nearly there (well almost)

Submitted by somedaysoon on Mon, 11/08/2008 - 12:33.

I have no idea what week I'm on but I have a name for my model agency

S C O P E
model management

Scope will have four divisons:

Junior from 8-12, Teen 13 -19, Young adult 20 -24 and Specialbookings which comprises of presenters, young sports talent and so on.

The agency will mainly deal with editorial work for teen magazines, campaigns etc

Our usp is that there is no agency in London that solely represents this age group they all include babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers.

When I was working as a client and booking models for jobs I found it extremely tiring and difficult scouting numerous model agencies for the right model. Child model agencies stop representing children at about the age of 14 and adult agencies start at about 14 -15 with a view to pushing them into adult work (i know this because I was a model in an adult agency from the age of 14 until I was 23) and had always wondered why know one bridged this gap!

We also have a mentor division where we have a resident counsillor who will over see the models welfare and coordiante workshops for them including time and money management, behaviour in the workplace and casting tution also we will have professionals from the industry come and talk to the young models about the in and outs of being self employed.

I feel really passionate about our youth here in the UK and feel they are having a hard time so to be able to offer some the chance to use their skills and be rewarded for it makes me want to achieve it even more.

I have yet to register the company although I do have a phone line, and basic website up and running my next step is to go out onto the streets of London and go find my talent cant wait.
To do this though I really need to get my business cards sorted but I dont know if I should include my address on this as I will be working from home at first, and I can't register my businss there so am a little confused at the mo!

Also really need a better website these templates are awful and as my business is about image I need to sort this out pretty soon.

Any ideas anyone?

until next time Vanessa

p.s does anyone still come on here?

Winter always turns to spring

Name/Company registration

Submitted by Red_Elle on Fri, 15/08/2008 - 13:38.

Hi Vanessa

I occasionally come on, but it's not the busiest!
I just wanted to say that whenever I hear the word scope I automatically think of the cerebal palsy charity and if you phone people up, surely they will to?

With business cards you don't have to include an address. Are you a sole trader or a limited company? I have my address down as my accountants.

The only thing with regards to websites that I can suggest is getting one professionally done. Most templates look reasonably amateur.

Liz

Your website

Submitted by cferthorney on Tue, 19/08/2008 - 22:36.

Hi Vanessa,

I'm a website designer/developer and have done some work on improving search engine (Google, Yahoo! etc) rankings too. Getting found via search engines with a name like Scope will be quite hard - Click here to go to Google and see Scope model management search. As you can see a lot of entries come up when searching for your exact name. OK that can happen to any name (To see this try entering your name or the name of a friend)

Being found on the web is vital these days, but unlike the phone book Google is not alphabetical, so calling yourself something silly to be listed first (EG A.A. Aardvark Model Agency) won't help. If you wish I can provide you with details and advice on what helps a website and what doesn't both in terms of Google rankings. (These are techniques known as Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO for short) but I can also help in terms of design and build - EG what colours work well in terms of readability.

Going back to SEO for a moment though - you have to remember being found on Google, like building your business' reputation takes time. Plan the site launch carefully and allow at least 3 - 4 weeks for Google to properly find you. There are things you can do to speed things up - Pay-per-click for instance (Sponsored Links on Google's pages) or Ad Words (Special advertising words that put you at the top of page one) but these cost money and are best used for short term gains whilst your site "builds up credit" in other ways.

With regards to the site itself - think about what you want from a website. Unless you want it to actually make the tea and do the washing up for you just about anything is possible these days! Things to think about with regards your sites design:
- What colour scheme do I want?
- What colour schemes go well from an accessibility point of view (E.G. Red on yellow = no no, texts being blue, grey, black on white/very pale background go best etc)
- What sort of layout do I want (Something simple that anyone can use - or something it takes a genius to use but looks amazing)

And from a functionality point of view:
- Do I want to be able to control the content myself or pay to have things reworded?
- How much information do I want on there? (E.G. model portfolios - yes or no)
- "subscribers" area - yes or no (E.G. log in to see portfolios?)

