Web & Marketing Assistant Apprenticeship

Following a recently successful process to select an apprentice to join our own team, we are now pleased to offer a second opportunity for a very similar role. This role will be working as an extended team member of the National Operatic & Dramatic Assocition (NODA – noda.org.uk) giving you access to and experience of supporting over 2,500 member societies, and well over 3000 individual productions every year.

The role: To take responsibility for a variety of administrative and marketing related tasks to support the National Operatic & Dramatic Association (NODA) and their member groups around the UK.

You will be working among our small team to support the NODA team, with whom you will have regular contact – giving you access to a range of experiences and opportunities within the UK.

Whilst you will be based at our offices in South Norfolk you will be required in Peterborough on a regular basis, and may have the opportunity to travel elsewhere in the UK from time to time.

You will work closely with web developers, marketing teams, business management functions and be in regular contact with users of the NODA website.

Key tasks:

• Co-ordinate website content development and create marketing materials including email campaigns
• Create engaging web content and marketing campaigns for theatre productions & support services
• Undertake research tasks
• Support the management of social media profiles for multiple organisations and platforms (NODA & it’s members)
• Maintain customer & press contact lists and manage communications and feedback gathering

Skills Required

• Excellent administrative and organisational skills
• Some experience of updating websites and online platforms quickly and accurately (including a blog or facebook)
• Ability to carry out a variety of administrative tasks quickly and accurately
• Ability to organise own workload, prioritise and multitask.
• An appreciation and understanding of good customer service
• Good verbal, written and face to face communication skills
• Good IT skills (data entry, word processing, basic spreadsheet, use of the internet)
• Ability to cope with periods of high workload

Working Time and Pay
You will work with us full time, 5 days a week. You will mostly be based in our South Norfolk offices in Diss with some travel regularly to the NODA office in Peterborough (Travel expenses are paid). You may apply if you are Peterborough based and you will come to our offices regularly for additional training and support.

For an average of 35 hours per week you will be paid £96.

How to apply

You may email your CV to emrys@mdkwebmedia.co.uk with a cover letter saying why your’re the right person for the role, and how you will be able to develop.  You may also apply using the National Apprenticeship Service website: apprenticeships.org.uk

The closing date for applicants is the 27th August, with a view to interview on the 30th.  You will start as soon as possible afterwards.

To ask any questions about the role please email or call 07905 253099.

7 content strategy tips for start-ups

We don’t often do this, but we are reposting an article that customers may find useful.  This article is by Danny Chadburn of our friends over at iCrossing UK.  You can find the original article at: http://connect.icrossing.co.uk/7-content-strategy-tips-startups_8902

The launch of your own business is an exciting time; the long nights mulling over the business plan, the countless branding tweaks and the prospect of being part of the start of something big.

There’s nothing to stop you making a big splash with your new business. You may have a genuinely life-changing proposition, but success ultimately relies on getting the attention of people likely to benefit from your site, and hopefully compelling them to spread the word far and wide.

Developing a content strategy for start-ups differs massively from an established organisation. You don’t have legacy content to consider revising or retiring, you don’t have multiple layers of management to deal with to make decisions, you don’t have reams of data to trawl through and analyse, and you don’t have time to be sat around in meeting rooms discussing how a content feature might impact your PR activities.

All you need to worry about is getting noticed, and these seven tips will set you on your way:

1. Believe what you say

This isn’t a time to be timid or apologetic. If you don’t have faith in your business, nobody else will give you the time of day.

The benefits your audience will get from using or buying your service – actual benefits that you’ve identified, researched, tested and verified, not ones that you’ve plucked out of thin air – can be used to create a memorable message that everything you subsequently create refers back to.

2. Tweak your tagline

The overall mission of your business should be neatly wrapped up in a concise statement to re-emphasise people’s perception of your business.

On your website, bolster this tagline with a relevant search friendly term and place it within your meta data. This makes it more likely that people will find your site and discover what you have to offer.

3. Be selectively social

Head to any new start-up’s website and they’re likely to have performed the obligatory social sweep, setting up Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube accounts to sit alongside their blog. Building meaningful communities on these networks is a huge task and each requires a distinct communications approach and uniquely tailored content that will attract the right kind of people who hang out there.

