Join The fatBuzz Team

In response to an increase in business and the addition of several new contracts, we are looking to bring in a new account manager to join the fatBuzz team.

Ideally, you will be a marketing, journalism or PR professional, who is not only able to write creative, in-depth blog content, but also comprehensive social media strategies and reports.

You will have a good understanding of social media and digital marketing, but more importantly, you will have excellent written and oral communication skills, as you will be expected to build credible relationships with clients from various geographical locations and industry sectors.

The successful candidate will be responsible for creating in-depth blog content, writing clear and error-free copy, and managing various social media platforms.

This role also entails writing comprehensive social media strategies, which includes identifying key influencers and key opinion leaders, writing in-depth content plans, and mapping out key objectives with meaningful KPIs.

The position will be based in our Glasgow office, and although not essential, a driving licence would be a distinct advantage.

Salary and package will be commensurate with experience.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience Required:

Essential

• Educated to degree level or equivalent professional experience.
• A strong understanding of digital marketing and social media.
• Journalism, copywriting or blogging experience.
• Exceptional written communications skills, with ability to adapt style to suit different media and audiences.
• Articulate and confident communicator (both written and verbally).
• Excellent time management and organisational skills, with the ability to manage multiple projects and work to tight deadlines.
• Ability to build and maintain working and credible relationships.

Desirable

• Good understanding of Wordpress or other CMS.
• Experience of working with large corporate and/or B2B clients.
• Previous experience in an agency environment.

In the first instance you should send your CV, cover letter and any other relevant information to jobs@fatbuzz.com. Closing date for applications is 28th March 2014. All applications will be strictly confidential.

If you have know someone who would be interested in this role, please share it with them using either the Twitter, Facebook or Share buttons below. Thank you.

    

  

What a wonderful time of year for fatBuzz and our clients

      

It has been a fantastic year here at fatBuzz, and it could get a whole lot better tomorrow evening - as we are nominated in the High Growth Company category of WeDO’s annual awards ceremony.

We are absolutely thrilled to have been nominated for this award, and it is testament to the hard work and effort that our talented team have put in throughout the past year or so.

We are home to a creative and innovative team with a diverse range of backgrounds, including design, marketing, journalism, and PR, and without them, we wouldn’t be half as successful as we are.

As proud as we are to be nominated, we have been slightly overshadowed by our fantastic clients, who have been successful in various awards ceremonies across a range of industry sectors.

Last night, two of our clients scooped awards at The Herald Society Awards 2013; New College Lanarkshire won the Education Initiative of the Year, while The Scottish Guardianship Service, run by Aberlour Child Care Trust in partnership with the Scottish Refugee Council, won ‘Young People’s Project of the Year’.

The ‘Young People’s Project of the Year’ is one of many awards that Aberlour has won this year. The Scottish Guardianship Service won the highly prestigious Partnership of the Year at the SCVO Charity Awards 2013, Aberlour Options - Borders won an award at the Scottish Business Diversity Awards 2013, Aberlour Youthpoint Glasgow was presented with the Young Award at the Evening Times Community Champion Awards, and Aberlour Family Outreach - Dumfries & Galloway won the School and Learning Community Award at Nithsdale Community Achievement Awards 2013.

Just last week, two of our clients, Spectrum Service Solutions and Phoenix Car, were nominated for ‘Family Business of the Year’ at the Renfrewshire Chamber of Commerce Awards 2013. Unfortunately, they couldn’t share the award, and Spectrum were the deserving victors on the night. The success doesn’t stop there for Spectrum, as they have also been shortlisted for ‘Scottish Family Business of the Year (Large)’ at the Herald Scottish Family Business Awards 2013!

Our clients in the health and beauty industry have been particularly successful this year. Edinburgh-based beauty salon and spa, Zen Lifestyle, has been shortlisted in four categories in the prestigious Professional Beauty Awards 2014, while Glasgow barber, Rebel Rebel, was nominated for Men's Stylist of the Year at The Scottish Hair and Beauty Awards 2013, and Best Barber and Best Website at The INAA Scottish Hair & Beauty Awards.

The innovative Lustre Pure Light acne treatment technology has been selected as a shortlisted finalist for three awards at the Aesthetic Awards 2013-14, coming on the back of winning a prestigious Gold in the 'Best Product Innovation' category last year. Lustre has also been selected as a finalist for the prestigious award 15th Annual Medical Design Excellence Awards competition.

