the Humber Apprentices Panel – how does this fit in with your work at Strawberry?

The Humber Apprentice Panel (HAP) has given me, as a learner, the opportunity to gain more confidence in discussing my view and future. It has also helped me to develop better communication and debating skills, which helps with my work at Strawberry. I meet with representatives of major student bodies such as the NUS to change certain elements of apprenticeships in order to create improved futures for people in the Humber region and across England. It was great to have the support from HAP whilst carrying out my apprenticeship.

What inspires you?

I would say that I take inspiration from my colleagues at Strawberry that started out as trainees like me and climbed further up the ladder to reach their prime position in the work place. It encourages me to follow their path and make the most of my opportunities. Being nominated for a Mail News & Media Business award is also pretty inspiring! I have made it to the final of the Young Achiever in Education & Business category and can't wait to find out the result in November!

How will Google Instant affect search marketing?

2010-09-10T15:09:28+00:00

Google instant has been rumoured for a while, but now it is finally with us, how will it affect the way we use Google?

If you visit Google now you will see the search results changing as you type your query. This 'search-before-you-type' feature as Google has dubbed it has been designed to give users the most likely search results given what you have already typed.

Google is telling us that there are many benefits of Google Instant, the main one been a time saver potentially allowing users to save between two and five seconds per search. Google is also estimating that they can save users 11 hours each second! This is quite impressive.

All this fancy time saving technology is all well and good, but what will it mean for search marketers?

Pay Per Click

When the first rumours of Google Instant started appearing, paid search advertisers like me did our research on how this change would affect our client accounts. Naturally, if people can see results as they type, then this is bound to increase the amount of impressions received which will have a knock on effect on click through rates (CTR’s). Google has taken steps to nullify this fear by stating that an impression is only counted if a user takes action to choose their query by hitting enter, clicking the search button, clicking a link on the page or by simply not typing for more than 3 seconds.

Google still stresses to us that the new feature may increase or decrease overall impressions, taking all this information into account, I can say that Google Instant ‘will’ impact on impressions and CTR’s so it is worth watching closely within your accounts.

Google also says that Google Instant is designed to improve the quality of your clicks because the system will help users type queries that are more closely related to the information they are trying to find which will potentially be a good thing.

SEO

Google Instant is potentially more concerning for SEO marketers rather than PPC, as this change will have an effect on keyword referral data which is vital. An example would be, if you wanted to search for ITV all you have to do is type “i” and my result will appear. Does this mean that the highest traffic driving keyword is going to be i? Not very useful so we will see.....

Google Instant will surely also affect long-tail traffic which is important for search marketers. As many site owners tap into long tail searches to gain a percentage of traffic that now may never be reached. For example, a user typing a query may find a result from another site before they have completed typing their query. A change in keyword strategy may be required.

Currently I am not sure about how this change will affect us. Google has always positioned themselves as a search engine with no frills which lets it’s results do the talking. This change goes against that and seems to me to be a needless attempt to separate themselves from rival search engines, when for me, they never needed to.

Strawberry nominated for a DADI Award

2010-09-08T05:29:07+00:00

We are proud to announce that our website has been nominated for a DADI Award, for best in-house website! Since we redesigned www.strawberry.co.uk , we have received lots of positive feedback from our industry peers and are delighted that our efforts have been recognised by the DADI Awards judging panel too.

The DADI Awards recognises work done by digital agencies and rewards innovation, strategic thinking and effectiveness. This is the first time we have put our work forward for judging so are looking forward to November when the winner of our category is announced.

This year’s DADI Awards attracted entries from agencies across the UK and finalists include well known brands such as Adidas, Channel 4, BBC, Lucozade, Red Bull, Wonderbra and Reebok – so we are in good company!

We will keep you updated of our progress – wish us luck!

A conversation with Sue Gibson, one of our Graphic Designers

2010-08-09T14:06:26+00:00

How long have you worked at Strawberry?

I have been working at Strawberry since it was first established in 1993 and have seen the company grown from a team of two (me and Jonathan Leafe) to over twenty! I originally came to know Jonathan after answering his advert for a ‘mouseketeer’ in 1991. We started Strawberry in a small corner of our current office building and it’s great to see how much the company has, and is still growing now.

What’s changed since you started?

I’d say the biggest change has been the introduction of new technologies over the past 17 years. When I first started working at Strawberry, we were typing copy into documents from hand-written client notes and the introduction of floppy disk seemed like a revelation!

Obviously things developed quickly from then on but it’s funny to think back to how we used to work. Also, Strawberry has changed dramatically from a primarily design-led agency to a full service agency offering everything from e-commerce websites to public relations.

However, one thing that has never changed is our relationship with Hull City AFC – we have been designing their programmes ever since Strawberry started.

What software do you use?

I work in Quark Xpress, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator for my design work and also use Excel and internal administrative software on a daily basis.

What’s new with design? Have you noticed any new trends in client requirements?

