Introduction

In this video, TheTalkies interviewed Photographer Andrew Wells from AJW Photography. We asked him to come join us and explain a little bit about himself and his photography business. He also explains to us how there is more to photography than buying a Digital Camera and pressing the shutter.

Description

Andrew is a professional photographer who has a great passion for his work. He owns his own company called AJW Photography. The company name sums it all up, and he is of course a professional photographer. Andrew tells us that he feels a great amount of privilege when completing some projects or even when he is there taking the photographs himself.

Andrew tells us his feelings on new age software such as Photoshop and whether he thinks it is an advantage or a disadvantage to him having the ability to edit photographs that he has taken. Also his truth about the internet and whether or not he believes it is an advantage to his company. He tells us that the internet is an extremely useful tool for his company as he can upload his photographs into his own portfolio allowing people all over to view his work before they even begin questioning him and his skills. It gives the viewer a brief chance to see Andrews level of skill and whether or not he is the right man for the job.

To view Andrew’s portfolio please visit his website at ajwphoto.co.uk

Partial Transcript

The Talkies: “First of all, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and the kind of work that you do?”

Andrew: “Basically, I am a commercial photographer based in North Wales. I provide photography for businesses which can range between anything from product shots right through to buildings and architecture, which is really where I specialise in.”

The Talkies: “Most people nowadays have their own digital camera. Now, could I be a professional photographer myself?”

Andrew: “Everyone’s got a digital camera, and they’re pretty good these days. They pretty much do everything for you. But I guess that’s where years of training and know how comes into play.It’s not all about pointing and camera and taking a photograph. There’s a lot involved before hand and there is a lot of understanding about what you are photographing.”

The Talkies: “Another advancement is of course the internet. How has this effected you, and how have you dealt with any problems?”

Andrew: “Well, I think it is an advantage really to have it. Everyone should really be embracing the likes of the internet. It’s such a powerful to tool to be able to promote yourself. It’s great for me for my own personal use as I can just get my portfolio out there to anyone. So anybody that goes to ajwphoto.co.uk will see my work. They can actually see my work and see whether I am any good or not before they even talk to me. “

Introduction

In this video we invited Theresa, from TBC Marketing, to come and talk to us about Networking and Word of Mouth Marketing. She came down to talk to us and give us advice about those two areas in the marketing world, and to give tips to you, the viewers, about marketing and 5 main pointers for it.

Description

Theresa runs a company called TBC marketing solutions, which basically helps businesses with marketing problems and setting up new businesses etc. She came to talk to us about the company. She started off by telling us that her business offers practical solutions to her clients for their marketing problems. She then continued to tell us about her unique selling point, and how she gets all her clients by treating all her customers with common sense, with methods such as being down to earth and to get the job quickly.

She then led on to tell us about her most successful times, and her least successful times of her business, giving the reasons for the success and the outcomes of the success and the not successful.Once explaining her successes, she told us about the significant issue in the marketing industry, and that is budget, and how her work is much harder if she doesn’t have the right budget to get through her work. Also how the economic situations don’t help, for example the credit crunch limits businesses disposable income, so its limited to the modifications they can do to the business in a marketing perspective.

Theresa gave us a guideline to stick to for a good marketing outcome. She said, there are 5 points to stick to have a good marketing outcome. These 5 points were:

• Time
• Knowledge
• Relationships
• Trust
• Referrals

Partial Transcript

The Talkies: “Could you just explain to us about your company?”

Theresa: “Certainly. I have a marketing communications PR business, and I offer practical solutions to marketing problems. Whatever they may be.”

The Talkies: “What has been your most successful time when marketing?”

Theresa: “I like to think every job I did was successful, but that isn’t always the case for different reasons. The most successful was a country house that I worked with recently. I worked with them for 6 months on a very intense project and I increased their business turnover by around £100,000 within that 6 month period. Well, by the end of the 6 month period their turnover has increased by £100,000 and they were thrilled as it only cost them a fracture of that amount to employ me to do it.”

The Talkies: “What are the significant issues in the marketing industry?”

Theresa: “Budget. Budget has always been a big issue in marketing. When there is a downturn in the economy as there is now, or even a recession. People will automatically pull back on their marketing budget. But what they should do is actually increase their marketing budget because it is proven that if you do that within the recession, that at the end of it you will come out stronger than before. What will happen is you will take some of the market off your competitors that have actually pulled back on their budget. So you increase yours and you take the market share and when this is over, your business will be stronger than it ever was.”