Snapping up the usernames early on is a must, but you don’t necessarily have to use and publicise the platforms just because you own them; focus on one area in particular to begin with, then expand as you learn about your audience and discover what resonates with them.

4. Scale content production

Many start-ups create masses of content from the get-go. Invariably, things quickly tail off as other business priorities, development needs or marketing ventures take precedence, meaning the river of content becomes a trickle.

A sustainable and scalable approach to content takes into account the dedicated resources required for creation, and puts emphasis on continued learning of what works and what doesn’t.

5. Create signature content

A single idea executed well is better than 100 implemented badly. By creating useful content that’s indisputably yours, you’re producing a calling card – something for your audience to remember you by that they’ll keep coming back for.

Not every business can come up with a willitblend.com, but if you can produce something of use, value or interest at manageable intervals, you’ll start to develop real affinity with your customers. Whether it’s a weekly quiz or a quarterly ‘state of the industry’ infographic, build it, brand it and persist with it.

6. Plan ahead

During your launch period you’ll hopefully be very busy; fulfilling orders, conducting countless media interviews and ironing out the inevitable bugs in your website. How are you going to find time to create good content?

If you’ve analysed your target audience – and if you’re launching a new business you certainly should have done – then you can make certain assumptions about the kind of content that will be of interest to them.

Populating a 12 month content plan based on this research and your marketing plan will save you from having to constantly be thinking of new ideas on newsletter deadline day, and you may even be able to prepare some of this content in advance so it’s ready to be released according to your schedule.

7. Encourage content creators

In every business, each member of staff has a unique story to tell, and giving them an outlet is good practice. Make content development everybody’s responsibility as part of their job spec, with the necessary quality checks in place of course.

The content you produce defines the personality of your business, acting as the middleman between your products and your customers. Setting the right content foundations from the outset will result in many benefits further down the line as your business expands, helping you to share your on-going success story.

DNS Updates

As per our recent Twitter announcements we have now updated our DNS capabilities further.  In addition to the globally spread servers hosting our primary DNS capability, our tertiary Name Server record is now provided by a different supplier.  By utilising a different geographic location with multiple servers in isolation, and taking all records from our primary servers automatically means our DNS systems should remain online.  Even in the event of a large scale attack on our primary supplier such as that suffered last week.

We hope that this new service combined with further infrastructure and management panel upgrades will help us beat our previous uptime availability records.  Unlike many providers, we keep our email, DNS and web hosting provision separated to ensure maximum availability and uptime.  We are working hard to maintain this and provide integrated services.

Information – DNS DDoS – 23rd July 2012

Yesterday our DNS supplier suffered an extremely rare and serious Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack over a sustained period.  This is where someone floods the systems of a company with so many requests it simply can’t cope.

DNS is essentially the phone book of the internet, translating domain names (like example.com) in to an IP address. The IP address is the address of services such as servers. By attacking the suppliers’ services and bringing them offline browsers wouldn’t have been able to look up the server address for a given domain name.

The attack was quite large, and certainly resulted in our longest outage ever for some of our customers. Our current set-up relied upon this one supplier but with 3-4 name servers across the world. We use one in London, Amsterdam, Denver (USA) and Singapore. By having so many in different locations means that it usually wouldn’t result in downtime if one or two were attacked or suffered other major issues – essentially providing global fall backs and ensuring the highest uptime possible.

However, on this occassion our supplier was attacked globally and had to bring services back online in a staged way.

What did we do yesterday? We were able to move all core services to another set of name servers and also moved several clients with business critical websites.  We also updated twitter.com/mdkwebmedia with status information like most companies.

What are we doing now to further mitigate? Well we are going to create additional back-up services that isn’t reliant on our main DNS Partner 100%. Whilst it is unlikely such a large scale issue will reoccur we are taking further steps beyond our already otherwise robust set-up.

Was anything working? We recommend and utilise Google Applications as the email provider of choice. Their email systems were unaffected and it was possible for customers to login and send emails – however receiving emails will have been disrupted. Our actual servers were also unaffected and as such customers would still have been able to access their FTP and other management services using our IP address directly. No personal or business data was ever at risk.

We apologise for any inconvenience that was caused by this issue and can assure all customers that we are working on additional safeguards to minimise further risks.  If you have any comments or questions then please do contact us.