I guess the biggest trend over the past few years is clients requiring integrated designs for their websites to tie in with brochures and offline advertising campaigns.

Do you have any other responsibilities?

I’m Strawberry’s work experience coordinator so have a good relationship with many of the local schools and colleges. The majority of our work experience students are of school age, however we will accommodate university students too.

So do you have any tips for people who want to work in the marketing industry?

We are committed to helping talented, enthusiastic individuals enter the industry which is why we have set up the Strawberry Academy – to help students of different ages gain experience and learn more about agency life.

We welcome anybody who is keen, interested and willing to learn. The industry is very competitive at the moment so work experience is a great way to give you an advantage.

What do you most enjoy about working at Strawberry?

I’m now in my 18th year at Strawberry so can safely say that I really enjoy the job! There’s never a dull moment and it’s particularly enjoyable when you can develop a good rapport with clients.

What projects are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on the marketing material for national building supplies merchant MKM. This involves designing adverts, point of sale material and brochures for individual campaigns and ensuring MKM branch managers can view them on the website ahead of ordering what they need.

Finally, what inspires you?

Good design!

Working in partnership to create online sales success

2010-07-29T02:32:46+00:00

We are pleased to announce that we have successfully taken over £1.1M in online transactions via our bespoke e-commerce platform, with the help of local communications provider KC. Our e-commerce software was developed and is managed as a joint venture with local IT consultancy, BSC Solutions, and is hosted on KC servers.

KC’s business services team designed the technical infrastructure that the e-commerce programme sits on and provides continuous support as the number of transactions steadily increases. The servers currently host 11 of our e-commerce websites including local and national brands such as www.tigerleisure.com, www.motorwayshop.co.uk and Bristol City FC’s online store,www.bcfcmegastore.co.uk.

Mark Conway, Director of Business Services for KC, comments: “It’s great to see one of our clients celebrating such success! We are delighted to have helped Strawberry take over £1M in online transactions. We strive to work in partnership with all of our business customers to help them achieve their goals and look forward to helping both Strawberry and BSC Solutions develop the strength of their e-commerce offering.”

James Greenwood, New Media Director for Strawberry continues: “It goes without saying that we are delighted with how our e-commerce platform is performing. As more new clients come on board, additional pressure is put on our servers and the KC team is always on the ball with advice and solutions should any problems occur. Our account manager, Ben O’Leary, is in regular contact with us which has helped us to develop a genuine partnership with KC.”

Simon Crosby, Managing Director of BSC Solutions, concludes: “Having met with Mark and Ben at KC, I am confident that KC’s business team cares about our success. We have built a close relationship with them since we built our e-commerce programme. We can rely on them to be flexible without any stresses – which is essential when it comes to hosting e-commerce stores!”

BSC Solutions is an IT consultancy based in Hull, which provides expert advice and bespoke software solutions to a variety of businesses.

KC offers the local business community a variety of support services including telephone systems, scalable hosting solutions, business broadband, server back-up and business mobiles.

A conversation with Dominic Lidgett, our Internet Marketing Executive

2010-07-26T12:52:44+00:00

How long have you been at Strawberry? Has anything changed since you started?

I’ve been at Strawberry for almost two years, and since I started, our clients have become a lot more understanding of search marketing. Instead of simply dipping their toes in the water, they are committing full budgets to internet marketing campaigns because they know that the returns on investment can be potentially very high.

How is it going so far? Are there any differences with your previous job?

I had a decent grounding and learnt the basics of internet marketing in my previous job, however at Strawberry, I’ve taken those skills and progressed whilst taking on a lot more responsibility. In my previous role, I had an account manager to lean on, whilst at Strawberry, I’m solely accountable for my own clients and find it very rewarding.

What does your job entail and what tools do you use?

I’m responsible for building, monitoring and analysing the traffic to our clients’ websites. I use Google AdWords and Google Analytics to measure traffic, PPC editors to make changes to client accounts and several reporting tools to report on progress.

What’s new with internet marketing?

The importance of online PR for brands is becoming apparent and budgets from clients are increasing – especially since Google introduced real-time social results in search pages. It’s a great and easy way to get your brand noticed for a low cost. Mobile marketing has become vital with more people using smart phones which make it easier for people to view sites and potentially purchase products. It’s important for PPC account managers to show their clients’ ads on mobile phones more than ever, as they may be missing out on an increasing amount of traffic. Site speed has become a ranking factor too because Google’s goal is to help its users to find information as quickly as possible. How quickly a site loads definitely fits into that.

What projects are you currently working on? Is there a project that has exceeded your expectations recently?

I’m excited to be working with some well known national and international brands including The Katz Group and Eastern Airways. We have a number of new e-commerce sites launching this year so I’m currently setting up pay per click campaigns with these clients whilst the sites are being built ready for launch. I’m particularly pleased with the Eastern Airlines campaign, which has recorded great results and exceeded targets over the past year.

What do you enjoy most about working at Strawberry?

