Richard Dewick's blog

In the last month Makak Media have redesigned and built a new website for SFM Radio, the community station for Sittingbourne. The new website needed to highlight all the latest local and national news along with events and DJ biogs.

"I would thoroughly recommend Richard, and all at Makak Media, if you're looking for a fantastic fully interactive website at an affordable price. I love it - it looks great and the Radioplayer looks sexy!"

Read the full case study or simply view the website whilst listening to the station online!

Our last meeting saw a good turn out with a lot of positive comments from both attendees and the panel. One of our members, Michael Clegg, has provided some useful feedback below, thank you Michael:

Report of Bromley Business Club Meeting submitted as Logged for Continuing Professional Development, (CPD) with IOSH, now offered to the Bromley Business Club News Sheet to show how useful the Membership of the Bromley Business Club is, by Michael Clegg.

Bromley Business Club arranged a Meeting lasting two hours with four professional Marketing Experts on the Platform to Present their personal Approaches to Marketing for Small Businesses, and to Respond to Questions from the Members present.

It was well attended (about 40 Members and Visitors) and the Panel on the platform presented personal views without being in "competition for the attention of the audience". The result was a most helpful review of several experts explaining their experiences in "Marketing" for SMEs.

The questions from the Audience were disappointing, but this could be due to the fact that the audience were left with much to "think about" and "no questions" at the time.

(I found the Meeting very helpful and have awarded 2 Credits in category B "Maintenance of Skills".)

Having recently launched two new websites for our customers, www.foreignstudents.com and www.nucreativetalent.co.uk, we thought it was about time we revamped our own website to highlight the potential of Drupal!

What the heckings is Drupal? You may be asking, well it's the Content Management System of choice for Makak Media, allowing the website owner to take control over the running of their site on a day-to-day basis.

We specialise in Drupal development as it's a system that provides cutting edge functionality with ease of use for our customers:

"The Content Management System Makak Media built for us was exactly as requested and more. The ease of use was surprising and it's capabilities exceeded our expectations." Andrew Davies, Sales and Marketing Manager, ITC Global Security

Come and see us at the Bromley Business Club Open Evening to find out more.

Thanks to all those members who have contributed to the blog over the past year, I'm sure you have found it worthwhile and I look forward to reading further contributions in 2011.

A reminder to all members that blog posts are included in our regular newsletters that go out to over 1,000 businesses in the area. Why not start 2011 with a blog post of your own and get your company name in front of all these people.

Comments are more than welcome to start the discussion and at the bottom of each blog post are links to share the articles on Facebook, Linked In, Twitter and StumbleUpon.

To those members who have not yet written a blog post, what are you waiting for?! Blogging is a great way to share your expert knowledge and gain business, especially if you do not have a website of your own.

Here are some tips and ideas:

• Blog Launch and Tips
• It's About Time I Started Blogging

If you are new to The Bromley Business Club or networking in general here are 5 Reasons To Join A Business Networking Club

Seasons greetings to one and all.

Richard Dewick
The Bromley Business Club 

Getting good website design and development can prove tricky especially when you can be blinded with science/technical jargon! Good communication between both parties is crucial to a successful project and it's sad when this breaks down.

Is your website only half finished with no obvious time scale for completion from your developer? Sadly this is a familiar story I hear from clients that come to me in need of help.

There's a multitude of reasons why this may have occurred, from poor website development skills, bloating of completion schedules, loss of faith in your developer or it being that they have moved out of the area and you would prefer to use someone locally.

This all goes to prove that getting the right developer from the outset is an important part of the process in getting your business live on the internet. Researching your developers capabilities is crucial to making sure your website is built correctly and delivered on time. Check the developers work, testimonials and their own site to make sure you have the confidence in their skills.

If your website still isn't complete and live after weeks of work then do not think all is lost. We've worked with many customers who have come to us with half completed sites and been able to work with what they have and finish the job.

There are many different programming languages that can go into building a website but as long as the developer has not deviated too much from standard practice then there shouldn't be the need to start from scratch. This does depend on the size and scale of your site and if the developer has used their own custom CMS or similar but in most cases this is not the case.

If you're in this situation then do get in contact and we can make sure your website is live and working asap. Do also check out and subscribe to our design communication blog for web design tips, social media marketing, all things internet related and jargon free.