Midas Creative Blog

‘Fostering Pays’ Campaign for Nottingham City Council

Paul — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:32:59 +0000

Midas Creative have had the pleasure of designing a Fostering Pays campaign for Nottingham City Council. We have designed Posters, a 4 page leaflet, business cards and exhibition banners to raise awareness of the fostering options available in Nottingham.

Sheffield Hallam University Leaflet Design

Paul — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:42:25 +0000

This is the latest leaflet we have designed for Sheffield Hallam University. It is a 4 page A5 leaflet for the Centre for Facilities Management Development. The purpose of the flyer is to promote the department’s new foundation degree in facilities Services.

9 Ways to Get More Out of Google Analytics

Paul — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 08:53:55 +0000

Already know and love Google’s data tools? Here are nine cool features you may not be using–but should.

You probably already love Google Analytics because it gives you a big picture look at how your website is performing. You probably also love it because it is free and easy to install.

But I have come up with nine more reasons to love Google Analytics. Check out these sophisticated tracking tools you might not even be aware of:

1. Set up “event tracking”

Event Tracking is a feature of Google Analytics you use to track different actions visitors take on your website, such as clicking a button or downloading a file. It is useful for tracking actions on your website that don’t take the user to a new page (i.e. clicking play on a video player). This will help you to understand which features and calls to action are being utilized and which are being ignored.

2. Track page load time

If your site is loading slowly, you are guaranteed to be losing traffic. Web users are impatient and have a very short attention span. If your site is loading slowly, get help immediately! Find an expert who can both diagnose and fix the problem.

3. Setting session length to the right amount

By default, a session in Google Analytics is set to 30 minutes. That means that if a user is inactive on your website for over 30 minutes, their next move on your website will be counted as a second visit with a brand new set of pages that will be part of that visit. For some websites it is beneficial to see the entire “flow” of one long visit, regardless of idle time.

4. Create “funnels”

Google Analytics allows you to track the steps visitors take to achieve a specific goal. Let’s say your goal is to have a visitor make a purchase of a specific product. The “funnel” is all of the pages that lead a visitor to this desired goal. By listing and tracking your funnel pages, you get great data on where visitors are dropping off (in this case, not making a purchase) along the buying funnel. Armed with this knowledge, you can fix the weak links in the buying chain.

5. Establish “cross-domain tracking”

This helps you to track user behavior in cases where a user is visiting multiple domains you own. This frequently comes into play on e-commerce sites that use a third-party checkout provider. If you fail to set up cross-domain tracking, Google Analytics will not be able to track the entire buying process, ending a session when a user leaves one domain and creating an entirely new session when that user arrives at the second domain.

6. Set up “advanced segments”

This tool provides another way of slicing up your visitors. For example, you can divide visitors into those who came from paid advertising, from organic searches and from directly typing in your domain name. Or perhaps you want to see what new visitors coming to your site after a search query do after landing on a specific page of your website and you wish to track this regularly. This information gives you key data on your paid marketing and SEO efforts.

7. Set Up “campaign tagging”

Wherever you promote your site, whether it’s on Google, through a paid advertising campaign, or through social media, you need to create URLs that identify the source and nature of the visit. For example, if you launch an email marketing campaign, you want your URLs linking back to your website to contain various attributes, such as source (“Email to Prospects #4″), medium (“Email”), name (“Email to Prospects 2012″), etc. The data provided by campaign tagging will help you see which marketing and advertising channels are providing the best ROI and which ones either need to be improved or abandoned.

8. Establish “e-commerce tracking”

By enabling e-commerce tracking on Google Analytics and coding your shopping cart’s receipt page, your sales revenue data is sent directly to Google Analytics and is available to you in a simple, straight forward report.

9. Filter IP addresses

Certain visits to your website distort your analytics. These include all internal (company) visits and repeat visits from spammers. By using Google Analytics to filter these IP addresses out of the equation, you get a purer set of visitor stats.

Whether you have someone in the company who really understands Google Analytics or hire an outside agency with Google Analytics expertise, get someone one board who can help you set up and monitor all of these valuable tools. Chances are, very few of your competitors are digging deep enough into their data, so the more you do the better off you are.

Read the original article here via inc.com

Bright Sparks Generate Interest at Event

Paul — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 08:49:26 +0000

Mansfield based firm Midas Creative generated additional interest at NOF Energy’s annual conference in the North East recently with their range of marketing materials.

Held in March by the Durham based organisation NOF Energy, the popular event is intended to showcase their unique work in the industry and is dedicated to the oil, gas, nuclear, offshore and renewable energy sectors. VIP guest speaker for the evening was Energy Minister Charles Hendry MP who explained the Government’s continued commitment to supporting the UK energy supply chain companies’ ambitions to win new contracts, both from the UK and abroad.

The talented team at Midas Creative designed and created the branding and supplied all promotional items for the occasion including flyers, leaflets and exhibition banners. The conference, entitled “Energy; A Balanced Future”, was bigger and better than ever and local firm Midas Creative was once again proud to have been involved.

