Somethings in life are easier to do looking in the mirror, like having a shave or brushing your teeth. Writing about yourself is not one of them. Mirror or not, if any of you have been given the task to write about yourself, your business or product you will know what I mean.

One of the first things you do in the digital world is to do an internet search for people, businesses, services or whatever you need to write about. Then you can madly copy and paste them onto a document and before you  know it you have page after page of bla after bla and then you start to edit it to suit your needs. After working up a sweat you find yourself with a couple hundred plagarised words that at first read make you feel like the deed is done but when you read them again they sound like the worst re-run ever. Believe me I have done this so many times and have the gigs on my hard drive to prove it.

Today I tried something different when Andrew Bleakley reminded me that I was responsible for writing an About us, about us for our new website and other social media related activities. After cutting and pasting the best words from the best advertising and digital design sites I could find, not to mention cursing flash sites that you can’t cut and paste from it came to me. Ironically it came to me when I was writing down, yes writing and I was even using a fountain pen. These need to be my words: Fresh from my cranium and unique to our team and what we do. So without further a do, here is what I have come up with about us.

ABOUT US

Bush Branding & Marketing is an independent, full service, digital creative agency. Our team members were birthed in the 60s, 70s and 80’s so we know our ways around the traditional and digital world. We offer you our international experience in design, development and promotion. What sets us apart is our entrepreneurial spirit and work ethic. Our founder has started up and continues to manage a handful of businesses that keeps our team busy and on our toes when it comes to delivering measurable results. We are really good at coming up with ideas that will take flight like a feather. On the other hand we know how to push the back end of an elephant up a steep hill if that’s what it takes to get the job done.

Bush Marketing has not won any awards and it never will. We applaud agencies that have the time and money to enter the never ending list of award shows; however, when our days and nights are done we can think of much better ways to have fun like thinking of new ways to grow the brands in our care (especially our own).

We have put our 10 acre property in the Byron Bay hinterland up for sale. As a result we are getting some new insights into the challenges and of course opportunities in marketing real estate. The internet has truly changed how Real Estate agents and property owners sell their homes, buildings and acreage. In the past when you wanted to sell it was pretty much all about picking the right real estate agent, or agents, and shell out lots of money for a promotional campaign–mostly in expensive print mediums. It was the only practical way to get awareness–other then the sign on your lawn.

The internet has changed all this. As it seems to do quite often. Let me put this question to you–if you are interested in buying or renting a home how would you find one? It’s not a long shot to predict that at some point in time you will be on the internet looking at real estate sites or real estate agent sites to check out prices, pictures and features of prospective dream homes.

When we first put our property on the market our agent let us know that there are 3 p’s to successfully selling property: price, promotion and presentation. Last week we took care of price with an extreme reduction and presentation (sadly we had to give our tenants notice so we could present the property vacant). This week we are doing our part with promotion.

Promotion online really comes down to pictures. Plenty of pictures to capture the key selling features of your property. Another P-get a professional photographer if you really want to let your home and land shine. We have had some professional shots done but we also wanted to show people how much hard work (and hard cash) we have spent to get our 10 acres that were formally camphor and noxious weed infested to the pretty paddocks they are now. An hour of reviewing 1000’s of pictures and I selected about 100 and have uploaded them to flickr. Living by the less is more motto Alison is helping me cull them down to a dozen of the best shots for our agent to review and use. Being impetuous I can’t wait for the selects and want to share all of my picks using flickr slideshow. Here we go. If you have sometime help us out and comment on the pictures that stand out to you.

With December on the door step our home-grown client Presso is preparing to pump out an online and public relations campaign for the gift giving season. The campaign, “I’m dreaming of a Green Christmas” features a Presso with the special offer of a free designer sugar spoon and espresso beans, from Green Cauldron in Australia and from te-aro in the United States and Canada. To really Green things up Presso is going to plant a native tree for each Presso sold. Trees will be planted as part of regeneration projects on the Cromwell Farm in Australia and the Gregory Farm in Chatham Ontario.

In North America we will be planting trees native to the endangered Carolinian Zone which lies south of an imaginary line between Grand Bend on Lake Huron and Toronto on Lake Ontario. “Carolinian” is a name coined by early botanists, who observed that hardwood forests in southwestern Ontario share many characteristics with forests as far south as the Carolinas. Forests in Ontario’s Carolinian Zone are enriched by trees having a strong southern affinity, such as tulip, sassafras, Kentucky coffee, cucumber magnolia, black gum, and papaw. Carolinian forest is one of Canada’s most threatened habitats.

