Rather than just offering to tweet for people or set up a Facebook account, we’re going a bit deeper. We’re giving clients a choice of exactly how much they want us to do and then providing the training for them to do the rest – or even all of it.

What makes it more interesting is that there are funding packages available to allow clients to go down the social media marketing route. We can advise on how to get hold of this cash.

As well as the use of social media, we’ll look at overall strategies, specific campaigns and how it can fit in with your existing marketing efforts. We can also bring in search engine optimisation and emal marketing along the way.

We’ll keep you up to date here and on the Socialite page.

The initial conclusion you might jump to would be that websites are obsolete and the big brands are now just relying on Facebook. It’s true that your average non-geek internet user could happily have all their online communications, web searching, video viewing, gaming, news etc. needs serviced without moving away from Facebook, with their laptop next to them on the sofa whilst watching telly. Do some people just think Facebook IS the internet? It’s certainly less complicated – a single login (not even that if you set your browser to remember the passwords) and it’s all there. More importantly, is that what Lynx, Carlsberg, Ford, Pepsi et al think that you think.

I actually did what I was supposed to do (for once) and followed the herd to Facebook. I chose Lynx as a example (facebook.com/lynxeffectuk). Instead of seeing the brand’s website duplicated on Facebook, the landing page is dedicated to the campaign that the TV ad is part of. 236,000 likes. The updates from this are fed back into the “proper” website as well as a Twitter and YouTube Feed…and everything, of course, is “liked” and shared by those 236,000 Facebook users.

Facebook hasn’t replaced the website, it’s just another way into people’s heads. By using a familiar environment and changing your message accordingly you can get a more subtle, finely tuned message to a set of customers than a one-size-fits-all website. Facebook allows a different kind of interaction with an audience, more ways to discuss and share things and it happens pretty much instantly. If you do it right your target customers are not only potential buyers but a potential (and free) marketing team who will do your work for you.

The Cicada Principle and Why it Matters to Designers

Web design, ecommerce and branding.

The Templar Knights Partnership was formed in September 2010 to promote the Knights Templar City of Tomar, in Portugal.

The partnership wants to do this in a number of ways:

Work with the local tourist board to promote Tomar
Boost local business by selling wine from the region
Provide an information service and publish guide books
Run guided tours for visitors

10th Planet were asked to give the project an identity and create a website which looked modern and was easy to use but which reflected the deep history and heritage of Tomar and the fascinating history of the Knights Templar.

The website is the hub of the operation and covers:

Information about the partnership
Several photo galleries
A shop to sell local products, guide books, wine and tours
A historical resource

We decided that a WordPress installation would allow the partnership to constantly update and renew the content and also offer an ecommerce and photo gallery solution.

templarknights.eu

Junction Arts is recognised for high quality rurally-based participatory arts work that changes peoples lives, builds confidence and skills, increases communication and supports community and personal empowerment. The Derbyshire-based organisation’s vision is to increase and extend access to high quality arts through inspirational, innovative participatory arts programmes and projects via partnership and collaboration within rural areas of the East Midlands.

In a time where arts funding is a constant victim of cuts, Junction Arts needed to publicise the success and importance of their work and were finding their existing website was neither engaging its visitors or conforming to the styles defined in their recent rebranding excersise.

10th Planet were called in to provide a complete visual overhaul and to add several new levels of functionality and interactivity for the site’s visitors and Junction Arts themselves. These included:

• Full content management and control for Junction Arts
• Blog and news updates
• Project viewer
• Past projects archive
• Photo gallery
• Video area and YouTube integration
• Social media integration
• Viewer contributions and comments

We also consolidated the wide array of conflicting domain names, email addresses and hosting packages to all operate under a single name:

www.junctionarts.org

We’ve just launched the brand new Eazitools website.

A complete rebuild of our original design from three years ago, the site now uses a totally custom WordPress theme with an integrated ecommerce system to provide a shop, blogs, news, product photo galleries and social media integration.

eazitools.com

School for Startups is the brainchild of former Dragon’s Den dragon, serial entrepreneur and angel investor Doug Richard. It is the UK’s leading provider of business training for entrepreneurs, providing accelerated business training to help entrepreneurs launch more successful startups and run more successful businesses.

