Google Street View for your Business & Drone Photography

February's SIMS is on it's way and for this month's meetup we're getting a glimpse of modern day technology through camera lenses.

Our SIMS speakers for February are Carl Lamb from www.ambientlight.co.uk and Pete Kyle from ukaircam.co.uk and they're here to share their knowledge on how to implement Google Street View into your business and how drone photography can become a part of your business in the future. 

See your business inside and out.  Google Street View has made a breakthrough since being launched for more than 8 years ago. Launched in May 2007, Google Street View gave us the opportunity to see places around the world by simply clicking and looking at a computer screen. People have had their share of fun with Google Street View like having a tour around the Eiffel tower, virtually walking through New York's Time Square and even looking at the street where they used to live. This technology gives us the freedom to roam the world but the real question is, how are businesses going to take advantage of this new technology? 

What we failed to realise is how it's only matter of time until businesses benefitted from Google Street View, and it's finally here. Google Street View now gives business owners the ability to show their customers a virtual all-around view of their physical business and have website visitors interactively explore inside a location and really get to know the business on an unprecedented level. Google Street View for your business is a snazzy and extremely useful feature for businesses who want to showcase their physical shops or work place through their online webpage. 

Reach for the skies. Drone photography is a new and growing variation in the photography industry. Drone photography show us the world in a different yet stunning perspective at a much higher view. We now have the chance to go beyond what our eyes can see as drones soar the skies. Drones help people take photos of beautiful horizons, city skylines and magnificent terrains that couldn't have been captured by any other land-based optical device. Drone photography isn't for every business but it would useful to see what it could possibly do for you in the future. 

February's SIMS is slightly tech-filled but we at SIMS always aim to bring you speakers that can help you think of ways to stand out to your potential customers. We feel that either of these topics, if not both can help your business do better online. 

Carl's talk will cover: 

  • What is Google Street View for Business? 
  • Where is it seen?
  • How to best showcase a business with Street View
  • Some weird and wonderful examples for inspiration! 

Pete's talk will cover:

  • What is drone photography?
  • How does it work? 
  • Advancements in drone photography and its future. 
New Wolsey theatre usingGoogle street view for your business

New Wolsey theatre using
Google street view for your business

Drone Photograph of Suffolk's Fields

Drone Photograph of Suffolk's Fields

If you'd like to see more details for this event, here's a link to our SIMS Meetup page and SIMS Event Page. We hope to see you there! 

Free Events for Local Businesses

SIMS-Waterfront_Ipswich.jpg

Hello everyone,

February has begun and we have several networking events for you to attend. All these events are free and open to businesses, UCS academics and professional services staff, students, alumni and the public. Simply click on the links to find out more about each meeting and register to confirm your attendance. 

Engage with, Expand into Europe – Business Opportunities and Funding Seminar with Enterprise Europe Network.

9th February 2.30pm – 4.30pm, Waterfront Building

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/engage-with-expand-into-europe-business-opportunities-and-funding-seminar-tickets-20919894969

Agile Networking Introduction – Agile in a regulated environment with IJYI

11th February 6.00pm, Waterfront Building

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/agile-networking-introduction-agile-in-a-regulated-environment-tickets-21062610836

Sustainable Futures UCS Lecture Series – More Personal Computing: Machine Intelligence and I with Microsoft

23rd February 6pm, Waterfront Building

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ucs-lecture-series-sustainable-futures-more-personal-computing-machine-intelligence-and-i-tickets-21080618698

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships Funding Seminar

15th March 5pm, Waterfront Building with Innovate UK

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/knowledge-transfer-partnerships-funding-seminar-tickets-21057165549

Quay to Growth Business Breakfast Series – Creating employees: employing creatives with Nigel Ball, UCS and Atrium Studios

18th March 7.45am, Boardroom, Waterfront Building

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/quay-to-growth-business-breakfast-series-creating-employees-employing-creatives-registration-19751944598?aff=ebrowse

East of England Agile User Group presents: An Audience with Iain McKenna with IJYI

28th April 6pm, Waterfront Building

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/east-of-england-agile-user-group-presents-an-audience-with-iain-mckenna-tickets-21062837514

On a side note, the SIMS competition is still running and will end on 16th February 2016. Enter your business to get the chance to win £1000's worth of digital services (T&C's apply). 

