blog.

It's been a very busy month for us all at Focus Towers! We've had a number of client websites going live and excitingly today we have launched the Trade Store for our long term client Barriers Direct. This has been a great project for us to sink our teeth into; it's given us the challenge of creating a sub brand which is part of the Barriers Direct family whilst having a sense of being its own entity. We've also had to tailor the site to a very specific audience making it as useful as possible for our target audience to get the service they need. The technical demands of the project were also high - grouping all the many, many products into easy to navigate categories was a great challenge. We're really pleased with the result! Take a look and let us know your thoughts.

We're on the hunt for an account exec / manager to help look after our clients and get stuck into all things digital marketing.

As you can see, we are one of Bristol's longest established digital studios, providing lots of web and digital stuff to people like Bristol City Council, Sustrans and The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Ireland. Have a wander round our web site to find out more.

The sort of person we are after might:

 - have a year or two of experience in a similar role at a web or digital agency.
 - or be an enthusiastic graduate with a marketing qualification, looking to kick start a career in digital.
 - have experience of the web design / development project life cycle - this would be a bonus.
 - have excellent communication and organisation skills as you might be juggling!
 - most important: a real people person with bags of enthusiasm for digital and for being a key part of our team.

The sort of work you might be doing includes (but not restricted to):

 - briefing projects and work into our technical team, making sure they understand the requirements and letting our clients know progress and updates through clear communications and reports.
 - assessing projects against Service Levels and KPIs on an ongoing basis, generating reports and holding regular client reviews.
 - helping us create and manage digital marketing plans, search strategy, email marketing and using social media.
 - helping us expand our products and services and cross selling into current and new clients.
 - assisting with new business sales.
 - networking.

We'll pay a competitive salary based on your experience and knowledge - but this isn't a senior role. We'll offer lots of training and we do our best to send our people to important seminars, exhibitions and conferences.

We're based in Westbury on Trym, to the left of Bristol and we would probably require you have a driving licence as you'll be out and about visiting our clients.

Please strictly no agencies. 

If you'd like more details or would like to apply, then drop us a CV and letter to:
job_am@thisisfocus.co.uk
and lets get talking. We look forward to hearing from you.

 

Had a great weekend at Bristol Harbour Festival this weekend - the weather held out (apart from a small down-pour on Saturday night!), there were some great acts and loads of stuff to do for young people.

Highlights for me included beat boxer extraordinaire Vid Warren, Kid Carpet (always good for a giggle) and the bizarre but incredible youth theatre production Run (on King Street on Saturday afternoon), organised by Bristol Old Vic's Young Company.

A couple of our clients were out in force too - namely Go Places Do Things and Go Places to Play, who were there to promote Play Day 2010 - taking place this Wednesday 4th August!

All in all, a brilliant weekend showcasing Bristol's talent, and best of all, it's completely free!

Thanks Bristol City Council - had a great time!!

I have had the pleasure this morning to support Les Compton of Bristol City Council with presenting our website Go Places Do Things at the Engage event at the Watershed.

The workshop was arranged to discuss digital tools for participation and active citizenship with participants from the UK, Germany and Denmark.

ENGAGE is a continuing professional development programme for European youth workers who wish to understand the new ICT-enabled culture and explore how web 2.0 and social media tools can help to extend and enhance their practice.

Les and I went along to talk about our participation with young people while developing and evolving the GPDT site, as well as discussing the challenges that we have faced and the plans for the future. We discussed the access we have given to youth workers and other activity providers for adding their own events and direct feeds that have been set up from the BCC events online and 1 Big Database.

After Bristol the programme will move to Aarhus, Denmark and then on to Hannover in Germany where participants will continue to develop their understanding of how developments in ICT and online technologies can amplify and extend the voice of young people in European society.

The session was really interesting and we had the opportunity to discuss the other online solutions that people have set up, as well as talking about how to get young people to participate and engage as young editors on website content.

I will certainly be following the progress of the programme via the Engage website and will be looking to keep in touch with some of the participants at the workshop.

Originally started in 2006, the Easton Arts Trail (Bristol) is proving to be 'one of those community things' that actually works.  This year, the Easton Arts Trail 2010 took place in 30 different venues, including open houses, local churches, community venues, cafes and pubs, with over 55 artists and arts groups exhibiting artwork, performing and running workshops and other activities.