Saks Hair & Beauty is another client who has had a tremendously successful year. Among many other awards, Claire Denyer at Saks Kings Hill scooped the coveted title of Franchisee of the Year at the British Hairdressing Business Awards, and Saks Doncaster scooped the coveted Men’s Image Award at the L’Oréal Colour Trophy Grand Final.

Away from the health and beauty industry, Excel Vending was Highly Commended for Best Local Operating Company and Vending Supervisor of the Year at The Vending Industry Awards, and Greenvale Farm Fresh all rounder potatoes won the Meal Accompaniment Category at The Grocer New Products Awards.

Moving northwards, Dean's Shortbread, whose website we recently designed and developed, were recently shortlisted for Exporter of the Year at the annual Food & Drink Federation Awards, and picked up a hat-trick of awards at the Grampian Food Forum Innovation Awards, including the Investing in Skills Development Award, bronze award for Best New Retail Product, and gold award for Best Packaging for their premium Mary Steele gift brand. 

Earlier in the summer, Mary Steele also won the best Bakery & Cereals product at the Scottish Food & Drink Excellence Awards. Mitchells Dairy, who are slightly closer to home in Inverurie, won Local Independent Retailer of the Year at the Grampian Food Forum Innovation Awards, and the Healthy Option Retailer of the Year at the first ever Scottish Grocers Federation Retail Excellence awards!

The Royal Yacht Britannia had a glorious year of celebrations in its 60th anniversary year, winning the TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice® 2013 award and TripAdvisor Excellence Award, and being nominated for Most Stylish Entertainment Venue at the Scottish Style Awards.

Britannia also achieved the highest mark ever awarded to a visitor attraction in VisitScotland’s quality assurance five star grading (95.85%), and the Green Tourism Gold Award which awards the most environmentally friendly businesses for good sustainable practices.

Last but not least, Club 29 won Scotland’s Nightclub of the Year at The Scottish Entertainment Awards, while 29 Managing Director, Lynn Mortimer, received the Bighearted Scot 2013 title at the Bighearted Scotland Awards 2013.

As we're sure you'll agree, 2013 has been a hugely successful year for fatBuzz and our clients, and we are incredibly proud of each and every one of them. Here’s to 2014...

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Work Experience Student Shows Hunger for Success

    

  

For the past four days, the fatBuzz team have been privileged to have Lex Moore, a fifteen year old pupil from Wellington School, in the office on work experience.

From social media marketing and video production, to web design and development, Lex has been involved in every aspect of the business.

But rather than us telling you what she’s been up to, we thought we would let Lex do the honour.

On the Tuesday when I arrived here, I spent the morning learning about what fatBuzz does and spent time delving further into social media.

After this, I began to write a blog post about a subject I personally like a lot called The Hunger Games. I wrote two separate articles, one about my favourite character, and the other about why I love The Hunger Games so much. (You can read Lex's blog posts HERE). 

It was interesting and I had fun testing myself on how to write in a way suited to the Internet. I enjoyed the writing aspect a lot.

On the Wednesday while I was here, I had the opportunity to go with Malcolm to film a piece of footage for a company and see how the system works. Later in the day, I set up my own blog using WordPress and was able to personalise it by choosing my own theme.

I also looked over coding using CodeAcademy which helped me learn about coding after I had only touched on it at school.

After lunch I also had a look at Photoshop and was able to edit a header for my blog with David. I learned how to use some simple aspects of Photoshop as I had never used it before.

On Thursday, I went over the blog posts I had written two days previously and edited them quickly to fit my blog.

After this I filmed a couple of videos, one being about my time here at fatBuzz, which you can view above. I edited the video after which was fun, and gave me a view on some editing skills and how to make a video look good.

After adding music and photos into the video we uploaded it to Vimeo. Later on in the day, Joanna and I put my previously written posts onto my blog and added hyperlinks for each post.

We then added my video I recorded about The Hunger Games into my second post. After learning this, WordPress seemed a lot easier to use, and I will definitely be continuing with my blog.

We certainly hope Lex will be continuing with her blog, because she is a terrific writer with undoubted ability. We have no doubt that she is well on her way to achieving her dreams of being a writer or journalist.

You never know, she might even end up working right here at fatBuzz...

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Dean's: A Short and Sweet Process

    

  

As you may have noticed in various media outlets including The Drum and The Scotsman earlier this year, fatBuzz was enlisted to design and develop a brand-new website and online store for global shortbread brand, Dean's.

