The BBC Radio 4 Today show spoke about the serious problem people are now facing in the UK which has been caused by the modern living styles people have adopted resulting in major storage problems within people’s homes. Most shockingly many people do not even have enough storage space for basic day-to-day items and are storing items like their food shopping in their cars.

We saw this as an opportunity to write a press release and put our client Basement Living into the limelight!

Brick technology have a dedicated Web Editor working full time as part of our internet marketing team and so the content was created and then sent for release. Once accepted the press release was then made live and this was where it all got very exciting.

Everyone was checking to see who was picking it up and where the press release was being distributed – then BINGO! We were astounded to see that Yahoo News had taken our release for use on their site and we couldn’t have been happier!

Here are just a few of the places the press release was distributed to:

• Yahoo News
• One News
• Digital Blog

Press releases are great for making an impact now! Already we have seen an increase in the number of visitors to Basement Living but in reality press releases are only successful when carried out effectively and at the right time; timing is everything!

Brick technology really did Basement Living proud this week and got them some fantastic results. More of our clients are enquiring about press releases and how they can help give them a boost.

Press Release Titled:

Basement Living Ltd Responds to BBC Radio 4 Today Show Broadcast Concerning the UK Having Problems with Storage Space By Presenting the Solution of Basement Conversion

There was nothing more pleasing than seeing our hard work pay off and for the press release to get the uptake it deserves. We will be checking back in on Monday to see how it is progressing but the real icing on the cake for us was seeing our client feature on Yahoo News and Digital Blog.

For more information then please contact us on 01254 277190 or email our Editor and discuss your requirements today at h.pearson@brickweb.co.uk

Article source: http://www.brickweb.co.uk/news/2012/may/brick-press-release-makes-yahoo-news.html

Brick technology web design has come up with some useful hints and tips concerning recommendations on LinkedIn:

If you do not ask you do not get

Do not wait for someone to provide you with a recommendation because the chances are you will either be waiting for a long time or else you will not get one. What you need to do is politely request someone to recommend you but you need to make this request personal.

Ask them to recommend you for something which you worked on together like a big project otherwise you could end up with something very general which do sadly look like you forced the person to write something.

Alternatively ask them to write about something that happened as a result of you working together like sales increasing or major contracts being acquired.

Be selective and do not ask everyone

Sending out a blanket request to all of your connections is never a good idea and should be avoided. Not only are these extremely impersonal but in reality you may have not worked with all these people close enough.

You regularly see recommendations where a person has been recommended for something which is irrelevant and these are the types of recommendations which are just there for the sake of having one.

Recommendations with comments such as “he/she is a nice person and was really good to talk to” should be avoided because they stand out a mile and are not the types of comments to add to your professional business profile page.

Never ignore a request from someone else for a recommendation

If someone sends you a request for a recommendation from you but you do not know them too well never just ignore them. You should reply and give them feedback just saying thanks for the request but at this time you are not in a position to comment.

Tell them the truth that you haven’t worked with them close enough to recommend their work but if this arises in the future then please feel free to contact you back. That way you have been polite and not left them wondering whether or not you would recommend.

You should never just write something on LinkedIn as a recommendation just because you want to be polite. Instead you should be straight or else they will end up with a general comment which in reality is better left off their profile anyway.

Take care when your recommend

Whilst it is really good to feature some fantastic recommendations what you need to avoid is having your whole work force all recommending one another. It looks fixed, cheesy and adds very little to the recommendation no matter how fantastic it sounds.

What you need to bear in mind is that who you recommend will show up on their profile once they accept it but it also shows on your profile that you have recommended them and wrote one.

If people see them recommending you and you recommending them back and then you recommending another member of your team and them recommending you back it can all get a bit suspicious!

Regularly make adaptations and changes to recommendations

This isn’t something which occurs often but sometimes there might be a reason as to why you wouldn’t want to be associated with someone and therefore you need to withdraw a recommendation.

