Iconic London event the Chelsea Flower Show celebrates its centenary year in 2013.

Chelsea in Bloom in association with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) is Chelsea’s alternative flower show, and  features floral festivities and bloomin’ marvellous banquettes as the streets of Chelsea are filled with flowers.  This year’s design theme, for the third year delivered by underscore, is ‘The Decades’.

This plays on the centenary concept, focusing on iconic ‘floral’ moments throughout the past hundred years.

Chelsea’s retailers will use iconic periods in British floral history as inspiration for their floral designs. For example in the 1940′s fabric patterns were often floral and have now become the popular vintage fashion styles of today, whilst in the 1960′s the hippie subculture used flowers as symbols of peace, and the daisy came to represent ‘Flower Power’ at its most iconic.

As with previous years, the floral theme has been kept at the core of the visual identity and campaign, although we have taken great care to ensure our ‘Decades’ concept can support but not overpower the overall competition message, and  some of the retailers competing this year include Mary Quant, Hackett, HSBC, Partridges, Links, Massimo Dutti and  many more!

Collateral created by underscore for this year’s event includes the brand identity, branded rickshaws, information stands, uniforms, flyers, event pocket guides and a dedicated event website through which visitors can use social media to recommend and vote for their favourite display.

The event launches today and runs until the the 25th May, so why not take a trip to Chelsea this week and join in the floral fun?!

These days you never know where your next client or customer will come from.

Although ‘content marketing’ is the current buzz word of choice for digital marketing, we at underscore are still strong advocates of a balanced strategy that starts with a best practise .

You may be put-off by hearing the term ‘SEO’, but great content alone will not get you there, and it should be in the interest of any company to invest in their website’s discovery potential.

Positioning yourself to be found online can make a huge difference, so here are a few starters for ten:

•  Site Architecture & Accessibility; make it logical, simple, ensuring easy navigation and a great experience for users
• Website content; get your key words and phrases in your text/titles etc – remember its not quantity that counts here, but clever placement.
• Ongoing content; create fresh new content; be it blogging, RSS feeds, news, insights.
• XML Sitemap: Have one! Google can find and read all your pages of your site for indexing.
• Promoting your site; inbound links from other sites can help drive your rankings.

There is no denying the need for SEO, but if you are thinking “If everyone utilises SEO – how can you make it to the top search?” well, fear not; Google is all about providing users with correct information, and like anything that adapts, you can update your SEO to reveal in different searches. Algorithms are always changing, it’s just a matter of keeping pace. SEO should not be a one-time-fix, but an ongoing monitoring and updating process.

So if your search results on google could be better, then perhaps it’s time to speak to underscore about your SEO.

It’s been a very busy week in the Underscore office and we’re delighted to announce we’ve won some exciting new accounts to add to the Underscore portfolio.

Stay tuned as we’ll be revealing more next week but we’re all looking forward to working with some lovely new people on some great little ideas. Well done team!

Is Evernote becoming the next big thing? It already is!

Just one year after the debut of the Chinese version of Evernote in july 2012, CEO Phil Libin has reported that the number of users has reached 4 million in China.  Just as impressive as inital stats which boasted the service reached 1.1 million users in just two months.

Last tuesday saw the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing,  where Evernote’s team in China, now 17 strong, activated the Chinese version of its Evernote Business Service.

Phil Libin (CEO) discussed China’s role in Evernote’s online strategy of becoming a long-term startup that can survive up against the world’s largest web firms. Libin predicted that the next decade will see the globalisation of more Chinese tech companies.

He also noted that as the China moves away from manufacturing and towards a knowledge-led economy, China will become a creative melting pot, and startups will be an “innovation furnace.”

This year marks the 10th anniversary of WordPress, our key platform for development, and we couldn’t be happier that it’s still up and running; although we are not surprised.

WordPress started as a blogging platform like tumblr and Blogspot, but has grown into a the most widely used content management system powering 17% of all websites on the internet. If you don’t know much about WordPress, here’s a basic feature list:

• Simplicity
• Flexibility
• User management
• Built in comments
• Search engine optimised
• Multilingual
• Media Management
• Extensible with the use of plugins

The real list is a lot longer and can be seen here. A quirk of WordPress is that most versions are named after jazz musicians, with the latest being Elvin Jones, and the first being the immortalised Miles Davis. WordPress has one of the largest developer communities on the planet, with user groups up and down the country and across the globe, as well as an annual WordCamp event.

As part of the celebrations, WordPress have released special edition tshirts and has invited its community to hold their own get togethers and celebrate, with any event held with more than 50 people there may be stickers and buttons sent there for everyone to enjoy. Remember save the date, 27th May, and find a meetup near you to join in the celebrations, I know we will.

In recent years, more and more brands are using their consumers to generate campaigns and products.

This is partly due to consumer expectations of brand experiences, ; and now brands are delivering consistently and pushing the boundaries of ‘an experience’.

