Archives for the Brighton category

So BrightonSEO has come and gone. This year was the biggest event yet with events and talks running in a multitrack format. Kelvin Newman organised everything, as he has done in the past, so a big thank you goes to him.

Unfortunately, the multitrack format meant choosing between presentations and rooms so I decided to stick with the main hall for the day. Because I’m particularly hip and happening, I thought I’d keep a diary and note down all the cool stuff that happened throughout the day.

This is that diary (in case you didn’t work that out).

BrightonSEO is a great event for learning new things and keeping up-to-date with a constantly developing industry. Of course to be totally up-to-date, you need to know about how mobile search is affecting SEO efforts, in which case you need our brand new Mobile SEO Course.

So anyway, join me on my voyage of discovery through the wonderful world of BrightonSEO:

BrightonSEO 12/04/13

9:00 – Arrived at the Brighton Dome, lots of people already here. Park myself as close to the main hall doors as possible and read all the pre-emptive tweets circulating on the #BrightonSEO hashtag… because I’m that cool.

9:30 – Notice more and more people are positioning themselves close to the hall doors. Preparing to get sprinting when they open to get a front seat.

9:50 – Doors open, no need to sprint as it seems no one else is too bothered about being at the front. #amitookeen?

Read the rest of "My Brighton SEO 2013 Diary"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Brighton, News, SEO on April 16th, 2013| No Comments »

From the 15th of March, with an exclusive preview on 14th, Sunshine Books in Hove will be holding an exhibition of rarely seen photos of some of the biggest names in 60s rock, taken by music photographer Mick Ratman.

From The Who to The Stones, some huge acts are featured in this special collection in ways you’ve never seen them before!

Here at Silicon Beach, we can’t promise that you’ll get to capture Keith Richards or Pete Townshend but if you come on our Photoshop Course, you’ll develop post-production skills that can make your snaps look masterful – an option never available to Ratman in the 60s of course.

Mick Ratman

While still at school, Ratman developed a burgeoning passion for music photography – often sneaking into shows underage to catch a glimpse at first and then later, snaps of the biggest names in rock at the time.

As well as capturing The Stones in their pomp at Studio 51, Ratman also shot at famous venues like the Marquee upon invitation and expanded his collection to some of the biggest American blues and soul artists around at that point: artists like Sam and Dave and Otis Redding. Read the rest of "Mick Ratman Photography Exhibit"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Brighton, News on March 8th, 2013| No Comments »

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

We hope you had a great 2012 and are looking forward to 2013 – we certainly are!

That’s it for this year, we close today (Friday 21st December) at 5.30pm but don’t worry, we’re back shortly on Wednesday 2nd January.

In the mean time, if you need to get hold of us please email info@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk which we will be checking. Or you can leave a message on 01273 622272 and we will ring you back in the new year.

Silicon Beach Training 2012 Stats

As an extra bonus here are some top Silicon Beach Training stats from the past year which we hope you’ll find interesting… Read the rest of "Merry Christmas! Opening Hours & 2012 Stats"

Posted by Craig Charley in Brighton, News on December 21st, 2012| No Comments »

This competition is now closed! Please check back on Friday 25th January when we will announce the winners.

Silicon Beach Training and Brighton Media Centre are excited to announce our first joint photography competition featuring an incredible prize for photographers!

Win a full day in the Brighton Media Centre Studio to use as you like, a 2-day Photoshop course at Silicon Beach to learn how to edit your images (alternative courses will be offered to those who already know photoshop) and a print of your choice to show off the finished product. All you need to supply is your own camera, tripod and subject! It’s a fantastic prize for both professional and amateur photographers alike. More details of the grand prize can be found below, and there are also prizes for the top 4 runners up.

The ‘Movement‘ theme allows you to be as creative as possible, with licence to interpret ‘movement’ as you like – we’re expecting some really interesting images as a result.

Judging the competition is local photographer Jean-Luc Brouard – a favourite here at Silicon Beach and popular in the Brighton Photography community. Read on to find out how to enter, but make sure you read the terms & conditions first.

Tim Andrews “The Red Ball” by Heather Buckley

In addition to the great prizes on offer, you will also gain a lot of exposure through our Twitter, Facebook and Google+ accounts – a great way to get your name out there!