I enjoy having the responsibility to manage all my clients and make the key decisions which affect the income generated through their websites. My colleagues are great and I get good advice from senior staff members about how to improve our clients’ results and my own personal development.

A conversation with Jonathan Leafe, our Managing Director

2010-07-21T00:39:41+00:00

How long have you worked at Strawberry and how did you get here?

I started back in October 1993 with Susie Gibson and we’re both still here today after 17 years! Prior to that I’ve been a shipping agent, a professional musician, an account executive for an advertising agency, a marketing manager for a hotel in Spain and when I got back to England, I set up my own design agency business, which eventually became Strawberry in 1993.

What was your vision for Strawberry?

The vision is still the same as it was in 1993. To build long-term relationships with clients so that we grow as they grow. To build those relationships we have to be really good at what we do and supply it at a reasonable price.

What’s changed about the company since the early days?

The internet has changed almost everything. The way we work, the services we supply. The turnaround for jobs is so much quicker than in the early days and the general IT awareness throughout the production chain is a big factor in this. Oh, and that we now have 25 staff!

What tips would you give to aspiring marketers trying to break into the industry?

Have a strong sense of what you want to achieve, be enthusiastic and get your foot on the ladder at any level to show people what you can do. And most importantly, never stop learning.

What are the latest industry trends? What do you anticipate to be the 'next big thing'?

I think we’re in a state of consolidation. Companies are looking to keep things tight, well organised and be ready for future prosperity gained through doing things smarter and better. And nothing is going to stop the e-commerce juggernaut.

What do you enjoy the most about working at Strawberry?

I love the variety. We work in almost every industry you can think of and whilst they are all different there are so many similarities. I’ve learned so much for every client we have, after all if we don’t fully understand their business we can’t operate successfully.

Finally, what inspires you?

I’ve recently started working with sixth formers from a local school, mentoring them in their young enterprise year. They are bright, so enthusiastic and have uncluttered minds.

Strawberry apprentices start promising careers

2010-07-16T10:22:32+00:00

Our two apprentices, Katherine Owen and Jade Woodfield, have successfully graduated from the ‘Strawberry Academy’ with full time jobs and a promising career. We recently appointed Katherine as Web Support Coordinator and Jade as a Graphic Designer. Both have become valued members of the team and we are on the lookout for our next talented apprentices.

Both Katherine and Jade studied for their apprenticeship at the Hull Business Training Centre and joined the Strawberry Academy in 2009. The academy is designed to source, train and develop local talent and also caters for school work experience students, university placement students and graduates.

The girls were both given a real job from day one and benefited from hands-on learning, as Jonathan Leafe, our Managing Director, explains:

“We are delighted to have successfully appointed our two latest Strawberry Academy graduates to full time positions. They know the company inside out and have show great dedication – not only in furthering their careers but doing a great job for us and our clients. They have made a real impression here and are an asset to Strawberry.

“We are always on the lookout for bright students. We really want to help people start careers in this industry and are keen to encourage talent to stay in the local area – not migrate to Manchester or Leeds. In fact, we are running a web workshop as part of the Strawberry Academy later this year to give web design students and graduates a taste of agency life.”

The National Apprenticeship scheme provides the ideal way for students to gain experience and qualifications, as Katherine explains:

“By studying for an advanced apprenticeship in IT, I’ve dramatically improved my knowledge, however, working every day in a busy agency has really given me the confidence I need to move forward in my career. I’m dealing with clients, working on real projects and boosting my skills whilst learning from people who have been working in the industry for years.”

Jade comments: “I’m really pleased to have been given a full time position at Strawberry. My colleagues have really helped me develop and I have enjoyed the mix of both education and work over the past year. I’m sure I’ll carry on learning throughout my career and would definitely recommend the apprentice route!”

How we implemented CSS3 into the new Strawberry.co.uk

2010-07-14T04:52:08+00:00

When James said we were going to be designing the strawberry website, I was rather excited when he said we were going to be doing it in HTML5 and CSS3. It really made sense as myself and fellow colleague Stu had already been experimenting left, right and centre with the new CSS transition and transforms which come wrapped up in the big present to web designers that is CSS3!

Dabbling with new techniques

We had been dabbling (my own personal site being a rather big dabble of note) adding CSS3 on client websites as a simple, progressive enhancement (for example: KC Stadium and Edwin Snowden), so carrying this forward-thinking ethos into our new site really was a no-brainer.

As CSS3 is yet to be finalised as a specification, and support for the new features aren’t fully supported, we have to use “vender prefixes” with the new selectors so that they can work in the browser. What is a vender prefix I hear you ask? It’s a word that you place before an element of CSS specific to a certain browser’s rendering engine. For example, Apple Safari and Google Chrome both use the Webkit rendering engine therefore if you want your new CSS3 selector to work in those browsers you need to use the prefix “-webkit-“. For Mozilla’s firefox it is simply “-moz-”.This means that for the meantime (before the CSS3 specification is finalised) we have to write multiple lines of CSS to target each browser and in turn ensure that everyone sees the same effect.

