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Category: Podcast

Something Inventive 5: Can you make the logo bigger?

  • Ben Kinnaird
  • September 7, 2016
  • Podcast

Al and Ben meet in glorious Bradford on Avon to muse on how children use technology, demanding clients and moving your website over to HTTPS.

Episode sponsored by Be Sociable
Easy-to-follow social media tips and strategy to get noticed by the right people for the right reasons. Nick says “Ben and Helen know everything about every social media”

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Audio edited by Donalize – ‘Goofy Vocal Groove‘ intro music by Dave Girtsman

Something Inventive 4: Stuck in a boot

Ben is joined by Jack McCaughtrie from Core Tree to discuss what makes a tweet engaging, LinkedIn endorsements and getting personal on social media.

Episode sponsored by Be Sociable
Easy-to-follow social media tips and strategy to get noticed by the right people for the right reasons. Nick says “Ben and Helen know everything about every social media”

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Intro Music: ‘Goofy Vocal Groove‘ by Dave Girtsman

Something Inventive 3: Peak Kitten Video

Ben and Al are joined by special guest Nicholas van der Walle from Astute Graphics. Behind his dry humour lies a business mastermind who helps us tackle topics such as click bate headlines, getting external investment, how Brexit might effect marketing and Piccolos!

Episode sponsored by Be Sociable
Easy-to-follow social media tips and strategy to get noticed by the right people for the right reasons.

Something Inventive 2: Recreational GIFs

Ben and Al discuss the benefits of mobile/responsive web design and getting clients involved early in website development. They eventually get round to answering questions on; why keywords don’t show in Analytics, which image formats to use online and setting up monthly reports in Google Analytics.

My appologies for some of the annoying echo and cracking at the end of the audio.

Episode sponsored by Ticked Off
Your internet marketing checklist, free 30 day trial, no credit card needed – Sign up today at ticked-off.com

Something Inventive 1: Little Red Spiders

In our very first episode Ben and Al discuss; the format of their new podcast, finding images to legally use on your blog, what makes a good FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page, adding password protection to WordPress and finally 301 redirects to remove missing pages from your website – We do get into some technical detail in places but nothing too geeky.

Episode sponsored by Ticked Off
Your internet marketing checklist, free 30 day trial, no credit card needed – Sign up today at ticked-off.com

Visual impairment on the web interview

Bik Lee, Digital Media Officer for the RNC (Royal National College for the Blind), explains the importance of making the web accessible for all and why using too many #hashtags in social media is far from helpful.

Find Bik on Twitter @bik_lee, follow @RNC_official or visit www.rnc.ac.uk.

Honesty in design and branding interview

Designer and branding expert Tim Masters and I talk about the importance of honesty in brand and why he started his blog.

Find Tim and the team @MastersTim or visit mastersdesignandbranding.com.

Recorded on Skype with my new Mic.

The Kitchens and Puppy Swarms Interview

I’ve worked with the Sustainable Kitchens team in Bristol for over 2 years now but I wanted to step back and get some perspective from Nicky Spear, head of development and dare I say head of “getting things done”, on how they are developing internal processes to keep up with their fantastic growth.

Find Nicky and the team @itWoodwork or visit sustainablekitchens.co.uk.

Recorded at the Curio lounge in Stroud (I recommend the mid-week breakfast). Crying courtesy of SK co-owner Sam’s baby Eli.

Print Strategy and the Bacon Sandwich Interview

After receiving an intriguing promotional book called “I didn’t know they could do that” from Print Strategy I wanted to find out how well it’s been working for them so got in touch with MD Rob Newton1. We also talked about the future of print and how it’s beneficial to modern marketing.

Follow Print Strategy on Twitter @printstrategy or visit their website printstrategy.eu.

Print strategy book2

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1. This is my first Skype interview, I’ve love to hear what you think of it on Twitter @BenKinnaird.

GDA Deaf Awareness video campaign interview

Another interview for my Epic Win talk at the Going for Growth networking event was with Gemma from Gloucestershire Deaf Association to find out why their Deaf Awareness video campaign was such a success.

Your organisation in 140 characters

Gloucestershire Deaf Association enables deaf and hard of hearing people to live independently, without fear, isolation or barriers. (that’s 132, well done!)

How did you come up with the idea

The idea of the videos was the brainchild of my colleagues James and Reg, both of who star in the videos. Reg is profoundly deaf and James is a fully qualified British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter so both have a very in-depth understanding of where deaf awareness is lacking. We were able to produce the videos thanks to some funding from a grant from the Lloyds TSB Foundation – the videos were the finale of the ‘Money Matters’ project that had been running over the last two years thanks to their funding.

 

What was the intended outcome and did you meet it?

The intention was to get the ball rolling for Gloucestershire to become the most deaf friendly county in Britain. Through the series of videos we hoped to reach as many businesses, groups, individuals as possible with simple and effective ways that could make them and their businesses more deaf friendly. Yes, I think we did, we certainly got the idea of deaf awareness out there thanks to the videos, social media and press coverage.

