Silicon Beach Training Blog » Competitions

Top SEO Trumps Blogging Competition

Heather Buckley — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:48:24 +0000

The great Top SEO Trumps Blog Off has begun!

We have been slaving away creating the top SEO Game of the Decade. To get your hands on one of these limited edition Top SEO Trumps packs we are inviting you to take part in our Top SEO Trumps Blog Off!

Here’s a preview of how the cards look:

Simply write a blog post that meets the conditions below to be in for a chance to win.

There are 46 Top SEO Faces from the SEO world, each ranked by:

Popularity on the web
Twitter followers
Google+ contacts
Fanciablility (we are keeping our judges a secret for this category)
Geek Cred

Can you guess who is hiding behind Danny Sullivan? If you can’t guess or want to see the other 45 Top SEOs then you can follow all those who made it into to pack by creating your own SEO circle from this one we made earlier, just click on the image to view or add this circle in Google+:

35 Limited Edition Top SEO Trumps packs are up for grabs.

Anyone can enter: SEOs, marketing people, social media specialists, bloggers, content marketers, and students, anyone who thinks they can write a good blog.

There are so many ways of winning that the playing field is wide open, there is a really good chance of winning so it’s worth a go. As all great SEO’s and Content marketers know, generating great content is just par for the course anyway. What have you got to lose?

Not only that, if you are one of our 35 finalists we will publicise your fine post using our many social media accounts, and link to it from all of our resources and blogs, as well as on our own well ranked site, so it would be good for your SEO too.

All you have to do is what you do best: write a great blog post.

How to win

Write a blog post that contains a link either to one of these links
http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/blog/seo-top-trumps OR http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/seo/
Tweet a link to your post to: @sbttraining with the message: “My SEO Trumps entry” and the Hashtag #seotoptrumps

It’s as easy as that!

For example if this was my entry I would tweet:

@sbttraining My Top SEO Trumps entry http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/blog/seo-top-trumps (or shortened version) #seotoptrumps

You can publish your blog post anywhere (not necessarily on your own blog) as long as you identify yourself as the author somewhere in the post and tweet the link with hashtag as above.

After the closing date April 1st 2012

Votes will be counted and verified and prizes will go to the authors of the winners of the following categories:

The 5 funniest posts
The 5 most original posts
The 5 most useful posts
The top 5 posts that drive the most traffic to the destination link.
The 5 top most liked posts on Facebook – where that information is available
The 5 most +1’s on Google Plus
The 5 most tweeted posts – where that information is available

Good luck and get blogging!

Become a future top SEO trump with our many SEO related courses. SEO training will provide you with the best practice approach to optimising websites and content for higher rankings, you can then use the knowledge learnt on our Social Media course to market your website and build strong brand identity. If you want to measure how your site is doing (and your social media efforts) then Google Analytics training is essential, while Advanced Google Analytics training is available for those who already use it on a regular basis. Don’t forget, we also now provide Content Marketing training – great for building brand and author identity whilst gaining valuable backlinks!

Car Share Photo Competition

Heather Buckley — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:22:14 +0000

Brighton-based car share website Catch-a-ride have just launched their photography competition and it is being judged by Silicon Beach Training‘s co-founder and photographer, Heather Buckley.

Catch-a-ride is set up to encourage people to car share by connecting drivers and passengers. This is a great idea to reduce travel costs, emissions and traffic!

Read more about the competition at Catch-a-ride’s blog or we’ve provided all the info below…

The Competition

The competition theme is ‘Car Share’ so send in your most interesting photo of people car sharing for a chance to win a fantastic prize. You can interpret that as you like but the most interesting one wins! Just don’t break the law of the road or your entry will be discounted.

The Prize

Up for grabs is a 16-megapixel Nikon Coolpix compact camera, perfect for taking more photos of your car sharing adventures!

The Rules

1) Only UK residents may enter

2) All entries must show a car share journey but must not include any activities that go against road safety

3) By entering, you agree that www.catcharide.co.uk may use your photo on their website. Photos will not be used for any other purpose.

4) Photos must be in JPEG format and a maximum of 1MB.

The Entry

To enter, send your car share photo to: contact@catcharide.co.uk

The Closing Date

All entries must be in by 15th March 2012.

