Showing posts with label Birmingham Social Media Cafe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Birmingham Social Media Cafe. Show all posts

Monday, 11 September 2017

Birmingham August and September Highlights

Willard Wigan
The Tailor of Gloucester
You have until the 28th October to see the fantastic In The Eye of The Needle exhibition at the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter.
Willard Wigan
Willard Wigan's art really is so small you need to look through a microscope to see the wonderful creations inside the eye of a needle. He even uses an eyelash to paint these miniature beauties.
Willard began doing miniature work as a child when he disturbed some ants in the ground and decided to make some furniture for them. If you are reading this on your phone zoom in on the photos below to get a better look.
Check out the Ascent of Man and remember that apes did not start this war but apes will finish it.
Christ The Redeemer.
Hummingbird 
Mammy from Gone With The Wind
The Pieta. Brought back a nice memory from the one in St Peter's in Rome.
What big teeth you have Granny!
To See or Not To See.
Willard spends 18 hours a day on his art and holds his breath whilst working to get the absolute stillness needed to work on the art. He is even visiting Oxford University who want to study his hand control whilst manipulating stem cells.

BMAG Thresholds
Busting makes me feel good
I headed to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery for their VR photography exhibition Thresholds as part of the Developed in Birmingham season. It featured VR replicas of some photo prints from 1839 originally displayed at King Edward's School.
You looked into the cabinets and then used your hands to magnify and move the photos. It was really kwl and I loved it. You could look out the windows to see a Chartist protest, there was a mouse running around on the floor and moths buzzing around the lights.

School of Code at Google Digital Garage
School of Code ran a beginners guide to coding inside Google's Digital Garage on New Street. School of Code has just started a coding boot camp that lasts for 16 weeks and is absolutely free to the lucky 20 participants who will go from beginners to fully-fledged programmers.
You should check out all the free classes being offered by the Digital Garage as they cover everything from social media to spreadsheets.
Below School of Code explained the difference between HTML, CSS and Javascipt by getting you to design and animate a little character. This was my Batgirl attempt.


Birmingham Social Media Cafe July 
Birmingham Social Media Cafe headed over to the classy Opus restaurant on Cornwall Street. It was great to catch up with social media whizzes such as My Jewellery Quarter Twitter account which does an amazing job, Gleeson Recruitment and Biddle and Webb Auctions who use Periscope to market forthcoming events.

Birmingham Social Media Cafe August
A lively meet-up at Tilt included LinkedIn guru Ian J Preston (below 2nd left) who runs the Coffee and Natter networking club giving everyone a pep talk on nailing marketing of yourself on LinkedIn. David Glenwright of JC Social Media was also nearby hosting a free social media clinic for small businesses. He is full of wonderful advice and expertise.

Brum Bloggers Co-working
Thanks to The Ting Thing and Laura Creaven  Brum Bloggers arranged a co-working evening at the AC Hotel to get everyone to stop procrastinating and catch up with their social media activities. Interesting bloggers included One Tech Traveller who is off to Hong Kong and the Far East for 6 months amazing travel blogging and Galina Thomas who has an incredible 19,000 Instagram followers.

Birmingham Heritage Week Lazarica

Finally I was one of the many people that swarmed over to the Lazarica Church on Griffin's Brook Lane for its Birmingham Heritage open day. The church is breathtaking and truly a hidden gem. The first purpose built Sebian Orthodox Church in the UK dedicated to the Holy Prince Lazar.
The stunning murals are all the work of one man completed over a 5 year period.
The middle doors of the altar are reserved for the priest and royal family only.
It is a glorious sight.

