As you've probably already seen, Propellernet has recently relocated to lovely new and inspirational offices in the centre of Brighton! One of the things that makes our new office space really unique is the 30-foot graffiti mural, depicting the journey from Brighton to London. We commissioned  Dave Samual, from RareKind to complete our piece. RareKind are a specialist graffiti agency, responsible for some of the UK's best graffiti artwork. A few months back, as the graffiti was in the planning stage, we decided we would find someone to help us produce a short time lapse video, capturing the creation of the Mural. We found Brighton-based camera man and video producer Greg Brand, who has done an fantastic job of doing just that! Read the rest of this entry...

Read the rest of this entry »

After 7 years at 40 Church Road in Hove, the time has finally come for Propellernet to move to swanky new offices in the centre of Brighton! The Hove office has served us well, but as we continue to grow and win new clients, it's time for a fresh and much needed change. We started with one room in the Hove office and over time we took over the entire building, eventually running out of space. Now we've joined the vibrant digital community in the centre of Brighton, with some inspirational open plan offices. Months of planning have gone into our new office move and it's been a love/hate project for Jim, our finance director who has done a brilliant job pulling it all together in such a short period of time. Jim worked with a number of people on the project including our designer, Nicola Gobat, whose brief was to deliver a creative, functional and innovative space for Propellernet staff to work in. Nicola has far exceeded expectations, creating a wonderful office environment to...

Read the rest of this entry »

This week saw myself and Stu Bowker presenting on behalf of Propellernet at the MDHub 100 SEO & Google tools seminar, at the Sussex County Cricket ground. Our presentation gave a basic overview of SEO, exploring some link building tactics and the role good online PR can play. We also touched upon the power of conversion optimisation and detailed lots of free tools available to get you started. One of the key themes that came out of the session was that Google wants to provide the most relevant search results to users, offering the best user experience possible, encouraging searchers to come back time and time again. So how does Google decide who gets the top spot and ensure results stay relevant...? Well Google's search algorithm looks at a host of factors, but particularly important ones include good and relevant on page content mentioning the keywords you are targeting, as well as relevant and authoritative external links to that content. Read the rest of this entry...

Read the rest of this entry »

Topping off a fantastic month of award entries and wins, we were victorious at the Sussex Sports Awards! Following on from our Healthiest Workplace award win at the Sussex Business Awards, we were selected as winners for the Active & Healthy Workplace Initiative award (sponsored by Wave Leisure). The other finalists included Nibbles of Worthing Ltd and Wellbeing at Work (Brighton & Hove City Council). To find out about some of the healthy workplace activities and initiatives we have in place here at Propellernet, check out Annelies' recent blog post: Is Propellernet the healthiest workplace? Read the rest of this entry...

Read the rest of this entry »

Friday night saw some of the best of the Brighton and Sussex business community turn up for a night of glitz and glamour at the Sussex Business Awards. A fantastic evening was had by all and it was a particularly triumphant night for the Propellernet team! We were shortlisted for three award categories on the night: Healthiest Workplace, Best Employer and the Innovation in Business award. Despite some very stiff competition from some great Sussex businesses, we are pleased to have walked away with the award for the Healthiest Workplace (sponsored by the NHS West Sussex), as well as the Innovation in Business award (sponsored by the University of Brighton). As regular readers to the blog have probably seen, we're keen believers of a healthy body = a healthy mind and have put in place a 'wellbeing team' to drive forward continual improvements in this area. So it was fantastic to win an award for our wellbeing efforts and we've got plans to continue investing and improving employee...

Read the rest of this entry »

By 2050 almost 60% of the UK population could be obese... now there's a scary fact. Regular readers of our blog and newsletter will know that we are an active and healthy bunch of people here at Propellernet. We regularly take part in events such as the Brighton half marathon, Tough Guy and we reached the semi finals of the Brighton Business Volleyball tournament. We've even launched our own 'wellbeing' team focused on continually improving employee wellbeing, which has seen us receive nominations for 'the healthiest workplace' and 'best employer' at the BAHBAs, The Sussex Business Awards and the Sussex Sports Awards. So we can definitely vouch for the concept of health body = healthy mind. All this brings me neatly onto the purpose of this blog post, to highlight a couple of great offers being promoted in the Brighton & Hove and Worthing areas, in association with National Obesity Week (2nd - 8th Nov 2009): Read the rest of this entry...

Read the rest of this entry »

Currently the internet is served by 21 gTLDs (Generic Top Level Domains) including .com, .org and .net to name a few. But 2010 sees ICANN (the not-for-profit organisation tasked with coordinating the internet’s naming system) opening up the internet naming system further with the introduction of new TLDs. So in theory, soon you will be able to have .anythingyoulike. The reason for making this change, as stated in a recent press release on ICANN’s website, is to promote and encourage innovation and offer people more choice. And it seems support online is growing for new TLDs with sites like www.supportnewtlds.com set up supporting ICANN’s 2010 plans. I’m sure most people reading this have at some point in their lives spent countless hours trying to come up with a clever and easy to remember .com or .co.uk URL that reflects your business, blog or website, which hasn’t already been snapped up years ago. .Com domain names often come at a premium and many of the more...

Read the rest of this entry »

Propellernet's super-duper online PR team has done it again with another great piece of online PR work for one of our clients King & Allen (bespoke suit makers). Seeing as the doom and gloom of the recession is all everyone is talking about at the moment, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to put a positive spin on it with an article and video interview appearing on the Telegraph's online Business & Finance section about 'how to dress for the recession'. You no longer need to trek down to Savile Row for a bespoke suit which could cost you in excess of £2,000 when you could make your way down to King & Allen and get yourself a top quality, made to measure suit at a more affordable price. Read the rest of this entry...

Read the rest of this entry »

Historically some of the biggest brand wars of the past have been in the FMCG market between the big consumer players, and Coke and Pepsi have certainly been no exception! Often in the past Coke and Pepsi have beaten each other up by signing up exclusive supplier deals through restaurant and pub chains. A fact I encounter on an all too regular basis. How often have you been in a pub or restaurant and you ask for a Coke only to be met with the response 'is Pepsi okay'? Then you try to be clever on your next pub or resturant outing and ask for a Pepsi, only to be met by the response 'is Coke okay'? Annoying isn't it? All I want is a soft drink - Coke or Pepsi, I don't care! Sorry a slight sore point with me as you may have guessed. This brings me to Coke's most recent one-up-manship campaign in the US, aimed to get one over on Pepsi. Soft drink brands Coke Vault and Mtn Dew (owned by PepsiCo) are fierce competitors in the US and Coke has just launched a clever campaign called...

Read the rest of this entry »

This week has been full of big brands getting involved with Social Media. The beginning of the week saw Skittles launch their new website, which total puts the Skittles brand in the hands of social media. Then mid week we saw Visa announce their "More People Go with Visa" Campaign, which has a heavy tie-in with the photo sharing site Flickr. And that brings us to today and Amnesty International's Social Media time bomb campaign. Today, at 1:10pm saw a 'flashmob' style collaborate effort by Amnesty International, to raise awareness of violence on Women in Britain. Amnesty International coordinated the 'flashmob' on their own blog and website, with the aim to raise awareness of the issue across Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. You can read more about the Amnesty campaign by visiting www.oneten.org.uk. Read the rest of this entry...

Read the rest of this entry »