Of late, the ‘licensed trade’ industry offers prime examples of involving consumers within their brands. Beefeater Gin have recently  released a limited-edition bottle that tries to capture ‘My London’, composed from consumer photographs. The photographs construct the packaging design and are used across a separate mircosite to promote the ‘My London’ campaign and experience, showing that London clearly means different things to different people.

Another brand utilising their consumers’ to create content is Rekorderlig Cider, with their ‘Celebrate The Sun’ campaign –  Rekorderligs’s first ever outdoor media campaign. They challenged cider drinkers to ‘mark the arrival of British summertime’ with inspiring photographs that capture the essence of summer in a ‘Beautifully Swedish’ style. The campaign will incorporate the use of the consumer photographs to generate Rekorderlig’s summer billboard campaign. A nice touch if your an enthusiastic-cider-drinking photographer, or just take the odd snapshot.

Consumer brands are also putting social media to use, with the likes of Mercedes utilising an instagram campaign to promote the new Mercedes-Benz CLA #untamed. Mercedes are using the hashtag #untamed to promote the uniqueness and individuality of their new car. The campaign is to collate hashtagged instagram images using the guiding principles of the creative campaign, “The natural enemy of the average.” The collation of images is to be used as a digital photo installation of extraordinary views within a Mercedes-Benz Pop-Up Store in Paris to promote the new CLA. Utilising an instagram campaign is a great way to interact with consumers and source images to ensure individuality and consumer consideration to a campaign.

However, as previously discussed social media should not be measured by last click attribution models. The brands above are all utilising social media marketing to generate overall brand awareness and engagement, which contribute to traditional elements of the marketing mix to create a well rounded campaign.

To discuss how a social media marking campaign could help your business, say hello!

The following is a submission by guest author Cody Cahill, a U.S. based Content Marketing and Link building expert:

“When I made my pitch for a guest post with Underscore, my goal was to craft a piece that would be of particular relevance both to their website and mine.

Since Underscore is a leader in online branding strategy and content marketing, and my company Page One Power operates in the link building niche of the search engine optimization world, I proposed a piece about how you can build brand while also building links.

The response I received wasn’t entirely unfavorable, but I was met with some skepticism about how these two topics related to one another.

To paraphrase slightly the response, I was essentially told:

We don’t usually publish posts about link building, but if you can make it about branding in some meaningful way, I’d be willing to take a look at it.

This response was instructive and jibed perfectly with something I’ve observed in my first year working for an SEO company that focuses primarily on building links.  For many people, the whole term link-building (if not SEO as a whole) comes drenched with negative connotations.

When link-building is mentioned, certain undesirable images are conjured up, such as black-hat practitioners blasting the internet with thousands of irrelevant links meant only to fool the search engines.

To be honest, this manner of link-building ruled the roost for far too long and it understandably warped people’s perception of the tactic as a whole.

However, the Panda and Penguin updates forced the industry to reinvent some of their tactics and link-building has undergone a quasi-renaissance for companies that understand SEO and link building no longer need be relegated to outsider status, existing only in the ethers of a company’s overall marketing plan.

When done optimally, it can be a powerful tool in a company’s overall branding strategy.

Building Links = Building Brand

Historically, link building campaigns were designed with a singular purpose in mind: creating backlinks to a specific website in order to improve that site’s position in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).  For many, this activity was about getting as many links as robotically possible with as little effort as humanly possible.

Fortunately, recent Google crackdowns of this method have greatly decreased the effectiveness of this black-hat approach.

In the last year these game-changing events led many in the SEO world to denounce link-building as dead, though many savvy search marketers knew that the rumors of link-building’s demise had been greatly exaggerated.  It wasn’t dead; it just needed to be reinvented, transformed into something more dynamic and effective for multiple ends.

The scorecard for measuring the success of a link-building campaign has changed; no longer is the measuring stick the quantity of links built, but rather the quality.  Obtaining a link on a high-authority site with editorial standards and an engaged readership might take longer in terms of man-hours than 100 spammy links in the “old days” but the benefits are far greater.

These quality links will not only have a big long-term impact from a strict SEO perspective – but you also get the added benefit of putting your company and the author you choose to represent it in front of thousands of readers who are grateful that you’ve written a piece worth consuming.

And that’s the tricky – yet ultimately most rewarding – part: crafting content that is engaging enough that it makes an impact on the audience, thus creating good will for your brand with the appreciative reader.  The foundation of a good content marketing strategy is creating content that is helpful to potential customers, and by incorporating the best of these inbound marketing practices into your SEO strategy you’ll get the best of both worlds.

Building Relationships = Building Brand

One of the most oft-repeated truisms of post-Penguin SEO is that you build quality links by building quality relationships.  The same is true for an effective inbound marketing campaign; the goal is to create content (it could be articles, videos, infographics, etc.) which proves helpful to the readership and engages then in a way that causes them to remember you.  There is no better way to attract and retain customers than to develop and foster a lasting bond.

