Our latest thoughts, our blog.

As someone working in a creative environment I get to observe the effect that positive and negative feedback - from clients and from other colleagues - have on a creative individual. Whilst commonly we are taught that constructive feedback works best, this may not always ring true in an environment where you may want to nurture your creatives and see them develop, rather than see them wilt and get disenchanted.

Recently I have been reading about Jay O’Callahan, and his workshops. Jay O'Callahan, described as "a genius among storytellers" by Time, has been telling stories around the world for almost 30 years. He travels around the world sharing his stories, whilst also running workshops (to help aspiring storytellers to hone their craft) which could be applied to any creative developing their art.

Jay talks about appreciation and the impact that it can have on improving one’s craft. The concept, that I found deeply resonated with me, is as follows: Having given a presentation, idea, or a story, the creator would go around asking people to comment on the elements they appreciate most. Upon hearing about the positive elements the creator is likely to emphasize those components more in the future (and therefore de-stress the elements that are not appreciated also).

Constructive feedback may not be the most effective way to help people improve, be it a particular piece of work or the artist’s general style and skills. Positive feedback, that points out elements that you appreciated the most, helps the creator to concentrate on those aspects and further motivate them to create better work in the future.

Recently we have had a surge of interest from clients, trying to inject social media into their brand, and I thought I’d share a few quick pointers to consider when doing that.

1. Consider whether you actually need to setup a facebook page or twitter account for your business, or whether you’re simply doing it 'because everybody else is'. It's superfluous if you’re not planning to be continuously involved in updating those and spreading the word.
2. Pay close attention to what people are talking about in your industry. You should be listening about what your customers think and who they share the information with.
3. Engage with your audience and build trust around you. Genuinely try to solve their problem and offer some positive feedback.
4. Share quality content or information, be tips or advice.
5. Be ready to act quickly if a crisis unfolds. You have to expect that not everyone will like you, but be positive and quick to respond to negative feedback, and hopefully nullify it before it spreads further.
6. Regularly start the conversation or topics, as with careful planning you can steer the type of conversation in a more favourable direction.
7. Carefully monitor your social landscape and pay attention to whether conversation is continuing. Continue to have a presence and in consider responding to negative or wrong information.
8. Do not bad mouth anyone. Always be polite and courteous with your responses.
9. Enlist fans that you know well, such as friends, clients and employees, someone who knows the company and have positive sentiment about your services.
10. Never spam. Your interaction should be genuine and helpful, providing information that is relevant to your customers. You audience will quickly catch on if you’re trying to cheat them into buying something.

I was shocked to learn a simple fact, SEO – (Search Engine Optimisation) really should be renamed Google optimisation. I am not a newbie to this game (Website Blue has been implementing SEO and SEM for nearly 4 years now), however it was only just recently that on one of my customers Google AdWords campaigns that I decided to mirror the same campaign in yahoo’s very clunky PPC (Pay Per Click) program named Yahoo Search Marketing. The result was less than satisfactory. I guess what I expected was to get something around 30 % of the traffic that Google provides, the actual result was less than 10%.

My ad and keyword settings for this particular campaign were rather simple but very targeted, in fact only people connected to the internet in Brisbane would view my ad. I made sure I mirrored all of these settings to make sure that I was comparing apples to apples.

This got me thinking about how much market share Google really has and if in fact it is worth perusing the other engines for traffic. My impressions from media and internet exposure I would have said that Google had about 70% market share followed by yahoo then Bing then the others...

Here are the finding …. In 2006 ! (Based on amount of searches) Google had 43.47%, Yahoo 28.8%, MSN 12.8. Now in 2008 we see a dramatic change, Google has 66.44%, Yahoo 20.59%, MSN, 5.16%. Now for present day Google has a whopping 90.77%, Yahoo 4.12%, MSN now called BING just 3.41 %

The Answer is simple, 90.77% Google is the clear winner, put all of your marketing efforts here... for now at least anyway :-)

In light of the recent iPad release that has been covered in abundance on any design related blog, I thought I’d share a multimedia tablet concept I’ve found. The MacView has got to be the coolest concept I have seen for a tablet with two touch screens, possibly even cooler than the iPad itself!

I’ve come across this amazing online tool and just loved it, as I’m sure you will! Odosketch allows anyone to sketch incredible creations using their digital canvas, online. It’s papery textures and life-like brush effects that make you forget you’re using a computer.

The website also features a playback feature that literally recreates a drawing from an empty canvas to the final piece, animating each brush strokes the drawer’s made. Just by watching this amazing drawing techniques can be revealed.

It’s a community based application, so sketchers can sign-in to their own private collection of work and browse other recent sketches from other artists.

http://sketch.odopod.com/

A peek at some branding for a new client we were commissioned to undertake. Group Training Association is an industry body that represents 34 Group Training Organisations around Queensland and Northern Territory. They were brave enough to recognise that a brand refresh was required. We created a bold corporate logotype representing the one entity (GTA) encircling the two other entities (the Employers and the Trainees) seeking (radar-like waves) and finding each other, which is represented in them overlapping within the main (GTA) circle.