How good does it make you feel when you make a friend for life through your business? It sure makes me feel swell.

Kate Ramsay was the first real client I took on about 10 years ago when we started Bush Marketing (via a friendly take over of bayweb.com.au). Kate had heard we had taken on bayweb and wanted to know when she would be getting a bill from us for hosting her microsite. Well that bill was never sent and 10 years later Kate and I are still doing business together. Yesterday I got a call from Kate who was seeking some business advise–we have an ongoing deal where we exchange our consulting talents.

The timing of Kate’s call was perfect. I was in the middle of pouring our second 5 metre load of concrete and the beer fridge was empty so I asked if Kate could pick up a slab on her way over from the Federal Shop. When Kate arrived the work crew was happy to see the beer and even happier I bet to see the end of me for an hour.

Kate had a couple of questions for me relating to domain names and hosting. Due to client confidentiality I will not go into the details (you could ask Kate if you wanted the juicy bits) but the bottom line of my advise was– stick with what you have; get control of it (domain name registration and hosting admin access) and make a move to Google’s gmail.

Email is the crux of the internet and if you don’t have a handle on managing how you use this tool you are really missing out on what the new paradigm of communication and interaction.

Here is a link to some information on what google can do for your business. Better yet if you are interested have a look at this video.

Feeling very proud of my business partners and Bush Marketing photographer at large Jon Sturge for this great catalogue. Oops just noticed it’s actually the Blundstone Canada Catalogue. Better let me mates know.

ABC-Catalogue

Emma and Greg working hard at the Round Table

The year was 2004. Bush Branding & Marketing had moved to the hills of Byron working out of an old farm cottage that we affectionately called the Bush Station. We had lots of working coming through the Station door, and allot of it was via the Department of State and Regional Development (DSRD). Don Tadixz was the man in charge of our area and he had plenty of clients looking to get on the net. One of these clients was Emma Harrison. Emma, originally from London, had moved to the area and was looking for very specialised work: scenic artists are a unique field. Our team back then was Jason Ferris, Nighean O’Brian and me. When Emma came in the door with her portfolio of work we were blown away by her work and talent. Nighean put her design talent to work and Jason worked the code and within a few weeks emmaweb.com was born.

Six years later, Bush has moved further into the hills and our team has gone its separate ways. Jason is in Kansas City, Nighean is designing away madly from Ocean Shores and I am spending most of my time farming and keeping my eye on our various entrepreneurial enterprises. With that backdrop set it was so good to have Emma drop into our new head quarters on Sheaffes Road in Goonengerry. Emma had contacted us to get advise on the best way to start selling things online. With that as a brief we had a wordpress blog installed on her site and good ole wp-commerce plugged in. A simple template was selected to get things started.

Emma has started to dabble in Social Media marketing and setup a facebook page called Stuff and Nonsense to promote some of her eclectic work. In under an hour I gave Emma a whirl wind tour of the backend of wordpress, showed her how to edit a blog, upload a photo and got her shop loaded up with a few things, plugged in her paypal and had the honour of making the first purchase. Six years ago it would have taken weeks and big bucks to get what we got done in just over an hour. In today’s whizz bang world of open source goodness it’s unbelievably easy to make things happen.

Our work has just started so if you check out what we have done it’s very much work in progress. However, most of the work will now be in Emma’s talented hands (fingers). All that is left for us to do is do a custom design for wordpress and then integrate the blog and shop into her main site. Of course we will be lending a hand with some social media marketing magic and providing technical hand holding.

Thanks for coming back to the Bush Emma. Good luck with your online adventure.

The count down will soon be on for Christmas this year. More and more people are giving differently then they have before with the focus on giving something that gives back (or at least takes less) from the planet. In the spirit of this new paradigm, we have helped one of the branches of Bush get an early start by launching The Presso Green Christmas Special today.

Last week we inked a deal with Rainforest Rescue to bring them on board this year. Rainforest Rescue will plant a tree in the Daintree rainforest, and nurture it to maturity for every Presso sold as part of this promotion.

The Daintree is the world’s oldest rainforest having been in existence continuously for 100 million years. It is one of the most significant regional ecosystems in the world and is of international conservation importance. The Daintree is home to 122 threatened species of plants and animals, including the endangered cassowary. It is estimated that there may be a little as 1,000 of these magnificent birds left in Australia. The donated trees will help restore the natural environment of the Daintree rainforest and providing essential habitat. They will also be absorbing carbon from the atmosphere and helping to reduce climate change.

Looking forward to reading this article about writing web copy. 5 Tips for Aspiring Digital Copywriters.

Here is a small example of how social media can work. When I was checking facebook this morning I noticed my half sun (Jon Sturge) had posted a link to this tv commercial. Had to check it out and what a ripper this tv ad is. Well done creative team who ever you are.

How the social media bubble will burst | Social Media Today.