peterborough - TheWayoftheWeb

I can haz new logo

February 15, 2012 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

I’ve been running a personal blog for about 6 years, including early experiments on Blogger. Prior to that I’d had a simple homepage, along with some other static websites to play around with.

Over time I’ve managed to attract a reasonably large audience every month with a range of articles mainly covering writing and content, marketing, social media, SEO, and technology. But until 18 months ago, it was very much still a passion for my spare time, along with the videogame sites I’ve launched.

But after starting a freelance business, and with the ambition of growing, it was time to get things more organised – and about 18 months later I finally made use of a talented and friendly designer who was foolish enough to agree to provide a logo (I won’t say who as I don’t know if he’s accepting any more business at the moment).

So here it is, the logo for TheWayoftheWeb – your friendly content marketing, SEO and Social Media company.

It’s pretty simple, but I think it’s effective. Trying to come up with something to illustrate Content + Social Media + SEO was a challenge, particularly as I picked such a vague name years ago, and didn’t just want a name and strapline until I’ve done a bit more work on the exact proposition, as you could also have it as Writing/Content Marketing/Social Media/SEO/Training and a bit of Community Management/Affiliate Management as needed.

The Facebook Page and G+ pages already look massively improved. There’s still a bit of design work to do here, but I’m working on it. One of the great things about a self-hosted blog is that it forces me to actually get involved in the HTML and CSS myself on occasion, and I still feel smug when I manage to get something right first time without breaking everything!

What’s going to be interesting is seeing if there’s any increase in traffic/business to back up the horror designer friends have shown when I’ve launched and run sites without having a logo or branding in place first…

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: branding, content markeitng, journalism, logo, peterborough, seo, social media, thewayoftheweb, Writing

Failing to understand the social media economy?

February 3, 2012 By Dan Thornton 2 Comments

This is a great example of how you can listen to someone talk about the way that social media, social business and engagement are all supposed to work, and yet miss the entire point when it comes to actually trying to interact. If you’re not familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk, it’s worth me pointing out there’s some strong language.

It’s so often the case, particular with larger companies and the relentless need to show immediate ROI that even when someone understands the concept of earning what they want, that they succumb to the temptation of just diving straight in with the request, because someone has insisted they need to show results in the next day or week.

(Incidentally, Gary has released two books, Crush It! and The Thank You Economy. Both are well worth reading).

It’s why I’m been sharing this article by Michael Ellsberg on the Forbes website – a recommendation from one notable blogger did more for the success of his book than national broadcast television or newspapers. But the flipside is that he’d built that relationship up over a period of years, rather than days, weeks or months.

That’s also potentially a great reason to use freelance resources, which is something I intend to expand on. If you’re a new company or you’ve never tried earning coverage and referrals before, then it can take a long time to build those relationships. Whereas I’ve tried to work on them every day for the past decade, which is why I’m able to survive via word-of-mouth referrals and work via previous clients, colleagues and friends.

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Filed Under: Business, social media marketing Tagged With: agency, earned media, freelance, gary vaynerchuk, peterborough, social media, social networking, thank you economy

Geek curry night in Peterborough…

March 15, 2011 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

The belated arrangements for the fourth meetup for ‘Digital People in Peterborough‘ have now been announced, and in a change from the pub format, it’s going to be a curry night…

I’m still surprised that something I’d mentioned in passing to my good friend @pjeedai and virtual acquintance (at the time) @joffff has turned into a regular meetup which sees 20+ digital people get together for drinks, food and chatting. All from just deciding a time and a place and seeing if people would turn up.

And it’s continuing to grow. We’re getting a reasonable amount of people checking out the site regularly, more and more people are registering and posting in the forum, the Facebook page has got 34 Likes so far, and the Twitter account has 25 followers.

That might be small if you’re used to reading case studies of global brands and millions spent in marketing, but as a group which met for the first time 5 months ago, and which has come together from nothing, I’m pretty amazed. And particularly as it’s revealed how many talented and skilled people are in the area – as a result, it’s led to the founding of digital design and development company Jodanma, of which I’m a co-founder, for example.

With the ease of communication and organisation, if you’ve ever wondered about starting a community around a cause, shared hobby, idea, dream etc, there really is no excuse not to give it a go. Maybe it’ll become massive in terms of size, or value. And maybe it’ll take a bit of time and work. But there’s no excuse for not giving it a try and finding out who else is interested…

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Filed Under: community, Crowdsourcing, Digital Culture, social networks Tagged With: community, curry night, digital people in peterborough, dpip, geeks, meetup, networks, peterborough, techy, uk

Second chance to meet Digital People in Peterborough

November 10, 2010 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Last month I finally asked if anyone fancied coming along to a meet up for people working in all aspects of digital in Peterborough, UK and the surrounding area. And fortunately I didn’t end up sitting on my own in the pub, as around 12 people came along for a pint and to chat. It was great to meet a load of talented people, catch up with a couple of people I already knew and be able to find out how much we had in common etc.

So, as it went so well last time, we’re doing it the same way again this month, on Thursday November 25th from 7.30pm, in the Brewery Tap pub in Peterborough.

There’s more details and the chance to meet up with other digital people in the Peterborough area online at http://dpip.spruz.com (No www), or via a public Twitter list I’ve created for Digital People in Peterborough. And we’ll be using the Twitter hashtag #DPiP.

It’s likely to be the last one before Christmas, so hopefully everyone can make it, and in the new year, we’ll look at what we can add to the drinking and chatting to make it even more useful for everyone…