SIMS COMPETITION SIGN UP

SIMS Be Brilliant in 2016 Competition (Closed)

SIMS Be Brilliant in 2016 Competition (Closed)

 
 

SIMS and Measured Brilliance are proud to present our first competition for small businesses with support from Ipswich Borough Council.

The idea behind all this comes from our experience. Measured Brilliance has been providing websites and digital marketing training to small business for over 3 years. We pride ourselves in our work and the impact of what we’ve done to improve our clients’ businesses. We're inspired by the idea of small businesses thriving locally and boosting Suffolk economically and we see this competition as an opportunity to further motivate local businesses. 

How long will this competition run?
Entries will open on 26th January 2016 and close at midnight 16th February 2016. All details are on the SIMS website.

Why a competition? 
The purpose of this competition is to bring you a step closer to what you want to achieve for your business this year. We want businesses to become brilliant, bold, and confident about themselves in the upcoming year and fearlessly implement new ideas to their business. To do so, we’re giving away £1,000 worth of digital services to turn your next idea into online reality.

Why should you enter?
One of the things we see our clients struggle with, time and time again, is integrating their ideas into their business, and especially into their web presence. There are several reasons for this, it may be that the scope of the idea is so large they're not sure how to implement it, or it may be budget. If these things apply to your business, then this competition seeks to help you resolve those limitations within your business, to help you visualise what your ideal online presence in 2016 would look like and raise awareness of SIMS to help everyone achieve this.

About SIMS
Started two and half years ago by local digital agency Measured Brilliance (that's us), SIMS is a free monthly meet-up where businesses, individuals, students and digital enthusiasts meet to learn how to work more effectively online. 

SIMS meet on the last Tuesday of each month and invite guest speakers from different industries to talk about experiences in their field that may be valuable to your business. 

 
 

Wordpress and Web Accessibility presentation

Hello everyone, 

We were really pleased with the turn out at last night's SIMS. It was definitely pleasing to see new faces along with our regular SIMS attendees. As promised, here is the lovely content from last night's talk, made available to us by our speakers Andy Proctor and Angie Vale. Thank you all for coming!

Click on Andy and Angie's names to access their presentations!

It's all about your website: Wordpress & Web Accessibility

It's all about your website: Wordpress & Web Accessibility

Andy Proctor (www.andyproctor.co.uk) and Angie Vale (www.purplebabyhippo.co.uk) were our speakers for January's SIMS. Andy and Angie are two of many small business owners who operate their businesses using Wordpress but luckily our speakers are able to provide possible areas of focus in your website with a few tips and tricks to use to your advantage. 

Two speakers for January's SIMS!

Andy gave us a live demo of a Wordpress website to demonstrate what Wordpress can do, such as creating pages and ordering navigation which Wordpress beginners within the SIMS audience found very useful.  A quick run-through, some notes and reminders from Andy's talk:

  • Do you have analytics? (Every business website should have this)
  • Do you have ownership of your analytics and data? Ask your developer. 
  • Install (reasonable) widgets that help your website's design and functionality. (Don't use too many) 
  • Editor access can be used to see how powerful Wordpress is.
  • Speak to your developer and make sure you have right amount of data you need to improve your web presence.
SIMS-Audience

Angie's presentation on Web Accessibility asks the question, "How accessible is your website?".  Angie's talk gives light to assistive technology and how they are commonly used (assistive technology includes things like your glasses! How well does your website work if you take your glasses off.) and many more. Here are few notes on Angie's presentation:

  • Check the accessibility of your website. Can everyone use it?
  • Try using your website without a mouse! 
  • Google is blind and deaf! It's not always about design. 
  • Use semantic markup (Page Headings).
  • Make links stand out. Show what's clickable and don't confuse your visitors. 
  • Use good colour contrast in your website. Tell them the difference instead of making them look for it. 

All tools recommended by our speakers can be found in their slides available in the presentations blog post on the SIMS website (www.simsdigitalskills.co.uk) along with news and updates about SIMS. 

Finally, don't forget about SIMS "Be Brilliant in 2016" Competition. All details of the competition are available in the SIMS competition page. We're eager to expand SIMS and reach out to more businesses so please share the competition to family, friends, and other businesses.

We'd like to thank everyone for attending January's SIMS. We love to see how SIMS is reaching its potential to build a community of small businesses that will thrive together. We want everyone to be a part of this community and we greatly appreciate it.

Here are some photos from January's SIMS. We almost filled the whole room!

We hope to see you all at the next one.

