Ode to Rocktime for National Poetry Day

In Celebration of National Poetry Day, with this year’s theme of "Home". We spend 35% of our day at the Rocktime Offices, so I decided to write an Ode to Rocktime, sharing with you all here, enjoy:

Ode to Rocktime

In south England, Poole resides,
A digital agency named Rocktime,
Who laid down their creative tech foundations,
Back in nineteen ninety nine.

They offer cutting edge development,
Using the latest tech in unity,
With social media reporting and teaching,
How to create a community.

They design all manner of interactive sites,
To engage and interest your visitors,
Aligning developments with all your objectives,
So that your ROI soars.

A team of developers, designers, accounting,
Not forgetting our search marketing smarties,
Talking design, interactivity, usability,
And integration with all your 3rd parties.

Talk to Rocktime to develop advanced platforms,
For an immersive and interactive site,
They have a number of products in modular development,
Including Logic, Source & Flashlight!


Well, that was fun!

To find out more about National Poetry Day, check out their website, if you would like to take part then the closing date for the National Poetry Competition is the 31st of October.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Geek Video of the month

This months Geek Video of the month is the piece put together exploring the basis behind the YouTube Play Contest.

A collaboration between YouTube and the renown Guggenheim Museum, New York. A phenominal 23,000 submissions have been whittled down to 125 fantastially creative videos from over 91 countries. You can view the shortlisted videos now over on the Youtube Play channel.

Later this month the jury will be picking out their top 20 to be revealed and presented at a special YouTube Play celebration event at the Guggenheim Museum on October 21st. For those of us who don't want to travel quite so far, you'll also be able to find them on youtube.com/play.


Author: Alice Cheetham

The new Google URL shortener website

Last week, Google gave its URL shortening service Goo.gl, its own website, opening the shorten URL service to all. A handy tool for creating short URLS that can be easily shared tweeted or emailed to friends.

The URL shortener has been available in other Google products, Maps, News, Blogger for sometime, and we are pleased that it is now it is open to everyone whether you are logged into Google or not. What we particular like about the URL tool, is the speed to shorten – super quick in comparison to others.

Try it here: http://goo.gl/

Another big positive about the Google URL shortener is that if you sign in with your Google Account and create the shortened link when signed in, Google will provide the history of that link, along with analytics so you can track the traffic.

We have just found out that there will be API in the future, so once this is available, people may want to opt to integrating goo.gl as a choice for shortening links in their sites and applications.

You can even get a QR code for every link you shorten, viewing on the stats page, or appending .qr to any link. To find out why you would want to do this, visit back to this blog in a couple of weeks, where one of our Web Developers (Andy Edwards) will be explaining a bit more about QR (quick response) codes. In summary a QR Code is a bar code that can store much more information and on scan can take you direct to a website (links to Mobile Marketing).

A short explanation about how url shortening works from Craig Sherlock one of our Web Developers at Rocktime:

1) URL to shorten: http://www.rocktime.co.uk
2) A shortened url is created: Goo.gl/Vilj
3) The shortened url is then stored in the database at Goo.gl, along with the real url
4) When someone clicks the shortened url they are taken to Goo.gl
5) Goo.gl sees that /Vilj has been appended to the url and looks in its database for the entry Goo.gl/Vilj
6) Once found it looks at an opposite column (Real URL) and finds http://www.rocktime.co.uk
7) The next column will now increment by a value of 1. This keeps track of the number of visits.
8) Once incremented; the page then redirects the user to http://www.rocktime.co.uk

Find out more about the Google URL Shortener over at the Google Blog:
http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-url-shortener-gets-website.html

If you need any help in using the Google URL shortener or wish to discuss how you can integrate the URL shortener to your online marketing campaigns feel free to contact the Rocktime Flashlight team.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Twitter is rolling out some major new features

Twitter which is signing up 370,000 new users daily on average are redesigning their site to make it easier for users to navigate and find related information, making Twitter much more of an information resource, rather than just a place to network.

This is big news and we can already predict that engagement levels will rise.

Forrester analyst Augie Ray said the Twitter redesign should help improve engagement with users.

"Twitter's new Web functionality is a significant evolution that promises to attract more visits to Twitter.com, improve Twitterers' interactions with content and each other, and ease adoption for Twitter newbies"

Watch the introduction video above and find out more over at the Twitter Blog Post titled "A Better Twitter": http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/better-twitter.html

The influence over numbers argument

The above table from http://www.emarketer.com/, which is backed up by an ExactTarget study, reproduced by eMarketer, assists with the "influence over numbers argument" on Twitter, as it shows that US Twitter user's in April 2010 were far more interactive online, than general internet users.

The results table indicates that US Twitter user’s were more likely than general internet users to post to forums, to write their own blog, comment on blogs and post ratings and reviews.

What this means for brands and companies, is that the people on Twitter are far more likely to be the ones that create the noise online and encourage conversations about a topic elsewhere online.

The ExactTarget study also explored Twitter users’ motivations for following brands and companies on Twitter, the majority wish to get updates on future products (38%) followed by staying informed about company activities (32%). This is followed by finding out about discounts and sales. Pretty interesting chart, and one that is now stuck up in the Social Media Office.

Within the communities we work on for brands we have asked the question, which social networks do you reside? From close review we have identified the above to be the case that "Daily twitter users comment and upload content at least twice as much as average".

We have formed some great, profitable relationships with bloggers on Twitter for clients, profitable in that they provide interest to our clients community groups (we PR them to the community) and they help increase our clients reach for little more than a friendly conversation.

Find out more about the ExactTarget study, including the motivations of Twitter users over at the eMarketer site:

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Geek Video of the month

The Galaxy Tab. Potential iPad contender?

We have talked quite a bit about the iPad on this blog, so we thought to shout about one of the so called challengers to the Apple iPad: introducing “The Galaxy Tab”.

We like the fact that they show a number of scenes on the video which are missing with the Apple devise (walking down the street, riding a bike etc). They are also pushing the most used smart devise features on the video, these being: Navigation, eReading, Web Browsing, Augmented Reality & Video Conference.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab was launched in Berlin on the 2nd of September, read the press release on the Galaxy Tab mini site:
http://galaxytab.samsungmobile.com/press/pressrelease.html

The smart device is being marketed as the 7 inch tablet which brings "more possibilities on the go". If you have any thoughts, we would love to hear them.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

eBay Launch Favourite Charity Campaign

A new eBay for Charity feature allows you to set your favourite charity on eBay, so that you can support them whenever you buy and sell.

To celebrate the launch of ‘My Favourite Charity’, eBay is awarding grants of up to £5,000 to the three charities that receive the most votes as favourite in September.

Visit My Favourite Charity to see which charities Tess Daly, Sharon Osborne, Helen Mirren, Roger Moore, and other celebrities have chosen, and then choose your favourite charity.

Ebay state that: “your contributions have so far raised over £19m in the UK. Along with the benefitting charities, we'd like to thank you for supporting good causes on eBay”.

We are big fans of the layout of the Ebay for Charity page, good mix of useful links, video and social media. Loving the ribbon idea too.

Learn more about eBay for Charity or follow them on twitter here.

Author: Sarah Griffiths