What is the Theme of the Photography Competition?

The theme is ‘Movement‘, which is deliberately open to interpretation. It could be the movement of the subject or the camera, it could be a subject known for its movement (or lack of) or any idea at all that you have related to movement and photography.

How do I Enter the Movement Photography Competition?

It’s incredibly easy to enter the competition, simply upload your entry to our dedicated Flickr group. If you don’t have an account just enter in the basic information to set one up, but make sure you use your real contact details or we won’t be able to let you know if you’ve won.

You can only enter one image, so think carefully before you upload because you only get one chance.

We would prefer it if you entered photographs taken specifically for the competition itself.

What do I Win?

As well as a fantastic complete photography experience for the grand prize we also have some prizes for the runners up. View the full details below.

Grand Prize

• 1 day studio shoot in the Brighton Media Centre Studio including:
  • 770 sq feet of studio space
  • 6 metre white infinity cove
  • Colourama paper backgrounds
  • 4 Elinchrom electronic flash heads (BX500RI)
  • Stands
  • Selection of modifiers
  • Green room for comfort breaks
  • Studio technician on hand to help out if needed
• 2-day Photoshop Training or Advanced Photoshop course in Brighton at Silicon Beach Training (don’t worry if you’re already a Photoshop pro, you can swap the prize for any of our public courses up to 2 days – including social media, SEO, email marketing and even our management courses)
• One full colour print (up to 26″ x 17″) on an Epson Stylus Pro 4880 (unframed)

What is not included in the prize?

The winner must supply their own camera, tripod and whatever they want to shoot on the day.

They are also required to pay their own travel and accommodation costs if required.

Runner-Up

The top 4 runners-up will receive an unframed high quality full colour print of their entry.

Who is Judging the ‘Movement’ Photo Competition?

After heading overseas to Los Angeles for our last competition judge, we decided to stay local this time and ask one of our favourite Brighton photographers – Jean-Luc Brouard.

“Based in Brighton Jean-Luc provides images for a range of clients in the areas of Portraiture, Fashion and Still life. 

More than happy to work in a studio his true love is location based work, where his willingness to go almost anywhere combined with a passion for controlled lighting means nowhere is out of bounds when it comes to getting the right shot.”

You can reach Jean-Luc on Twitter and Tumblr, but don’t go offering any bribes!

When does the ‘Movement’ Photography Competition End?

The competition is now open, and runs until Friday 18th January at 5pm GMT.

Judging will then commence until Friday 25th January, and we will announce the winner shortly afterwards.

Please make sure you are contactable around that time, or let us know in advance if you aren’t. If we cannot contact the winner within 48 hours of the judge’s decision, the prize will move on to the second place entry. Read the rest of "Movement Photography Competition"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Brighton, Competitions, News on December 3rd, 2012| 1 Comment »

Thanks for all the entries to our Summer photo competition – 74 in total – making our first Facebook photo competition a great success. It’s a new format for us and so it was good to see it embraced (despite some grumbles about the voting system) and we particularly enjoyed the high numbers of local Brighton entries.

The votes are in and we’ve confirmed that the winner is…

Lauren Hazzard with an astounding 80 votes!

Here’s Lauren’s winning photo:

Lauren Hazzard | 80 votes

Lauren is now booked in to come on a Photoshop course in 2013, so we look forward to seeing how she uses that to help with her photography in the future.

If you didn’t win or missed the entry date then don’t fear, our next photo competition is already in the pipeline with a truly special prize up for grabs.

As there were so many entries, we have decided to feature some of our favourite snaps that really captured the ‘Summer’ theme of the competition. Read the rest of "‘Summer’ Theme Photo Comp Winners"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Brighton, Competitions, News on November 7th, 2012| No Comments »

During my morning round up of BrightonSEO I asked the question ‘Has SEO grown up?‘ For my afternoon round up I’m going to focus on one tip from each talk and why I liked it.

The afternoon was as varied as the morning with topics from linguistics to affiliate marketing, all from good speakers with something interesting to say and wisdom to impart on the audience.

We were also lucky enough to spot one of our Top SEO Trumps in the flesh! Here’s Ralph Tegtmeier enjoying his pack. We left our final packs dotted about at the after party. Did you find one? Let us know!