Damien Buxton, Managing Director of Midas Creative said “We’re very pleased to have been asked to design and supply promotional items for the event. We’ve worked with NOF Energy for a number of years now on both their conferences and other projects and it’s great to hear the evening was a complete success – we’re already looking forward to working with NOF Energy on next year’s conference”.

More information about the conference can be found on the NOF Energy website at www.nofenergy.co.uk

Enter our competition for a fresh new look!

Paul — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:02:00 +0000

We’re teaming up with Mansfield’s Chad to give local businesses the chance of a new brand identity in a competition worth £1500.

Two lucky companies could win the prize, worth £750 each, to be spent on logo and stationery design, newsletter, leaflet or brochure design and advertising or exhibition banner stand design.

Details of this exciting opportunity were published in this week’s Chad newspaper and the competition is open to all local companies. We’ll work closely with the winners to produce new materials for their organisation or next project and although the prize money equates to fifteen hours of design time, we’ll ensure they love the finished result.

Midas Creative’s Design Director, Paul Skelton, said “This is a fantastic chance for local organisations to benefit from our skills and expertise in graphic design and print. We’re really happy to be able to help out local businesses, supporting the local community is really important to us”.

Entering the competition couldn’t be easier, just email ashley.booker@chad.co.uk with your name and company details to be in with a chance of winning.

Bloggers: 10 SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid

Paul — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:19:16 +0000

Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to any successful blogging campaign. Therefore it should be implemented in the right manner. SEO itself is quite intricate for numerous reasons, but mainly because Google uses an algorithm, which takes several factors into account when ranking a webpage, and they keep changing it.

There are virtually so many SEO myths that it has become very difficult to know what’s 100% true, but I can advise you on which SEO mistakes you should not make:

1. Buying Links

You might get a short term boost by buying links if your website is already popular, but you’re still taking a risk here. Paid links are sometimes flagged by Google’s search engine experts. You may wonder, how will they ever catch me? Well, Google’s bots and a special team at the company search for questionable linking patterns every single day!

For example, if you pay for a few hundred links to be pointed to your website in the very same day, some links will probably be flagged as a sort of ‘irregular linking activity’. Links from totally unrelated categories will seem suspicious as well.

I would recommend the old fashioned method of comment linking, manually — your blog will still be able to grow, albeit at a steady pace. Over time, the end results will be worthwhile. If you are however settled on purchasing links, do not use the same anchor text for all of them; mix it up a bit.

2. Duplicate Content

Many bloggers I know try to target the same topic with a variation of essentially very similar keywords. For instance, ‘make money on facebook’ and ‘making money with your facebook’ are quite similar, and creating a completely different page for each keyword won’t add much value to your site.

How much can you really play with topics or keywords that are essentially identical? If you can’t, then you’ll probably end up writing the same content for both keywords, which poses a risk of a search engine penalty. Instead, you should try to penetrate one original topic or keyword in detail and make an effort to strengthen each post.

3. Chasing PageRank

Don’t get me wrong, PageRank is important for any website’s success. The higher the PageRank you have, the better you rank in search engines, and the more visitors you’ll get. However, it’s definitely not the only metric that’ll help you improve your blog’s success. Furthermore, Google has mentioned previously that PageRank is just one of two hundred (wow!) indicators used to crawl and rank a website. Instead, you should focus on your analytics, ROI, and relevancy as recommended by Google itself.

4. Leaving Title Tags Automated

The title tag is undeniably one of the most important aspects when it comes to search engine rankings.Beginner bloggers usually write a post with a long title that describes the topic in too many words. First, you want to keep the title rather short, (not more than 60 characters) but more importantly, you should aim your focus at optimizing the title tags.

For example, if you write a post titled ‘What Is A Niche Blog And How Do I Create It?’ your title tag should be more targeted towards a keyword, perhaps something like ‘What Is A Niche Blog?’ with ‘a niche blog’ being a possible keyword. You would surely want to check the popularity of the respective keyword with a keyword tool such as Google Adwords before optimizing for it. Consider changing it and you may enjoy a better placement in the search engines and as a result, more visitors.

5. Sacrificing Looks For Content

While many bloggers depend on content to grow their blog, there are some who had become obsessed with the design of their blog. Don’t get me wrong, if you don’t have an appealing design, some visitors won’t be attracted to your website. However, using too many graphics or images will overcrowd your page and slow it down.

I see many sites using Flash and sacrificing page speed for motion and sounds. Definitely an attractive setting, but not a worthy enough tradeoff. This will also prevent search engine bots from being able to crawl your pages at a desirable faster rate.

6. Using Free Hosting Blogs

Blog services that offer free hosting such as Blogger, TypePad, and many others, can offer a decent platform and an excellent value. However, they are not flexible enough to be able to install the Plugins, themes, and other extensions you truly desire for superior SEO results.

All it will take is to register your own domain, and to purchase an inexpensive hosting plan. If you do enough shopping around, you shouldn’t spend more than $50 for both for the year. It’s worth a few bucks per month to have total control over your website. The power of independence can reap great rewards when your blogging operation grows.