Introduction

We interviewed Gary from thetalkies.co.uk about the new online interview site. TheTalkies is a database completely devoted to interviews with businesses. Their main objective is to promote local businesses and keep local companies up and running. So the main objective of the website is to advertise local companies over the Internet.

Description

To start off with, Gary told us what the website was all about. He told us that TheTalkies is an online community that competes with other methods of advertisement to help promote local businesses to keep the local industry alive and keep it within competition limits of other major companies.  He then went on to tell us how they are using Youtube to aid them in their video interviews, as Youtube will help them direct potential visitors or even businesses to their website via direct links and channel links from the videos. He tells us that local businesses should use TheTalkies resources as it could be a cheaper method of advertising their company. Gary explained to us one of the major issues in the industry and that is other methods of advertisement. Some companies may not want to be advertised online, so instead they may choose other methods such as posters, billboards or even television.

Partial Transcript

The Talkies: “Can you just explain to me about thetalkies.co.uk”

Gary: “The Talkies is basically an online community that hosts interviews with businesses, they’ve all been videoed in our office, in our headquarters. We then upload all the videos to Youtube and then embed them onto our own blogging website.

The Talkies: “I’m a business, why should I use The Talkies? Why should I become a part of The Talkies?”

Gary: “You should use The Talkies because it’s probably going to be cheaper than other methods of advertisement, and we wont keep coming back to you, we make one video and that is then uploaded for everyone to view when they want to.”

The Talkies: “What are some of the issues in the industry?”

Gary: “The main issue is competition. As you can see a lot of companies use billboards, flyer, posters. But everybody knows that the future is the Internet, so we figured, why not put mini videos of interviews with businesses where they can get their points straight across to the viewer and potential customer. With that method, they can view them whenever they want to, the don’t have to drive down a street to see it up on the wall, they can find it easier and faster.”

Introduction

Featured in this video is Paul Levy from bestofthebay.co.uk, an online directory for local businesses in North Wales. He has joined us here at thetalkies.co.uk to discuss his views and information on the best of the bay website, also he shares with us some tips and advice for other website owners and directory owners.

Description

Paul Levy was interviewed about his online directory for local North Wales businesses, bestofthebay.co.uk, he told us about the website itself and how it is an online database which is focused on businesses around Colwyn Bay. He told us that many people have looked up all sorts of companies on the website, featuring unusual ones such as Glan Clwyd Hospital. So it sounds as though the website brings in visitors from all different areas with all different needs. He told us that they have created web directories for other areas of North Wales, and they then decided to open up a directory for Colwyn Bay as there must be some good businesses. And it’s to be focused on the best areas and the best businesses within  Colwyn Bay, hence bestofthebay.co.uk. He also told us that there are some very popular areas of the website. Two of the main areas are the link to the Colwyn Bay Football Club, and there is also a live webcam feed from the office focusing on the streets of Colwyn Bay, which updates every minute, which has also been another popular concept of the directory.

Partial Transcript

The Talkies: “So Paul, can you just explain briefly about the best of the bay?”

Paul: “The best of the bay is an Internet web directory which is dedicated to Colwyn Bay. The idea goes back about 4 years to 2005 when, basically we specialise in Internet web solutions. We do websites, successful web directories for other towns, Llandudno and other parts of North Wales. So we thought why don’t we do one for Colwyn Bay after all, this is where we  are. A lot of our business we found was coming from completely different areas. It was coming from Prestatyn, Bangor, a lot of websites have been other network activities, with different network organisations. So we thought why not do something for Colwyn Bay. There must be some good businesses in Colwyn Bay, in fact there are probably one or two really good businesses. So we thought we must do something and it’s called “Best of the Bay” and we’ll focus on all of the good things which are in Colwyn Bay, and all the positive things. From then its really grown from strength to strength we’ve offered it as a free service, because we believe in a free model. As far as the internet goes more and more things are becoming free I suppose it’s like Google. It offers most of its stuff for free, apart from the advertising. Best of the Bay has some advertising on the side, which does help run the server costs, and also makes a little bit of profit for us.”

The Talkies: “So apart from it being free, why should visitors choose to use your directory?”