In order to remove a recommendation all you need to do is go to your profile and click on the “recommendations you have made” then here you will view them when your profile has been linked in and you can easily remove it.

Within this same area you may wish to remove a recommendation which someone has given you whereby in reality you no longer wish to be associated with. You can remove this here too as well as correct any spelling mistakes.

Always say Please and Thank You

This one goes without saying however you would be surprised how many people are not polite when requesting a recommendation or when they have received a recommendation. What you need to remember is when you receive a recommendation you are given the option to return the favour and write one back.

As mentioned earlier you shouldn’t write one unless you’re comfortable doing so. Remember you can always submit one further down the line if you do not feel its right at this point.

With this in mind however you need to ensure that when someone sends you a recommendation you do reply to them and say Thank You. It is common courtesy and general politeness.

For more information then please contact Brick technology on 01254 277190 or email infobrickweb.co.uk.

Article source: http://www.brickweb.co.uk/news/2012/may/what-are-linkedin-recommendations.html

Most recently 1,000 mums and their children were questioned in order to see how social media has penetrated their family life and how it has affected their mother and child relationships. According to the questionnaire more families now have three generations on a social media site such as Facebook or Twitter.

From those who were questioned more than 75% of mums said that they would accept a friend request from their child but just 43% if children said they would do the same. What is interesting is that twice as many children and mums – 18 to 19% said they would have to hide some photos or other information before taking the plunge and accepting a request.

It would seem that teenagers are shyer about broadcasting their family connections via social media and nearly twice as many mums as children, 29% to 16% said that they would use public messages to communicate with family members.

Teenagers would much rather use private messages than public comments and this shows too in the figures in that 39% of teenagers would private message compared with 31% of mums.

What is worrying slightly for parents is that 66% of the teenagers would hide things from their mums on social media sites but only 34% of mums would hide things on their social network from their teenage children.

Brick technology would like to know your experiences of having family members on your social networking sites. Have you got yourself into trouble through the social media? How many generations of your family are on there and if you won’t accept your family members what are your reasons?

Leave your comments below in our social media comment box; we are looking forward to hearing your stories and comments on the topic of family members on your social networks.

Article source: http://www.brickweb.co.uk/news/2012/may/mum-and-gran-are-on-facebook.html

A 140 character service based on sms message character limits in the UK alone a massive 80% of users are active on mobile which isn’t surprising at all. Twitter emerged at a very critical point when many other social media services were struggling to make the transition into the mobile device world.

Since its launch Twitter has boosted itself and become a well-known brand but not only this, Twitter has also provided a platform for other companies to create their own brand and to target global audiences. 140 brands within the UK are active on Twitter as advertisers since the Promoted Products was launched. Well-known brand Cadbury used Twitter as the platform to raise awareness for the re-launch of popular chocolate bar Wispa.

Twitter has been so successful because it gives brands and people a voice, they can connect on a personal level with their customers and share information, discounts, deals, have conversations with customers as well as the most important – listen to what customers have to say about them!

The growth of Twitter has been amazing and there are now around 30 employees in the London office and more positions which need filling. Their main goal is to help users to be able to locate the most relevant content for them at any given moment in time.

Every single day 340 million Tweets go through the platform! With so much information going through the platform on a daily basis it is important that this is organised and presented to the user in a convenient way and Twitter does this really well.

Who knows where the boundary lies and what the future holds for Twitter! We just know one thing its certainly going to be a positive future and we cannot wait! It will completely revolutionise internet marketing and how this is carried out.

For more information then please contact us on 01254 277190 or email info@brickweb.co.uk.

Article source: http://www.brickweb.co.uk/news/2012/may/twitter-reached-10-million-active-users.html

For small businesses who didn’t have the funds to be able to run huge advertising campaigns they bought into link building schemes so they could appear on the search results and now because of their spammy sites they are being pushed back down the results.