Last week, after less than three months of hard work and dedication, we were delighted to launch a site that is not only modern and visually appealing, but one which also maintains Dean's traditional heritage and identity.

One of our main aims when building the new Dean's site was to simplify the process for the admin staff and remove confusion for the customer.

Prior to launch, the site was split into three elements: content about the company, the shop, and the blog. The main issue was that each of these parts were completely different in look and feel, not to mention they each had separate domain names.

The old Dean's website: leading to inconsistent pages and sections

We wanted users to be able to land on any part of the site and navigate seamlessly from the main content to the online shop to the latest news section, all while having a consistent navigation.

It was also very important that Dean's personnel could log in to one central location that would give them control over all elements of the site; something that we've managed to achieve with great success.

Stand out from the competition

Before beginning our design process, we looked at the analytics on the previous site and noticed a considerable amount of traffic from mobile devices and from older desktop machines.

So, in order to cater for the right markets, we had to make it responsive and ensure cross-browser compatibility as much as possible.

Not only that, we had to ensure that the site was scalable; whether we had 1 product or 1000 products, the site should feel just as approachable and manageable.

Design - Meetings, moodboards and meticulous planning

The brand-new Dean's homepage

With all these ideas in mind, the design process began by having a meeting amongst ourselves and meticulously examining the good and bad parts of the existing site, which gave us an idea of what to keep and what to improve on.

From there, we created wireframes of the site, so that we had an idea as to what the customer journey would look like. Having created some moodboards to help express our ideas and vision for the site, we presented a considerable number of different designs, which varied in colour, element size and position - once this was approved, work commenced on building the site.

Development, details and devices

Looking at the site, there are subtle details such as using different graphics for mobile devices compared to the desktop equivalent, but regardless of which device you're using, you won't miss any of the key content.

Once the core site was complete, we integrated the ecommerce side of the business, and started to build the responsive element.

Online store: Full range launching on 20th November

Testing the site then involved dummy purchases, awkwardly sized images, extra-long blog titles, poor networking conditions, and most importantly, feedback from Dean's.

Finally, we moved the test site onto the live server, which involved some more testing to ensure that all elements were still working as expected.

From an SEO perspective, we made sure that old links were being permanently redirected to their new site equivalent, which ensures that all the work put into Dean's SEO to date won't be diminished.

Now that the site was completed, it was time to let people know about it. As we're sure most of you will already know, we have worked with Dean's on their social media management for the past two years - so we of course utilised social media.

Facebook graphic for Dean's competition

However, rather than physically running the competition on Facebook or Twitter, we decided instead to run it on the website to drive traffic - thus far, we have received almost 3000 entries!

Thankfully, all the hours of hard work from both sides has thoroughly paid off, and we're sure you'll agree that the new website looks absolutely fantastic.

Please feel free to have a look around the site, and give us your feedback by either commenting on this blog post, or by getting in touch on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

And don't forget to enter the competition to win a delicious Dean's hamper - just in time for Christmas!

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So, who were this year’s social media winners and losers?

    

  

For those who were unable to attend Friday's New Media Breakfast at 29 Private Members Club, you missed a hugely interesting, and at times extremely humorous event.

The topic of Friday's breakfast, 'Social Media Winners and Losers', was to look at a broad range of successful (and less successful) social media campaigns and explore what we can learn from them.

In front of a healthy crowd, complete with a welcome number of new faces, Gordon started off proceedings with Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches campaign.

Dove decided to conduct a 'compelling social experiment that explores how women view their own beauty in contrast to what others see'. The resulting video, which you can view below, has, thus far, amassed over 56 million on views on YouTube.

As one of our attendees, Thea Newcombe said, this emotive campaign was definitely a social media winner.

As well as Dove, Gordon focused his attention on Asos’s brilliant #DenimPairs campaign.
Essentially, this live, interactive Twitter campaign encouraged people to tweet in two numbers, and if they matched up the pictures on the cards, they could win their perfect pair of jeans

As the video below explains, Asos trended worldwide after just 11 minutes, and then for the duration of the competition. 5,971 tweets used the hashtag during the 32 minutes that the activity ran, with 2,362 unique users.

Of course, we haven’t got the time, or space, to fit all of Gordon’s presentation into one blog post, but here are some highlights (or perhaps lowlights?) of this year’s social media losers.

After British Gas announced a £120 increase to annual energy bills, some wisecrack in the marketing department decided it would be a good idea to launch a question and answer session on Twitter.

Unsurprisingly, the questions, some of which you can see below, weren’t quite what British Gas was expecting.