7. Keyword Stuffing

Probably one of the most common SEO mistakes is common stuffing. It’s not only unethical, but also will hurt your search rankings. If you really want to rank for a bunch of keywords, create a separate page for each keyword and optimize for it accordingly. Instead of using hidden or duplicate text, focus on creating useful pages that have your keywords implemented in them as part of the content. Trying to manipulate a search engine like Google is a big no-no.

8. Writing Little Content

Many websites, especially blogs, suffer from posts that are too short. I personally get at least a few guest post submissions per day, and more than often, I have to reject them on the basis that they are too short to publish. How great can a piece be if it’s written at just 400 words? Writing extremely short posts hurts reader loyalty plus your page could be considered as low quality when it comes to SEO rankings.

9. Not Doing SEO Correctly

There’s not only one right way to optimize your posts for the search engine, but there are general proven methods you can use. For example, in regards to link building, several bloggers I know make the mistake of only linking to the front page of their website. Instead, you should build links that also point to your top, most popular posts. There’s always something new to learn about SEO, so make sure your optimization knowledge is up to date by reading articles or guides from qualified authors such as Google’s Matt Cutts.

10. Forgetting The ALT Tag

While Google reportedly (WebCEO software) doesn’t place a big emphasis on ALT tags, other search engines such as AOL, Bing, and Yahoo do. The truth is that a picture is just an image file if it’s not optimized for a keyword. To optimize it, use the ALT tag when inserting your image in a post; you’ll definitely see better results. Also, consider naming the file of the image as your keyword or at least to a defining term. If you’re blogging about copyright laws, name your image as ‘copyright-laws.jpg’, not something like ‘picture10.jpg’ — that simply won’t do you any good.

Conclusion

I see additional SEO mistakes regularly, such as the use of generic descriptions for posts, not updating the sitemap, broken 404 pages, and grammatical errors in various site contents. Most of all, I see posts that lack organization and simply contain too much text without separation of any sort, such as spacing or headings. That’s simply unattractive to your valued readers. It takes away from the overall experience, and the quality of your website will take a beating. These SEO mistakes may seem basic to some but shouldn’t be overlooked or ignored. Better yet, consider evaluating your blog right away to ensure that your overall SEO is in check.

Original article via www.hongkiat.com

Midas Creative design billboard advertisement for restaurant

Paul — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:36:47 +0000

We have recently had the pleasure of creating a series of billboard advertisement for Blackburn House at Boughton Pumping Station in Nottinghamshire. Blackburn House, Boughton Pumping Station is a stunning Grade II Listed Building situated on the edge of Sherwood Forest with a huge brick chimney which forms a distinctive local landmark that can be seen in the landscape from surrounding villages.

The first of the series of three is to promote their restaurant.

The outstanding Bistro style restaurant can comfortably seat 150 diners and their Sunday Carvery has proven extremely popular with a regular clientele of repeat customers.

Midas Creative creates branding for major conference and exhibition

Paul — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 08:54:03 +0000

Nottinghamshire-based Midas Creative beat off stiff competition from much larger graphic design agencies to create the branding for the recent Subsea North East Conference and Exhibition.

The event, which was organised by NOF Energy on behalf of Subsea North East, took place over two days in Newton Aycliffe in June, 2011, attracting visitors from around the world. Entitled ‘Subsea: Business Opportunities in the Global Market’, it was created specifically to highlight the economic importance of the subsea sector.

Midas Creative, who in December scooped the Business Idea of the Year at the 2010 Mansfield Business Awards, not only created the branding for the 200 strong conference from their offices in Mansfield Woodhouse but also a 28-page brochure, programme guide together with a series of web banners for use on the Subsea UK website – www.subseauk.org.

We were absolutely thrilled when we were given the brief to create the branding for the Subsea North East Conference and Exhibition

Explains Paul Skelton, Director of Midas Creative: “We were absolutely thrilled when we were given the brief to create the branding for the Subsea North East Conference and Exhibition. The team at Midas Creative worked around the clock to turn the design around, and our hard work appears to have paid, with everyone, from the organisers through to the delegates, delighted with the way the event looked.”

Midas Creative was launched in 2008 by Damien Buxton and Paul Skelton to provide a cost-effective alternative to existing graphic design, print and marketing companies in Nottinghamshire. Since then, it gone on to work with a wide range of public and private sector organisations throughout the UK including the Forestry Commission, Motorpoint, NOF Energy, Nottinghamshire County Council and XMA.

For more information on Midas Creative visit www.midascreative.co.uk

Midas Creative struck gold at business awards 2010

Damien — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 10:41:46 +0000

We finally attended the regional business awards on Thursday 25^th November, we were nominated in the ‘Business Idea of the Year’ category. The awards are held each year to celebrate and recognise the most innovate and inspirational businesses in the area.

After many months of waiting from our initial nomination and presentation, the night arrived. I am very proud to say that we WON!

Onwards and upwards for 2011

Samsung mailer

Paul — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 17:44:44 +0000

This is a 4 page direct mail piece to promote Samsung‘s notebooks for schools. Each mailer is individually personalised to the recipient. The concept of the mailer is to look like an old school notebook.