What's in store for 2010?

The papers might still be full of doom and gloom but here in our studio we're hopeful that a New Year and a New Decade will bring us happiness and prosperity.

Already on the cards for 2010 we have the launch of a new site for http://www.trafficonline.net scheduled for the end of Jan/early Feb.

We have a site in production for a new client offering a new type of service to home owners looking to sell this year. It's all very exciting and top secret so we can't tell you too much! There be lots of SEO and online marketing for this client as well as some press and PR so we'll be busy with this one. Better get our creative thinking caps on for this...

We also have the launch of a new site for current client http://www.barsport.co.uk. The new designs are certainly eye catching, some of our best work, even if we do say so ourselves.

There are a couple of new e-commerce ventures in the pipeline that use our bespoke online store management system. We're going to be adding new modules to this later this year... a product comparison section and a wish list set of tools for additional functionality.

We are also turning up the Social Networking heat under http://www.wolvescivic.co.uk with a new Blog (check it out here http://wolvescivic.blogspot.com/), Twitter integration for @Wolvescivic, event hash tags and Facebook friends.

We have to satisfy our geeky nature somehow, so, to add to all this we are looking at some iPhone Apps and a couple more Adobe Air desktop widgets for existing clients - there's no time to stand still - so we're moving fast to keep up with technological advances.

If getting through all that doesn't make us happy then we don't know what will!

Merry Twittermas!

Hot off the desktop we have our 2009 eCard design.



This will be combined into a HTML email and sent to all of our clients early next week.

As well as our own Christmas eCard we always spend the last couple of weeks before the Christmas break producing eCards for several of our clients.

HTML emails are an very effect way of grabbing your customers attention so don't limit yourself to fancy emails just for the festive season.

Get in touch with us here at emediates and we can pep up your sales emails or eNewsletters.

Just how far can you cast your net on the world wide web?

We've just launched our brand new website here at www.emediates.co.uk and now we are looking at the envious task of getting some serious exposure for our business.

So we asked ourselves the question, just how far can we make our content go?
It was obvious that we there are lots of platforms that we can update, share, link our content too but surely the work required to update Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Digg, Technorati, Blogger etc would just be too much.

We needed a way to write one piece of content and then cast our copy as far afield as possible. Seems impossible? If you're reading this post then it's not as impossible as you think.

This content was created on Blogger and automatically updates on over 30 social networking sites that includes all the big hitters above and others like Flickr and Stumbleupon. So, how did we do it?

Well, I promise that we will reveal all soon. In the meantime pop us an email to sales@emediates.co.uk and give us a good reason why we should tell you and we might let you in on the secret early. Why do we want a reason... well it's all for a new section for our new website, we want to know funny, serious or surreal the reason why we should give away anything for FREE. Call it market research.

For more SEO advice or anything web development related then choose to follow us as we update regularly.

Pre - Christmas Sort Out

I know - I've mentionned the 'C' word at the beginning of November!

However, I don't believe I am the only person in the world who finds putting a delay on the festive frenzy impossible ... Am I ??

Whilst we are constantly bombarded with Christmas decorations, ancient pop tunes and suggestions for the office party from the beginning of October - there is one piece of pre-festive planning that I wholeheartedly support - 'the pre-Christmas sort out'.

Not only at home, but in the office - this satisfying activity will ensure the New Year starts out as organised and as stress free as possible. And, whilst I do recommend diving into your kids toy boxes and re-homing some of their teddies and binning those shirts that haven't seen the light of day for 3 years - I also recommend booking your FREE Marketing Health Check appointment with emediates.

Use this opportunity to reflect upon how well your current marketing has performed this year, what could you have done better, will your print be out of date next year?

Consider all these questions and more and let emediates help you to clear the way for a positive marketing strategy and action plan next year.


Email Esther at marketing@emediates.co.uk to organise a meeting.

The importance of being earnest

Thought it was about time we wrote a blog about something personal... after not a lot of thought we decided to pick on our New Media Director Graham Cartwright and task him to record a typical day for him here at emediates.

7:50am Arrive to be greeted with strong black coffee (no sugar) from Anil.

8:00am I'm now awake and so is my laptop, weekend football gossip has been dispatched with and I'm onto the envious task of wading through emails. 47 this morning which is probably because I answered some Saturday afternoon.

9:00am Emails either answered or scheduled into task list and I'm ready to start planning my week.

10:00am Week long planning finished and I realise that there will be few late nights again.

10:06am Coffee.