Link building is not a substitute for an internet marketing plan but with all these confusing animals getting in the way what can you do without being penalised? Brick technology shed some light on the situation of how to generate links without annoying Google:

Offline Link Building

This is something which people often overlook but things like sponsoring your kids football team and getting your name on their football shirts for cheap might be a great way just to build some awareness. You may get links from the football league’s website and it gives you an excuse to take some pictures of the team for your Facebook business page and then connect with parents to get them to tag into them. This brings us onto the next idea which we have had for link building…

Do Something Good in the Community

We are not talking about going around and making all the elderly people their tea! Oh no what we are talking about is to maybe run a fundraiser for a charity which is local. Organise an event which the whole community can be involved in and everyone can do their bit but if you organise it then you can get your company name branded everywhere raising awareness whilst doing something really special. Some of the newspapers locally may even give you a link which is great for SEO.

Get Involved in your Business Association

This is a great way to network with other businesses, get word of mouth recommendations and get some fantastic links and citations from this. This benefits your business association as well as every single member because you can all help to market one another.

Run a Competition or Contest

Competitions and contests get attention because people have the chance to win something. Get a price or even get involved in a competition or contest and donate a competition prize – one of your products which are branded. This will generate lots of interest and people who enter obviously want the prize so if they do not win they may be tempted to purchase anyway. It’s all about putting your brand, products and services into the public eye and a competition prize doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive or cost a lot as many often think.

Make Some Media Productions

It is so easy nowadays to create your own low-cost media productions but one of the easiest things to do is to create your own video and then share this around locally, nationally and globally through say Twitter and Facebook.

There are a number of ways in which you can link build however; you need to stop thinking of search engine optimisation as some secret black magic like that found in the Harry Potter films. SEO is simply something to compliment your internet marketing plan.

Do not worry about those Penguins and Pandas; come to Brick technology web design and let us handle all of your link building as part of your internet marketing team.

For more information then please contact us on 01254 277190 or email infobrickweb.co.uk.

Article source: http://www.brickweb.co.uk/news/2012/may/link-building-for-googles-penguin-and.html

Nicola Brookes, a 45 year old Brighton resident is not against Facebook but all she wants is for Facebook to be made to comply and should this occur it would be the first of its kind within the UK. As part of Facebook being made to comply it will mean that fake users who create a profile in her name can be prosecuted.

Unfortunately she was accused of being a paedophile and had death threats directed at her on Facebook after she left a supportive comment on an X-Factor singer’s page.

“They started getting very personal, looking at my Facebook account, and talking about my appearance, my age and my illness. I hadn’t invited any of it, but they ganged together and started inciting a sort of public hatred of me,” Brookes told The Telegraph.

It got so bad that a fake profile was created in her name where by explicit messages were sent to young girls. Since this occurrence she has contacted the police as well as Facebook but no action has been taken.

“A criminal offence has been committed and the police should be involved hunting down these perpetrators, but no such assistance is provided,” she said.

Now with lawyers involved they have stated that the police target trolling cases only when a personality in the public eye is involved but they have defended themselves saying that unfortunately it is often difficult to trace anonymous activity back to the perpetrator.

Twitter users have in the past been brought to court for racist comments and inappropriate comments so why not on Facebook too?

A landmark case within the UK if this goes through the courts then it could have lasting effects on social media use in the country. This case is within the UK but within the US a similar case was brought to court and those involved received $14million in damages after abusive comments were posted onto a social forum.

As mentioned this will be the first of its kind within the UK but another recent case showed a judge rule that defendants could be summoned to court via Facebook. We may be entering a new era of Facebook users being served on the social network for their online conduct. Only time will tell what will happen but in regards to social media networks it is safe to say they are impacting many lives on a daily basis.

Article source: http://www.brickweb.co.uk/news/2012/may/facebook-taken-to-court.html

Over the last year there has been a vast increase in the number of e-commerce websites and Brick technology has been part of making many of these projects a reality. We have had a number of huge success stories from our clients and now we are going to be running a workshop to help more of our clients to double their online business.

Come along and join our team on either Tuesday 29^th May or Wednesday 30^th May 2012 and uncover our top five tips on getting the most from your website and doubling that all important bottom line!