Hope this helps - I can provide more information on both website design/functionality and SEO if you would like. Just leave a message here saying if you want more help and I'll provide an email address for you. Failing that give me your website address and I can have a look at it for you and give advice on how it can be improved. If you think the templates are awful - be the boss and change it :-)
Regards,
David.

Website

Submitted by somedaysoon on Wed, 20/08/2008 - 13:43.

Hi

Wow so good to have a reply! Thanks Liz and David

To answer your questions Liz I will be a limited company and i think I'll take your advice and not put my address on the business cards.

Hi David would love some more help pls.

I am already looking for another name you were quite right about scope I have a very clear picture of what I want for the website simple but polished - easy to use and yes I would need portfolio's on there as well as a subscription for the viewing of the juniors division.
Its quite frustrating because I cannot do it myself and can see the website in my mind but the templates that I have used although customizeable are'nt quite what I'm after.

As for searching I know nothing so your help would be really appreciated

here is a link to my very bad website at the moment just for your perusal

www.scope-london.com

Thank you

Vanessa

Website part II

Submitted by cferthorney on Wed, 20/08/2008 - 21:45.

Hi again Vanessa,

Had a look at the website, and believe me I have seen a lot worse (Including a few others I found through this site - I won't name names though)

I can definitely help you further, both with being found on the web, as well as the design and build of your site - assuming you would like to that is? I will give you some more "anyone can see" advice prior to suggesting this goes to a private email conversation though - as this will help you and any designer/programmer/computer geek/whatever else you like to call us that you work with in the future.

When you want to design your site in your mind you to sit down with a pencil and paper (A4 is best, I find I prefer graph paper to do initial sketches off - but plain works well with a ruler) and draw a basic shape. We are simply doing a plan here - like you might if you were doing a poster in art at school. Put the date in one corner as well as initial it (Helps with copyright and also your own memory) and (Maybe because I do this for a living) I also put a version number there.

Now do you want a portrait or landscape site? Its the same terminology as in pictures so landscape is wider but shorter in height and portrait in longer but narrow. You need some room at the top and bottom for the header and footer (EG your business name at the top and the copyright date and owner etc at the bottom)

Now work out how much space you want for content for each type of page (EG an information page, a contact page, a photo page) and take a separate piece of paper for each. Now draw how you see the content. EG for a photo page - photo on the left or right, high or low.

This way if you see it and know it looks terrible - you can start again. Don't worry about the fact its all stick men and lines - your mind can fill in the detail! Now if you decide you want my help further - you can use these ideas as the base of discussion :-)

If you decide you'd rather not accept my help privately - that's fine too. A lot of designers will take your hand drawn templates on A4 and help you flesh them out. Some will rubbish your ideas, and insist on scraping it and starting again, some will work with you explaining why they are making the changes they are. I personally find the later the more helpful especially as it is your website not theirs. Let me know if you want more help.

Regards,
David

Website II reply

Submitted by somedaysoon on Wed, 27/08/2008 - 13:02.

Hi David,

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply had trouble logging in!!!

Ok thank you for your advice and yes, yes , yes would love to work with you on this if that is still ok?

I will be sketching my heart out later but may I give you a link to a website that I really like

www.selectmodel.com

I know this is a large and expensive website but I wouldnt need that to begin with I just really like how it looks.

Thanks again David

Contact

Submitted by cferthorney on Wed, 27/08/2008 - 15:53.

Hi Vanessa,

Best thing to do now is contact me the address is dthorne [at] contemporaryfusion [dot] co [dot] uk . If you use hotmail please note email from my domain gets marked as spam - so please add my address to teh "safe contacts" so you can receive all my mail - I will not spam you)

When I have received your email etc I can then organise contact with you so we can discuss mock ups of potential designs, addresses of other sites that look along the lines of what you are after / have the functionality you are after etc.

I am more than happy to work with you - and don't worry about whether the site is too big/small for now - we can work on that over time - I don't want to build something that is too big for your business - its not fair on anyone! I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.

Dave