Covering all bases

With all these different prefixes being used, as well as some of the browsers not fully supporting all the new selectors yet, it can get very confusing. Something that we all felt was essential, was even if the browser you use to view our site doesn’t support the new CSS3 selectors, then you can still use the site without ever feeling like you’re getting a substandard experience.

An example of this is that if you are using Internet Explorer (which doesn’t support CSS3 yet) then you will not see the transition effect between the colour white to black on the navigation links when you hover over them, instead seeing the colour change instantly. Another issue is, what happens when the specification is finalised and the prefixes become irrelevant? Well, we have ensured that for every line of browser specific CSS3, there is the equivalent without the prefix, so that when the browsers support CSS3 without the vender specific prefixes, we already have the no prefixed code ready and waiting.

The same approach has been taken for pieces of CSS3 that aren’t currently supported by certain browsers.

The example here is that Firefox does not currently support CSS3 transitions (but will be in the very near future), so when applying this CSS3 technique we’ve placed the same code with the “-moz-" prefix too, so that when the new version is released, our site doesn’t need to be altered to utilise the new features.

In action

I guess you’re now really wondering what it all looks like? Below is a code snippet of some of the CSS3 used for the navigation links on our website:

a {
   -moz-transition:color .2s ease;
    -ms-transition:color .2s ease;
     -o-transition:color .2s ease;
-webkit-transition:color .2s ease;
        transition:color .2s ease;
}

If this doesn’t make any sense then here is an explanation: it is a CSS3 “transition” that will change the link elements “color” over a time span of 0.2 seconds using the “ease” effect.

As you can see, we target Firefox with -moz-, Internet Explorer (9) with -ms-, Opera with -o-, Google Chrome and Apple Safari with -webkit- and then have the final selector without a prefix (placed last to ensure that when it comes into use that it can override the previous statements).

How we acquired our ‘Strawberry’ Twitter name

2010-07-08T11:55:45+00:00

When we initially set up our Twitter account back in September 2009, we couldn’t get hold of the Twitter name ‘Strawberry’, as it was already taken by a user in Atlanta, USA.

As our website URL is http://www.strawberry.co.uk we th,ought it was about time we tried to obtain the Twitter name ‘Strawberry’ when we unveiled our new branding in June 2010. We are pleased to say that we managed to and since then, we have received several requests asking how we went about it.

In response we thought we would write a blog post to provide some advice to other businesses out there that may be in the same situation as we were.

When we started tweeting, we did so under the username ‘Strawb_Hull’ – which wasn’t ideal but it served us well. When we started to look into obtaining the name ‘Strawberry’, we found it was an inactive account and hadn’t been used since 2007. Whilst many people join Twitter to simply observe and never tweet, we thought we had a good case for transferring the name over to us – especially as we are a trademarked business.

So, we started by visiting www.twitter.com/help/escalate. This brings up a form where you can submit a request. We did so and chose the options ‘I’m confused and have a question’ regarding an ‘inactive username’. In the space provided, we explained that we are a company called Strawberry and were using Twitter to promote our business, however found that people were searching for us using ‘@Strawberry’ instead of ‘@Strawb_Hull’.

We fired this message off to Twitter and received an automated response full of instructions of what to do next. For us, the best route was to ‘trigger a review’ of the inactive username ‘Strawberry’ so that it would become available.

Within 30 days, we received a response and were able to change our username to ‘Strawberry’. To ensure nobody else could take either ‘Strawberry’ or ‘Strawb_Hull’, we immediately set up another account with our old name and tweeted a message to direct people to our new page. This meant that anybody following an old link to ‘Strawb_Hull’ could still find us on Twitter.

So there you have it. It wasn’t easy or quick, but with a bit of help from Twitter and some persistence, we managed to acquire our new Twitter name!

How we redesigned Strawberry.co.uk

2010-06-08T21:02:39+00:00

Anyone who has dealt with us in the past, or even visited this site previously, will have seen our old branding and website. We'd had it a long while and it had served us well but it was time for a change. Dominic, our Creative Director, felt it didn't match what we were about any more. Dominic and Carl (one of our senior designers) set about creating us a brand that we'd be proud of again.

Dom and Carl presented the finished article to Jonathan and I and we were both blown away. A really modern brand, with some great ideas for how it would work on the web.

I then presented it to the developers as we'd only have a few weeks in our schedule to build it. One of the developers (who shall remain nameless!) had an interesting reaction:

"I love it - but how do you expect us to build it?!"

Well, they did and it's exactly as we wanted it - this is the brief story of how we did it.

Prototyping

For some of the more flashy bits, we needed to prototype. Adam and Jamie set off prototyping pretty much all the JavaScript calls we'd need. We then spent a good few hours as a development team in the boardroom discussing how we thought the filtering and tagging system should work. We changed our minds several times - in fact, we changed it back again during the build. Prototyping the areas which we knew might cause us a problem was a very necessary step.