Photo by Heather Buckley. Follow Heather on Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

Why not really make your photo stand out with some nifty Photoshop tricks? By coming on our Photoshop Training course you will be able to edit your photos professionally to really make them shine. If you’re already competent on Photoshop and want to take your skills to the next level then our Advanced Photoshop course is worth checking out. Call us on 01273 622272 or email awylie@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk to discuss either course or any other training requirements.

Street Photography Competition Winner!

Andy Trainer — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:49:16 +0000

Due to an unprecedented number of entries to our Street Photography competition, our judge Eric Kim certainly had his hands full deciding a winner. He has sifted through all 579 photos and come up with a winner and five honourable mentions.

It was not just the number of entries that was high but also the quality so thank you Eric for judging the contest and thank you onOne Software for providing the prize, a copy of Perfect Photo Suite 6.

If you want to edit your photos and graphics to look professional then check out our Photoshop Training and Advanced Photoshop Training courses. The courses are designed to immerse photographers and artists into the intricate world of post-photography editing. We also have a dedicated Photoshop resources website where you will find loads of great tutorials, news, tips and downloads all for free!

Watch the video below to reveal the winner and honourable mentions or scroll down to view the photos.

Winning Photo

Tri, dva, jedan by Ivan Aleksic

Beautifully composed. All of the elements seem to be positioned exactly where they need to be. Ivan has waited for the precise moment when the walker is in the right place within the frame. The strong contrast emphasises the graphic lines and perfect proportions.

Honourable mentions

Quai n.24 by Christine Margot

Again the composition and the cropping have been perfectly thought out. Superb use of backlighting helps to focus the viewer’s eyes on an intimate moment. The soft and subtle tones along with the wide aperture used add to the atmosphere.

Order out of Chaos by Laura Fitzpatrick

A true slice of life, each individual and couple have their own story to tell in this image. A true ‘street’ photograph.

Feline Burqa by Gerard Boisnel

Wonderfully captured and observed. The crop of the face leads the viewer’s eye straight to the focus of the image. We love the way the cat and the photographer have direct eye contact. Very contemporary style of street photography.

Meet the Driver by Zora Iuga

The shadows are what makes this image. You want to find out more about the moving blurred figure and are rewarded by the crispness of the profile shadow on the boot of the car. An image that asks questions and yet tells a story.

3 by Edgar in Photo

A frame within a frame, the decisive moment at its best. The figure perfectly framed to obscure half the face with his umbrella perfectly positioned under the arch.

Keep your eyes peeled for our next competition.

Competition – Street Photography

Aaron Charlie — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:37:45 +0000

The Street Photography Competition is now closed! Here is the Silicon Beach Training Street Photography Winner!

Tate Modern by Heather Buckley

Our new Street Photography Competition gives you a chance of winning onOne Software’s superb Perfect Photo Suite - more details on this great prize can be found below.

The ‘Street’ theme is open to your own interpretation, just get your feet on the street and start snapping!

If you are after some inspiration have a look at Eric Kim’s work, Eric is a well known and respected Street Photographer from LA.

The successful winner will also gain lots of exposure through our Twitter and Facebook accounts. Follow us on Twitter to see if you’re mentioned as our own weekly favourite entry! It’s worth following Heather on Google+ too (the photographer of the image above).

Note – our Twitter mentions don’t necessarily mean you’ve been shortlisted – our Judge Eric Kim will be choosing the winner, more info on him below…

Street Photography Competition PRIZE

The lucky winner will get their hands on Perfect Photo Suite 6 courtesy of onOne Software.

onOne Software, a leading developer of innovative, timesaving solutions for professional and advanced amateur photographers, have announced Perfect Photo Suite 6 along with new products Perfect Effects, Perfect Portrait, Perfect Mask, and an update to Perfect Layers. All products in the Perfect Photo Suite 6 now work as standalone applications in addition to working directly from within Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Apple Aperture and Adobe Photoshop. If you wish to brush up on your Photoshop skills we offer a range of Adobe Photoshop Courses as well as Lightroom Training.

This additional functionality means that the Suite can be used directly within Lightroom and Aperture without the need for a separate host application as was previously required. Perfect Photo Suite 6 will continue to include full support for Photoshop CS5 and CS4 with many of the products now functioning as Smart Filters.

