Thursday, August 31, 2006
PR Survey Winner
Following our 2006 PR Survey, we're delighted to announce the winner of a Persona managed campaign is Cornelius & Co - a growing practice, headed by Director Sarah Cornelius. When told that the practice had won, Sarah had this to say: "I'm delighted we have been chosen - we never win anything! I'm looking forward to working with Persona to improve our PR activity as we certainly have a lot to shout about and want more people to hear about it. We're now going to work with Sarah and the rest of the Cornelius team to produce a PR campaign, using the elements of our new Basics service. Following that, we'll be managing media communications for a period of time to generate promotional exposure for them. Commiserations to our survey responses that didn't win this time, but the good news is we've read and analysed everybody's views and as a result have created a series of new services to help get you started in Digital, Brand and Media activity - Basics, from Persona Creative.
Going Live
Over the last couple of months, we've been faced with a similar problem from a number of our clients who have web site's going live and it could all be attributed to Gophers. Don't worry, we're not working on the comeback show for BBC's Gordon T Gopher, but it's ironic how his show name "Going Live" is exactly where our problem lies. Back when the Internet was just getting it's act together "Gopher" was a way to search it - before the combined might of MSN, Yahoo! and of course Google; who now dominate what we find online. Like many of our clients, your web site may have built up a good reputation with the search engines and in some cases even been assigned a decent Google rank. Web log analysis shows that the usual suspects of Google, Yahoo! and MSN are providing the lions share of your current traffic and they all have pages cached and indexed - some of our clients have hundreds of quality content pages in the memory banks of the search engines! So where is the problem I hear you ask? Enter the sandbox. Although the search engines are notorious for keeping their algorithms close to their chest, it's widely agreed that some of them have area where they flag web sites as "under surveillance", whilst their credibility and longevity are checked out. It's literally a sandbox, where new web sites are told to play until they can be trusted to be amongst the more trusted and responsible ones already out there. As you may or may not know, search engines are very suspicious of everything. As they fight for their share of the webs viewership, accuracy is everything if they want users to return for their next search. This, combined with the global obsession of everybody with a web site to get to the top of a search results page means they have to watch out for the con artists out there. If you're working on a new web site (or even major changes to an existing one), the intention is usually to improve your search engine performance as well as provide a better service to your visitors. But for all your good intentions, it is highly likely that by pulling off the old and replacing it with the new, you'll be put in the sandbox for a while - and that could mean loosing your Google rank as well as massive amounts of your current traffic levels. Think about it this way - if Google comes and indexed your site regularly and often throws up your pages in a search result, over time it will trust you enough to assign you a decent rank; which in itself will boost your performance again; wonderful! But, if in it's regular visits it finds that the pages it was looking for have disappeared and replaced with something else - it will get nervous and think you're trying to abuse it's trust by dumping new (and possible untrustworthy) content onto it. Into the sandbox you go and all that previous hard work on building credibility has been lost in a simple switch over of content pages! It's actually a very serious issue and one that is all to common to be caught out by. Worse yet, once you've made that switch there is no turning back. Now, unlike some search engine "specialists" out there who will promise that they can trick the search engines into avoiding this (and other) problems, we've been working on effective go-live strategy and techniques that actually work - without any sneaky tactics or code that could upset the search engines even further. So if you don't want to see your web site placed in the sandbox along with Gordon, speak to our team who can help you avoid this costly mistake.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Part Time / Freelance Photographers
Photography at Persona Creative is booming! In the last 12 months, we've grown our photography services to an enviable level and are working on some of the most exciting projects out there, including:
- Custom brand shoots
- Desktop product photography
- Location based lifestyle shoots
- Knowledge of using and designing studio lighting setups
- Creative lens and filter use
- Advanced Adobe Photoshop post-production techniques
Graduate Design Jobs
It's that time again - when all those bright-eyed design graduates are starting to think about getting a job. Well if you happen to be one of the talented ones, Persona Creative could be the place for you.
Essential Skills & Experience
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator
- Macromedia Dreamweaver MX
- Paper & Pencil Sketching & Illustration
You'll also be savvy with Microsoft Office, in particular Word and PowerPoint formatting. Don't worry if you're not - it's not hard and you'll pick it up quickly. We always look for those who are keen to learn and develop their skills, so if you can prove your ability to do this you'll be fine.
We do use a few other programs, which if you know how to use would be great; otherwise you can learn on the job.
- Macromedia Flash MX
- Adobe InDesign
- Adobe Acrobat
- Microsoft Visio
What you can expect
We have a great studio right in the city centre of Nottingham, fully equipped with an in-house photography studio, large format proof printing and more IT than you can shake your pencil at.
We're Windows PC based and standardise on Adobe Creative Suite 2 and Macromedia MX. You'll be part of a very fun and talented team and will get the chance to work on live client briefs as well as grow the Persona brand - which we're very passionate about.
Projects we work on include everything from creating exciting new brand identities and literature to web site design and online advertising.
How to apply
To be considered for our graduate programme, you'll need a portfolio of your work. This will need to show your creative style and range of skills.
In the first instance, email us a few example images and a short summary of who you are (tell us about your personality, rather than your CV). Include any information about work experience, qualifications and salary expectations to increase your chances of making the shortlist.
We'll then get in touch and invite you in for an informal interview and a coffee and see if we click.
Send your applications to careers@personacreative.com
Good Luck