Understanding Wordpress & Web Accessibility

SIMS with Measured Brilliance, is proud to present two speakers for January's meetup. We're more than excited to start 2016, bringing more topics, facts, figures, new technologies and latest development in the online industry to our valued SIMS audience. 

This month's topic is on Wordpress and Web Accessibility. Both Andy Proctor and Angie Vale specialise in Wordpress and run their businesses through Wordpress. They are only two of over 2.1 million businesses that run their websites through Wordpress and perhaps even you. It started as a blogging content management system that has become something bigger similar to the likes of a fully functioning website. In this evening Andy and Angie will go through how you can optimise and effectively use your Wordpress website to the fullest.  

For startup businesses. If you're thinking of creating a website to start up your business then this is a good opportunity to see one of the most commonly used Content Management Systems out there. For existing Wordpress users, this is an opportunity to improve their websites and other features or functions of Wordpress builds that you can use to make your website smarter and wonderfully designed. 

Help people find your website.  Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web. This also includes people with changing abilities due to aging.

Web accessibility also considers the technology used to view websites such as browser choice, broadband speed and mobile devices. Websites and applications that don’t consider these needs may be missing out on potential business. Web accessibility takes all users into account which means more customers for you!

Whichever standpoint your businesses needs some advice or experience in, it'll be worth it to come and take a look at what our SIMS speakers can offer you.

Andy's talk will cover:

  • Free tools and services to help you with your website, with the focus on a WordPress website. 
  • Elements of functions, layouts and marketing to show you how a website should be more than something you should have, but a tool that gets brand awareness and contact. 
  • How to ‘properly’ add and amend pages.
  • Using the Widgets and changing the home page.
  • Editor access and how you can use any developer.
  • What you should remove from a website and why.
  • All important Google Bounce explained in 90 seconds.
  • Links to keep Google happy while measuring sales/contact.
  • How much can you control yourself without your developer.
  • What to make sure your developer promises to do ongoing.
  • The basics you need to do if you make the website yourself.

Angie's talk will cover: 

  • What is web accessibility.
  • Why web accessibility is important.
  • How you can make your website more accessible.
  • How you can test your website for accessibility.
  • How web accessibility can help your business.

If you'd like to see more details for this event, here's a link to our SIMS Meetup page and SIMS Event Page. We hope to see you there! 

A lovely thank you from a (soon to be award winning) Suffolk blogger!

Many people thank us for the work we do at SIMS, it started as a passion project to help more people connect and learn and has grown into a rather lovely community of business people who take what they do seriously. 

We recently got a thank we are especially happy about as it's shows that what we're doing is working! Jason Alexander from Wildlife Gadget Man is collecting votes for his wildlife blog. Jason is a regular SIMS attendee and I'm sure he'd love to share any tips, if you come to SIMS and ask him. 

Please vote for Jason and watch this space for good news! 

static1.squarespace.png

 

SIMS is a free meet up group for small businesses organised by the digital marketing team at Measured Brilliance, SIMS is an opportunity for small businesses to learn about digital marketing from experts speakers. We have been working hard behind the scenes to finalise the SIMS 2016 schedule and we’re proud to announce that this January we have two fine speakers about Wordpress. Free to attend and open to all.

Sign up and RSVP here: http://bit.ly/1ZLrXti

The Power of Podcasting Presentation

Even with the offer of free biscuits we know that not everyone can make it to a live SIMS event so we try and make videos and presentation available whenever we can.

Here are award-winning UK podcasters, Kathryn Bryant and Julian Illman from the Changeability Podcast sharing insights and tips about podcasting. The footage was kindly filmed and arranged by Carl Stickley of Films for Websites.

If you'd like to attend a future SIMS events sign up for updates. 

Julian Illman and Kathryn Bryant are awarding winning Podcasters based here in Suffolk and we are proud to say regular attendees at SIMS. They gave an entertaining and enlightening talk at our SIMS meeting in November. The pair have a few podcasts including their Changeability podcast at www.brilliantliving.com and the new Podcast Divas available at www.podcastdivas.com.

Spotting Blackhats in SEO

Spotting Blackhats in SEO

SEO expert Daniel Somers from www.seomers.com was our guest speaker for December's SIMS. Daniel talked through his experience with Blackhat SEO techniques in his profession and outside of it. Blackhat SEO is the “easy” way of having your website rank highly in search results but it's definitely not worth the risk of Google ‘punishing’ your website by removing it from search.

