Blog
A personal listing of online and offline tools – a guest post from Simon Fogg
March 7th, 2012
Posted by Michael Hobson
“Who do you think will complete the task of prep-ing their pineapple first? The person with the pineapple slicer gadget or the one with the sharp knife?”.
So began one of my John Maxwell’s Million Leader Mandate leadership development training sessions a few years back. This is one of the most effective visual aids I have ever used. The pineapple gadget won this by an amazing margin. Clearly, a knife can be used to prep a pineapple but a tool specifically designed for the job can do it in a fraction of the time. Read the rest of this entry »
Keren Speaks – to wedding planners and interior designers
February 27th, 2012
Posted by Keren Lerner
Just wanted to update everyone on 2 very exciting speaking engagement I have coming up. Both to distinct audiences, which I love, as I can really be specific to how design, marketing and social media applies to their industry.
UK Alliance of Wedding Planners – Wedding Planning Excellence – WPE ‘12 – March 2nd
On March 2nd, I will be speaking at the UK Alliance of Wedding Planners – Wedding Planning Excellence 2012 (‘WPE ‘12′) event about “Looking Fantastic Online”. I was interviewed on their blog as they did a series of speaker bio interviews. I have spoken to this audience before with Tamsin Fox-Davies (who happens to also be speaking at the same event this time) and the planners were so friendly and receptive. I even now have amassive Twitter list of “Wedding Planners and Suppliers which I have built up since.
The British Institute of Interior Design – March 15th
On the 15th of March, I will be speaking to the British Institute of Interior Designers about “How to make social media work for your business”. This means there will be a Twitter list for them too.
I will of course be mentioning Pinterest as these two audiences are perfect for using this new social network to show examples of how they can help and inspire their clients. Happy to send you an invite if you like – it’s really worth exploring!
And then the next morning, I will be running my fantastic Social Media for Business “Don’t Ignore It” with Alicia Cowan. More about that on this recent blog post!
If you are an interior designer or a wedding planner and you are coming – make sure you come and say hi (or comment below) or send me a tweet!
Launch of The Athena Network Singapore website – in record time! Whew!
February 24th, 2012
Posted by Keren Lerner
We made it! Two weeks ago we got an email from our client Gina, founder of Athena Singapore, saying they wanted Top Left Design to design and build a website for Athena in Singapore. We already have worked with Gina with clients in Singapore and there are a few more projects in the pipeline – the start of a strong global partnership! It was to be a WordPress based site and needed to be designed and built by the 24th – today – in time for their big launch event.
A mammoth task!
What is Athena Singapore?
With a membership made up of only female executives and entrepreneurs, The Athena Network provides a networking and collaboration platform for members to share knowledge and experience across a diverse range of industry sectors – for mutual referrals, support and successs. The Athena Network in Singapore signifies the expansion to the Asia-Pacific region, The Athena Network provides members with international collaboration opportunities and a rapidly growing online community where women can interact and share information, skills and business contacts.
How did we pull it off?
We had four of our designers work last week on design concepts, and showed 3 options to Gina and Claire. Claire Kidd (copywriter and content strategist and co-founder of Athena Singapore) the meantime worked on writing all the copy.)
One design was chosen on Friday, and we made a small tweak to the position of the social media links, and sent it back that night.
On Sunday I came in to our office and worked on the beginning of the inner page designs and then briefed Amy to continue on Monday morning. She worked till 2pm (UK time – 4pm Cape Town time) and then sent it to Tamlyn to continue with the inner page designs. We sent this over for feedback from Claire and Gina and then got those changes made and signed off on Tuesday. Then it was up to our coding team to work on the HTML / CSS build. This was really what we needed for the site to be launched, and next week we will continue to make this website fully integrated with WordPress.
We are still working on testing and tweaks but the site had to go live today for their big launch event.
Check out the site here, we hope you love it!
And you can go find Athena Singapore on Facebook or on Athena Singapore on Twitter and congratulate Claire and Gina on their new site!
Juggling Social Media with Alicia Cowan
February 23rd, 2012
Posted by Keren Lerner
Exciting news! On the 16th of March, Alicia Cowan and I will be joining forces once more to bring more people over to the world of social media – and ensuring that it’s used properly for business. We have both had a lot of success using these tools in our respective businesses – we even met each other on Twitter!