If you did miss the talks and want to know more about SEO and inbound marketing, we offer a 5 day SEO training package. Pick from a selection of courses including SEO, Social Media, Content Marketing and Google Analytics to create your own custom 5-day course! It’s a great way to introduce yourself to the concepts of earned media or as a way to boost the skills of new employees so they can get to work straight away. Read the rest of "BrightonSEO 2012 Afternoon: Fourteen Lessons Learnt"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Blogging & Content Marketing, Brighton, Marketing, News, PPC, SEO, Social Media, Web Analytics on September 21st, 2012| 2 Comments »

Last Friday we attended BrightonSEO at the Dome. There was a marked change from the previous event and I don’t mean the 27 algorithm updates in the past year, or the extra 500 people attending.

There has been a shift in attitude. The talks were varied and focused on the bigger picture of SEO as a marketing tool, not an elite club where we sneer at Google and keep everything close to our chest.

My personal favourite talk was from Dave Trott, who didn’t even know what SEO was before he spoke (read our Predatory Thinking write up).

People who were there just to find out what small trick they can do rank better would have gone home disappointed. Those who want to improve their businesses, make better websites, keep up good relationships with clients and evolve an industry would have gone home with big smiles on their faces.

There was a lot to learn about the psychology of marketing, the importance of language, the benefits of teamwork and overall the need to grow up as an industry, to stop being seen as snake oil salesmen and seen as a viable marketing channel for global businesses. Congratulations to Kelvin for putting on such a diverse selection of speakers.

Of course, amongst all the seriousness there was still time to be a bit silly:

Professor Puppet welcomes some familiar critters on to the stage

There was a lot less Google bashing than the last BrightonSEO – other than the penguin and panda carcasses hung from a coat rack on stage of course. When panda and penguin were mentioned, it was as a warning of what happens when you relentlessly go after the algorithm and try to con the results.

In this round up, I’m going to run through each talk and explain what we can learn to become better at what we do. How SEO can evolve from the common misconceptions in the media and many boardrooms to a recognised and trusted industry. Read the rest of "BrightonSEO 2012: Has SEO Grown Up?"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Brighton, Marketing, News, SEO, Social Media on September 18th, 2012| No Comments »

Kelvin Post-Penguin

Today we’re at the 2nd BrightonSEO of 2012, blogging on all the topics that interest us! We were also at Brighton Digital Marketing Festival yesterday, so if you have some spare time why not read our full coverage of #bdmf12 Day 1 and Day 2 keynote write ups?

First up we had a great talk from Dave Trott, but not before an opening video from Professor Puppet followed by a dancing Panda and Penguin (Kelvin was the penguin). Here’s a picture of Kelvin – Post Penguin.

I’ll admit that we were dreading the day being about link building, keywords and lots of boring SEO stuff that doesn’t really mean anything anymore.

Instead, Dave Trott of CSTTG set the tone for the morning sessions – SEOs need to start learning from marketers and from other disciplines. Stop the silos, stop the SEO church (term used by Anthony Mayfield in the second talk) and start thinking about consumers, brand, business and taking tips from marketing tactics that have worked long before search engines existed. Funnily enough, Dave only learnt what SEO was 5 minutes before he was due to speak, thinking it was the name of an organisation! But as he said, SEO is about beating your competitors, just like any other business.

“Whatever you do, you need to stand out.”

The focus of Dave Trott’s talk was how to separate ourselves from our competitors so you stand out from the crowd and don’t get ignored.

Creativity

Creativity is the new buzzword – from creative thinking to creative football managers. But does anybody know what it actually means?

Dave Trott – BrightonSEO

Pure creativity and applied creativity are different. Pure creativity is what you find in art galleries:  it doesn’t do anything, but takes you forward in your thinking.

Then along come designers/ media who take that pure creativity and turn it into applied creativity. This is the wrong way round, and marketers should instead adopt the Bauhaus method of form over function.

90% of Marketing is Ignored

Apparently, 18 billion was spent on marketing last year but 90% wasn’t noticed, the same goes for SEO. So how do you get noticed? Read the rest of "Dave Trott – Predatory Thinking – BrightonSEO September 2012"

Posted by Craig Charley in Blogging & Content Marketing, Brighton, Marketing, News, SEO on September 14th, 2012| 7 Comments »