This will be a two hour workshop where we will be able to show you how to increase your visitors and then in turn you can increase conversions. What you will learn is how to get quality customers to your site which will not increase your bounce rate and they will stick around on site, browse through product pages or gain information in order to get a sale or a query phone call and then close down the sale.

Brick technology expects that this will be a very popular workshop as it is applicable to all our clients; who wouldn’t want to increase their sales?

We chose to put the workshop over two days in order to accommodate demand and so if you do not want to be disappointed then book now!

For more information then please contact us on 01254 277190 or email Hayley on hayley.pearson@brickweb.co.uk.

Article source: http://www.brickweb.co.uk/news/2012/may/double-your-online-business.html

Last week saw the launch of the new Galaxy SIII and it is Samsung’s flagship Android smartphone which is planned to take the mobile market by storm! It features a 4.8 inch Super AMOLED screen, a 1.4GHz Exynos 4 Quad processor, 8 Megapixel camera, 32GB of internal storage and a range of new voice, eye tracking and software features which is going to make it so easy for people to share content with friends, make calls and find new information.

Now mobile accounts for 10% of all internet usage worldwide; there is a rise in demand and ownership of smartphones and tablets and so for Samsung to be the official Smartphone manufacturer for the London 2012 Olympics will be key to this product launch of the Samsung SIII.

What is even better is that specially for the Olympic Games 2012 Samsung are going to be launching a limited edition Galaxy S III Olympic Handset and Visa have already shown interest in the NFC capabilities of the handset and is bundling a special themed version of its payWave Android application (in partnership with Lloyds TSB) to offer contactless payments.

As part of the contactless payments there will be 140,000 contactless terminals available across the UK. Everything from taxis to retailers and the Olympic Park have all been outfitted with its technology.

The new Samsung Galaxy S III and the contactless payments at the Olympic Games 2012 is going to completely revolutionise how people purchase an item. They will simply hold their NFC enabled phone in front of one of the cardless readers to purchase an item and the mobile app will not need interation for payments under £15.00 however, anything above £15.00 will require a postcode.

Users will also be able to check a list of their recent transactions and view their balance in real-time. We are extremely excited for the progress of NFC payments and are excited for what this will mean for e-commerce websites and online sales through mobile devices.

Article source: http://www.brickweb.co.uk/news/2012/may/samsung-galaxy-siii-is-the-official.html

What is so special and different about this new algorithm is that this one has not focused upon the quality of search results but rather it has placed focus upon penalising and removing any value from websites which appear to have manipulating link profiles and are in effect violating Google Guidelines.

Currently if you look at a set of search results then the number one result could be the best result quality wise however, if it is manipulating the search results then Google is not going to keep it at number one. Instead through the Penguin algorithm they will downgrade this and place it further down the results because of that particular sites engagement in bad link practices, manipulation of the links and for things like purchasing links.

If you are hit by Google Penguin then there are two things which can happen:

• Penalty – If Google are 99.9% sure that it is you and your site which is engaging in the bank link practices then you will receive a penalty.
• Notification – If Google are not sure that it is you specifically but rather you’re a great site and you have just been ranking on some shoddy links from devalued websites which Google are now not going to count or shouldn’t have counted then you will receive notification and you will need to get better quality links.

This new Google Algorithm is proving that Google is not tolerating black hat SEO practices and they are prepared to make the results temporarily worse in order to ensure that people and SEO experts now follow the rules and guidelines set out. For quite some time now we have not had an update like this and so this is the first time which Google has released a new Algorithm not focused on quality.

Some of the worst spam has been affected which is good and means that some total junk has now been eradicated and sites with obvious participation in link networks have been penalised too which is fair.

It is people within the marketing and services industries which have been hit the worst inclusive of SEO providers, web design companies and marketing and advertising services. Businesses which have been using items such as “internet marketing Blackburn” are being penalised.