HTML5 and CSS3

We decided we wanted to use HTML5 and as much CSS3 as the browsers would allow. HTML5 isn't supported by default by any of the existing Microsoft browsers but by applying some JavaScript, we knew we could fix this. This means the site won't function in Internet Explorer(s) without JavaScript enabled. In fact, JavaScript is relied on heavily throughout the site and testing without JavaScript enabled gave some interesting results. JavaScript is employed by 99.9% of browsers, so we decided we wanted to push the boundaries of what we can currently do within a browser, and not spend as much time worrying about the lack of JavaScript as we do for some of our clients site.

Ultimately, it was me that decided to go down the HTML5 path, so if you're a web developer reading this and you think we've made a mistake in adopting HTML5, I'd love to hear from you.

Jamie is going to write a full post on the use of CSS3 - it'll be posted in the near future so make sure you've got our RSS feed bookmarked.

Expression Engine

We've opted to use Expression Engine 2 even though it's still in beta. Again, you might call it a "brave" decision and we could have opted to stick with the tried and trusted 1.6.9 version, however this site was about pushing the boundaries of what we are able to do right now and that meant using version 2. It's been stable - our resident EE experts have found it good to work with, which gives me the confidence to at least consider adopting it for clients sites.

Getting the content together

This is always the hard part of any web build - gathering content can sometimes be a long and ardous task. Not this time - Sarah simply got on with it and delivered it to the development team before they needed it and typo free. It's safe to say that we didn't need to employ Lorem Ipsum during this build which is a good thing! Thanks Sarah!

The Next Step

There is more we want to do - we want to do a mobile version of this site. We want to tweak areas of the site already and it's only just gone live. We're committed to ensuring that this site continues to get the love and attention it's had over the last few weeks and we're committed to writing posts about what we're up to.

The last thing is for me to thank the designers, developers and authors - I'm proud of what we've done in a short space of time and they should be too.

Introducing the Strawberry Academy - helping local talent shine

2010-05-31T02:45:59+00:00

As one of East Yorkshire’s leading marketing and design agencies, we are committed to sourcing and mentoring young talent from the local area. This is why we developed the Strawberry Academy - to give the region’s budding designers and marketing professionals of the future a taste of agency life and on-the-job experience.

The Strawberry Academy is open to students of all ages – from 14 years right through to university leavers and beyond. It is designed to help kick-start careers and also gives us the opportunity to work with young people that have new, fresh and interesting ideas. We have close working relationships with our local education establishments to help source potential candidates – however direct enquiries are always welcome.

The Strawberry Academy is broken down into five categories:

Work experience:

For school students ages 14-15 years old completing their GCSEs.
One week’s work experience as part of school programme.
The student is given a project to complete throughout the week, where they learn to use key software programmes and manage their time.
We work with the following schools – Hull Collegiate, Hymers College, Wolfreton, South Hunsley, Cottingham, Bishop Burton, Andrew Marvell, Hessle, St. Mary’s College, Longcroft.

Apprenticeship placements:

For students aged 16 or over.
In conjunction with the National Apprenticeship Scheme.
On-the-job experience with mentoring from other members of the team.
A real job from day one.
We work with Hull Business Training Centre – all enquiries should be made through them.

Graduate placements:

Up to one year-long, full time work placements for university students.
Putting the skills they have learnt at University into practice.
Client-facing and working on creative projects from day one.
An ideal opportunity to gain valuable experience before graduating.
We also cater for individuals who want to spend a day or so here at Strawberry and get a feel for agency life.

Graduate Trainee:

Fast track learning for talented graduates.
Will work with clients from day one to offer a first rate service.
Mentored by other members of the Strawberry team.
Given as much responsibility as they can handle.

Investing in our future

In addition to providing work experience and mentoring via the Strawberry Academy, we are also committed to helping members of the Strawberry team enhance their existing skills.

Each individual member of the Strawberry team has an annual training budget to take part in seminars, courses and workshops that they think will be of benefit to them.
In the past, our team members have taken part in Business Link events, Prince2 courses and worked to achieve Google AdWords accreditation, in addition to attending industry exhibitions throughout the UK.

Helping the local community:

We take part in many events throughout the city, to share our knowledge and provide advice to those who need support. In the past, we have:

Presented lectures to college and university students.
Talked at business events to share our knowledge of SEO.
Held seminars to teach local business people the benefits of internet marketing.
Given presentations about ‘cheap’ marketing for charitable organisations.
Spoken at many networking events about the benefits of Internet marketing and online PR.

A system that works!

Several members of our team have taken part, or are currently taking part in the Strawberry Academy. We have two apprentices working with us at the moment, a university student on placement and several graduate trainees. In fact, our Creative Director is the original Strawberry Academy graduate!

Strawberry expands web team

2010-05-23T23:36:37+00:00

We have recently expanded our web team in response to increased demand for our services. Simon Willans was appointed as Web Designer at the end of May 2010, after spending two years at a Scarborough-based IT company.

