May's SIMS- Brand Authenticity with Helen Oldfield

Another amazing meetup this month and we have to say a huge thank you to Helen Oldfield from Affinity PR for her talk. Helen's talk was about “Brand Authenticity”; the business case for conveying your genuine values and personality online. Helen told some hilarious tales from her years of experience (none of which were to leave the room), and generally shared tips with an enthusiastic audience. 

Have a look at some of the lovely comments at SIMS - Suffolk Internet Marketing Specialists meetup.com account.

Next month we have Linda Rumbold from Linda Rumbold Marketing coming to talk about Social Media.

We've Got Something to Shut Up About - Echoleft.

You will have heard Max and myself talking about lots of things over the last few years - we both like to waffle on! You most likely know we run Measured Brilliance and SIMS, but in the background we have been working hard for the last few years on a project we are very proud of - Echoleft. 

Echoleft is a memorial website which we have developed in partnership with St Nicholas Hospice Care. It offers friends and families a safe place to share photographs and stories about a loved one. Additionally, each memorial is able to accept in-memory donations which go directly to charity.

To celebrate the launch of Echoleft, Max is going to be silent for 48 hours. There have been many comments that I should have volunteered, but I had fears I might spontaneously combust if unable to share my thoughts! 

If you're feeling even more generous, we would really appreciate a donation to Max's silence. As you can imagine, as well as raising funds, testing the system works matters to us too and while any donations would help support the Hospice, you would also enable us to make sure Echoleft works for everyone. You can Shut Max Up here.  

Please feel free to share Echoleft socially. Anything you can do would be amazing.

April's SIMS - Website Building, How to Avoid the Horror Stories

April’s SIMS meetup saw our very own Max Shelley giving the SIMS the value of his many years of experience and helping the audience bypass all the usual pitfalls to make the most of their online presence. Max’s talk got some amazing feedback, sadly I think some people spotted the mistakes as ones they had made but, as Max pointed out, knowing about it means you can make it right.

Max’s main advice was to make sure you have clear, easy to read contracts and project agreements which explore any likely outcomes, including the bad ones. He also explained how important it is that you, or your business own the rights to your website and all the ensuing data.

As always with SIMS, if you have a question about your own website please feel free to come along and ask one of our experts. 

Up Periscope!

We also Persiscoped (is that the right verb?) Max’s talk and got some love hearts from the audience. It was also recorded by the lovely people at Red Cliff Productions and will be available to view soon.

Next month's at SIMS we'll have Helen Oldfield from Affinity PR talking about Brand Authenticity, sign up and RSVP here.

On the Move Again.

We're really pleased to announce that we have moved to Adastral Park under the Innovation Martlesham banner. We've been incredibly happy at The Atrium Studios since we began in 2012 and they will continue to help us host our monthly educational meetup, SIMS. Max and Sam will still be giving talks to students at UCS and intend to stay connected with all the amazing students, lecturers and staff on the campus. 

The time has come to be at the centre of East Anglia's digital community. We have been warmly received by the IM team and look forward to meeting all the many businesses on site. 

We still welcome visitors, you'll just have to let us know you're coming! The coffee is still always on.

February's SIMS - Sucessful Email Marketing with Justin Bowser

At February's SIMS we were happy to welcome Justin Bowser, Chief Operating Officer at Ipswich based HTK, giving his insightful talk about email marketing. Sam first heard Justin talk at a Digital Drive talk and knew he was a perfect match to talk at a SIMS meetup, and she was 100% right!

Justin's funny and relaxed talk was not only entertaining but contained some marketing gems. The feedback from Justin's talk was amazing and we will pester him to come back again soon.

SIMS sponsor, Carol Gant, arranged for Redcliff Studios to film Justin, which will follow soon.

Max gave his usual SEO round up, you can find his list of helpful links here. Max also gave the 10 minute takeaway talk about SSL encryption. This is all second nature to Max he explained what online security means to Suffolk online businesses.

If you'd like to know more about SIMS, visit our page and join our meetup.com group for updates.

January's SIMS - Anne Gould, Vlogging for Business

January's SIMS meetup saw Anne Gould from Workingwordz Media giving an introduction to her training session 'Vlogging for Business'. Anne explained why having a video presence matters to your online profile. She told us how easy it can be with just a smartphone and some relatively inexpensive tools.

We can't thank Anne enough for taking the time to come and share her knowledge with the SIMS, the feedback was great and a number of people told me it had inspired them to pick up their phones and get talking!

If you'd like to know more about SIMS, visit our page and join our meetup.com group for updates.

Upstairs, Downstairs

Having been based at The Atrium Studios since we started, we have been happy up here on the third floor of the West Building at UCS, in what used to be the teaching kitchens and restaurant. Recently Carol Gant, our lovely landlady, asked if we'd like to move to the posh offices on the ground floor and so we've moved! 

The offices are lovely and we've already had some visitors. If you'd like to pop in and say hello, please do, we always have coffee on.