The biggest laugh of the morning came when Gordon discussed Conservative MP Gavin Barwell’s Twitter gaffe.

The Croydon Central MP was left red-faced after a plan to expose Labour for making money off a ‘date Arab girls’ link backfired and revealed it was actually a targeted advert for his computer!

Of course, these are just a select few of Friday’s winners and losers. Gordon also discussed IRN-BRU’s ‘fanny’ advert (which was launched by a randomly selected follower with just 329 followers), Tennent’s Lager’s SelfTie campaign, Tesco's 'hit the hay' storm, and Belvedere's questionable advert.

As always, we hope you enjoyed Friday’s breakfast, and hope that you can adapt some of these examples and make it work for your business.

Remember, as Gordon explained, we can learn as much from the social media losers as we can from the winners, and identify what not to do.

Do you have a social media success story that you would like to share with us? Or is there a particular social media failure that we didn't touch on?

If so, leave a comment on the blog, or get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter.

If you want to come along to the November New Media Breakfast, and receive some Christmas tips from Craig McGill, you can click HERE to find out more.

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Sgt. Social Media - Is social media becoming an effective tool in law enforcement?

At fatBuzz, not only do we like to keep tabs on the world of social media and all things digital, we also keep a close eye on the news.

Recently, we've noticed the digital world and news world are coming ever closer to each other, and at times, becoming intertwined.

In this blog post, Social Media Account Manager, Cameron, discusses how social media is becoming an effective tool in law enforcement.

Remember the ‘Peru Two’; the two girls who got caught trying to smuggle 25kg (£1.5 million) worth of cocaine out of Peru? If not, don’t worry, there’s a blog we wrote about them HERE.

In their statements, the girls tell how they were working in Ibiza and did not meet until they were 'kidnapped at gunpoint' and forced to go to Majorca, however photos uploaded to Instagram allegedly showed the two of them sunning themselves in Ibiza together.

This most likely had a large impact on the case and, who knows, may have just resulted in the two pleading guilty to the charges. However, the ‘Peru Two’ aren't the only ‘bad guys’ who have been incriminated through social media.

In recent news, Rihanna's activity on Twitter and Instagram led to three arrests by Thai police. Her images and tweets from her visit to Phuket led to two people being arrested for illegal wildlife touting, while the other was charged with obscenity and operating a venue without a permit.

Heck, even Snapchat is being used by officials in certain cases. When you send a ‘Snap’ it is held on a Google-cloud server until the snap is opened, and once opened, it ‘disappears’ off of the server.

Micah Schaffer, the Head of Trust and Safety for Snapchat said: “Since May 2013, about a dozen of the search warrants we've received have resulted in us producing unopened Snaps to law enforcement. That’s out of 350 million Snaps sent every day.”

So, why are authorities increasingly using social media as a means to capture criminals? Well, it’s pretty obvious, isn't it?

Facebook users upload 350 million photos each day, Twitter users post a combined 500 million tweets per day, while Instagram’s 150 million + users upload 55 million photos every day!

This plethora of content, allied with our generation’s inclination to document every aspect of their lives online, potentially offers authorities an incredible and seemingly endless database of information about even the most intricate details of people.

But is it any surprise? As you can see from this blog post, social media is now being used for different markets, industries and institutions.

Undoubtedly, whether it is marketing or law enforcement, the power of social media is on the rise.

Do you agree with Cameron's views? Do you think that social media is becoming an effective tool in law enforcement? Let us know by either commenting on the blog post, or by getting in touch on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

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fatBuzz are proud to be sponsoring the Scottish Italian Awards 2013!

We are delighted to announce that fatBuzz is an official sponsor of the Scottish Italian Awards 2013!

Scotland is world renowned for having an excellent and varied hospitality industry, and the Scottish Italian community plays a vital part in its success, so it's only right that these businesses are rewarded.

The Scottish Italian Awards will recognise a variety of categories including best restaurant, best multiple operator and many more.

Voting is open to the general public ensuring that these awards reflect Scotland's favourite Italian places to go and have a good time.

The Scottish Italian Awards is an annual event that will showcase the fantastic range and quality of Scotland's Italian owned businesses.

Celebrity chef, Jean Christophe Novelli, is 'delighted to be working with the Italian Awards and is looking forward to judging the very best Italian Venue's in Scotland'.

Are you wondering why a design and social media agency has decided to sponsor the awards?

