Every new beginning is marked with a new name.  But I'm having issues selecting one and, as result, it's holding me up somewhat.

I freelance under my own name and will continue to do so in future.  However, because of the projects I’m launching this year and the increasing number of collaborations I’m doing I need to form a limited company with a new business name.

I’m not hiring anyone, I’m not looking to turn into an agency at this stage or anything like that – it’s still going to be projects either delivered exclusively by me or led by me.  Apart from design and web strategy projects, this new entity will look after all of my web series production, any online properties (including blogs) and a new merchandise line.

My work is ever-changing - it ranges from creative to consultancy to management, whilst my clients range from non-profits to businesses and media publishers - so the name needs to be malleable/vague enough to encompass all of these things.  Consequently, I’d like to eschew words like ‘media’, ‘creative’ or ‘productions’.

I’ve narrowed it down to three choices:

• Philosophy Studio – ordinarily, I would have passed on this one because it contains ‘studio’; however, it’s currently the name of my work-related blog and most people that follow me know it.

• Hey, Squish! – I just like this; I came up with this when brainstorming names for my t-shirt line, but ‘Produced by Hey, Squish!’ sounds pretty good too.

• Oli&Chris – Named after the personalities of both of my brothers: fun, witty, courageous, thoughtful, serious, spontaneous, pragmatic, dynamic, juxtaposed…

So, please vote!  And leave your comments in the comments… Thanks!

I realised recently that a lot of my 'work in progress' tweets were about the new website that I'm designing for Bee Charmer Productions.  I've had a few tweets back asking for sneak previews but, because of my NDA, I haven't been able to share... until now.

Part of the header for BCP's new blog

If you follow my work, you'll realise that Bee Charmer Productions is the production company of Regan Latimer, best known to you as the creator and writer/director of the web series, B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye (on which I am also Associate Producer).  BCP's website has taken a number of guises over the past year - first a holding page, now a one page intro site - and I am pleased to announce that we are now in the home stretch of putting together its first full website.

I'm sure I'll write this up as a full case study when it's up, but for now here's a sneak peek of a work in progress...

Part of the main website's footer

BCP's new icon set

Christmas is a great time of the year to volunteer for your favourite cause, charity or community group.  I used to volunteer several hours a week but, like a lot of people, my work schedule has overtaken me somewhat and I have not been able to offer pro bono hours for the last three months.

So, in January, I am giving away chunks of half days of my time to charities, social enterprises or community groups based in London.

Projects I have previously worked on in this time include

• designing flyers for training
• facilitating project planning for new websites
• putting together a marketing plan for a web series
• performing user scenario testing on existing websites to increase positive user experience
• brainstorming online marketing strategy for new blogs
• building a three page microsite for an event
• designing skins for Blogger, Twitter and other online platforms in keeping with existing brand colours and style (like I did with WRC's blog).

I'm open to most projects that can test and utilise my background in design, web strategy and marketing, so feel free to contact me with your idea.

Compliments of the season to you all and a very happy 2010!

**Update - 18 January 2010
I have had an amazing response to this, so much so that I'm scheduled deep into February.  Needless to say, all of my pro bono hours have been pledged for this window of my year.  Schedule permitting, I plan on opening up the calendar again in the Spring, so watch this space!

Updating (or overhauling) a web design is a big deal for most organisations.  More often than not, ‘out with the old’ brings a welcome breath of fresh air.  But with organisations with a long and significant history, integrating specific elements – especially specific images - from their old site into the new one can be a bit of a challenge.  Especially when at first they don’t have a place in your vision.

I recently completed the site re-design for the London Centre for Personal Safety, an organisation that provides gender-aware personal safety training, as well as advising organisations on personal safety issues and campaigning with like-minded organisations to end violence against women. 

LCPS' old website

There was no design brief; they simply wanted to reflect the organisation in a more professional light and appeal to organisations not just in the voluntary/non-profit sector, but in the public and private sectors as well.  During the brainstorming process, I asked their Director, Claudia da Silva, what was the main characteristic that embodied the organisation’s work.  As well as safety and security, she said, “The feeling of freedom, like a bird being set free and flying into the sky.”