Paul: “Well, as we know everybody uses Google as a first force of call, and throughout search engine optimisation techniques and methods. You’ll find that this things on our business, our actual site, and it does actually appear on the first page of Google. Lets say someones looking for something very simple, lets say a painter and decorator in Colwyn Bay. They type that into Google, and a lists on one of our sites is very likely to come up. From there hopefully they can find what they want, and they have a choice of people they can choose from, and help to keep the business local. Which is a great thing nowadays, trying to trade locally and thinking of the environment, keeping the number of miles everybody travels down. So it works well from that point of view.”

The Talkies: “I understand you have a speech tonight. Would you like to say something about that?

Paul: “I do yeah, I’m doing a presentation to whats known as “The Bay of Colwyn Business Network” it’s a new organisation. It’s also giving it’s searches for free, it’s dedicated to try and improve business in Colwyn Bay, so were all in the same place, and really we decided to join forces, join resources and I’m going in to explain to some of the members. I think there’s going to be around 100 people there representing 80 businesses I believe. So it’s a very good opportunity to explain about “Best of the Bay” and also to get across some of our services and how we could help people. Thats what it’s all about.”

Introduction

In this video, we are interviewing Rhys, the current owner and moderator of gospelrhys.co.uk to find out what he thinks of the blogging industry and to answer our questions on the related subject of blogging.

If there are any further questions after viewing this video, please feel free to leave a comment, or post here on thetalkies.co.uk

Description

Rhys explains to us in this video about his blog, and how it focuses mainly on technology, games, the Internet and sport. He then tells us that he has been contacted by the 3rd highest ranked member of WordPress due to his highly respected blog. Rhys gathers many visits daily, and he receives many posts from visitors about his blog, status, and various other measures of his social time on the internet. He tells us that he has made many friends due to the freedom of his blog, and how he has managed to talk to people he would never have imagined talking to. His blog has given him the freedom of speech, and access into peoples online lives. He tells us he has been blogging for around 7 years, and it has become a large part of his time at home, allowing him to talk about the subjects he loves.

Later on in the interview, he explains to us about the drawbacks and competition in the industry of blogging, and how he is up against larger based blogs such as TMZ which were announed on Sky News as they were the first website to release the death of King of Pop, Michael Jackson. Rhys tells us that it is companies like that who are a threat to gospelrhys.co.uk

Rhys had one major tip for all you bloggers and “wannabe bloggers.” Be yourself, tell the truth and don’t lead people to believe made up stories, as they will just backfire and effect you worse than they could anyone else. For example, if TMZ had lied about Michael Jackson, they would have found themselves in a large financial problem.

Partial Transcript

The Talkies: “Can you explain briefly about the business and company you have come from today?”

Rhys:  “Yes, my blog is 7 years old, its been going in various forms for the last 7 years, it hasnt always been gospelyrhys.co.uk, it has been a number of other websites. Its basically a blog situated around my interests, which is basically Technology, News, Social Media and the Internet, a little bit about sport and other hobbies I do on a day to day basis. Its got programs, plugins for wordpress, which is the blogging piece of software. My blog contains adverts for companies My blog gets around 150 to 250 people visiting a day. Visiting mainly either from Google or from social media services such as Twitter and Facebook. “

The Talkies: “What has been your most successful time when blogging?”

Rhys: “My most successful time, erm, there was a period starting from about three years ago to about a year ago, where I was featured on a lot of big blogs with links to my blogs generally featured about what I wrote. I also appeared on BBC Radio Wales a couple of times to talk about blogging and to talk about how blogging works.”

The Talkies: “What was your must unfortunate time when blogging?”

Rhys: “There was a period from probably after that very successful period for about 6 months where blogging changed. It became a lot more money focused and a lot of people lost track of what was important. As a result it was difficult, because financially, well I cant say that. I know I’m not going to make huge amounts of money before anybody says that, but it’s a case of everybody’s like “What you going to do for me?” and I’d just expect them to be nice rather than be, I’d rather them contribute. Thankfully that period died down quite quickly a lot of people of who starting blogging don’t have much spare time and most people like myself carried on. That was probably one of my most unsuccessful times I had.”

Our first test run video. Just checking the lighting area, the camera focus and distance. Also checking the embed tool worked via youtube.