Simon’s previous position involved website design and development, print design and developing iPhone applications – a specialism that we are looking forward to moving into. He has relocated to Hull to take up his new role after having lived in Scarborough since he graduated from the University of Hull with a degree in Internet Computing.

Simon comments: “It’s great to be working as part of a larger team on some exciting, new and varied projects! Strawberry has a great client base and an impressive portfolio of work. My first job has been to help complete the new Strawberry website, which features some very innovative design, and I’ll soon be working on Strawberry’s e-commerce projects too. Strawberry has a strong commitment to developing the skills of its employees, so was the obvious place for me to progress my career.”

James Greenwood, Director of New Media says: “I’m delighted to welcome Simon to the team. We are currently experiencing steady growth and are receiving new client enquiries all the time – which has resulted in us appointing four new web designers and developers in the past year alone!

“We have also branched out into offering online PR services so Simon is joining us at an exciting time. I’m looking forward to working with him on our upcoming projects and I’m confident his technical skills will be an asset to our growing team.”

Strawberry supports local rugby union team

2010-05-07T05:36:28+00:00

We are very pleased to announce that we are helping to support local rugby union team, Hull RUFC, by having become the first Hull business to purchase one of the club’s new, premier ‘First XV’ memberships. The new membership comes with a number of perks and a luxury seat in Hull RUFC’s brand new 165 seater main stand – which is due for completion within the next year.

The construction of the new stand at Hull RUFC’s Chanterlands Avenue ground is a major step for the local club and is part-funded by Sport England, the RFU and membership packages. The packages available include the ‘First XV’ - a premium membership of which only 15 are available and ‘Founders 50’ – which is limited to the founding 50 members of the new main stand.

The club has also introduced a ‘donate a brick’ scheme to help raise money as Ron Gibbin, Hull RUFC President, explains:

“We have invested heavily in our grounds over the past few years to create a first rate rugby venue for both our players and fans. We have upgraded our pitch and our investment is culminating in the completion of our new state of the art stand and dressing rooms.

“Whilst we have relied on sponsorship from local businesses to fund the new stand, instead of asking for donations, we decided to introduce several membership packages that allow businesses and individuals to share in our expansion and be a part of the club and its future.”

Jonathan Leafe, Managing Director of Strawberry, comments:

“We are delighted to be one of the first businesses to take advantage of the Hull RUFC ‘First XV’ membership packages. Strawberry is always keen to support local sporting clubs – we are patrons of North Ferriby United, sponsor a local golfer from Beverley and work very closely with Hull City AFC and Hull KR. We look forward to the completion of the new Hull RUFC stand and enjoying our membership from some of the best seats in the house.”

The new Hull RUFC membership packages are proving popular, however some are still available to purchase. Those interested should contact Chris Murphy, Geoff Lound or Leroy McKenzie at the Hull Sports Centre on 01482 348142.

Strawberry launches new website for KC Stadium

2010-04-26T07:18:05+00:00

We are pleased to have recently launched a new website for the KC Stadium, home to sporting teams Hull City AFC and Hull FC, to provide the local community and out of town visitors with detailed information about the stadium, planned events and facilities. The new website, www.kcstadium.co.uk, features an up-to-date events calendar on the home page, a gallery of images and interesting statistics relating to the stadium.

Andy Tate, Bonus Arena Manager and member of the Superstadium Management Company team, explains the significance of the new website:

“I was tasked with the role of commissioning a modern, updated website for the KC Stadium several months ago by our Chairman, Adam Pearson. He was determined that we build closer ties to the local community so we appointed Strawberry to make his vision a reality. As a large sporting venue with a high profile, we felt it was important that our new website not only looked great – but helped users as much as possible.

“You wouldn’t believe the number of calls we used to receive asking for directions and information about events! Our new website is now a great information resource for people either visiting a sporting game, wanting to hire a room or attend a function. It also includes detailed contact information so people can get in touch with the right people first time – instead of having to go through our reception. We are delighted with the work Strawberry has done for us – the design is great and we intend to develop the functionality as time goes on.”

James Greenwood, Strawberry’s New Media Director, comments:

“We were very excited to work on this project – as it’s such an important venue for the local area. We are always keen to promote the great things that are happening in Hull and developing a new website for the KC Stadium seemed like the perfect opportunity! There is plenty going on at the stadium and Bonus Arena so we wanted to create a user friendly, easy to navigate website that included a comprehensive events calendar. We are really pleased with the result and look forward to developing the website further in the future.”

The KC Stadium was opened in December 2002 and has a total capacity of 24,995. It is run by the Superstadium Management Company and hosts a variety of sporting events throughout the year – including from sporting matches, conferences and social events.