LCPS' new website

A number of years ago, LCPS found out about a programme where you could get some postal stamps printed to support your organisation.  They created some mock-ups of the stamps and, although nothing ever came of them, they have been used in the organisation’s materials ever since.  One of the organisation’s early requests was that these stamps be incorporated into the site’s design in some way; this was especially important given that this organisation has yet to have their logo designed, so I was keen to keep any existing branding collateral that would identify them to the organisations with whom they already work or want to work with.

After many consultations, I was left with the impression that the people they work with are as integral to the organisation as the unique training programmes for which they are known.

Although the website’s defining image (which you can see on the homepage) is a woman in silhouette, arms raised in celebration against a sunrise, capturing the spirit of liberation and freedom that the organisation embodies, I wanted to incorporate photos of the organisation’s target groups. It was a perfect opportunity to incorporate some of the photos from the original stamps.

A mock-up of LCPS' stamp for their children's projects



The header on the children's projects page incorporating the stamp's photo

Their legacy stamp, used almost in place of their logo, was somewhat more difficult to incorporate.  It’s a very definitive style from a very specific period – completely unlike the clean, bright images of the people in the headers.

LCPS' legacy stamp

I decided to keep the image intact and place it on a background of clouds in a blue sky.  I tweaked the original strapline so that it read ‘Over 25 years of preventing, protecting, empowering and liberating…’

LCPS header on the 'About Us' page incorporating their legacy stamp

The new header now underlines the organisation’s status as an established authority that only age can bring, while the blue sky background represents its innovative approach (literally, blue sky thinking!) and the feeling of freedom and liberation that it seeks to impart to all of its project participants.

A few weeks ago, I was putting together a post intended for the Life On Fletcher blog.  It was going to be a bit of a how-to based on our experiences of making the show.  As we’d just announced our development deal, we were feeling a little reminiscent, so the angle changed to ‘what we wish we’d known before making our show’.

I opened out the question to a number of web series producers whose shows I’d discovered via connecting with them on Twitter. Within a couple of weeks I had accumulated six great responses that needed to be shared with an audience wider than our blog.  The resulting article, Confessions of Indie Web Series Creators: Things They Wish They Knew, ended up on Tubefilter.tv (thanks to Tubefilter’s Marc Hustvedt for having us!).

That was last Tuesday; today is Sunday, and a lot of the emails and messages I’ve received since then have been requests to see, in full, what everyone sent in.  Their contributions were very different from each other.  I have to say that it was quite overwhelming in the first instance to receive it all, but then to read it all…

Susan Miller, Executive Producer & Writer of Anyone But Me

“Here’s what I wish I’d known:

“How freakingly awesomely totally cool this would be, dudes!  Could have saved me hours of sitting on my shrink’s well worn couch crying over the terrible state of the world and where to relocate my lost place in it and how ever would I make my voice heard again.

“But, then, if I had known then what I know now I might have been just a little too happy. And, after all, it was my discontent with the confines and dictates of the mainstream that moved me to venture into this great unknown. To say yes to this web series madness.  To say yes to Anyone But Me.

“Of course, there are things I wish I’d known, only because I would have prepared by taking vitamins, going to the gym, getting an MBA and learning how to talk in P.R:  

“That you have to ask. A lot of people for a lot of things. Favors. And how to’s. And please watch and please, please, please.

“That you have to scour web sites and blogs to find other web sites and blogs to make connections. You have to get your schmooze on and walk into rooms and hand out cards and be able to describe your show in one sexy killer sentence.

“That you have to reach out. To CEO’s and store owners and people walking down the street and sell them your wares and not be daunted. Even though you used to sit alone in a room or café and just write or think all day and talk to no one. You do it all for the show. And the show becomes all that you do.

“That there are remarkably generous people out there. That the fans make you. That we are a community. That we have to keep the faith.

“Whatever I didn’t know, I’m learning.  Which makes me feel forever young. And part of something. Something uncharted.  Something without rules. Something we’ll define for ourselves. Something big. And something freakingly, awesomely, totally cool.”

David Nett, Executive Producer, Writer, Actor, Director, Boom Operator on GOLD

“The thing that I knew, but didn't really comprehend fully was, since Season 1 of GOLD was a deferred pay gig (basically, everyone was a volunteer), we'd have a lot of drop-outs and last-minute replacements, and a lot of scrambling to fill gaps. I knew it would be rough, but wasn't really prepared for the sheer amount of wrangling I'd have to do, during both production and post. I now know, if I can't scrape together strong pay packages, to line-up back-ups for my back-ups.