Well, we simply see it as a brilliant opportunity to highlight the fact that we can help businesses create a buzz about the awards on their social media platforms, and ultimately receive votes through the power of social media.

If you want to find out more, you can like the Scottish Italian Awards on Facebook and Twitter.

The categories you can vote for are:

• Favourite Italian Business
• Best Italian Restaurant
• Best Pasta
• Best Pizza
• Best Bistro
• Best Multiple Operator
• Best Fish and Chips
• Best Front of House
• Best Newcomer
• Best Wine List
• Best Family Restaurant
• Best In-House Marketing Team
• People's Choice Award 2013
• Best Takeaway
• Best Barista
• Italian Chef of the Year
• Best Ice Cream Parlour

The voting closes on Monday 30th September, so make sure you get your votes in for each of the categories! Click HERE to vote!

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The Peru Two - A Social Media Downfall?

At fatBuzz, we like to keep an eye on what’s happening, not only in the world of social media, but also the world in general. And when the two combine, it’s something that really gets us talking.

Just this weekend, it was reported that alleged Ibiza 'drug mule' Melissa Reid is set to plead guilty after striking a deal that could see her walk free from prison in less than three years.

Reid, along with Michaella McCollum Connolly, was facing up to 25 years' imprisonment after being caught with £1.5 million worth of cocaine in their suitcases at Lima International Airport.

In this blog post, social media account manager, Graeme Geddes, looks at how big a part social media has played in the girls' downfall.

'Having read news reports and watched bulletins on the television of the 'Peru Two', I believe that central to the case being built by the police in Peru are a series of photographs.

'The girls, Melissa Reid and Michaella McCollum Connolly, claim that they met for the first time in Peru, however images of the two together in bikinis would suggest they were, in fact, together in Ibiza.

'With it being winter in Peru just now, would the girls really have been wearing so little clothing?

'Not only that, yet more pictures have emerged. Among these photographs is one of a Nokia mobile phone with the caption 'Wongamaker' on Instagram.

'That particular photo went up before she left her home in Scotland to work on party island Ibiza, so how are the authorities discovering these images? Social media, of course.

'The Peruvian police have been able to simply and effortlessly trawl through a host of images taken by both Reid and McCollum Connolly, which have all be posted on the girls’ personal Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

'And going on what has been widely reported by the media thus far, it would appear these images are going to play an instrumental part in this case.

'Will this be the first time we have really witnessed social media form a huge part of a high profile court case?

'As more of us use social media, we are all beginning to log everything we do, even minor, inconspicuous (at the time) things.

'Not only that, we are increasingly adding locations to our Instagram pictures, our tweets, and our Facebook statuses.

'Everytime we post a picture, even if it is of our dinner, we’ve leaving a trail of virtual breadcrumbs; perhaps this is something we should all bear in mind and be more wary of?

'Unfortunately for the ‘Peru Two’, this is something they didn’t think of when they were out partying in Ibiza, and it could very well be their downfall if it can be proved their stories are false.

'This is a story that will undoubtedly keep evolving over the coming weeks and months, and one which we will continue to keep a close eye on.'

What are your thoughts on how social media could be logging your every move? And do you have concerns about the privacy offered on social network sites?

Just leave a comment below or get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter - we would love to hear your thoughts.

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Quick Buzz - What is Responsive Design?

How often do you use your smartphone or tablet to access a website? And how often is that website compatible with the device your using to view it?

Since the craze of the iPhone, Android phones and tablet devices began, more and more people have realised that they were losing traffic due to the fact that their website could not be viewed on mobile devices.

Over the years, the way that we view websites has changed massively. Building content was pretty straightforward; you had two browsers, rendering content in a very similar fashion.

Businesses started realising that they had to have a website that was accessible on all platforms, to make  its users time on their site a lot easier, no matter what they visited the site on, whether it be desktop, iPhone or iPad etc.

Ten years on and we had more browsers, more styling techniques, and ultimately, more permutations to design and build for. We not only have multiple browsers to contend with, we also have multiple platforms, with the introduction of tablets and smartphones.

It goes without saying that your site will display on all of the above, but, of course, you want it optimised for your audience. This is where responsive design comes in.

To view more videos, please visit fatBuzz.TV

Here's some examples of the site we've worked on that are now responsive

www.thelustreclinic.com

www.primestaff.co.uk

www.punkroyal.com

If you'd like to know more about responsive design, then please feel free to give Jon, or David a call on 0141 427 0727

If you have found this post interesting there's a chance that other people in your online community will too, please use the share buttons below to tell them about it.  Thank you, it is much appreciated.