Giving photographers intuitive tools that work where they do, the Perfect Photo Suite 6 now offers solutions for photographic effects, portrait retouching, creating and working with multilayered files, replacing unwanted backgrounds, image resizing, depth of field control, and edge effects, in one affordable package. The Perfect Photo Suite 6 includes Perfect Effects 3, Perfect Portrait 1, Perfect Mask 5, Perfect Layers 2, Perfect Resize 7, FocalPoint 2 and PhotoFrame 4.6.

Street Photography Competition JUDGE

“Street photography is all about capturing the beauty in the mundane” – Eric Kim

Eric Kim is a street photographer currently residing in Los Angeles, you can follow Eric on Twitter here- @EricKimPhoto. He specializes in black and white street photography, and has taken photos all over the globe, including Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice, Cinque Terre, Prague, London, and Korea. The images that you can see on Eric’s website are mostly candid street photography of people in their natural environments.

Here is Eric’s thoughts on Street Photography -

“There is not one definition which defines street photography. Depending on who you ask or where you find your information, you will come upon conflicting responses. Some street photographers will say that it is about capturing the emotion and expressions of people, while others may put a higher emphasis on the urban environment. However I believe that the most effective street photographs are the ones that synthesize both the human element as well as the urban environment. To capture a moment in which a person is interacting with the environment or in which the environment is interacting with the person is a true mark of a skilled street photographer.”

How to Enter the ‘Street‘ Photography Competition

If you have a Flickr account you can add your photo directly to the Flickr Group Pool.
You can email your entry to photocomp@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk with “Street” as the subject of the email. Attachments should be no larger than 3MB.
For email entries: the file name must state the title of the image and the photographer, e.g. Heather Buckley’s image above could be named as “Tate Modern by Heather Buckley“, and the email message should also state the photographer’s full name.
A maximum of ONE photograph entry per entrant will be accepted.

If you don’t already have a Flickr account it’s easy and free to set one up, you then need to join the group and add your image (you can only enter 1 image) to our Flickr Group Pool.

When is the Photography Competition Closing Date?

The deadline is Friday 16th December 2011 at 5pm (GMT).

Photography Competition Terms and Conditions

Please read the competition terms and conditions before entering.

We run quarterly photography competitions so keep in touch, let us know if you have any suggestions for the next competition theme or if you want to sponsor future competitions.

Thanks to – PhotographyCompetitions.NET, ThePrizeFinder – UK Competitions, Competitions Today, UK Competitions and Prize Draws at UKwins, Photo Competitions, http://www.crazycompers.co.uk, Competitions Time

Lifestyle Photography Competition Winner!

Aaron Charlie — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 08:46:43 +0000

Our new ‘Street Photography Competition‘ is now open!

A big thank you goes out to everyone that entered our Lifestyle Photography Competition and to Anne Herbert for supplying the fantastic prize of 2 classic prints on aluminium mounts.

As with previous competitions, the standard of entries was very high and our wonderful judge Nicole Young very kindly spent her weekend judging them all for us.

And now – the moment you’ve all been waiting for, drum-roll please! The winner and honorable mentions are revealed in the video below:

Thanks to Pete Davies (AKA @petedaviesmusic) for providing the music

Winning Photo -

Live Show by Dreuam_top

Here’s the reason Nicole chose this as her winner -

“The symmetry in this is what drew me to this photograph. It has so many people doing so many different things. It was fun to zoom in and see all of the people on the balcony up-close.”

Honourable Mentions -

The Blue Bathroom by Taylor Mathews

Nicole said -

“The colors in this are gorgeous. Such a simple concept, yet beautifully executed”

—————

Llangollen Motors by Howard ‘H’ Pimborough

Nicole said -

“I love the ruggedness in this image. The crop is perfect, it shows the main subject to the left, with some ‘empty’ space that you can look at on the right and see all the little details, like the jacket hanging on the wall or the jugs sitting on the shelf.”

—————

untitled by Claire Griffiths

Nicole said -

“This image made me laugh. The expression is priceless, and the fact that the horse still has hay in its mouth added a lot to the photograph.”

Congratulations to the winner and honourable mentions!

Watch this space for our next photography competition, it will be announced VERY soon!

Illustrator Course Review From our Competition Winner

Andy Trainer — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:58:18 +0000

Back in March we ran a short (but very popular) Re-Tweet Competition in conjunction with the training advice service MyTraining Manager.

The prize was a free place on any of our public training courses, and we had hundreds of entries.