“But I guess the biggest thing I wish I'd known (and better prepared for) was the long-term commitment to the project after shooting was complete. I come from the world of theater -- however rough the production is, once a play closes and all the bills have been paid, it is all over, save the fond (or not so fond) memories. Not so with web series, I found.

“I came into GOLD with a pretty decent shooting plan and a rough post production plan, but no real understanding of the massive amount of ongoing promotion, paperwork, decision-making and just plain grunt work that would continue not only after shooting was done but even after our Season 1 finale dropped last month. It is certainly not all bad, and I have a deep commitment to my series and doing everything I can to keep it going into Season 2, but it is a little more than I bargained for. Had I known those things ahead of time, I'm not certain what I'd have done differently, but at least I wouldn't have kept saying to my wife, "we'll have our life back soon, I promise." I didn't mean to lie to you, sweetheart. I swear.”

Robb Padgett, Creator & Actor, Life From The Inside

“How do you get people to WATCH?!

“Not as if we've figured this one out exactly. But we sure know more now than we did. Of course, back when our show first hit the web in January of 2007, there weren't as many shows online. It was easier to get the attention of web show watchers (though there were fewer web show watchers back then too). But it still took us a while to figure out how to get noticed. In fact, I'm not sure we ever really DID figure it out. If it weren't for the help of people like the producers of Break a Leg mentioning our show in interviews and people like Sunny Gault noticing our show and profiling it on her old show Viral, we might not have ever gotten noticed.

“I guess what I should say is that I wish I would've known how to PROMOTE the show before we started making it. It took us WAY too long to do stuff like tell the good people at Blip.tv about our show. And they've been some of our biggest supporters of all (Blip is good to a lot of shows. I sure wish Felicia Williams was still at YouTube though, she was a true champion of independent content).

“We're still learning how to get our show out there. And we've discovered just how big a task promotion actually is. I'm not a huge fan of publicity, but I like having people watch our show so...

“Oh, one other thing I would've liked to have known is that it's much easier to shoot your entire season ALL AT ONCE than to shoot it as you go. Though our current show with it's full-length episodes might have been hard to do that way.”

Justin Marchert, Creator of Big Bother

“The most helpful piece of knowledge that I could have used before making Big Bother is that everything takes longer than you think it will. I had the initial idea for my web series in May 2007. I was an actor-turned-filmmaker who thought I'd have a finished product ready in two months. Oh, was this the underestimate of a lifetime. I spent nearly a year writing the script and doing preproduction. Then, the two weekends I'd initially allotted for principal shooting somehow stretched into several months. Next, I thought I was ready to go to the editor and put it all together. But, you then learn that there is a whole phase called "capturing." This means spending months digitizing, logging and filing all of the footage. Your editor won't even speak to you before this is complete. Alas, we come to editing. We average 15 hours of editing for each 3-minute episode of Big Bother.

“Consequently, most episodes are finished the night before they're released (feel free to read the chronicles of creating Big Bother on our Bblog).

“In hindsight, I'm actually glad no-one told me it would be a two-year process.  Otherwise, I don't think I'd ever have begun.”

Renée Olbert, Actor & Co-Creator, and Rosemary Rowe, Writer & Co-Creator of Seeking Simone

Renée and Rosemary pointed me to this article that they had written on their blog entitled Things We Learned About Making a Web Series – no sense in reinventing your wheel, right!?

This is my favourite tip from their list:

“7. You will not have time to knit. You just won't. So give it up.”

Regan Latimer, Creator, Executive Producer, Director, Writer, Editor of B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye

“If you had asked me a year and half ago if I'd ever considered making a web series or producing web content, I probably would have responded with something very close to, "the what?". My knowledge of web series, or producing any kind of content for the web was in it's absolute infancy. That said, I believe that my ignorance on the subject probably worked in my favour. Having no idea just how absolutely all encompassing and life absorbing it would become is probably one of the main reasons Fletcher came into being. Not to say that if I had known then what I know now I wouldn't have done it, more that I certainly would have adjusted my expectations and game plan accordingly…”

You can read the rest of Regan’s contribution on the Life On Fletcher blog.

And in case you were wondering…

Rochelle Dancel, Associate Producer, B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye

“I’m actually glad that I didn’t know what I know now because I would have said a resounding, “No!” - not only to the sleep deprivation that comes with being ahead in the five hour time difference, the elevated stress levels and having to be the go-to person on subjects that I know fuck-all about, but also to the education I received, to the opportunity to push myself beyond what I thought were my limitations and the richness of my new community, the people I have met, and the new opportunities in my life that this show has brought.”