In Australia native rainforest trees are being planted in an area known as the Big Scrub. The Big Scrub Rainforest was once Australia’s biggest subtropical rainforest covering over 75,000 hectares. Sadly 99% of this area has now been cleared.

It’s that time of year again and we can’t wait for it to be Friday. This year’s soiree has the added dimension of a social media workshop to warm up before we dig into some slow food from within 100 miles of our farm. More big news is we have moved to a bigger farm.

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For more information on our annual client party visit http://www.bushmarketing.com/100mile.html

There are almost as many sayings, philosophies and processes about how to best translate a clients web wants and desires into something they are happy with and more important willing to pay for then there are questions below. If you are considering briefing us on a web project please take the time to read the following 72 Questions to Ask Your New Web Design Clients–written by Douglas Bonneville of bonfx.com. Thanks Doug I hope you don’t mind us making some additions and revisions to your great questions–they will be noted so as to not confuse.

1. How does your company handle email?
2. Do you need any password protected areas?
3. Do you have the Pantone numbers for your current
company colors?
4. Did you take a look at our portfolio? BBM Portfolio
5. What is your time frame? (then multiply it by 2)
6. Is this a brochure site, blog, forum, shopping cart or mash up?
7. Who is your audience?
8. Do you have any specifications?
9. What are the website addresses of your competitors and 3 websites accomplish what you are after in terms of look and functionality?
10. How many other companies have you talked to? (If we are the first please talk to at least 2 more)
11. Do you need a business card and letterhead?
12. What is your main message (what is the one essential thing you want to say)?
13. Did you or someone else register the domain? (do you have pass words to manage the dns)?
14. How familiar are you with search engine
optimization and best practices?
15. What are several websites you like? (and why)
16. Do you currently have a website? (what is the web address)
17. Do you or anyone on your staff have Photoshop or
other image editing software?
18. Do you need search engine help?
19. Does the site launch need to coincide with a
product launch or any other important milestone?
20. Do you need a content management system?
21. How long have you had a website?
22. Do you have photos you need to use?
23. Will several people be editing the site?
24. How many pages do you need?
25. Do you have a catalog or brochure?
26. How do people find your current website (do you understand and have access to web stats)?
27. Do you have a newsletter?
28. Are you in touch with the orginal designer?
29. Do you have access to the web server?
30. What are several websites that you like the look of?
31. Do you have control over the domain?
32. Do you need any other promotional material?
33. How familiar are you with usability studies?
34. How important is search engine ranking to you?
35. Is there any specific functionality you need?
36. Will you be providing creative direction?
37. Do you have your content done?
38. Will your IT person be involved?
39. Do you have a logo? What format is it in?
40. How familiar are you with graphic design best
practices for web designs?
41. What is your current hosting company?
42. Have you been through the complete web design
and development process before?
43. Who are your competitors?
44. How often do you need to update the site?
45. Describe the style of website you are looking for?
46. Is the orginal developer still available?
47. What is your budget?
48. What is compelling about working with us?
49. Do you need an image gallery?
50. Are you are anyone on your staff familiar with
HTML and CSS?
51. Is your logo in Illustrator format?
52. Do you need this to integrate with your existing
identity pieces?
53. How are you going to maintain the site?
54. What software do you have?
55. How did you find us?
56. Did you read any of our blog?
57. What bugs you the most about websites?
58. Do you need any other graphic design help?
59. Do you need social media tools built in, like Digg,
Facebook, Twitter, Stumble Upon, etc.
60. How familiar are you with web standards and web
design best practices?
61. Do you need the website to tie into any particular
3rd party applications?
62. Do you need a contact form?
63. Do you have a domain?
64. Do you have any proposals from other design firms?
65. How important is customization to you?
66. Will you want or need help in making changes? If
so, would you need help routinely?
67. What do you need your website to do?
68. Do you need ecommerce?
69. Have you considered redesigning your logo?
70. Do you have hosting?
71. Have you considered taking a fresh look at your
corporate identity? This a good time to consider
refresh or an entirely new identity.
72. When is the last time you updated the site?

You know you are going to have a good day when a client gets in contact with you via facebook and sends you a link to a clip that takes the piss out of clients. Thanks Chari from Hampton & Larrson for making our day. If you are a prospective BBM web client please watch this and if you don’t smile please don’t call.