ExpressionEngine and our default build

2010-03-31T16:37:54+00:00

Strawberry had been on the lookout for a new Content Management System (CMS) for a while and we finally settled on Expression Engine. Expression Engine is built by the guys over at Ellis Lab and they are the company behind the powerful PHP Framework Code Igniter. The reason we settled for Expression Engine is due to the flexibility and the extensive support we get from using a commercial product - rather than adopting open-source software or building our own system.

The Install

We are now at over twenty Expression Engine installs and having used many CMS systems in the past, Expression Engine is one of the easiest systems to install. With its own install file you can have the core system setup within minutes with no PHP knowledge needed.

To make sure your server is compatible with Expression Engine you will need the following:

At least 10MB of space
PHP version 4.1 or newer
MySQL version 3.23.32 or newer
PHP must have XML support
Your server must have the following MySQL grant privileges (for tables): SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, DROP, ALTER, CREATE
Your MySQL server must not be running in Strict mode
To take advantage of the image thumb nailing feature your server must support one of the three image manipulation protocols: GD, ImageMagick, NetPBM.

You will also need at least minimal experience with HTML and FTP access to your server.

Expression Engine Tags

Having built over twenty Expression Engine websites to date, the first hurdle to get over was understanding the tag system Expression Engine has implemented. We have found that there are a few different ways in which to come to the same conclusion and after our first couple of builds we came up with a standardised way of templating all of our subsequent Expression Engine builds. From this we have made slight changes, but the core template code always stays the same.

The Add-ons

Expression Engine comes with a wealth of add-ons. They allow for every eventuality that you could come across when building a website and to date, we’ve currently not come across anything within a website that we couldn’t implement.

Below is a list of add-ons we are currently using within the majority of our Expression Engine builds.

Field Frame - Field Frame is a field type extension developed for Expression Engine by Brandon Kelly. The extension is a must for every Expression Engine build. Field Frame gives us the ability to extend our field type range, from just simply text areas and text fields to a rich list of field types including Check boxes, Selects, Radio Groups and the Matrix. There are also a few add-ons built on the top of Field Frame most notably Wygwam. (http://pixelandtonic.com/fieldframe)

Wygwam - The Wygwam field type allows integration of the popular CKEditor WYSIWYG editor into Expression Engine. The only issue we did come across with the add-on is the fact you need to use relative image paths and make sure you have the latest Field Frame extension installed.

LG Better Meta - Like the title suggests this module creates easy to use Meta tags within the Expression Engine control panel. Before we found this useful module we spent hours implementing Meta information into every section of the website builds, LG came up trumps on this one. (http://leevigraham.com/)

LG HTaccess - We inherited this extension from tutorial videos when we first started using Expression Engine and have used it on all projects since. This extension allows us to quickly create an HTaccess file for a project that eliminates the index.php from the URL. (http://leevigraham.com/)

The Experience Internet modules and extensions - a range of modules and extensions we’ve used extensively by a friend of Strawberry’s, Stephen Lewis. (http://experienceinternet.co.uk/software/)

Free Form - The Free form module allows developers of Expression Engine websites to easily create forms on the fly and post submissions. We have implemented this module and extended the functionality by building AJAX controls to integrate error and success messages within our web site pages. (http://www.solspace.com/software/detail/freeform/)

Other useful add-ons - We also use Image Resizer, Twitter Timeline, Category ID, Word Limiter, Edit Alert, File, by Mark Huot and REEOrder.

This list isn’t exhaustive - we’ve used others, and experimented with lots. We’re also a big fan of Stephen Lewis’ plug-ins - we would say that though as he’s not only locally based to us but we’ve worked with him on a big EE project too!

Safe to say, we’ve fallen in love with EE and look forward to using EE2.0 in a production environment!

Strawberry supports Dove House with free design services

2010-03-29T09:18:40+00:00

We are pleased to announce that Strawberry has become the official Dove House design agency for 2010. We are supporting Dove House by offering our graphic design services free of charge for the rest of the year and are encouraging other local businesses to do the same.

Jonathan Leafe, Managing Director of Strawberry explains:

“We have raised funds and worked with Dove House for many years, and have always offered our services free of charge. At the beginning of this year, we decided to make the relationship official and encouraged them to bring all of their design work to us.

“The work that Dove House does for the local community is fantastic and more businesses should think about the ways in which they can be supportive by offering their services and expertise for free. The hospice relies on the goodwill and hard work of fund raisers from the local area and we are keen to do our part to ensure this money isn’t used on promotional design work.”

Lorraine Pritchard, Director of Human Resources comments:

“We are delighted with the work Strawberry has completed for us. They have helped us to free up some valuable money that can be directed to other parts of the hospice. We receive fantastic support from the local community and it’s always a big help when businesses offer their support. We will be working closely with Strawberry for the rest of the year and hope to appoint a new agency at the start of 2011.”

Dove House provides care for those in the local community with life-limiting illnesses. They are specialists in palliative care for people with a wide range of illnesses. There is no charge for the care Dove House provides, therefore the hospice relies on donations from the local community and support from the local primary Care Trusts. Dove House is currently aiming to raise an additional £2.5M in funds through the ‘Love You 2’ appeal, to complete an extensive re-development of the hospice site at Chamberlain Road.