Artwork is copyright of their respective shows.

One of the fastest growing forms of online entertainment is the web series.  As an industry yet to fully mature, the majority of web series’ are homespun labours of love, produced by groups of friends and collaborators eager to showcase their talents.  Despite the wealth of professional experience in their current or day jobs, a web series enables many creators to take the reigns for the first time.

I’ve put together a list of ten tools that we use to put our web series, B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye online compiled from the many ‘how do we get a website for our show…?’ themed emails.  Bear in mind that there are more complex and more expensive ways of going about achieving what each of these tools does for us.  This list is neither exhaustive or original, but if your expertise lies solely in producing your show, you’re a novice in the world of putting up a website and your budget is the sum total of the change in your back pockets then this is a not-too-shabby way to go.

1. Dreamweaver

Yes, our site was put up in Dreamweaver!  Dreamweaver is an example of a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor.  

Dreamweaver is not free, but there are any number of free WYSIWYG editors out there. Check out this article by thefreecountry.com on free HTML editors, web editors, and WYSIWYG web editors and site builders.

You might also want to check what free software comes with your computer; for example, Mac users should find a version of iWeb on their computers.  The website for one our favourite web series’, FEED, is built in iWeb and also features a number of widgets and tools, including Site Meter for all your traffic stats and a PayPal Donate button for fundraising.

FEED

2. Blogger

Life On Fletcher is powered by Blogger and we chose Blogger for two reasons.  Firstly, I wanted to keep the existing site intact and I didn’t want to do a big integration or move it off Dreamweaver.  Blogger allows us to update the blog online and publish it to our site via ftp.  Secondly, I wanted the blog published on our URL i.e. www.bjfletcherprivateeye.com/blog as opposed to, for example, bjfletcherprivateeye.wordpress.com, so that it would be search engine friendly.

Instead of adding a blog to your site, you can follow the example of some of our favourite shows and put your show straight onto a blog. For example, Seeking Simone is powered by Typepad, while GOLD is powered by Expression Engine (with comments powered by Disqus, natch!).  

Seeking Simone

GOLD The Series

I’m a big fan of both of those sites.  They’re both very clean and easy to navigate.  Most of all, the style of their sites is in keeping with the theme of their shows.

3. Daily Motion

Our episodes are available on Daily Motion’s player.  We chose Daily Motion after signing up to the Motion Maker programme, which allows us to upload videos of a higher file size and of any length compared to their standard offering.

The main advantage to having a third party video player is that we don’t have to utilise our bandwidth or server space to allow you to enjoy our episodes.  There are many video hosting services out there with embeddable players.  Look for one that gives you a nice encode, might offer you quicker upload times and allows you to upload videos suitable for the file size and episode length of your show.  Vimeo, another one of our favourites, is used by We Have To Stop Now, and blip.tv is used by Anyone But Me, as well as Seeking Simone and GOLD.

4. Picasa

We chose Picasa because you can upload and create photo galleries in five different sizes, something we were quite keen on to show off the skills of our photographer, Jonathan Thomas.  Other free, popular, embeddable photo gallery sharing aps include Flickr and Photobucket.

There are many advantages to hosting your pictures in an online slide show.  The main one is that, if you have a gazillion behind the scenes pictures like we do, as with video you don’t take up valuable storage space and bandwidth when people view your high res images.  The fact that it’s also embeddable means that people can embed them in their blogs and on their sites – free publicity for you!

5. Zoomerang

Have you taken one of audience surveys?  If so, you’ve already been introduced to Zoomerang, a free online survey tool.  We’ve used it to put together demographic surveys of our viewers to give potential sponsors a better understanding of who watches our show.

Another popular survey tool is SurveyMonkey.  However, Zoomerang allows you 30 questions for free where as SurveyMonkey only allows you 10.  Although the basic version of both of these tools is free, any reporting functionality is not, so if you have a few surveys on which you need to report it may be worthwhile taking out a monthly subscription to save yourself the time of manually compiling everything in a spreadsheet.