Their “Made in 48 Hours” bootcamps are being held around the country and aim to get businesses onto the web with convincing ecommerce and online identities…all from two days of intensive seminars and workshops.

10th Planet have been selected to provide post-event consulting support to the bootcamp attendees and to help turn their ideas and seedling projects created over the two days into reality.

Made in 48 Hours on the School for Startups website

Well done to us.

In the run up to the release of the DVD, Sheffield Vision came back to us to update TheBeatisTheLaw.com with the new and finalised branding. We’ve been with this project from the beginning, so were happy to be on board to take it to it’s final incarnation on the web.

This time the root of the core design came from The Designer’s Republic, the influential design studio that set up in the middle of the documentary’s focus period, rather than Martin Bedford, like last time.

The main challenge when turning a print design into something that will work on the web is making everything work within a medium that you as a designer has very little, if any control over how the viewer will see it in the end. You then have to factor in elements of usability, flow and user experience, all without sacrificing the aesthetic quality of the original design… Fortunately, we’re well versed in that

The site’s content was all in place from the last version of the site, so it was important that it all stayed in place and the cross over between versions was perfectly smooth as nether us nor Sheffield Vision wanted to see any downtime on the site. This meant having to readjust a lot of content to fit into a very different form factor, as well as moving and reorganising the structure, all without changing the site’s internal structure, to avoid losing the PageRank.

What interests me is the fact that procrastination is almost universal in people who are normally described as “creative types”.Why? Douglas Adams used to famously avoid having to write by having baths. Several a day, in fact. Apparently his publisher once commented that he never once managed to hit a deadline…but he always smelt really nice.

As designers, we are surrounded by some very dangerous distractions. Computers. The most tempting, time-sucking creations ever made are, by a cruel twist of fate, the very things we are also supposed to use to get our work done with.

I took games off my Mac years ago. It just had to be done. However, since then the internet has sneaked up on us. Facebook, Twitter, the hundred blogs you feel you need to keep up with. Email, iChat. All of these toys with their shiny, glossy icons inviting you to come and play, and all with built-in justifications: Facebook could be helping you meet your next client. Blogging is a great marketing tool. Email is easier than phoning someone. That retro video PhotoShop plugin you just spent ten minutes downloading will, if mastered be great for some job in the future. Probably.

But it’s not all computers. There are endless possibilities for analogue procrastination as well. Never is our office tidier or more organised than when a big project has just begun. Well – you need to clean up, clear a space, get organised for the new work. And go and get some crisps and chocolate to see you through. Maybe the skirting boards need levelling off a bit. A new shelf to put all the new work on. Anything, in fact, to avoid doing the actual work itself (which, of course will be great when it is done, so no need to worry, really).

Wikpedia has some really scary things to say on the subject. Phrases like “psychological disorder”, “mental health” and “low self-esteem” kind of made me decide to go and do something else and maybe read that page later.

My own theory is that creativity is somehow in need of a jump start which can only be achieved with a buildup of adrenalin. Designers need the utter terror of a looming deadline in order to kick into action whatever part of the brain that supplies us with the instinctive solution to a problem without all that tedious thinking and planning that normal people have to go through. Also the act of thinking of something completely unconnected to what you are supposed to be somehow allows a hidden part of your mind to work away undisturbed and to quietly deliver the answer – usually at the strangest of times.

You could say rather than a negative aspect, procrastination is practised by people who have a supreme confidence in their own abilities. People who know they’ll always think of something at the last moment and know enough about how their own heads work to just let it get on with it automatically.

Either that or creatives are just people who are good at working out the bare minimum of work needed to complete a task so they can fill the rest of the day on Facebook.

Who knows? Not me. Anyway, there’s a deadline looming here so, naturally, I’m just going to fill the screenwash up in my car and maybe go and buy some crisps.