SEO Blackhats and their cheeky tricks 

SEO Blackhats and their cheeky tricks 

Daniel Somers shed some light into the world of SEO blackhats. Small businesses shouldn't be afraid of SEO blackhats but it's good to be aware that they exist, to make sure that your business stays away from them and be aware of the questions to ask your SEO. A quick run-through some of last night's notes:

  • 'Parasite Hosting’ hacks your website through bots or using plugins. Research what you download e.g. Wordpress plugins.
  • Buying link building tools simply isn't worth it. 
  • Dropped domains are still useful as google trust them more than the newer ones. £5 can save you £1000's.
  • False "Right To Be Forgotten" requests can put out your website out of Google searches (but this rarely happens). 
  • Negative SEO is when other businesses spam your website with backlinks for money or simply just to put your SEO in trouble with Google.
  • Local SEO cheats like virtual offices can affect your local business.
  • Social media blackhats exist. They could be fake accounts or fake stories used to generate likes, shares and traffic to their website. 

If you'd like to get in touch with the speaker about SEO blackhats, you can visit him at www.seomers.com. Thank you to everyone who came to another month of SIMS. We'll soon be posting details for the next SIMS talk in January 2016 and details about the upcoming competition for small businesses attending SIMS, but for now we'd like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  

Get news and updates about SIMS at our newly-launched website, www.simsdigitalskills.co.uk. Also click on the link to see Max's round-up for December's SIMS.

See Daniel's SEO blackhats presentation in the SIMS website. 

Here are some photos from last night's SIMS. Everyone's feeling very festive!

SEO Blackhats with Daniel Somers

December's SIMS will be about Blackhat SEO. ‘Blackhat SEO’ is the term for actions that violate Google's Webmaster Guidelines. This SEO antic is used by businesses to try and stimulate traffic to their websites in the easiest way possible.  Blackhat is bad in SEO terms, it can kill your business, brand and website overnight if (or when) you get caught.

Knowing about Blackhat SEO is relevant to your business if you are looking to hire a third party company to optimise your SEO campaigns, or if you already pay someone to do it. You should know what Google is looking out for that would blacklist your website, and what questions you should be asking.

But some website owners are making an absolute killing out of Blackhat and they stay in business for a very long time. A lot of the well-known brands still play in the naughty world of Internet marketing but the truth is you simply don’t know about it. Companies make a lot of money out of the term ‘rank and tank’…. You may think that Blackhat is about flooding the Internet with spam, but quite frankly some of it is genius although it will destroy your company when you get caught.


This talk will cover:

  • How Blackhat is more than just a few spammy links
  • You may already be Blackhat, you just don’t know it
  • How you can rank nearly anything within a very short time period
  • How affiliates are taking your sales
  • Amazon & eBay are even in on it
  • Social Blackhats – lots of them

Find out more about SEO blackhats and how they affect your business in December's SIMS (15th December, 7pm at UCS) with our guest speaker Daniel Somers.

If you'd like to see more details for this event, here's a link to our SIMS Meetup page and SIMS website. 

We hope to see you there! 

Max's Round-up From November SIMS

Every month at SIMS, Max provides a brief run-down of just some of the tech-related news that may affect small businesses, and agencies that work with small businesses and we post the links here. If any of these catch your interest, but you're not sure how they would affect you, feel free to get in touch and ask!

For photos and notes from last night, you can find them in November SIMS write up. You can find slides from Kathryn and Julian's presentation here. 

Instagram are providing yet more tools to help you reach new people on their network, this time with "streams".
http://recode.net/2015/10/31/instagram-joins-snapchat-twitter-with-new-event-specific-content-streams/ 

 

Anywhere that you might have been previously been pulling data into a spreadsheet to manipulate, you can now do it  Analytics itself.   https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6121409 

 

The new Apple tv is out. The media-based among you can create apps to deliver your content directly to millions of people on the Apple TV app-store.
http://www.apple.com/uk/tv/

 

Google's app (voice search) is getting even better at context when it comes to superlatives and dates.
http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/the-google-app-now-understands-you.html#gpluscomments
http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9745826/google-app-gets-smarter

 

Google is working on show warning about unencrypted email providers. If you're using a trusted email provider, you should be fine. If you're not sure, you might want to ask the person in charge of your emails before this becomes a thing.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/13/9728406/google-gmail-encryption-email-warnings

 

360 degree videos: We mentioned them at last month's SIMS, but now they're here and they're in your Facebook newsfeed.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/12/9723214/facebook-360-degree-video-ios

 

A redesign as Google continue to work out what Google+ is. Your opinion may vary depending on how (or whether at all) you use it. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/introducing-new-google.html 

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/updating-our-search-quality-rating.html

Read the complete PDF file here.