6. Google Analytics

If you're serious about developing your site and attracting advertisers, you're going to need the stats to back up your pitches, and that's where Google Analytics comes in.  It’s a free service that tracks not only the number of visitors to your site and where they came from, but also where they go once they get to your site – very useful when you’re trying to work out where to place one of your sponsor’s ads so that the most people see it, or to track whether anyone can find your deeply buried FAQ page.  How else would we know that, in the month of June, the most popular link on our homepage was the Season 2 link in our tag cloud?  

7. Add This

Make it easy for people to share your episodes, interviews and all the other cools stuff on your site with their friends on all of their social networks.  On our site you’ll see a handy little ‘Share This’ button courtesy of Add This on most of our pages that will allow you to share our content across 55 (and counting) different social networks.

8. Twitter

And speaking of social networking, I couldn’t let it go without mentioning the latest pretender to the social networking crown – Twitter.  We’re big fans, and it has allowed us to connect with some new friends, including the editors at Eurout and Cherrygrrl; some old friends, including the teams at AfterEllen and One More Lesbian, and some other web series talents including Mel Robertson from FEED, David Nett from GOLD, Renee Olbert and Rosemary Rowe from Seeking Simone.

Twitter allows you to keep your fans and supporters posted with up-to-the-second news on anything to do with your show.  On Fletcher, we tweet interviews, episodes, reviews and updates to do with the development of our show.  The Twitter widgets on our homepage and blog are from Twitter’s own site, and the ‘follow us’ tab that you see on every page comes courtesy of Go2Web.

9. ichat

Ok, so ichat isn’t strictly one that powers our website, but it is super useful when you’re talking to producers, other team members, PR people or journalists in far flung locales.  Fletcher is made in Toronto and I live in London (UK, not Ontario!) so mounting phonebills is one cost I was keen not to incur.  Luckily, all our producers come equipped with their own Macs (it’s almost a pre-requisite for joining our show) so very important video chats are powered by ichat.  Skype is a popular alternative.

10. yousendit

The only tool that we pay for, yousendit allows us to send, receive and track large files – incredibly important when emailing entire episodes or photo galleries for review.  Yousendit’s free service allows you to send files of up to 100mb.  However, we will soon be trialling Dropbox, a free file sharing service across computers that will hopefully relax the strain on our threadbare pockets!

So that’s 10 tools without which we couldn’t put our show online.  There are many more out there we’re currently playing with that you might see on our site in future, including Nabble, a free online embeddable forum where all of you can gather to ponder whether George will pick Fletcher or Jenna.  There are some incredible web series websites out there, ranging from sites that were put up on a wish and a prayer and absolutely no coding knowledge, to sites that were built by marketing powerhouses.  Take a good look at them all for inspiration for your site – just don’t forget to watch some incredible shows too!

What tools have you found useful for your web series website?

I recently spoke to a communications volunteer at a community group who had been tasked with looking at ways of increasing the group’s profile online.  When I asked what kind of activities were being done to promote their profile online, she responded, “Well, we have a website…”

I have news for you – that’s not enough.  ‘Brand building’ may sound like a term that’s too corporate or too ‘marketing’ to have any place in the non-profit / voluntary / charity sector(s) but there’s a lot that we can learn from our corporate relatives.

Before I give you five simple ways to build your brand online, here are five reasons why you should build your brand online.

1. It establishes you as an authority in your field

Ever feel frustrated that the bigger, better resourced organisations get all the media attention, are asked to speak at more events, are given the opportunity to work on projects on which you know you’d do a better job?  The reason they get these opportunities is because they are perceived as authorities in their fields, whether they are or not.

2. It’s cheaper than building your brand offline

Whilst it’s no substitute to running television, radio or newspaper campaigns, there’s no reason why you can’t establish your organisation online where, in this day and age, more and more people are looking for their information.  And that which you establish online will see results offline.
 
3. Everyone else is doing it

Whilst this alone has never been a good reason for doing it, consider this: if three similar organisations are very visible, why should anyone go to the bother of finding one that isn’t?  More to the point, how would anyone know that there are alternatives?

4. It drives traffic to your website

Essentially, this is where you want people to go online.  Your website is your organisation’s online presence and should contain everything that people need to know about you.

5. It puts your organisation into the mind of potential service users

With the explosion of social media and cheaper data packages for wireless and mobile broadband at home, whilst travelling and on our mobile phones, people are spending more and more time online.  If potential service users can find you in avenues that they already access, or if they are generally more familiar with your brand, they’re more likely to use you.