Relationships are also the foundation of effective branding.  You want customers and potential purchasers to remember and recognize you, and to do so in a positive and memorable fashion.  Through this relationship with the customer the brand attempts to make a distinctive impression that distinguishes the company from the competition.

Effective content marketing is a great way to build distinguishing brand; when done properly it lures the potential customer to the brand’s website and creates that lasting bond by providing them with helpful information.  Link building can be a natural extension of this strategy, particularly when utilizing the specific tactic of guest posting.

Constructing quality links with guest posting is all about relationship building.  First a relationship is forged between the writer and the webmaster by which the site owner becomes convinced that the writer is capable of crafting content that will be valuable to the readership, and thus the site itself.

Secondly, once the piece is published the seeds of a relationship are planted with the readers.  Ideally, they will find so much educational and/or entertainment value in the piece and that an enduring imprint will be branded into their memory.

The fact that a high-quality link will also be built – driving traffic to your website and helping improve your standing in the SERPs – can almost be seen as merely the cherry on the top of brand-building sundae!

Authorship as Brand Building

In the SEO circles, few things have been given as much attention in recent months as Google Authorship, the program by which Google links published content to a specific author and then provides established and demonstrably authoritative authors with certain perks.

Right now those advantages include a picture next to the content in the Google SERPs listings, and most SEO prognosticators are anticipating that Google will soon be unveiling their full AuthorRank system, in which authors who have proven their expertise in a given niche will have their content boosted in the search results.

Authorship is seen as another nail in the coffin for the antiquated practice of guest posting for bundles of low-quality links.  Once, guest posting was as simple as churning out 500 words and getting published somewhere.  But as Authorship continues to gain in importance, the value of these types of links will be further decreased, and only those pieces written for genuine human consumption by authors who have been established (or have the ability to establish themselves) as experts in their industry will reap the benefits.

This is good news for true content marketers, and it is good news for those seeking to build brand, as well.

Authorship provides the opportunity for companies to utilize their content creators as a branding tool.  Whether the content producers are in-house or contracted out, the Authorship profile of the writer can become a powerful branding tool once that writer has been established and a bond has been forged between the writer and the company.

Eventually that little picture tagged onto the search results will become associated with your brand in the minds of your target customers, and because your content is going to be helpful and engaging, this will prove to be a powerful branding tool.”

Cody Cahill is a writer and SEO guru at Page One Power, a white hat link building firm located in Boise, Idaho.  More of Cahill’s work can be found on their link building blog.

Birthplace of Tube Map designer is awarded the English Heritage Blue Plaque.

Harry Beck (1902 – 1974), an English engineering draftsman, designed the original world famous and iconic London Underground map in 1931.

The idea was to make the vast network a simple and easy way to navigate through the different lines on the London Underground, this revolutionised and defined the design for all underground maps around the world.

Today, 80 years later, Harry Beck’s birthplace in Wesley Road, Leyton, east London has been awarded an English Heritage Blue Plaque in his honour.

His original design has been developed and extended to adjust for today’s vast Underground and Overground Network.

For most of the last year we have been working vigorously behind the scenes to develop The Underscore Digital Suite 2013.

Our innovative new modular products are designed to drive your marketing efforts and make your life easier.  Following recent shifts, digital marketing trends and best practice, the amount of time an industry leader is expected to spend on content creation and digital efforts has increased dramatically. For this reason our bespoke suite makes the most of your time whilst driving traffic and building online content.

Our various products now include the following:

Sector News Publisher - Allows you to update you News / Blog with relavant industry or brand news with the click of a button, benefitting both your SEO efforts and adding value for your readers.

Social Hub - Makes the most of your Social Media efforts by automatically aggregating them all in one stylishly branded location, contributing to SEO and increasing engagement with your customers

Facebook event integration - Synchronising your website events page and Facebook page, automatically updating the Facebook events to enliven the account, build social media traffic and drive event awareness and footfall.

Time-line - Dynamically populated interactive display tool to drive engagement, presenting a large amount of visual or dated content in an easily digestible and space-efficient format.

Mobile Site - Responsive builds are the future of web design, optimising your website for use across desktop, smart phones and tablets

Social Reporting - Social Media monitoring and reporting services to help you keep a track of  your customers’ needs and gain a better insight into brand sentiment.

Location App – Our property app can drive interest in a location, increase customer engagement through augmented reality or drive an increase in sales through its GPS based and intuitive programming.

Search Optimisation - Our on-page audit and on-going SEO strategy can increase the volume of targeted traffic reaching your website and give you a better return on your efforts.

Data Hub - An easy to use online system, which allows for the secure hand-over of documents to clients and employees.

E-commerce Platform - An attractive and transactional e-commerce platform to maximise conversion rates and increase overall sales revenue.

For further information on our digital suite please contact Samuel Biss at sam@underscore.co.uk