These are the types of results being hit heavy and this is probably because people who operate within the field of marketing services have correlation with people who are getting the kind of link spam to their websites which Google hit hard they are connected to. We have already seen items such as penalization for links from client pages, keywords into the footer even in light form, items which in effect is not true spam but it’s a light manipulative action.

As mentioned this Penguin Algorithm will focus on manipulative link profiles, links which are pointing to your site and website pages but also where you link to and what link schemes, if any that you are involved within.

The problem comes because there have been a number of updates occurring at the same time:

• Panda
• Hacked Domains Bug
• 53 Outlined Changes by Google Search Quality

All of the above has caused the search results to be quite bouncy! It is hard to see which update or algorithm you have been affected by and whether you have been hit by Google Penguin specifically. You need to go through and check them all thoroughly to see which guidelines you break.

Google Penguin is not confirmed as yet to have a rolling update like say Google Panda. What is quite safe to say is that it could be here for a while because Google have set up the reconsideration request form on their website for people who feel they have been wrongly hit and had pretty clean links and say were not participating in link schemes.

Normally Google analysis is to improve the search results quality but this Algorithm hasn’t been designed to do this. Rather it has been designed to get people to simply follow Google guidelines and to remove the value from manipulative link schemes. They simply want people to follow white hat practices but there is a twist!

Many have already commented on sites which look horrendous and are ranking for items like “viagra”. In theory these are simply websites which have expired or are empty and parked domains but mostly they could be websites where spammers will test their link building “stuff” on and then they are not caught by Google Penguin.

Sometimes these sites are not caught because everything link building wise is fresh and probably links have only been built 3 days ago and so 3^rd party sites like SEOmoz haven’t caught up. In addition to this these sites block crawlers or redirect crawlers so we cannot see their link profiles.  

We do not advocate or want anyone to get the idea that by link spamming and black hat practices in the worst form will get them to rank. The real message is that Google is still caring and is willing to make sacrifices in order to get people, web masters SEO experts to participate in white hat practices they take aggressive action against manipulative link building.

Go through the normal practices what you would do when you are hit with a “you have been engaging in manipulative link building emails”  to remove all the links and get back a reconsideration request back to Google, show good faith and disclose in full what you have been doing and how you have corrected this.

They haven’t caught everything yet but they will – will you be caught out?

For more information then please contact Brick technology on 01254 277190 or email info@brickweb.co.uk.

Article source: http://www.brickweb.co.uk/news/2012/may/google-penguin-the-new-algorithm.html

The answer is probably or rather hopefully the customised web design because you chose to spend more time on this looking around. You do not need us to tell you that website design and website development has changed a vast amount throughout the years. For the best results a company should chose customised web design so that it is specific to their needs and requirements.

Brick technology fully understands that no two companies can have the exact same requirements and needs for a web design which is why you will not find any templates because we simply create your website from scratch. Although in some cases companies can be similar and we will show off other web designs through our portfolio which may be similar to your requirements none will match exactly what you need.

The age old saying of “you get what you pay for” is very applicable to web design. Yes there are other companies out there who are cheaper but take a look at the results they have achieved for their clients. Custom web design services aren’t the cheapest option for web design but it is most certainly the best option.

There are a lot of freelance web designers out there who may offer as mentioned cheaper web design however, there are a lot of cutting edge tools and techniques which are required and these items come at a high price or need to be custom made which makes it highly unlikely that a freelance web designer will possess these.

Choosing a web design company like Brick technology web design, Lancashire will equip a company will all the tools they need. We are a full digital agency with services in web design, internet marketing and media production which our customers can take full advantage of. If you are a reputed, respected and serious company or business then make sure your web design reflects this.

For a world class design, specific to your needs and requirements why not come in for an informal meeting about what it is you want and let Brick technology present you with a proposal. There is no obligation meeting we will simply find out what it is you require, let you meet our team and then leave the decision in your hands following the proposal.

If you require any information or would like to book then please call us on 01254 277190 or email info@brickweb.co.uk.

Article source: http://www.brickweb.co.uk/news/2012/may/custom-web-design.html