So that’s why you should build your brand online.  Here’s five ways you can do it.

Make it easier for people to find out about you

Get a blog and/or a website.  Contact everyone you know and ask them if they can put your web address into the links, resources or directory sections of their websites.  Make sure you include any resource centres, associations or councils that operate in your area or are relevant to your sector.

Ensure that when they get to your website there is quite clearly a section labelled ‘About Us’ and / or ‘What We Do’.  Sound simple?  You’d be surprised at how many organisations assume that people already know this.

Connect with people online

Social media isn’t just for planning your weekend.  It enables you to connect to people to whom sometimes you wouldn’t ordinarily have access.

There are a plethora of social media networks and communities and it can be overwhelming to select the ones that are most relevant to your organisation.  Put yourselves in the shoes of those that you are trying to reach and then consider – or better still, ask them – which outlets they use.

LinkedIn – more likely to connect with second tier, corporate or public sector people – think anyone with an office-based job

Facebook – because of its social nature, great for reaching potential service users

Twitter – the latest pretender to the social media crown.  Leah Williams, Communications Officer at the Women’s Resource Centre, has written a great article on the benefits of Twitter to women’s organisations although they very much apply across the board.

Engage with other blogs

Commenting on other blogs shows that you are engaged and up to date with all the developments of your sector or field.  You have the opportunity to put forward your organisation’s point of view, which will in turn be read by your peers and by those interested in the issues in which you engage (e.g. journalists or researchers). 

Identify, say, three blogs that people in your field read the most.  Whenever a new story is posted, comment on it.  Your comments don’t have to be very long – just informed and well written.

When you comment on a blog post, you state your name and your organisation’s web address, so if people are interested in what you say they can click on the link back to your site.  Ensure that if you can upload an avatar (an icon or picture that represents you online) you use your organisation’s logo.  Whatever image you use, keep it consistent across all sites in which you engage online.

If you comment a lot it is worthwhile getting a Gravatar.  A gravatar, or globally recognised avatar, allows your posts to be recognised by the same avatar across any website, blog or forum that supports them.  You register your website and email address in the Gravatar database along with your image and any blog, forum or website that doesn’t offer the option of uploading your own picture but still supports gravatars will display it alongside your post.

The next step after commenting is to offer to write an article for the same blogs.  This is particularly useful if your organisation has taken a particular stance around the development of a current policy or is promoting a new publication or forthcoming event.

Distribute information or news relevant to your sector

Don’t restrict yourself to distributing news and information solely about your organisation.  The point in this exercise is to establish you as an up-to-date source of information for your sector.

Distributing information isn’t just about sending out an email to your mailing list, although if you do that already that’s still an effective way of getting to people.  A more efficient way is to get your own RSS feed.

An RSS feed is a function on your site that allows people to sign up to receive information either straight to their inbox or via a dedicated feed reader.  I have to admit that an RSS feed is something that I know how to use and manipulate… but ask me to explain it and I’m at a loss.  So here’s a video:

The BBC published their simple guide to RSS feeds that you may find useful.

Getting your own RSS feed is simple.  If you use any of the popular blogging tools, such as Wordpress, Blogger or Twitter (yes, Twitter is a microblog!) then RSS feeds already come built into them.  If not, you can build your own.  Either type ‘setting up an RSS feed’ into any search engine to come up with several pages of tutorials, or create one with Google Feedburner.

Here’s the great thing - tools such as HootSuite for Twitter allow you to subscribe to a number of RSS feeds associated to your sector and output their news via your feed.  It’s a completely automated process so once you’ve set it up, you don’t need to do anything more.

Get advice on your online strategy

If you are serious about getting a more holistic, integrated approach to your online strategy, speak to a professional.  Online strategy is a bit of an obsession for me, so feel free to contact me if you have any questions; if you make great coffee, I may be persuaded to come in to talk to you!

Alternatively, I’m a big fan of the wunderkids at Beautiful World, an agency that works somewhere between the digital and non-profit worlds.  They are currently offering time on their now famous beautiful sofa to get advice on any subject you want.

Building your brand online doesn’t cost a penny.  It will raise your organisation’s profile head and shoulders above those that haven’t whilst capturing the attention of potential stakeholders who might prove beneficial to you in the future.  These brand building activities will also keep you informed of developments in your sector which will put your organisation in a better place to respond to them.  And then you can tweet about it.