Here at Virtuoso, we decided that at the end of each month, everyone in the team has to come together and present their ‘Digital Experience of the Month’.  This is to give the team a chance to share what we’ve stumbled across on the web and whether we started using it or just think it’s plain cool. Oh, and did we mention that Gary provides the sarnies!

So as this was our first month of sharing experiences, we were a bit hesitant to share our findings so Gary kicked us off with his Digital Experience of the month and what he thought Virtuoso could be using in the near future…

www.join.me

Join Me allows you to share your screen, with anyone, instantly. Whether you want to show someone your designs or presentations you can share your screen and chat at the same time.

Gary thought it could be a good way for us to help our clients, especially with web support. The testimonials include “It’s fantastic. I can now help my mother with IT requests remotely.” – Fredrik P which shows that this could be perfect for us and our clients, who may be having a few problems.

Next up was Glenn. Although he nearly forgot about our digital experience of the month competition, he pulled a very interesting and useful site out of the bag.

www.thinkwithgoogle.co.uk

Think with Google from Google pulls together all the trends, most popular topics, statistics, blogs and studies into one place. From presenting this, Glenn also flagged up a blog which explains how important it is to have your website compatible with smart phones. Over 60% of 16-34 year olds use their smart phones to connect to the internet!

As Joanne is our social media specialist! She came across a website called Pinterest while on her travels around the web.

www.pinterest.com

Pinterest is a place to ‘pin’ your favourite photos, designs and fonts etc. to create boards full of your favourite or helpful stuff.  So, if like Joanne, you’re soon to be married – you can pin your favourite dresses, flowers and venues and have them all in one collage in one place!

Joanne has already set-up relevant boards for Virtuoso to use and by installing a ‘Pin It’ button to her browser, she can quickly pin anything she sees while on the web and can add it to one the our boards. Creativity at its best! However, it is by invite only so if you fancy joining Pinterest, just give us a bell or email info@virtuoso.uk.com.

I was next in the line and I presented Intel ® Museum of Me. www.intel.com/museumofme

By logging into Facebook, this extremely clever website gathers all of your photos, friends and information to put your life into a museum! Although a little bit scary, it’s a very nice 3 minutes spent watching your life on walls…

After these pretty amazing finds, Maureen was regretting being last in the queue.  However not one to be left out she presented Earworms, a great selection of fun language learning apps which you can find on iTunes – and her Dutch is coming along famously.

Virtuoso’s expertise includes creating campaigns and competitions for clients on Facebook. Maureen also presented some new ideas on how we can develop Facebook competition apps,  and enable us to easily create interactive campaigns for our clients- check out  www.shortstack.com .

ShortStack helps you create campaigns and competitions using a simple drag and drop editor and provides great ideas and examples which other users have created.

So after five digital experiences and a box of scotch eggs, it was time to vote for the best.  And the majority vote was for…The Museum of Me!  Although it’s not as helpful for us as a company, it really gives you YOUR digital experience. So get logged in and give it a go…Joanne had goose bumps!

www.intel.com/museumofme

Well what a year it has been.  Facebook has undergone a multitude of changes both with its interface and behind the scenes (privacy remains at the centre of a number of issues for Facebook this year) – that said, the social networking site still proves ever popular for users and brands/companies and appears to have managed to keep Google+ at bay….for how long, we are sure to find out in 2012.

Here is an infographic designed by Antonio Lupetti using official stats and figures from Facebook…

The latest Facts and Figures on Facebook

Do you think that 2012 is the year for you to take your business on to Facebook? We will build and design a bespoke Facebook business page, working closely with you to get the results that you want and that are best for your business. We also provide out-sourced marketing support by managing your Facebook business page with a full marketing strategy and plan for the future.

You can speak to a member of the team on 0191 3867373 or email us info@virtuoso.uk.co.uk …or why don’t you check out our Facebook business page.

Yesterday was cited as Mega Monday by observers as consumers looked to online retailers to kick off their virtual Christmas shopping and were set to break online sales records.  Known in the US as Cyber Monday – both sides of the pond were clicking their way through a host of e-commerce websites in search of the perfect gift for friends and loved ones.

No matter what the size of your company, you could transform your website into an e-commerce site and instantly reach a new market of customers. Here at Virtuoso we have worked with a number of clients in developing their website to include e-commerce.

If you are interested in adding e-commerce to your website, or building an e-commerce website for your company, contact us today to speak to a member of the team.  We will work closely with you at every step of the way to build the website you want for your company and will help you develop the site and support you even after the site has launced.

Telephone us today on 0191 3867373 or email us info@virtuoso.uk.com

Here are some examples of e-commerce websites that we have designed for our clients which launched this year. Click on an image to visit the website.

Bishops Beds

Borne Again

Tom Jenkins from Theory Films has created this beautiful three minute stop motion Google Street View film which is catching everyone’s attention.

The film tells the story of a toy that longs to escape the office, given the chance, he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast using a toy car and Google Maps Street View!

We all love this in the office and we hope you enjoy it too.

Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.

If you would like to speak to us about any of your digital marketing or social media needs, get in touch today.  You can email us info@virtuoso.uk.com or telephone us 0191 3867373

As small and large companies face the reality that social media marketing is no longer an optional route of expanding the reach of their brand, a new age in social media is gearing up to explode in 2012.

There has been a gurgle of hype around social commerce since 2007 when the first virtual gift was sold on Facebook, and then impressive figures began to emerge in 2008 with Dell claiming they made $1 million in revenue from sales through Twitter. As the trend continued with both Delta and Disney launching online ticket purchasing on Facebook in 2010, social commerce is set to avalanche into mainstream come 2012.

Below, Useful Social Media outline the social commerce timeline with an infographic which looks at the history behind Social Commerce

The history of Social Commerce timeline from Useful Social Media

The smartphone market is seriously heating up as Christmas approaches with the iphone facing serious competion from a number of manufacturers.

The new Nokia Lumia 800 (as featured in the YouTube video above) is set to launch this month on the 16th closely followed by the Samsung Galaxy Nexus just 1 day later.  Joining them in the race for the Christmas rush is Motorola’s Razr, who The Drum predict is going “to win plaudits thanks to its ultra slim design, making it the thinnest device on the market”. The Razr is set to be available sim free at Clove.co.uk from today.

However, the new smartphones all come with a whopping price tag ranging from £379 for the Motorolla Razr, £399 for Nokia’s Lumia and a significant jump to £549 for Google’s Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

After the infamous Blackberry blackout recently, the brand is facing intense pressure to kiss and makeup with exisiting customers to avoid mass departure to the new and exciting range of smartphones.