Our lucky winner was Stephen Whitehead from Bellerbys College, who chose to attend our 2-day Illustrator Course

He finally got round to attending the course last week, and was delighted with the training – so we’ve included his Illustrator course review below.

Tutorial: How to create a scalable map in Illustrator

If you are a Photoshop user looking to add to your skill-set, or ever need to produce professional vector graphics (logos, maps etc…) – Illustrator is a very powerful addition to your tool kit.

Illustrator Training Course Review

Stephen Whitehead - Competition Winner

I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop professionally for over ten years now – and Adobe Illustrator is a package that I’ve wanted to train in for some time – but could never justify the budget.

However having now taken the Silicon Beach two day Illustrator introduction course I would recommend anyone who is a frequent user of Photoshop or has ever been interested in creating digital art and identities to consider taking this course.

Now that I am able to work with vector graphics – I feel as though I’ve found a missing piece in my understanding of digital design.

For me this was without doubt the most creative and downright fun training course I’ve ever been on; not only for discovering the tools and functions of the software but also for the wonderful trainer David who led the course.

He was animated, funny and with years of industry knowledge – was extremely knowledgeable.

David encouraged questions and took a real interest in demonstrating how Illustrator could help all of the delegates who came from a wide degree of backgrounds – across print, education, marketing and digital sectors.

He helpfully offered some mnemonics to help us to remember the various tools in the package.

I came away with a real buzz and feeling of accomplishment afterwards.

So thanks to Silicon Beach and MyTrainingManager for this wonderful prize!

_________________

We’re really pleased Stephen was so happy with his course. If you’re interested in attending any of our Adobe Training Courses – feel free to call us on 01273 622272 for more details.

We run regular competitions – so be sure to keep checking the competitions section of this blog for future opportunities to win free courses and other great prizes.

Brighton Museum Benefits from Silicon Beach Photography Competition

Andy Trainer — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 12:23:14 +0000

Our last Photography Competition ended on 23 May – and our judge picked this fantastic winning photo – a stunning San Francisco panorama by Charles Tu

Our prize for the Environment Photo Competition was a place on any 2-day course here at Silicon Beach – however as our winner Charles is based in the USA – he wasn’t easily able to attend.

If you’re interested in entering our current ‘Lifestyle’ Photography competition - with a chance of winning 2 stunning aluminium mounted prints of your choice – HURRY! it ends on 2 September!

Charles didn’t want his prize to go to waste, and was keen that a local not-for-profit organisation benefited. So – having done a little research online - he very generously donated his prize to Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.

The Museum was thrilled to receive the free place and have chosen to send a delegate to attend our Social Media course in August.

Paula Wrightson, the Museum’s Learning Officer, said:

“I was delighted when Brighton Museum was donated the prize. The first thing I did was have a look at Charles Tu’s winning photograph, which is a fabulous piece of work and I immediately thought how kind of him to think of donating his prize to us.

The offer of a place on this course could not come at a better time. We all think we could use social media better to promote Brighton & Hove Museums but feel we are not quite all on the ball yet or using new media as effectively as we could.

My interest is in promoting museum events like gallery tours and our more unusual experiences like our ghost-related programme at Preston Manor … we probably do far more in museums than people realise.

Ghost event attendees are usually slightly younger than the typical visitor and more likely to be users of social media.

I am keen to promote Preston Manor via social media to get a buzz going about this extraordinary building and its ghost story. We are lucky to have a real-life Victorian ghost story at the Manor – and right now I am in the middle of planning a fantastic new season of ghost events starting over Halloween.

I have spoken with a colleague who attended a course at Silicon Beach Training and she spoke very highly of the course and the trainer.”

We’re really pleased that Charles was able to find a worthy home for his prize – and we’re really excited to see the results of Paula’s Social Media campaign to promote Preston Manor after she attends the training in August.

Watch this space for more details soon!

VOTE for the Most Creative Google+ Profile Design

Andy Trainer — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 08:43:51 +0000

Voting is now CLOSED in our contest to find the most creative Google+ profile design using our “How to Pimp Your Google+ Profile” Template and Guide.

Check out full size images of all of the shortlisted Google+ Profile designs here, along with details of the – ahem – incredible prize for the winner.

Voting closed at 9.30 am on Friday 22nd July. But you can see the results in the form below.

Congratulations to Rajan Paudyal who won with 35.17% of the vote!

Take Our Poll