It's a good few months now since I've written anything on the blog. I've have been busy with a number of other projects and theres some great news on the way. If I am totally honest the gap between blogs is due to a lack of focus on keeping the Consoltis site up-to-date ... I think it's all too easy to take the foot off the communications pedal.
BASHgroup have seen some changes over the last month or so with the new owner Marcus Thomlinson now fully in charge. As a consequence of this time, the website has naturally taken a slight step back, but I am pleased to say that we are going forward again.
There's been a few changes to the website since the last report.
The site now displays the team biographies, has the capability for promoting local gigs in the local area ( Harrrogate, Leeds, Bradford, Ilkley to name but a few) and there are a few more pages available now that promoting the studios services such as Star for a Day and The rehearsal rooms.
There has been progress with social media links - the Facebook pages have with well over 1000 Fans in place and growing .. what is encouraging is that people are making bookings through finding out about promotions them either via Facebook or from the website directly . See www.bashgroup.co.uk/starforaday for more information
The homepage has alway had a bit of a tidy up too, largely as a result of number of You Tube videos that have been uploaded onto the site - Most of them have been directed and produced by the BASHgroup team.
I recently went to Bash Studios for another review meeting with the team. We agreed a time and some 2 hrs later, with the backdrop of bands in rehearsal, we started and various people popped in to join us ... it's all quite chilled actually.
Marcus introduced me more of team including Matt Speddngs of www.deepfocus.co.uk, who is going to be doing some of the filming that is planned.
We talked about the next stages for the site and there is a promise of some great content.
The key focus of our discussions is to generate some exciting and unique content to include film, composing, graphics and animation. The team are working hard and having a few laughs at the same time.
Coming up soon will be the Bash Studios song played by the house band, various Bash video clips, team bios and pictures and a local gig guide for Harrogate and the surrounding area.
Whilst exciting for everyone involved, it's taking even longer than I expected to build the content. I don't know why I am surprised, because I know how hard it really is and also is a new process to learn. I was hoping we would be a little further on. Anyway, the important bit is that the Bash team have embraced the need to create and have put plans in place.
I will be checking the progress at the next update meeting later this week and there will hopefully be some exciting new content to upload.
It's a sort of a gradual start and we are making progress, but you just can't see it yet.
I went to Bash Studios this week to continue the journey.
The domain www.bashgroup.co.uk is fully in place now, plus we've amended the photos used in the backdrop. They were all taken at Bash Studios by Jamie Valentine.
A few people are getting to know about the site which is good and getting some thumbs up. Its all at the early stages, but there is definitely an upbeat buzz around the place. There is talk of an official launch at the end of March.
Marcus Thomlinson was saying that the the followers in Facebook have moved up to to over 300 in the last week. Just the one tweet at the moment.
Still quite a lot to do with the site and now the team are starting to focus on producing amazing content for everything Bash Group.
Kasiuss popped in and Jason Odle gave us some feedback on the bashgroup.co.uk website so we just made some amends to the placement of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube icons - There in a better place on the site now so you can see them on every page.
The band found out that they are playing a couple of live songs on BBC Radio Leeds on West Yorkshire Raw Talent Show 18th March 2010 (19:00 - 22:00). I am told that there will be on at 8.05pm.
They will be great and Bash Group are going along to film it for the blog - it's all very Rock and Roll.
I went to Bash studios for the first time to talk about building the site. I met up with Marcus, Jamie and Jason.
We talked about how we could use social media to promote the businesses within the group – the studios, the online shop and telecoms. We talked about how we could engage with the local community much more than we do now and how to make Bash an even more exciting and engaging place to be. There are over 70+ bands that uses the facilities here and there are some really creative and talented people.
We talked about content – one of the most important elements in social media. Without something interesting nobody is going to engage.
So to kick the process off we put in place the Consoltis framework site onto our managed server and started to put in place the Bashgroup branding and added some initial posts. We have also put in the direct links to the Bashgroup websites (studios, online shop, telecoms) and to twitter, youtube and facebook accounts.
Framework functionality includes design controls, user authentication, RSS feeds, blogging, CRM, subscription services, in-built SEO, database management, remote support, online content management system. The development platform is neatComponents.
The snapshot below was taken from the site as at 10th March 2010
This is the start of a new journey with Bash Group. A media organisation based at Bash Studios in Harrogate. We are work together to build up the Bash Group brand and online presence using a variety of social media techniques. It's going to be fantastic - the people involved are just great and its going to be a success.
The normal business thing to do is write up a case study after the after event and say how great everything is and then get a great quote from the business owner. I thought we would do this one differently and if I am totally honest, I have no idea how this is going to work out in practice because we are going to share the journey with you including the ups and downs.
Besides an opportunity to actually show and evidence the journey, we want to get over the mixed messages and hype about social media. I think many people are not quite sure what to do right now. I believe there are three camps clearly cut into believers; non-believers; no-idea.
So for me, it’s about skipping over the buzz words, demonstrating what can be done and also putting everything into a practical perspective. It’s also about being totally honest with your customers and yourself about what is possible within your own budget and available time.
So this blog is going to show the journey of building the online presence for the Bash Group. The blogs will show the real word strategy discussions, ideas for marketing, social media techniques, discussions on site optimisation (SEO), successes and failures.
It should be fun and rewarding for everyone involved. We will see of course if you are in the non-believer or no-idea category my hope is there is something in these blogs that might inspire you.
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