Words and photos by Paul Clarke
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Tuesday, 11 July 2017

Birmingham Social Media Cafe #BRUMSMC May/June

 For May's Birmingham Social Media Cafe with CliveReevesPRBrum Hour aka David W Massey and Phil Choi aka The Blog Trainer took us to the quirky cool Tilt coffee bar in City Arcade.
Tilt Twitter
Craft beers, first class coffee and delicious treats such as BAKE's Snickers and lemon cheesecake bundt are all on offer at Tilt.
Tilt Twitter
By the Tilt window was the delegation of 4 from digital marketing agency Connecting Element led by Client Service Manager Matt Bowell. Matt talked about their clients from the restaurant industry and their work with bloggers and influencers to promote brands such as Miller & Carter and Harvester.
Near left in the photo is brilliant copywriter Anna Gunning who turns company jargon into beautiful content. To Anna's left was the Mac Birmingham team who are fighting back against huge funding cuts with exciting promotional content and events. To Anna's right is charismatic vlogger Sinead Latham who was a wiz at DigiCities week. Next to Sinead is the legend that goes by the name of Brummie Gourmand aka Ryan Parish. Ryan's blog is full of brilliant foodie finds.
BrummieGourmand.com
To Dave's left is accounting maestro Practical Edd who gives Ryan a run for his money with kwl restaurant tips. It was an eclectic group at Tilt working on some exciting upcoming projects.

Brum Night Cafe in the Gunmakers Arms
Brum Hour twitter
Wood you believe how good the Gunmakers Arms looks since it's recent refurbishment? The Two Towers Brewery real ale pub had just been completed before our visit mid June and hosts everything from gigs to board games nights and soon the Brum Vegan Beer Fest
Gunmakers Brum twitter
Attendees included PR specialist Karen from Cup & String Communications, visual communications designer Rachel Khor and Kelly and Becca from the JC Social Media team
 Dave introduced first speaker of the night Marketing Manager Adam Snelleksz from CMA Video who work with clients such as the Sealife Centre, Sport Birmingham, Legoland and Coventry Gin Festival. I was really impressed with what Adam said about a video communicating so much more personality than just a few lines of text. You can show off your knowledge, skills, enthusiasm and expertise to impress a customer with why they should hire your services. Adam mentioned the power of filming customer testimonials and user-generated content.

 Adam's Top 4 Video Tips
 1) Plan what you are going to say in the video by only having one or two main takeaway messages for viewers rather than a rambling conversation about everything you do.
2) Choose a short video length of 30 to 90 seconds to get your message across as many people may be watching whilst travelling so have less time to browse
3) Have a call to action message in your video e.g. call us now, for more information, to sign up.
4) Tell customers what they want to hear rather than generic phrases such as we have the best staff, reputation etc. They want to hear that you will save them money, time, make them look more attractive etc.
 Next speaker expert copywriter Anna Gunning told us that for you to resonate with your audience you will need to imagine that you were talking to one individual person rather than a generic crowd. So you personalise your content as if you were speaking to a customer named Joe and you imagine Joe's background, job and personality.
 Next rather than describing your product you talk about what problem it solves for Joe. You start broad then empathise then specialise. Work out where they are in the decision-making process and give them the information they need to guide them towards a purchase. Great advice!

June: BrumSMC Alpha Works
Everyone who visits Alpha Works gets excited by the surroundings, vibrant offices, amazing views and creative energy there.
 It was a great turnout with some new visitors. You may notice that a certain multimedia journalist and podcasting enthusiast Adela Earlington likes to be centre of attention in group photos. 😃
 Community Manager,  Theresa White told us about the diverse community of freelancers, entrepreneurs and small businesses in the offices. The hot-desking options are brilliant as you can pop in for a day, a week or a whole month depending on your needs.
 "Meeting you with a view to a kill".
Love these views from the 21st floor!
 Don't daydream too much as you need to make your own business dreams come true.

 On the ground floor the Alpha Cafe is run by the team behind the highly regarded Faculty Coffee shop in Piccadilly Arcade.
Mouthwatering treats! I had the raspberry and white chocolate brownie and it's fantastic!

Finally 
Theresa White and Phil Choi
The Blog Trainer Phil Choi is doing a free workshop as part of NatWest's Set For Success series.

If you need any help with the following this event is perfect for you.

Introduction to WordPress
Creating blogs for better SEO
How to craft a great blog post
Tools and apps to help you create better content
Driving social followers to your blog
Q&A


Words by Paul Clarke.
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