October 30, 2007
Its nice when our clients get some offline media coverage.
William Coles has just launched his first novel, The Well Tempered Clavier. Terinea overhauled Bills blog site.
“I remember that first weekend in Edinburgh, going up the Crags and watching the sun going down over the Castle - and it just blew me away.” Having worked his way through the ranks from being a staff reporter on The Sun to New York correspondent - at the time of the Monica Lewinsky scandal - William became a political correspondent and a commentator on the royals. But throughout it all, he harboured an ambition to write books so, when he moved to Edinburgh, he resolved to pursue that line.
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=1715832007
The Illicit Still is our first client in Edinburgh since House of Fraser bought Jenners Department Store, to install one of our EPoS solution, commonly referred as touch screen till!
AT THE BAR
PROBABLY the first and possibly the only Edinburgh bar to utilise Facebook, The Illicit Still chronicled its recent overhaul extensively on the social networking site, as well as recruiting most of its staff through its pages.
And what an overhaul. The Brougham Place bar has been completely renovated, resembling its former incarnation in shape and size only.
The Illicit Still has two real ales on tap, with a pint of either Caley 80 Shillings or Deuchars IPA costing a modest £2.50. Their present promotion means you can down a pint of Foster’s Super Chilled for £2.20. A standard glass of wine comes in at £2.65, with a bottle at only £8.
Get in early if you fancy a shot on their Nintendo Wii, which is hooked up to the giant plasma screen.
• The Illicit Still, Brougham Place, Monday-Saturday, 11am-1am, Sunday 12.30pm-1am, 0131-228 2633
http://living.scotsman.com/food.cfm?id=1712522007
October 25, 2007
Its nice when your client blogs about you, even if they are making fun of your mistakes!
William Coles is a experienced journalist who has written for a number of national newspapers such as The Scotsman, The Mail, The Express & Wall Street Journal, here in the UK and New York. A couple of months ago his friend Tim, a coffee morning regular suggested that he should pop along to the coffee morning and see if he could pickup anything that would help to promote his new novel, The Well Tempered Clavier. Two months later William, is a regular blogger, facebooker and I believe uploading his pictures to flickr.
My involvement? Well about a month ago William asked if I could jazz up his existing blog site. So after reading a little bit about the book I started my research. Now for some reason I thought the leading lady was a Indian, when infact she was called India!
“And I’ve got a picture of a really gorgeous Asian girl!” trilled Jamie. “Lovely almond-skin. Just gorgeous. She’ll be perfect!”
“Ahh,” I said, temporizing (William) a little. “Interesting. Tell me, Jamie, why do we want a picture of a gorgeous Asian girl on this web site?”
“Well I thought this guy, the hero of the book, was having a fling with an Indian bird …”
“What?” I said. “What! Have you gone totally insane? She is not some Indian bird, no! Her name happens to be INDIA.”
http://clavierbook.blogspot.com/2007/10/almond-skinned-beauties.html
That’s Journalists for you, I wouldn’t believe a word you read!
October 22, 2007
Dug the dog
Last Thursday I was invited along to a whisky tasting evening hosted by Spencefield Spirit and Mike of Digital Agency. Spencefield Spirit are a small company (Alex and Jane) that sell Sheep Dip and Pigs Nose whisky.
Without the deep pockets of larger competitors, Alex and Jane, along with some help from Digital Agency have been using digital and social media to expose their brands and create a customer experience. For example their whisky featured in the Burning Man festival, they blogged about it and uploaded the photo’s to flickr. Jane mentioned on the companies Facebook group, Sheep Dip Fold about her Christmas Cake recipe, after a number of requests Jane uploaded the recipe to the blog and along with photo’s on flickr.
Alex, Dug and Jane
Before you ask, here are the reasons for the names of their whiskies:-
Sheep Dip
The name came about because British farmers have long referred to whisky as Sheep Dip. There was a time when farmers distilled their own “home-made” whisky and in order to avoid paying taxes to the revenue man hid the whisky in barrels marked “Sheep Dip”. Farmers’ merchants continued this tradition by entering cases of whisky as “Sheep dip” on farmers’ bills and so “pulling the wool” over the farmers wives eyes.
Pigs Nose
The blend contains a high percentage (40%) of malt whiskies, principally from Speyside imbuing the product with their characteristic softness; the name comes from the farming expression “soft as a pig’s nose”
Whisky and Passion
Okay Spencerfield are not going to take on the big boy’s over night, but its important to show the company (Alex and Jane) have a real passion for their brands, that can’t be manufactured or purchased off the shelf (I’ll have 10 blog posts about my business please!). Its probably more important for niche brands such as theirs to show this passion.
So if your a whisky fan, keep an eye out for Sheep Dip or Pig Nose in your local or alternatively purchase some online.
October 18, 2007
Google has recently updated Google Reader to allow you to check the number of readers for each of your RSS subscriptions. Which can be handy feature when faced with cutting back on the number RSS subscriptions you have time to read.
You can also check the popularity of your own blog. This is something I do on monthly basis as a way of measuring our blog development.
Now depending on the way you read it (picture above), I either have 11, 17, 22, 28 or 39 readers who subscribe to the blog using Google Reader. According to Feedburner its 28, but that won’t take into account those who are subscribed using the raw feed not produced by Feedburner. While on the subject, make sure your blog doesn’t make that mistake by seeing my post on WordPress and Feedburner.
Finding the number of readers that use Google Reader?
Okay lets cut to the chase, how do I check the popularity of my blog with Google Reader.
- At the moment this is a closed system, so head over to Google Reader if you don’t already have a free account.
Once logged in, simple click on Add Subscription
Type the name of the blog you wish find out the numbers for and click Add.
Here we have searched for our good friend Mike from Digital Agency. I would say Mike has a nice health 76 readers who read his blog using Google Reader.
Social Google and Facebook
Now what would happen if Google decided to use this metric to determine website rankings? In one easy swoop Google has become a social search engine. Now you can understand why Google doesn’t appear interested in buying Facebook, but would rather compete with it. Google recently purchased Jaiku (Twitter type of service) and Zingku (Facebook for mobiles) maybe Google is up to something with its social networking site, Orkut?
July 27, 2007
Mike, Juliet and Tim
Donald, Andy and Johnny
A good turn out this morning yesterday morning at Edinburgh Coffee Morning - Tim and Juliet, Mike, Donald, Andy, myself and rare visit from Mr Walker!
Couple of topics we covered…
- Juliet asked for some advice about Google Adwords for her business blog, Edinburgh Humanist Weddings. We advise it would be best to improve her natural ranking in her specific search term “Edinburgh Humanist Weddings“ and for the more popular or competitive search phrases (Humanist Weddings) look to use Google Adwords.
- I mention a desktop blogging client might help Tim to time when managing his blog. Unfortunately I don’t have a Mac so I’m not sure which are the best ones, but here is a list anyway…
- For a change we had quick chat about Facebook
- We sell your stuff on eBay shop in Stockbridge
- Norway’s Oil, Charity shops and other non-web/face/techie stuff
Oh and we know have a Group on Facebook!
