Gone are the days when a good website was just a luxury, it is now essential.

A school’s website needs be a central part of an education marketing strategy; a great website can generate a channel of leads if designed and developed well from the ground up, and also offers a great platform to engage with current and potential stakeholders.

A well designed website can create an interactive platform on many levels. Not only can your website be a great way of promoting the services, departments and strengths of your school, but for current stakeholders it can offer interactive day to day content to further engage with them.

At Absolute, we're currently working on building a new e-commerce jewellery website.

Affetto Jewellery to launch 2012.

Taking advantage of CSS techniques we were able to create a subtle hover transition by changing the background position and colour for the twitter link.

Have a look for yourself and see what you think.

http://www.affettojewellery.co.uk/

If you would like to re-create this effect, please find the HTML and CSS code below along with a link to a DEMO on jsFiddle.

If you have any questions, feel free to add us on twitter: @absoluteagency

Have fun :)

HTML:

Follow us on Twitter

CSS:

a.twitter {
    -moz-transition-duration: 0.3s, 0.3s;
    -moz-transition-property: color, background;
    -moz-transition-timing-function: linear, ease-in;
    
    background: url("http://www.affettojewellery.co.uk/twitter.png") no-repeat 0 4px;
    color: #000;
    display: block;
    font-family: Georgia, sans-serif;
    font-style: italic;
    padding: 0 0 0 30px;
    margin: 20px;
    text-decoration: none;
}

a.twitter:hover {
    color: #eb1a67;
    background-position: 0 -18px;
}

DEMO: CSS Background and Colour Transition Tutorial on jsFiddle

After watching the Apprentice on Wednesday evening I thought I would put together a quick blog on target marketing or niche marketing as it is also called, especially considering how poorly Team Logic did on the task.

Why is it important? And what is it?

Target marketing can be the key to a company’s success. If you know who your target audience is then it will make the whole marketing mix fit together perfectly, and make your life a whole lot easier to justify where and how you spend your budget.

First of all it’s important to ensure we look at what target marketing is and how it works. Target marketing is simply the process of looking at and identifying the person or group of people who will ultimately buy your product or service.  You will probably have done this already, but are you actually using the information in your marketing planning?  This information should be the basis of your marketing plan, all the way down to the packaging. Would you make the same mistake as Logic with their feminine package which was apparently designed for the mass market?

As mentioned, how you then target these people creates the marketing plan, which encompasses the use of the marketing mix. More marketing jargon for another blog.

How do you break down your target market?

There are three main ways of defining your target market:

• Geographic segmentation – as it suggests this is based on location, good for

Not only do journalists get bombarded with press releases each day, but it is now much easier for them to go out and find the information themselves.  So to help I have written some simple guidelines to help increase your chance of having a story published.

Some simple rules:

• Make the editors/reporters/journalists job easy by presenting your press release in a format and style that appeals to them – this links to the next point!
• Make contact with your target magazines/newspapers to build up a rapport with them.  A good relationship with the press will lay the foundations for a successful PR plan.
• Your photo can make the difference on whether your story is covered. Editors/reporters/journalists all want their publications to look good so if you can help with a great photo - perfect!
• Be reactive to news as well as proactive.  You can make your press release topical by incorporating a recent news event this could be political, industry related or just an interesting story

Questions to ask before you write your press release

1. Why are you writing the press release: to broadcast information, increase business/sales, update target audiences, educate your audience?
2. Who is the audience? Who do you want to read the article?
3. Does the press release contain newsworthy information or important/valuable advice that will be used by your audience?
4. Is there a just cause for press release that you want to send out? 
5. What do you want the readers to take away from the press release?

Some hints and tips on the overall tone and structure of the press release

• Title – a powerful title will get the editors/reporters/journalists attention.  They are sent hundreds of press releases a day, so make yours stand out.
• Content – make sure the press release is grammatically correct; that it doesn't contain any spelling mistakes or errors, and finally that any sources are quoted correctly.
• Concise - keep it short, punchy and to the point, don't over use unnecessary flowery language.
• Factual – only present information that is true, correct and doesn't elaborate anything that to be communicated.
• Supportive – Quotes are great, but don’t use over hyped quotes as they can be seen as being too biased.