Quick Buzz - Facebook competitions. Are you breaking the rules?

Facebook competitions have always been a great way to create good, fun engagement with your online community, and of course, getting the 'likes' on your page up.

Most of you will be aware of these "Like & Share" competitions that tend to take over your news feed, but did you know these are against Facebook's rules and regulations?

Facebook has had rules and regulations for competitions for as long as we remember, but a number of businesses and big name brands continue to disregard them.

Whether they're aware of the consequences, or think that they won't get caught, then you need to ask yourself; is it really worth it?

Building your community on Facebook takes a tremendous amount of time and effort, so why risk losing all that hard work, just because you were a bit careless with the terms & conditions. If you want to find out what the rules are exactly, then follow this link, and jump to 'Section E - Promotions'.

One of the most important parts of the regulations, is that competitions should be run through 'Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App'.

To view more videos, please visit fatBuzz.tv

Although it's important to run these competitions through an app or iframe, you can still promote your competition through the Facebook wall. 

For example, one of our clients, Dean's, recently ran a competition to get Facebook fans to name their new mascot, so we created an iframe tab to run the competition on (adhering to the rules of Facebook) but we also created a simple graphic to promote the competition on the wall.

If you're reading this and realising that you are breaching some of the rules we mentioned above, please take the time to read the terms & conditions, and amend your mistakes, because you could wake up tomorrow and no longer have a presence on Facebook.

If you want to run a competition on an iframe tab on Facebook but don't know how to go about it, please feel free to get in touch, and we can discuss it with you. 

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Another New Face at fatBuzz

Our client list is ever expanding which meant we were on the lookout for a new web developer - and we have found the guy who fitted the bill!

We would like to introduce you to our newest member of the fatBuzz team - Web Developer, Stuart.

Stuart recently graduated from The University of the West of Scotland with an honours degree in Web and Mobile Development.

He has been designing websites since 2001 and started freelance work in January 2008, but fatBuzz is his first full time position since leaving university.

Stuart specialises in creating usable professional websites using the latest W3C web standards guidelines and best practice accessibility, resulting in semantic and SEO friendly XHTML and CSS.

Stuart brings a wide range of other skills to the fatBuzz web team including; graphic design, information design, XHTML/CSS/PHP, and usability standards.

In his spare time, you'll catch Stuart out fishing down in Dumfries and Galloway or playing his PlayStation.

To find out how Stuart can create a user friendly and aesthetically engaging design, whilst ensuring you have a prominent presence on the web - drop him an email on stuart@fatbuzz.com.

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Wimbledon Making a Racket in the Social Media World

Fans flocked to SW19 yesterday for the first day of Wimbledon, and as usual, there were plenty of serves, shocks and strawberries - but at fatBuzz, we're more excited by the activities on line rather than on court!

Although the competition is only in its second day, we have been thoroughly impressed by Wimbeldon's commitment to social media this year.

From Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Google+ (yes, even Google+), Wimbledon has got a visible presence across multiple platforms - and so far - they're really making a racket in the social media world. 

For the purposes of this blog post, we're going to focus on Facebook, Twitter and the brand new iPad app, The Championships, Wimbledon 2013, but before we do so, we had to mention the dedicated Social Media page on the Wimbledon website.

On this page, you can view featured hashtags, video and radio clips and slideshows, as well as its latest Instagram, Facebook and Twitter feeds. There is also a blog and live blog, where you can keep up to date with the latest news and results, as well as see behind-the-scenes.

Facebook

At the time of writing this blog post, there are 1, 206, 018 likes on Facebook, and we're sure that figure will increase dramatically throughout the next two weeks - so what features and functionality have encouraged over 1 million people to 'Like' the Wimbledon page?

Aside from general pictures, videos and status updates, there are three separate custom iframe tabs; Our Tweets, where you can view the Wimbledon Twitter feed, Instagram #wimbledon, where you can view the latest Instagram feed, and Our Videos, where you can, of course, watch the latest videos.

There are also daily polls to engage the community, and we have noticed that a new event is being created every single day, where people are directed to the website to buy tickets. Clever.

One relatively new Facebook feature which Wimbledon is effectively using is the hashtag functionality. No prizes for guessing that the most used hashtag on the Wimbledon Facebook page is, of course, #Wimbledon.

Twitter

As of today, Wimbledon currently has 581, 840 Twitter followers, and although this is substantially less than the 1, 206, 018 likes on Facebook, there certainly seems to be a lot of engagement.