Job Opportunity – Junior Account Executive (Arts Industry)

We’re pleased to announce that we are now recruiting for an apprentice to join our team as a junior account executive.  The successful candidate will work on a variety of web and marketing projects for a range of organisations across the UK.  They will be responsible for marketing and some administrative duties for three client partners all working in the creative arts sector.  A drama accreditation body, a theatre company (professional and education delivery) and a production services company.

The time on these clients will be complimented by opportunities for other tasks and working with other projects from time to time whilst studying for a Level 3 apprenticeship qualification.

The role is perfect for any individual that wishes to work in Arts administration/marketing in the future, or simply as a vocational route before applying for university.

We are currently recruiting for a minimum commitment of 30 hours per week typically across four days.  Although additional paid hours may be available from time to time.  The role can retain some flexibility to work with other commitments the successful candidate may have.

We envisage a start date of September 3rd with interviews taking place on Wednesday 8th August.  The application deadline is Friday 27th of July at 5pm.

You must apply for the role through the National Apprenticeship Service Website.  Please search the National Apprenticeship Service website for “Apprentice Account Executive” as the role or “MDK Web and Media” as the employer.

- – - **** UPDATE **** – - -

The application portal has now closed.  Until Tuesday 31st of July you may apply by sending your CV and a cover letter about why you want this exciting post to emrys@mdkwebmedia.co.uk

- – - **** UPDATE **** – - -

If you have any questions about the role then please get in touch with Emrys Green on 07905 253099 or via email  emrys@mdkwebmedia.co.uk

“Cookie Law” official guide

The International Chamber of Commerce UK (ICC UK) launched its long awaited Cookie Guide yesterday at a Ministerial event hosted by Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture Media and Sport and Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner.  The Commissioner commended the ICC UK Guide to the industry representatives in attendance.

ICC UK says the Guide will be updated regularly to ensure it is of most use to business and to bear in mind that the guide is in no way prescriptive, but is intended to act as a useful tool in addressing the issues faced by business in complying with the E-Privacy Directive.

The Guide is also available from the ICC UK website in the Digital Economy part of the “Our Expertise” section http://www.international-chamber.co.uk/our-expertise/digitaleconomy or directly at http://mdkw.eu/cookie-iccofficial

We encourage all our clients to get in touch with us and arrange to have their sites updated as required by the new legislation.

Supporting the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership

The New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) is developing a new dynamic approach to grow the Norfolk and Suffolk economy, putting businesses in the driving seat to create jobs for the future.

With 60,000 enterprises in Suffolk and Norfolk and a population of 1.5 million, New Anglia represents a significant economic area and we are showing our support of the regions businesses by becoming a partner.

See more about the work of the New Anglia LEP at their website:  www.newanglia.co.uk

Forrester Fund for Research

We’ve just had a call saying our donation earlier this year to Forrester’s (a charity for research in to Children’s Cancer) help supported them to raise over £25,000!

We support many organisations and charities through in-kind and discounted services; helping them get the marketing they need.  If you’re one then please do give us a call.

Latest on Cookies

Well it’s a saga that’s been going on a while, and if it was a biscuit being dipped in milk – the cookie would have crumbled by now.

New guidance is continuing to be drafted and a legal opinion is expected very soon from the International Chamber of Commerce led group working in this legislation.  Remember, that we already know that it’s not half as scary as many web developers out there are thinking.  Compliance with the legislation can be achieved pretty easily – just take a look at bbc.co.uk – and all this extra work is designed really to help consumers understand more.  Most cookies are harmless, they generally help make browsing a website much easier and more convenient for the user, and some can help the site owners develop the site further based on what their users are actually coming there to see.

Watch this space and we’ll be one of very few independent development companies with a true understanding and interest in this issue so that we can help all our customers efficiently with least (if not no) impact on their day to day lives.

New office move…

Well as some of our clients have been hearing on the grapevine we are now part way through the move to our new office.  Don’t worry though, this doesn’t affect any of your web services and there will be no down time as a result of the move.

With brand spanking new space, and the sharing of space with a sister company also in the creaive industries the creative and efficient juices are running high!

Our new address to send cheques to, other paperwork and even meet us for a meeting is: Unit 23, Court Ind Est, Vinces Rd, Diss, Norfolk, IP22 4BF

Wish us luck with completing the move!