Focus' Simon M. and Emily B. were two of hundreds of people who followed the trail through small start up studios, hijacked pubs and peoples living rooms.  Simon M. also took the opportunity to exhibit some photos from his brother-in-law's front room, which were well recevied.

With councils cutting budgets left right and centre, this is one project that seems to have really made the sun shine in Easton and Bristol would be a lesser place without it. Check out their website for more information: www.eastonartstrail.co.uk

Working with Bristol City Council, we relaunched their Go Places to Play website at the end of last week.

The updated site carries much more information for parents and carers of young people about Bristol's parks and green spaces, including the ability to search for the nearest green space to you through a postcode finder feature.

With many new parks and green spaces opening in Bristol throughout the Summer, try visiting the site to find your local play area. You might be surprised!

"The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win" (Sir Roger Bannister)

Well thanks Roger, we weren't in it to win it but it certainly was painful. The Focus team have succesfully completed the much anticipated Bristol 10km race. Paul and Duncan have been pounding the streets for the last 2 months in preparation for the big race and it was well worth it. The guys were joined by almost 9000 other runners dressed in an array of outfits from Scooby Doo to flamingos and even a man dressed in a suit smoking a pipe.

The event was brilliant, well organised and great fun. Well done Bristol!! I think there may be talk in the office of a half Marathon next!

The Children in Care Council’s (CiCC) RVoice website went live today, after a year’s hard work and collaboration between the CiCC members and Reconstruct, Bristol City Council and Focus.

We carried out a workshop with the CiCC members to establish what was liked & disliked for the look and feel of the site as well as the functionality and information to be included. They were a really pro-active group of young people and very easy to work with, which is why I think we've ended up with such a great looking site.

The CiCC members, including 16 year old Becca, who is the chair of the council, have been actively involved in contributing content to the site and the administrators have been busy adding and tweaking the text, images and files via their new administration system.

Here's what Becca has to say about the new site:

The website is amazing! Its got a really good design which we children helped design. It's got everything you could need to know about being in care on there, and most important of all - it's got My Blog! I'm very excited about having my own blog and it means that other young people can read all about what me and the Children in Care Council are getting up to on their behalf and what changes we're making in Bristol.

The site's live now, so please go and have a look - it will be launched officially at the end of March.

A different flavour Focus...
...still the same great taste!

We’re starting 2010 with a bang here at Focus. A bang and a whole new name, brand and website! We love it and hope you will too.

2009 was a busy year for us. There were new business wins, additions to the team and we added a number of services to our portfolio. We also took some time to talk about who we were and what we wanted Focus to be for our clients, and we decided what was really important was to be up-front, no fuss and honest, as well as delivering cracking personal service. A sort of 'back to basics' – a change reflected in our change of name. The wonderful world of digital can still be scary at times and we want to strip all that away. We create fantastic websites for lovely clients. Simple. Who said digital had to be complicated?

So 2010 will see us ramping up our digital marketing services and getting knee deep in SEO, AdWord campaigns, newsletter management as well as giving our clients first rate advice and consultancy on the new world of social media. All this as well as our bread and butter – creative and accessible web design and build. It’s all stuff we were doing before, but with a bigger team, we’re really able to go for it! And go for it is what we fully intend to do!

The changes also mean there will soon be a new 'arm' to the Focus group, solely concentrating on the development of large scale bespoke web applications for businesses. More on this exciting development later.

So in the meantime, we hope you’ll enjoy the new Focus site. It’s got some new features, lots of new content and of course a new look. Have a click around and let us know what you think! Suggestions are always welcome.

This is Focus!

We’ve been working with Bristol Balloons for five years now, and designed and built their three websites Bristol Balloons, Bath Balloons and Ballooning Network. You could say it’s a close relationship - fortunate, as our offices are up the stairs from theirs!

We revamped the design of all three sites last year, updating the look and feel of each, assigning each site its own identity within an overarching brand umbrella. We helped the team there to develop their online booking system, enabling people to check availability and book flights online as well as being able to being able to book flights as gifts for others.

We’ve yet to check out the flights themselves (I don’t have a head for heights!) but from what we’ve heard, the weekday dawn ones are pretty impressive!