“In 2013, we published our human rating guidelines to provide transparency on how Google works and to help webmasters understand what Google looks for in web pages. Since that time, a lot has changed: notably, more people have smartphones than ever before and more searches are done on mobile devices today than on computers.

We often make changes to the guidelines as our understanding of what users wants evolves, but we haven’t shared an update publicly since then. However, we recently completed a major revision of our rater guidelines to adapt to this mobile world, recognizing that people use search differently when they carry internet-connected devices with them all the time. You can find that update here (PDF).


There's a new book out with a comprehensive guide to learning Google Adwords & Analytics. At 480 pages, it's not for the beginner or the faint-of-heart, but you can get it on Amazon (including Kindle) now.
http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Google-AdWords-Analytics/dp/0994390408/

http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/new-book-learning-google-adwords-and.html

Podcasting by Professionals

Podcasting by Professionals

Award-winning UK podcasters, Kathryn Bryant and Julian Illman from the Changeability Podcast took the stage at last night’s SIMS as they enthusiastically discussed the basic and complex aspects of Podcasting in a night filled with ideas and valuable information for small businesses. 

We heard it from the best

We heard it from the best

We hope that Kathryn and Julian inspired you to take on Podcasting and discover how it can positively impact your business. As they mentioned, the podcast industry is still growing and there are definitely more topics to be covered. A quick run-through some of last night's notes:

  • Having a podcast helps you "develop your personal brand"
  • Podcasting can help you create networks and build a good relationship with you audience
  • Podcasting is useful for content marketing
  • Your listeners willingly choose to listen to your podcast.
  • Your podcast can reach places you wouldn't even imagine.
  • Easy to start up and can be monetised long term. 

If you'd like to get in touch with the speakers or ask about anything about podcasting, you can visit www.brilliantlivinghq.com. We'd like to thank everyone for another successful and enjoyable SIMS event. Get news and updates about SIMS at our newly-launched website, www.simsdigitalskills.co.uk, where you can also find Max's round-up for this month's SIMS.

Here are some photos from last night's SIMS, you all look great!

The Power of Podcasting

There are over 13 million podcasts listeners around the globe but how can a small business benefit from this?

Imagine if you started your own podcast on something you specialise in. After a few episodes you find yourself with a relatively small amount of listeners who really like your content. As your podcast content become better, more listeners tune in and they become devoted listeners. They start referring to other people and your business starts to get recognition for its great content. Through this, listeners start to trust in your business and gradually become customers who buy your products.

Podcasts can become a great selling point for your business but like any other business idea, it will take effort. However, there's nothing stopping you from recording your own podcast and giving it a try. Podcasting covers a wide variety of subjects and topics so make sure your content is the best out there. If your podcasts get enough recognition you may even find yourself as a guest on a show!

Podcasting will be this month's topic at SIMS. If podcasting interests you, this month's SIMS (24th November at 7pm) is a great place to start.

Avanti (Ipswich) Ladies Presentation

MB's Sam visited the Avanti Ladies networking lunch yesterday and told them all about what we do at Measured Brilliance. She actually managed to keep within the 10 minute time slot (threats of violence had to be mentioned!). Some of the Avanti ladies mentioned getting access to the slides, so we've added a link. If you have any questions, get in touch. 

Changes with Google and Google Tag Manager

It's that time on month again... SIMS time!! 

Tomorrow will see the next SIMS meeting, and we couldn't be more excited to welcome not one, but two guest speakers- Matt Anderson and Sen Clark. They will be letting you in on the secrets of Google and Google Tag Manager. The secrets will be out 7pm Tuesday 27th October at UCS. 

Come to chat, socialise and gossip.... I mean network, with fellow business people. There's free tea and coffee (and biscuits if you're good) for all who attend. You're in 

Open to all and FREE to attend. It may be Halloween soon, but this is not trick- just a great big treat lined up for you. We look forward to seeing you.

Pinterest & Instagram for Business by Sam Parnell

September's SIMS saw one of our largest audiences to date with makers, food producers, teachers, artists and many other visual sharers listening to Measured Brilliance's Sam Parnell explaining how to generate and grow an audience, find those who may already be sharing your content and how to convert posts in to sales. Sam has made the slides available, simply click on the gallery below. 