In addition to creating hashtags on a daily basis to engage their users in topical conversation (e.g. #Wimbledon, #tennis, and #SW19) one of the most interesting aspects of Wimbledon's Twitter output is Twitter's 'Magic Mirror'.

First used at The Oscars earlier this year, the mirror, which will be placed where only players can access it, will give tennis fans the chance to see behind-the-scenes photos at SW19. Once the photo has been taken, the images will automatically be posted on Wimbledon's official Twitter account, accompanied by the hashtags #TwitterMirror and #Wimbledon.

iPad App

Last, but certainly not least, is Wimbledon's brand-new iPad app, which is available from iTunes.

The app, The Championships, Wimbledon 2013, allows users to navigate around the grounds via a photographic map, zooming in on specific courts to get updates on the state of play.

The app also provides live scores, results and stats, draws and play schedules, profiles of players, live radio, and a live video show with interviews, highlights and features on the tournament.

Other features of the app include live time lapse images from the grounds, favourite player performance alerts, fan feedback, and much more.

With so many different ways of connecting and sharing your experience of Wimbledon, be it at home or at SWG3, we think they are most definitely social media ready - and we're already looking forward to seeing what tricks they have up their sleeves in the coming weeks.

Do you think the the use of social media will enhance your experience of Wimbledon? Is there anything else social media related that has impressed you this year at Wimbledon? Let us know over the next couple of weeks on Facebook and Twitter, or of course, you can also leave a comment on the blog.

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A look at Responsive Design

If you’re a regular reader of the fatBuzz blog, you will have worked your way through plenty of content regarding the evolution of social media; how it affects our every day lives, the way it has changed for the better or for worse, as well as updates on some of our clients' progress.

However, rather than focus on social media in today's blog post, one of our web developers, Jon, will share his thoughts on one of the key aspects that differentiates one of our latest web projects - a new website for clothing brand, Punk Royal - from most others. Responsive Design. 

Over the years, the way that we view websites has changed massively. If we go back 20 years to the early 90s, you had one platform (the Personal Computer) in which to view Internet content, through either Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or the Netscape browser, which is essentially now known as Firefox.

Building content was pretty straightforward; you had two browsers, rendering content in a very similar fashion, so what you designed on your home/work machine is what all your customers/followers would see on their machine. It was a simple time to be a web developer

Fast forward ten years to the millennium and things had really progressed. We had more browsers, more styling techniques, and ultimately, more permutations to design and build for. You could say this is where things started to get tricky, to make sure that 100% of your audience would see your site, or more specifically, your content, as you intended them to see it.

If we jump forward to the present day, the number of permutations has increased exponentially. We not only have multiple browsers to contend with, we also have multiple platforms, with the introduction of tablets and smartphones. It goes without saying that your site will display on all of the above, but, of course, you want it optimised for your audience. This is where responsive design comes in.

The main premise of having a responsive site is the ability to have one content management system and one set of content, but essentially a different looking site optimised to whatever device you’re viewing on. Roughly five years ago, we did have the option of creating mobile specific sites, but generally, this required having two separate sites, separate domains with two separate lots of content, which when scaled up, is not at all manageable.

Simply using CSS, we can now change how a user views a site, purely based on the width of the device that they are using. This then allows us to optimise websites for not only mobile devices, but for desktop machines too; a category that Punk Royal falls into, with its maximum width sitting at 1440 pixels, generally considered too big for a standard site brochure site.

However, the main target is still mobile devices. 28% of Internet traffic is from a mobile device and a new smartphone is bought every 2 seconds on eBay! And in 2011, mobile transactions accounted for $241billion worth of sales on online stores[1]. Just think of the customers that you could be missing out on if your site isn’t optimised for their use?

The site will change depending on your device - view it for yourself 

The Punk Royal site was built responsively in conjunction with the Twitter Bootstrap, an HTML/CSS framework that helps to maintain cross browser compatibility, something that is equally essential to ensuring as many people as possible see your site as intended. There are essentially two different ways of building responsively; either with breakpoints or as a fluid site.

A site with breakpoints is pretty self explanatory, in that when the browser width gets to point A, it changes, point B, changes again etc. A fluid site constantly changes width and size as the browser size gets smaller and covers every pixel between the maximum and minimum size. If you drag the browser windows horizontally to as small a size as possible, you will understand what is meant.

