Welcome to the Escape Blog

I have been trying to explain this idea for website content generation and sharing to clients for quite some time now and along came a link this morning to Sean at Spiders Secret and his metaphor of The Bikini:

I found out the age-old concept of the bikini to apply. That by giving away 90% of the concept, and keeping 10%, the attraction factor was just as strong, if not twice as strong. And yes, what the bikini didn’t reveal, was the part the audience most wanted (naturally), and was the part they were willing to pay for.

Hello, my name is Dean Hunt and I do Buzz Marketing.

So what exactly is Buzz Marketing?

Buzz Marketing is essentially the art of pumping so much emotion into your readers, that they feel the need to shout your message from the nearest rooftop. This helps get your message spread wider than Paris Hilton’s legs.

Today I am going to show you a new technique that will get more buzz than a swarm of bees on crack! (more…)

When you are sitting down on your PC, looking at the words on your screen on a website that has a nice design, you may be forgiven for thinking that everyone does the same and, of course, you would be wrong.

So, when web coders, have also added in abbreviations and acronyms with thought for accessibility, you’d think think it could only be a good thing but as the Web Access Blog on the RNIB website explains, you can go too far for those with screen readers.

Andy pointed me to this article on the Innocent blog about Google, the amount of energy saving that would occur if Google made their screen black, and what they did with it.

So, we made it! 283 miles and four long days in the saddle, Craig and Rob (pictured) finally negotiated the Paris traffic down the Champs Elysees, across the Place de la Concorde finishing up next to the Eiffel Tower to a loud cheer (from their butt cheeks) as well as the large crowd who had traveled over to France to see in the 450 riders. (more…)

The UK has been pounded with bad weather the past week and a half and it’s been interesting in terms of “up-time” for some geographical areas, with power and phone lines.

This may or not be the case for two massive issues we have had in the past week with hosting facilities - one ours, and another belong to a company we use and recommend, both of which have suffered down-time.

Web hosting is often viewed as a cheap and cheerful, what can I get away with, situation, partly because it is something you don’t physically see, so why pay over the odds? When it works, there are now worries.
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We’ve working on a really big project this week for Aquivo, which will see us present our “brand vision” on Monday. It’s all rearing to go and we have had a real fun “team effort” kinda week pulling it all together.

That said, we have another large’n’ next month with a new client - Transactor, so these skills are multiplyin’… it’s electrofyin’.

We delivered a funky new design for The Link this week - an internal staff magazine for Simplyhealth Group and got some great feedback from our client.

On the non-work side of things, we are currently getting battered by rain and Basingstoke is at a standstill. This ‘British Summer’ has not helped the preparations of intrepid two (Rob and Craig) who set out next Wednesday for the London-To-Paris cycle-ride. But, they have been attracting column inches (they need all the inches they can get I hear). Rob has been practicing like Lance Armstrong though…

Been doing my final preparation for our London to Paris (weather permitting of course). I’m a tad anxious about it but fairly confident. I cycled back from Brixton last Saturday with a hangover from hell, didn’t leave Soho House until 2.30am and was on the bike at 8am, first lay-by came in very handy though, say no more. ;0)

I had to link to this article on Fadtastic:

Today I am going to show you a step by step guide on exactly how I got a random story onto the Digg.com main page LAST WEEK.

E-Consultancy has a small article about declining e-marketing read rates. The article indicates that it is the way people read your e-mails rather than whether they do or not, which is having the impact, with many people choosing to not show images in HTML (the key to measuring read rates).

Many people are shocked when I first show them what can actually be measured with an e-mail campaign where the HTML versions are being read. That said, the situation is the same as with web statistics. They are purely there to guide you to make a better e-shot - testing and adapting the way that you send them. (more…)

Want a search tool facility on your website? I’ve heard Google tend to know something about search.

And now, they are offering a facility to small businesses. $100 a year for a non-branded search facility. Sounds like good value to me and worth looking into if it’s something you need. More from BBC