Was a series of videos better than just one?

I think so, each of the videos had the benefit of being short and concise meaning we could capture people’s attention much more. If we’d put the collection into one I don’t think we would have engaged as many people as we did. The series of videos meant we’ve been able to get across a number of simple messages rather than just one.

What channels (Twitter, Facebook, Email, word of mouth etc) did you promote the videos on? And which worked best?

The videos were uploaded onto Youtube and distributed mainly through Twitter. For us, Twitter offers a much wider audience. Our audience on Facebook is generally people GDA works with, so while it’s valuable they see these videos, given the objectives of the series it was important for us to use whatever means we could to reach a wider audience; local businesses, groups etc. Over the five weeks the five videos were viewed collectively 7,530 times, links to the videos were retweeted 719 times and we received 219 mentions specifically about the videos. Our highest viewed video was ‘Dave the Signer’, our first film which has been viewed over 3,840 times to date. Considering the average number of views for our videos is about 100 these figures are a huge success.

How important is humour in the videos?

We use humour a lot. We’ve found that our audience – mainly Deaf BSL users respond best to something that’s engaging and a little different from the videos that are normally thrusted at them. We get a much better response to the videos when we’ve incorporated Reg’s unique humour into them.

Have you seen an increase in website visitors, followers, likes?

We have yes, our YouTube subscribers have shot up from 11 to 68 at last count. Our Twitter and Facebook followers have both also increased and we’ve noticed a distinct increase in traffic: 24.51% more users while page views went up by 10.68%.

Any unintended consequences?

In response to the videos we’ve been able to make contact with a number of key figures including the Senior Equalities Manager for the NHS, Gloucestershire’s Police & Crime Commissioner as well as being invited to present deaf awareness to local groups.

Why use video over text?

Because video is so much more accessible to a Deaf BSL user. One of the misconceptions about a deaf person is that by writing something down you will break down the oral barrier – I myself used to believe this. However, for a Deaf BSL user, BSL is their first language, English is their second. In comparison to BSL, English is very complex – BSL doesn’t faff about with tenses or words like ‘the’ so to include those in text makes the message very inaccessible to a deaf person, getting these deaf awareness messages across on video meant we were being inclusive to our service users and leading by example.

What have you learnt from the campaign?

We’ve yet to have a full debrief session of the campaign, but personally I would perhaps consider releasing the videos closer to together, I don’t think we needed to have the week gap between each one. I think that way we may have caught people’s attention for longer and have continued the viewing figures of ‘Dave the Signer’ into the other videos.

What’s next?

What isn’t next!! As part of our overall campaign for Gloucestershire to become the most deaf friendly county we will be hosting a pre-election debate on the 16th April where Gloucester’s general election candidate will present their policies to our service users and who in turn, will have an opportunity to quiz them on matters that matter to them – if we can make local politics deaf aware we’re on the right road. We’re also going to be continuing to press for more local businesses to be more deaf aware by taking on board our simple tips and our next big campaign will be a campaign aimed at schools called ‘My Friend Dawn’. Using fun and interactive class room activities we want to make the younger generation more aware of how to be deaf friendly. All this is happening in the next three months so it’s a busy time at GDA!

 

Follow the GDA YouTube Channel, @glosdeaf on Twitter or find out more on their website www.glosdeaf.org.uk.

Exploring Social, an Interview with Dr Cat Arthurs

Dr Cat Arthurs, partner at Towcester Vets in Northampton explains how getting involved in social media and blogging has been amazing opportunity for their partnership leading them to become “go-to” experts appearing on radio and tv.

Find out about Towcester Veterinary Center on Twitter, Facebook or thier website.

Discovering her Bounce an Interview with Nicky Marshall

While on a diving holiday Nicky suffered an accident that changed her life. I find out how she pieced her life back together. She also shares some advice on marketing including the power of 3!

Contact Nicky on Twitter, Facebook or her website.

(We recorded the interview in Chiquito’s restaurant in Bristol and as such there is some background noise)

From Cobol to Conferences an Interview with Joel Hughes

Joel’s worked on main frames, web programming, design and now run’s his own conferences – He’s a true Tinkerer. Ben finds out about his events, accessibility, Mac setup and some advice on running events amongst many other things.

Contact Joel on Twitter, Instagram or his website.

Astute Graphics and the design plugin uprising

Interview with Nick van der Walle, head honcho at Astute Graphics, that has found a niche creating design software plugins for Adobe Illustrator.

We’ve been working with Nick for a few years now but Ben wanted to dig a little deeper into his background and how he’s built a successful company with a predominately US audience from rural Herefordshire.

Nick also takes us through his development process, the importance of a great product and 2 tips.

Contact Nick and his team on Twitter, Facebook or website.

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