Building a site with fluidity is very time consuming and requires a lot of patience but it does create the best result in terms of creating something that will optimize to any screen (in the case of Punk Royal, screens between 320 pixels and 1440 pixels wide).

The key part of the site was the navigation and how to handle this on a mobile browser. When a website has only a handful of links, the need to change the menu is probably minimal, however to future proof things, you need to consider that somewhere in the future, further pages may be added and the menu may evolve. This is why with the Punk Royal site, the menu evolves to a dropdown when viewed on mobile devices, essentially removing any restrictions from the design element.

We (well, I...) look at the Punk Royal site most days with pride in what we’ve created, and probably spend a bit too much time moving the browser back and forth to watch the elements morph into their new home. If you didn’t before, you really need to try it!

Hopefully you have something to think about regarding the importance of responsive design and the need to meet as much of your target audience as possible. Remember to have a look at the new Punk Royal website, on either your desktop, tablet or mobile device, and let us know what you think!

If you want to discuss responsive design further, or indeed any aspect of web design or development, just give myself or David a call on 0141 427 0727.

[1] http://mobilewebrockstar.com/13-killer-mobile-web-usage-statistics/

Twitter Infiltrating Music Videos

In the world of social media, Twitter is undoubtedly one of the most powerful tools. What started off as a platform for people to communicate what they’re doing to each other has become a massively successful business tool.

Unsurprisingly, Twitter has also infiltrated the music industry, and fatBuzz Account Manager, Graeme, has noticed a song currently riding high in the charts that has a rather interesting video accompanying it.

Being a keen music enthusiast (and DJ in some of Glasgow’s premier nightclubs), Graeme decided to share his thoughts with you...

I’m sure we’ve all seen TV shows embrace Twitter. Quite often, you’ll see a hashtag appear at the bottom of your screen during a show, hoping to encourage viewers to hop onto their computer/smartphone/tablet and get the show ‘trending’.

I suppose it’s a form of advertising, and a way of justifying the price advertisers pay to advertise during these shows - or even the prices brands will pay for product placement.

It now seems this phenomenon has made its way into the music industry.

First we had The Voice judge, Will.I.Am, release a track with Justin Bieber, entitled #thatPOWER, but someone’s decided to take it a little bit further.

Now, I’m not sure if many of you who pay attention to today’s popular music, or the Official Charts for that matter, however anyone who does, will know of the song I’m about to discuss.

Currently, the number one song in the UK charts is Blurred Lines, by Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and rapper, T.I. Now, I’ll be honest with you, I love this song.

The video for the song (which you can view below) features the three artists dancing and messing about, accompanied by young, scantily-clad females. Interestingly though, they’re also surrounded by a regular series of hashtags; #THICKE and #BLURREDLINES.

Although there are only two hashtags used in the video, what I found staggering was the amount of times they appear in the video.

I actually sat and counted (outwith work hours, of course...) as many as five hashtags in the first 30 seconds of the video, with the entire video displaying a total of 30.

The Blurred Lines hashtag only appears three times - it’s the RnB singer’s hashtagged surname that appears most often. At the end of the video, it’s even simply displayed on a black screen, making sure viewers are left in no doubt as to who sang the song, and how to talk about him on Twitter.

Now, as Mashable explains, hashtags don't traditionally appear in music videos, especially as big or as frequently as #Thicke appears in Blurred Lines. So, why now?

It could simply be a case of his management deploying a pretty crude way of building his Twitter following. Or it could be a ploy to raise awareness of Thicke being ‘back’ with new material, and more importantly, to get his name trending in the run-up to the release of his new album.

I’m not even sure if these hashtags have helped him gain his number one status in the charts - his first ever UK number one - but put it this way, they certainly didn’t hurt his chances, did they?

We’d love to know what you all think of Thicke’s use of hashtags. Was it a social media success? Have you seen any other good examples of artists using social media in music videos?

Let us know on Twitter, and heck, you might even want to use the hashtag #THICKE!

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Got To Let Go

Here at fatBuzz we have been working closely with Jai McDowall, a Scottish recording artist who won the fifth series of Britains Got Talent in June 2011, for the past few months.

We've been assisting with his social media leading up to the launch of his debut single "Got To Let Go" which was released on Sunday the 19th of May.

Since we have been working with Jai, the social media activity has dramatically increased with the YouTube hits now at 20,120 since it was uploaded just two months ago!

You can watch his latest music video below.

   

The team at fatBuzz like his song so much that we play it every Friday. Hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Please show your support for Jai and buy a copy of his single HERE.

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