Does resolution make your world go round? Do you speak in hex values?
We are searching for a mid-weight, super-skilled freelance graphic designer in Cape Town who is a keen to work with us on retainer on a range of work for different clients.
In the wake of the biggest cabinet reshuffle since 1996, civil society organisations, trade unions, businesses and individuals have vowed to take to the streets on what has become known as Freedom Friday.
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Establishing your brand’s social media presence takes a whole load of effort. By the time you figure out what you’re giving your audience and what you want them to give you, you can be pretty exhausted. So when it comes to considering a boosting budget, it can often seem like a task for another day. So to convince you how powerful social media tools can be we thought we’d share a recent Facebook success story.
The word ‘algorithm’ can send shivers down your spine if you’re not mathematically inclined. I think of millions of numbers in really tiny font that I can’t understand, and it’s stressful.
By Liz
Pomegranite recently live tweeted (and built the website for) the Alternative Mining Indaba and when I was putting our event report together, I was looking for some great tools to show off our work.
By Liz
I have mixed feelings about those Facebook memory posts. You know the ones, they appear first thing in the morning announcing, with confetti, “on this day four years ago…” and a photo of you in the arms of an ex-boyfriend that makes you cringe inside. That’s no way to start the day. It’s like running into your old self on the street, a twin you enthusiastically wearing your old clothes, obliviously making your old mistakes. You’re confronted with the person you were, a person who has changed. Mostly, I wanted to drag that historical twin into the nearest doorway and pack her away into a cupboard.
So you’ve chosen a name for your business and you’re ready show the world your brand spanking new logo. Your designer starts asking you a lot of questions and suddenly it all seems like a big decision to make in one meeting.
We get three types of reactions to our business’s name.
Social media predictions for 2015. The first few weeks of January have been full of them. And you know what? Here’s another one. You’re welcome.
Except this time, these predictions from SocialMedia.CEO are actually quite interesting and come from people who really do know what they’re talking about – social media CEOS.
The thought that makes the most sense to me belongs to Josh Simmons:
“2015 will be the year social media is put in its place. It’s an elemental thing, a tool, a means to an end: community, both online and off. By building communities we have stickier products and more scalable marketing. Social Media Marketers are being phased out in favor of Community Managers that understand social media in context of a broader ecosystem.”
We’ve said all along that social media is not an island and works better when it’s integrated into the wider marketing strategy. It will be interesting to see the practical ways in which brands do this in 2015.
Feature image by bplanet, freedigitalphotos.net
There’s nothing quite like a hopping on a bike and feeling the breeze in your hair on a sunset bike ride along the picturesque Sea Point promenade. Childhood memories of riding with “no hands” for the first time, the flying sensation of high speeds, near-collisions and scraped knees come flooding back. You can’t help testing your bell – brrrrrring brrrrrrrring – for safety purposes, of course.
But how do you communicate that experience on a website? Having been long-time customers of UpCycles, we got chatting about their website and before we know it, that question was ours to answer. So we checked out UpCycle’s social media presence and found that people had such a blast that they LOVED taking photos of their joyrides. And you can see the what a good time they’re having. So we let them tell the story of what it’s like to rent an UpCycles bicycle by collaborating with them on the UpCycles website.
Here’s a taster of what Instagram users happily contributed to the Upcycles website:
The result?
We used a grid design because we were working with generally square pictures of a relatively low quality (having been shot on the fly with phones most of the time). We used a small slider on the homepage and built links to important pages around it. We got across the important information as succinctly as possible with maps and clearly listed rates and contact details. We also incorporated their Instagram, Facebook and Twitter feeds to show off their online communities.
We had a lot of fun developing this site on a tight timeline and budget – and even more fun hearing how thrilled Jared and Shannon from Up Cycles were when we showed them the end product.
When I first used Hootsuite, it felt like I was sitting at the control panel of a spaceship. So many columns, so many posts! What if I end up like George Clooney in Gravity!? But once you’ve got the hang of it – which doesn’t take long at all with this helpful beginners’ guide – you’ll never want to go back. It makes managing multiple social media accounts a breeze, but even for just one account, it helps you run your social media better. I still feel like I’m in spaceship, but now it’s looking down at all the busy planets of Facebookland, the Twitterverse and LinkedInland.
Here are my five favourite things about Hootsuite:
Research has shown that 42% of adults are using multiple social networks so your brand had better be there too. Hootsuite is essentially a dashboard which supports social network integration for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, MySpace, WordPress, TrendSpottr and Mixi (I’ve never heard of the last two either) without you having to hop from window to window.
This cultivates the practice of planning your content which is crucial to good social media management. Being able to schedule posts means that you have to think ahead: figure out what’s coming up, what you want to highlight, what kinds of interaction you want to foster and what content you want to share. This awareness gives your content structure, saves you time and completely eliminates the dreaded morning feeling of, “Oh crap, what am I going to post today?” which generally ends up being something lame, which helps no one.
Quite simply, Hootsuite helps you work smarter. It’s integral to efficient working methods like How to Spend Only 10 Minutes Per Day on Twitter.
Whether they’re permitted to be or not, the fact is that a lot of school kids are on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and SnapChat. Remember how you used to get in trouble because you would spend all day with your friends at school and then come home and talk to them for hours on the phone? Well, social media is the new THAT.
It’s a great way for them to stay connected with their friends all day long, sharing photos, videos laughs and making plans.
The thing is, when you’re digitally surrounded by your friends, it’s easy to forget that these platforms are not safe little social bubbles – they are public platforms. And they can get kids into a lot of trouble, sometimes even when intentions are entirely innocent.
While school learners are digital natives and are very comfortable with these digital platforms, their parents and teachers, as digital immigrants, are not always as comfortable. They sometimes avoid having the all-important “how to be safe on social media” conversations with their kids because they don’t understand the platforms themselves or are unwilling to venture into these murky waters – so where do they even start?
Pomegranite offers social media talks at schools (both primary and high schools) which can be tailored to address the issues specific to your school. For example, would you prefer a talk on bullying on social media or how to stay safe on public platforms – or both?
I recently gave a talk to the grade 4s and 5s at Auckland Park Preparatory School about social media and bullying, and it was a great success. The girls were FULL of questions at the end, and one little girl even put up her hand and told me she loved my nail polish. Winning!
Here’s what their teacher, Vicky Hyland, had to say:
Thank you for a great talk around Social Media for our Grade 4 and 5 girls at APPS. It was pitched at the right level. Your examples were current, relevant and practical. The idea of interaction as well as questions at the end of your talk worked well.
It also highlighted for all the teachers sitting listening how vital a talk of this nature is.
All our pupils are making use of the platforms in one form or another. The girls themselves said how informative your talk was, particularly empowering them on their respective platforms of choice and making them feel safer.”
If you’d like to chat to us about giving a talk, please get in touch.
