Secret to light fluffy pancakes... add a little beer to the mix!

Dorset Food Blogger Wayne from the Credit Munch Blog invited his readers to share their Pancake recipes today. How did we do ? Well we came up with two recipes which were more than flour, egg, water, milk, sugar and lemon.

Our two pancake stars of the day are Dan & Alex with the below savoury pancake dishes:

Fit as a butchers Dog Pancake

Fill your traditional pancake with grated cheddar, grilled mushrooms and butchers ham. Then serve it with a side of Tomato soup and voila pancake-tastic.

Mushroom Surprise

Fry off 250g of mushrooms in sunflower oil
Add vegetable stock (200ml)
Add 4 spring onions finely sliced
Let the stock simmer and become thick (syrupy)
Add a couple of spoonfuls of cream fresh
Done!

For more pancake recipe ideas visit the Credit Munch blog post simply titled “Pancakes” and discover some more sweet and savoury pancake ideas.

While you're waiting for your pancake batter to cool (that is my top tip), why not find out a bit more on Pancake day traditions from the UK and the World ! over at the BBC Good Food website.

Enjoy your evening and your Pancakes....

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Fresh idea: Host a dinner party for charity

We subscribe to the latest news from Bullying Online, the UK’s leading anti-bullying charity and number one resource for people using search engines to find reliable information on a variety of bullying issues. Bullying Online recently let their subscribers know about a great new fundraising website, so sharing with you in their words what this latest fund raising innovation is all about.

“It's called Dinner4Good and allows you to raise money for us simply by doing something you enjoy - having friends round for dinner! To see how it works just go to www.dinner4good.com/bullyinguk. From here you can create and send personalised email invitations – takes less than 5 minutes. Your guests can then accept and donate online, so there's no awkwardness over asking for money or hassle of collecting cash. You can all see who's coming and how much is being raised – in a click. Dinner4Good takes care of everything, including claiming the Gift Aid which reduces the admin for us!
All you have to do is hold the dinner, eat, drink and enjoy yourselves! “

If you are a UK charity the Dinner4Good website appears to be a great way to potentially earn new funds and provide your supporters with a new opportunity to raise money whilst having fun. There are no set up or monthly fees to the charity and to remove doubt (due to charity sites receiving bad press) and encourage sign up, we were pleased to see that Dinner4Good have been transparent on who they partner with and how much money the charity will receive (for operating costs to run the site).

As a means of promoting this charitable site, if you are interested in holding a Dinner Party for charity or you are a UK charity looking for a new way of fundraising, we would encourage you to find out more about how the Dinner4Good website works. We wish all the best to the founder of Dinner4Good website Bryan Sergeant, great idea, great initiative, well explained, good work.

If you are a UK charity, that would like to make your own website more interactive to encourage participation in raising money from within your own site talk to our Sales team and we can bounce around some ideas.

Author: Micky Pain

Setting a geographic target for your site with Google

Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa from the Google Webmaster Tools team talks on this video about Google’s GeoTargeting Tool. A really useful video to explain to those who wish to target users in a particular geographic location and those that don’t.

Watch the video to find out how you can use the Google geographic target tool to provide Google with information that will help them to determine how your site appears in their search results, and also improve your sites search results for geographic queries (limiting the scope of the search to a particular country).




Author: Sarah Griffiths

Rocktime’s Book of the month: Gary Vaynerchuk’s CRUSH IT!

If you want to find out what you are really passionate about, then you must read this book, or if you already have a passion and want to release all you know to the world then this book must go to the top of your Amazon wish list.

This is not just a business book (Social Media Strategy) it also seeks to explain how you can use your own DNA to change your life, personally and professionally.

Following on from the strap line “Why now is the time to cash in on your passion” Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee), explains to his readers how you can communicate your passion / your personal brand using the correct content and whatever media format of channel that are the best fit for your audience.

Based on his experience he provides a step by step manual on how you can execute your own social media strategy and how he used social media and social networking to build a huge business, see Wine Library TV.

Something we especially liked was the line “Anything is better than zero”, where he explains to his readers not to get hung up on the Analytics and to go with their gut. Great advice on building your business and your personal brand is packed throughout and refreshingly Gary often admits to his contradictions and invites the reader to explore certain areas further, or to contact him. This is a great reflection of the personal brand he has built.

What is really really engaging about this book are his insights and tips based on real business examples and personal experience, he shares with his readers insights into how he built his business and because he writes with such passion and flair you really don’t mind him promoting himself every now and again.

Gary’s enthusiasm to social media strategy is totally infectious, he is an extremely motivated guy, you will never read a book so quick, and if you are as passionate as us about what you do, you will want to read it again.

Well done Gary we are looking forward to the next insightful book from you, and as they say in America “You Rock”. If you do make it over the UK for a book tour, let us know and we will gladly give you a pat on the back, the only feedback we will give is placing image of your book on your site for us then to seed out, or have a "I read this book it was awesome" badge. Oh and Gary if you are reading this (and sure you will be) you have inspired me to get a FlipCam, what have you done !!!

Find out more about what you can learn from the book here

People in the UK order your copy of Crush IT from Amazon


Author: Sarah Griffiths

What makes a video go Viral??

Have you ever wondered what makes a video become extremely popular and go viral online? if so join the club, as so have we.

We believe that for a video to touch the heart and minds of the audience then it needs to firstly consider the audience, giving focus to what images would connect with the audience to move them into action/thought. Equally first the video should have a solid understanding of what the brand is, to give across a clear brand message. Cadbury’s executed this well – with their “Glass and a half full productions” subscribe to them from their YouTube channel here.

A viral that works won’t leave people thinking “so what!” “I don’t get it”, it will have the ability to be understood and liked/loved even, making the audience go “oh right clever” or “wow that is amazing” "how moving" or simply as a fan of the subject matter “cool”.

It is these connections with the audience that make the viewer of the video want to share and pass it on, “Simples” :

View the Compare the Meekat Bloopers Video here:



We would love to make our own viral video at Rocktime, we have our video production and brand agency connections and it is on the “things to try board”. Our vision would be to capture the hearts and minds of our clients, potential clients, possible thought “Education in a no nonsense/jargon way with some talking pebbles”. Sounds crazy doesn’t it, great, watch this space.

Mashable presented a list of the 10 most innovative viral video ads of 2009 and share a similar view point on what makes a video go viral, they also mention that:

“This year’s Top 10 is certainly a glimpse of how the viral video ad business is evolving, and as marketers, we can learn from that evolution”

View the Viral video ads Mashable favoured in 2009 here.

If you know us and have any thoughts of a hilarious thing that we could do as a Viral send us a Tweet.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

It's all about the Lego

Lego has certainly been one of our favourite topics of conversation this month, after we shared our Love for the Lego Click site at the start of Feb, we keep falling over more lego videos on YouTube.

Sharing with you two of our favourites a video animation of lego bricks and a geek robot lego machine, enjoy.

Geek Video of the month

February's Geek Video of the month promotes the new website Lego Click, which seeks to let people share their LEGO photos to inspire others. The video gives you a brief glimpse of what is in store for you if you visit the site, visitors can also visit the iPhone application (LEGO Photo) from here, enabling you to immortalize precious moments in Lego, check it out.

A great site for brand engagement and really inspires us to get some lego in the office.