More Pinterest and Instagram events to follow soon, if you'd like to know more please email sam@measuredbrilliance.com for details.

Max's Round-up From September's SIMS

Max's Round-up From September's SIMS

Every month at SIMS, Max provides a brief run-down of just some of the tech-related news that may affect small businesses, and agencies that work with small businesses and we post the links here. If any of these catch your interest, but you're not sure how they would affect you, feel free to get in touch and ask!

While we were away for the summer break, Google became a different company:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/10/9128083/sundar-pichai-ceo-google-larry-page-sergey-brin

Windows 10 sets Edge as the default browser and, with it, Bing as a default search engine:
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/07/30/an-open-letter-to-microsofts-ceo-dont-roll-back-the-clock-on-choice-and-control/

Andrew was asking about GTM, this is a little technical, but useful for non-devs:
http://ipullrank.com/google-tag-manager/

Android Pay is now live (although I think it may be US only for now?), along with an updated version of Google Wallet both for Android and iOS.

I've linked to this before, but they have a new website:
http://ecomchat.com

There have been a lot of AdWords features, a huge number of which are related to mobile and eCommerce. If you're interested in the specifics, I recommend some time reading the Inside AdWords blog. If you pay someone else to do your ads, speak to them about how to implement these features.

Google are now allowing advertisers the chance to upload lists of customer email addresses, and advertise directly to them:
http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/Google-brings-you-closer-to-your-customers.html
“Customer Match allows you to upload a list of email addresses, which can be matched to signed-in users on Google in a secure and privacy-safe way. From there, you can build campaigns and ads specifically designed to reach your audience. Users can control the ads they see, including Customer Match ads, by opting out of personalized ads or by muting or blocking ads from individual advertisers through Google Ads Settings.”

Google's inbox-based email ads are now available to all advertisers:
http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/native-gmail-ads-arrive-in-adwords.html
“ advertisers can manage native Gmail ads right in AdWords by setting up a Display Network campaign and creating a Gmail ads format in the Ad gallery.”

You (or at least someone you pay) can make 360-degree video ads:
http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/see-future-of-video-by-looking-behind.html
“360 degree video ads let you engage your audience in an entirely new way. Available today in Chrome and the YouTube app on Android and iOS, viewers can explore every angle of your videos by dragging their mouse or moving their phone to shift their POV 360 degrees – up, down, left or right. Thanks to the ability simply to move your phone to see different parts of the video, 360 video ads are a truly mobile-first video ad product.”

Contactless limit is now increased to £30 - this includes Apple Pay. There are some imaginative uses of this technology already.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34110348

Analytics updates have been technical, but if you're feeling analytical, dive in to the releases for July 2015 and September 2015.

Content blockers are here, they are in iOS 9. http://www.imore.com/best-content-and-ad-blockers-iphone-ipad

Google My Business app gets an update. Android only for now. iOS coming soon.
http://searchengineland.com/the-google-my-business-app-gets-an-update-230351

Another step towards Facebook Messenger becoming it's own platform. Facebook M.
https://www.facebook.com/Davemarcus/posts/10156070660595195

Last mentioned back in May, tweets are now a full-time, first-class citizen in search results:
http://searchengineland.com/google-officially-expands-twitter-into-desktop-search-results-228723

Using Pinterest and Instagram

What a turnout that was! Amazing to see all those faces at UCS this evening. A big welcome to back to old friends and a huge hello to newcomers! We hope you all enjoyed the talk Sam Parnell gave (she's quite good at talking isn't she), and found Max's monthly round-up useful. 

We loved hearing your thoughts on Pinterest and Instagram and how you feel they would be good for your business. We've seen that you all have the skills, knowledge and entrepreneurial oomph to master these social media sites and we want to know how you're getting on. Let us know about your new photo-sharing ventures and how it's going for you.

You can join our Facebook group and share you ideas, ask for feedback and encourage engagement. We have more Pinterest and Instagram events planned and will keep you updated. Slides will follow very soon.

SIMS Returns!

SIMS is back and better than ever! After a (much needed) summer break, SIMS is returning to UCS this September. We have all relaxed and rejuvenated in the Summer sun and now that Autumn is within reach, business must run as normal. No excuses. 

Our first meeting will be on Using Pinterest and Instagram for Business, and will have our very own Sam Parnell giving this talk. She has a brain full of knowledge she just has to share with you so come along Tuesday 29th September at 7PM!