10:30am First conference call of the week, This ones an update on a HUGE social networking development that we have on the go. Client seems happy enough, pushing for completion which is encouraging.

11:30am My turn to get the drinks. Developer Pete is constantly changing his favourite beverage but everyone else are creatures of habit.

12.00noon Need to spend an hour designing some new page layouts for new client pitch. We tend not to spend too much time on designs in pitches as clients like to change them once we get the go ahead and a full brief. However, we do like to give a little bit of creative input at the pitch stage to help balance all the technical stuff.

12:26am Coffee.

2:00pm Ploughing through some amends to our C# paging class. It draws a dynamic paging navigation that can be quickly added to any of our C# .NET modules. It writes out some nice HTML and CSS, need to add some Javascript for even more funkiness.

2:01pm Coffee.

4:00pm Taking a break from all that code with a spot of PowerPoint animation for Anils latest Sales Pitch - next week he is up in front of 60+ small business as keynote speaker for the Federation of Small Business's. I have to take his impressive talk on the 'Magic of Marketing' and make it look nice.

4:54pm Coffee.

5:30pm Home time for some, but I'm setting up some back ups to run on a new development machine. Don't want to lose all that new code, let alone the new Access and MySQL databases that are running on there.

5:31pm Coffee.

6:04pm About time I got off home. Haven't had any lunch today and drunk far too much coffee (again) but up-to-date with all my scheduled tasks.

8:00pm Kids in bed, time to crack on with emediates new website. Needs to be ready for Anils keynote speech next week. Need to nail this Google Blogger API and then get the Twitter API on multiple pages. More Visual Studio and C# for me tonight.

10:30pm Shattered and starting to get all coded out... going to see whats on BCC iPlayer and then call it a night. Toodlepip.

Shhhhhhhhhhh.... it's a secret

Here at emediates we must get 100's of emails a week asking us if we 'Want to be No.1 on Google?' or 'Would like to discover how to get to the top of the Search Engines?' etc.

Most of these never get read, we prefer a short sharp shot of Ctrl + Delete to get rid of them but will occasionally 'Add to blocked senders' if we are getting really annoyed.

However, occasionally one will catch our eye, that's what happend this morning. Our New Media Director Graham had an email that just said 'Google's BIG Secret' in the subject....

Out of sheer curiosity this email earned a reprieve and was given a quick read by Graham before being forwarded on around the office for everyone to have a laugh at. The joke? The nameless sender of the email wanted £250+VAT for a half day course to tell attendees the big fat secret that Google are keeping under their hats.

Why is this so funny you may ask? Well two things, there is no secret to SEO. It is simple, create a good site, with clear navigation and desirable content, submit it properly and add some carefully chosen keywords and put in the required amount of time and you will eventually achieve some degree of success.

Secondly, *if* there was a secret, *if*, then how on earth did the nameless small business get hold of it? Do they also happen to know the blend of 11 spices that make a KFC? Could it be that Cokes secret recipe is not so secret either? Here at emediates we may be cynical but, claims like these about SEO make our work harder than it already is...

Our approach is one of careful preparation, diligent planning and meticulous execution. We spend time with our clients and offer a solution that we believe gets a website to the top spot based on merit.

We are very wary of people who claim they know 'Google's Secret', and you should be too!

If you want impartial Search Engine Optimisation advice or are looking for a partner to boost your online profile then please contact us at sales@emediates.co.uk.

What does it all mean?

Here at emediates we sometimes find it difficult to talk to our clients. Not because we are awkward or unsociable or grumpy* or geeky... no, it's because we struggle with jargon.

That's right, we struggle with jargon. Even our developers hate it, we can't stand it. Jargon makes our job very difficult. Web development is an industry steeped in buzz words, you can't move for the next big thing, in the last few years we've had .net, Web 2.0, AJAX, RAILS, API's and much much more.

This is already on top of HTML, XHTML, JavaScript, C#, XML, XLST, RSS, ATOM etc. It's enough gibberish to make your head spin. And here in lies the problem, we pride ourselves on speaking our clients language. We talk to our customers in terms of how they can improve their business. We discuss websites in terms how it will benefit you and your customers.

So if you want to talk about a website project but would rather talk about selling your products online instead of AJAX posts or you would like to talk about expanding your mailing list instead of MySQL databases then email us at hotdog@emediates.co.uk.

We're polite, friendly and approachable with a mutual hatred of buzz words and jargon.

*Our New Media Director Graham can get a bit tetchy if he hasn't had a coffee in the last 10 minutes but he sits next to the kettle so is usually happy.