We are not advocating that social media marketing is there to replace face to face relationships, but rather that it is there to allow people to get to know you and your business in a soft and gentle way. Each of the platforms – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest – have their own unique behaviours and uses – and though Alicia and I use them all it’s not mandatory.
The rewards of social media are undisputable in our eyes, and this is because we apply a few simple behaviours but mostly we are just ourselves.
What’s really rewarding is that so many of our previous attendees have become super active on Social Media which is a great way to keep in touch with them.
Social media is another form of networking so it’s really a long term thing, which is great as it gives poeple time to practice, get to know people,an just let it become second nature.
5 must follow social media rules!
- Make sure you fill all your profiles properly – with a picture of your face, a well written bio, and your branding where appropriate. Don’t be an egg!
- Don’t be salesy! Use social media to share, inform and promote others. This will mean people see you as interesting, useful and generous
- You don’t need to spend all day on it – you know what your priorities are. But it is important to be consistant with your activity.
- Don’t underestimate the power of a blog – this is a place where you can really share your knowledge, advice, and case studies.
- Build relationships online but bring business conversations to real life meetings or email wherever possible – the real deals happen there!
If you are an active user of social media, you probably know all of this and the value it brings. Feel free to send people to our event or come along yourself, it would be great to meet you (see point 5 above).
Launch of Rosie Millard’s revamped website!
February 16th, 2012
Posted by Nichaela Thompson
We recently launched Rosie Millard’s new website! You may have seen this in our most recent launches section of Top Left Designs latest newsletter ‘Make Do and Mend’.
Rosie Millard is a journalist, broadcaster and author. As well as her newly launched website, Rosie also has a mummy’s blog which we launched in June 2011 called Helicopter mum.
Rosie came to Top Left Design requiring a complete website and blog revamp. Her old website and blog were seperate from one another and were in need of a modern, professional re design as well as being joint together.
Rosie’s old website shown below was quite outdated and in need of a contemporary re-design.
“Latest news” or “Blog” – what should you name it?
February 15th, 2012
Posted by Keren Lerner
Some of our clients find it hard to get their head around the word “Blog”.
People say “we dont need a blog – can we have “Latest news” instead?
In essence a blog is the same thing as a “Latest News” but better! So much better!
We want our clients to be happy – so they choose ultimately what they will call their links! Let’s explore this in a bit more detail.
4 years and counting…
February 13th, 2012
Posted by Amy Senyard
Top Left Design – what a place to work! I’ve enjoyed myself so much that I have stayed for 4 years… and counting.
I started working with Keren and Top Left Design back in December 2007 and although I left the UK offices over 2 years ago I am still a proud TLDer.
Keren decided that in light of my 4 year anniversary she would treat me to SPA DAY, and although she couldn’t join me I would be accompanied by her most lovely cousin Gabriella Sholk.
Our Spa Day was at the lovely Cayenne Spa which is part of the Pepper Club Hotel in Cape Town.
Websites for UK Financial Advisers & Financial Planners
February 9th, 2012
Posted by Amy Senyard
In the last year we have been working on a number of websites for financial planners and financial advisers in the UK, along with our strategic partner the lovely Abbie Tanner from A Business Innovation.
Abbie does the strategy and content planning, as well as the copy writing and value proposition, and we have been designing and building the websites according to the brief and branding that results from this.
Below we have gone through some of the projects we have worked on so far and we will add more as we go along – so keep checking back!
Don’t be an egg
February 7th, 2012
Posted by Amy Senyard
I know that some of you already know what we mean by this from our April 2011 Newsletter, but for those of you that didn’t see it let me explain this very important point again.
I can hear all the desperate questions already… “What does it mean to be an egg, or rather to not be an egg?“, “What’s wrong with eggs?“, “What is an egg when it comes to Twitter?“, “How do I change from an egg to just fabulous old me?“, “What is the best way to poach an egg, I mean some people have said to use vinegar but really I’m not sure…” Ok so maybe that last one won’t be one of the questions, but the rest we have all heard before when this subject is brought up.