PR – the online shift

2010-03-25T23:34:28+00:00

Sarah Roustoby – Online PR Manager for Strawberry

When I first started to work in the PR industry 4 years ago, online PR simply involved ensuring client websites were up to date with press material and issuing e-newsletters on their behalf. The internet wasn’t ignored, but magazines and newspapers took precedence and the majority of my time was spent building relationships with journalists.

In just a short amount of time, how things have changed. With the massive online social media explosion, press officers are now tasked with the role of building relationships directly with a group of new ‘content creators’ – the public.

The death of the newspaper?

I’m confident that targeting traditional media will still remain a core part of the PR package – especially for business to business clients. However, a good online presence is now essential in order to reach the growing number of people that consume their news on the internet. Niche websites, social networking websites and handheld devices all offer the consumer an up-to date, real time alternative to newspapers and magazines.

As a result of this trend, newspaper sales are inevitably declining and it is estimated that up to ½ of the UK’s regional and local titles will close within the next 5 years. This prediction is supported by the recent news that The Times and Sunday Times Online will be charging £1 per day for its news content from May 2010. Whether this model of charging for online news will work – who knows? But if newspapers are changing their approach, it goes without saying that PR professionals must too.

Benefits of online PR

People simply don’t ‘absorb’ news online like they do when reading newspapers. They share, rate and comment on it – and it’s these actions that press officers need to be aware of and responding to. Any good PR person worth their salt recognises the opportunities social media channels such as blogs, forums and social networking websites present.

They allow you to listen, gauge opinion and most importantly – strike up a conversation and react to those discussing businesses, products and brands – whether positively or negatively.

Whilst online PR is great for reputation and brand management, its benefits are twofold, because it is ideal for SEO too. We all know that ahead of making a purchasing decision, we will visit the website of the company in question to undertake research. E-commerce websites in particular must be as easy to find as possible and online PR is the perfect tool to achieve higher natural search engine rankings – a topic alone that can form the content of another blog post!

The changing role of the PR professional

There’s no doubting that online PR and social media will be the ‘buzz’ for 2010 and as a result, the industry is forming closer ties with the world of new media. This is great for full service agencies, because they have the expertise in-house to offer a first rate, integrated service. PR professionals can no longer just profess to be the ‘words’ people! They need to stay abreast of what’s new online, embrace technology and not be afraid to stray from the traditional PR approach.

I’m a prime example of going through this transition. Until recently, I was a bit of a technophobe and didn’t even have a twitter account. I simply couldn’t face sitting on my computer all night after doing so all day and only visited facebook occasionally. However, since I started to use a blackberry, I’ve been hooked! My online networks are at my fingertips 24/7 and I’m building new relationships online every day. In fact, I recognised just how important social media is for businesses when I started using twitter. I had an ‘issue’ with an international fashion retailer and complained on twitter. Within 24 hours my problem was sorted and I’m now a happy customer again and letting my friends know.

As a consumer, I appreciate the value of interacting with brands online and as a PR person, I’m adopting new techniques to offer a modern, relevant service to my clients.

Strawberry launches online PR service

2010-03-22T03:19:11+00:00

In response to increasing demand for our marketing services, we have appointed an Online PR Manager. Sarah Roustoby took up the role in March 2010, to offer our clients a variety of online and social media PR services. The new Strawberry PR offering is designed to increase traffic and raise the profile of our clients’ websites, through the use of online social networking, blogging and article submission.

Sarah joins Strawberry from a local marketing and PR agency, where she spent almost four years specialising in offline PR techniques for a wide range of local and national clients. Sarah’s previous experience also includes working as an Account Executive for a large printing company and she graduated from the University of Hull in 2005 with a degree in Marketing and Advertising.

Sarah is looking forward to using her existing skills to target and engage with the ever growing online community of social networkers, journalists and bloggers on behalf of Strawberry’s clients, as she explains:

“The PR industry has been forced to evolve over the past year, due to the growing number of people who access their news on the internet via online publications, blogs and social networking sites such as twitter and facebook. A prominent online presence is now just as important as a company’s offline image – especially for organisations with e-commerce websites that rely on high volumes of web traffic.

“Members of the public are creating content on the internet more than ever before and you don’t have to look long before you find a blog or tweet that mentions a product or brand. Businesses cannot afford to ignore the power of social media and it is our aim to help them engage with anybody who may be talking about their brand or industry online.”

Our new PR service forms part of a wider internet marketing department, which seeks to increase visitor traffic to client websites through the use of cost per click advertising and search engine optimisation techniques. Jonathan Leafe, Managing Director for Strawberry concludes: “We are delighted to be expanding our services to include PR and are confident our clients will be excited about our new offering. In fact, we already have several clients signed up and are in the process developing online PR strategies for them. I’m looking forward to developing our PR proposition in the coming months and have some exciting plans for the future.”