These are my links for April 27th through April 29th:

  • Digital Economy Act: Don’t Forget The Wi-Fi! – More details on the Digital Economy Bill and its potential impact on reducing public wifi, this will be a major challenge area too for public service centres e.g. libraries. To me wifi availability is a major part of the sucess of Digital Britain and mobility of workers.
  • Social Media Strategy Before Tactics – This is an absolute must read article, interviewing some of the good and great in online marketing (including Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki) about the relationship between strategy and tactics in social media. Unsurprisingly 90% think it's all about strategy, but some good views on just testing the waters first off, which will work best for a lot of big to small companies.
  • Checkout optimization tips from Dr Mike Baxter – Interesting guide (for members only) about how improving the checkout experience of e-commerce along can create greater retention and less lost sales. Key takeouts: customers want simplicity (not crowded pages, pop-ups or warning messages) so declutter, and the confirmation message is a great place to post other purchase recommendations. Also using analytics is critical and few e-commerce people use them to their advantage: not using analytics funnels and deep analysis will put you at a competitive disadvantage.
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Future Jobs Fund

If you’re growing your business, or bouncing back after the recession, you could probably do with an extra pair of helping hands right now.

The Future Jobs Fund programme is great scheme to bring new talent into your organisation.  It’s a government scheme to create 17,000 jobs for 18-24 years old which provides 100% funding for your business to recruit a young person for 6 months, working 25 hours a week at the National Minimum Wage.  To recruit a full time person or to pay a higher salary, just pay your own top-up.

Who can benefit

Digital Consultant is working with Gecko Programmes to create jobs in the East Midlands, West Midlands and South West for creative, digital and cultural businesses.  We will help you recruit if your business is in:

- Advertising
- Computer games
- Design
- Events
- Fashion design
- Product and furniture design
- Film and television
- Heritage
- Jewellery and antiques
- Marketing and promotion
- Music – promotions, studios and manufacture
- Performing and visual arts
- Radio
- Video production
- Web and software development

For us to help, you need to have a registered office in:

- East Midlands (see map)
- West Midlands (see map)
- South West – (ONLY the counties of Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Bath and Bristol)

How we can help you recruit

Gecko will manage all of your recruitment working with the Job Centre and our existing database, or helping you to recruit from your own network.  If you are not established as a business (e.g. a voluntary group), Gecko may also be able to employ someone on your behalf.

Future Jobs Fund is not an apprenticeship scheme – you have no obligation to offer training, but if you want to skill your new employee, Gecko Programmes can offer advice about accessing Train To Gain and other funding for skills.

We can help you hire someone for any kind of job, including graduate or specialist roles.  We’ve recently helped to recruit roles for organisations including:

Birmingham Royal Ballet
New Vic Theatre
Aston FM

Start you recruitment

To find out more and get started with your recruitment contact:

Susi O’Neill, Digital Consultant tel: 07981 222799
Email:  susi@digitalconsultant.co.uk

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These are my links for April 23rd from 10:17 to 10:24:

  • Hitler Is Very Upset That Constantin Film Is Taking Down Hitler Parodies – After Marmite ordered the BNP to take out images of their product from their site, another strange copyright take down notice has been served this week on hundreds of un-suspecting parody film makers: Constantin Films, makers of the (outstanding) film Downfall, have served notice on many parody film that use the scene of Hitler in his bunker to convey everything from frustration at the new iPhone, leaking a list of BNP members and anything topical/mundane/silly. Parody falls into 'fair usage' in many settings, and the web memes gave the film a breath and life that many German films could never have. It seems a strange move on the part of the film makers, particularly when it's become a 'genre' in itself (this is publicity independent film makers cannot buy), and further shows the divide between how some copyright holders perceive their work should be used, and the means people are choosing to re-create and use their works.
  • Altimeter Report: Social Marketing Analytics (Altimeter Group & Web Analytics Demystified) – A summary of how social media can be measured, and what analytics tools can be used.
  • First Take Analysis: Facebook’s Crusade of Colonization – The irrepressible rise of Facebook continues with yet more changes aimed at opening up the platform, mainly to the benefit of developers and marketers, but with some controversial loss of privacy (basic data about your locations and interests will now be visible to all, unless you choose to remove it). Jeremiah Owyang gives a roundup of the raft of new technical features, and how they threaten to compete with other social services including Google. Facebook are positioning themselves as the personal hub online – even making moves to compete more seriously with email and document sharing services.
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These are my links for April 19th through April 20th:

  • The iPad isn’t a computer, it’s a distribution channel – Interesting take on the phenomena of the iPad and iPhone representing a shift to a closed network for laptop usage, where users engage in tasks within constraints, putting the power into the hands off producers and software/content distributors, rather than the free network of the web. This is an interesting space in monetizing content (the iPad is essentially web content without a URL, that people are forced/willing to pay for) but one which seeks to constrain the open possibilities of the interest, trading this off against the convenience and reliability of a closed network.
  • Michael Porter : What is Strategy? – This is great – Michael Porter, one of the top 20th Century business strategists, in a one page nutshell including a summary of the 'five forces' theory affecting a business in the market. I like his take on the internet:<br />
    `In our quest to see how the Internet is different, we have failed to see how the Internet is the same'
  • Ning Exodus | This group is set up to make your transition as smooth as possible – Got an existing Ning website but don't want to pay when the paywall comes up? Grou.ps have set up a transition service that is suppose to let you port a lot of your data and community from Ning directly into Grou.ps
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These are my links for April 16th through April 18th:

  • (Infographic) What Musicians Get Paid In The Digital Age – This is seriously depressing stuff. It shows how much a musicians needs to sell if relying on online physical sales and digital distribution alone to earn their keep just to the minimum wage. The greatest gap is the multi-million streams needed on services such as Spotify to achieve less than a few pence in revenue – clearly not achievable if you do not have some trigger from 'mass media' to generate it. Further evidence that musicians need to develop a mix economy of live, work-for-hire, licensing to survive.
  • Near2Home – The local business finder – Here's a new service that may be interesting to hyper local businesses: it's a link you put on your site so if businesses are far away from the areas you serve, you can route them to the Near2Home network. For every three you send, you get two referrals back. May work for more generic types of businesses.
  • Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards 2010 – Case studies and presentation from yesterday's healthcare engagement strategy awards organised by Creation Healthcare – great examples of how the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector are finding imaginative new ways to communicate important public health and marketing messages to patients and customers.
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