Social Media and Branding for New Maui Clients

It’s been a busy start to 2017 and the weeks feel like they are flying by but we are beyond happy with how this year has started off, with so many cool new projects and clients.

The first we’d like to mention is a slipper/flip-flop company called Ha’awi. This is a new Maui venture owned by three fantastic, inspiring and ocean-loving women who wanted to create a fresh slipper brand, inspired by their love for Hawaii. Their vision is not just limited to designing attractive and beach-ready footwear but also to perpetuate Hawaiian values and the spirit of aloha, while giving back to the local community. To say that we were inspired by their vision when we first met is a huge understatement.

Funnily enough, we initially met the trio of women behind Ha’awi shortly after they’d paid a visit to one of our other clients, Star Noodle. While eating at the restaurant, they saw the 30 Acts of Aloha t-shirt that Jenny had designed in mid-2016, found out about us and got in touch. You’ve got to love those kind of connections.

After meeting to discuss the project, we were thrilled when Ha’awi chose to work with us, using Jenny’s graphic design and branding skills to come up with a series of logos to launch the new company.

A sample of Cake Media's design work for Ha'awi.

There will be plenty more news coming up about Ha’awi in the future but for now, remember the name! We know that this Maui startup is going to be huge.

Elsewhere, we feel very honored to reveal that the Old Lahaina Luau is now one of our clients.  In late January we started managing their social media across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, with the focus on driving engagement, organic follower growth and customer service.

Performers at the Old Lahaina Luau.

This Luau is owned by Na Hoaloha Ekolu, the parent company of Star Noodle, Leoda’s Kitchen & Pie Shop and Aloha Mixed Plate. It’s a phenomenal organization and we are deeply grateful to them for the work they have sent our way. 

We genuinely love what we do—creating and sharing fresh and unique content, interacting with followers, writing and design, assisting with customer service and getting to be creative every single day. For us, there really is nothing better.

We’ll soon be bringing you exciting news about our work with a swim/activewear company, based in West Maui. Stay tuned for more details!

Thanks for visiting, Laura and Jenny

Making Writer's Block a Thing of the Past

Following a recent Instagram post, where we touched on the topic of writer’s block, we received a couple of direct messages asking us to elaborate on how we really overcome a creative clog to set about filling an empty page.

It's something I used to face quite regularly when starting out as a writer. I knew I wanted to write but sometimes—deadline looming—I'd find myself staring at a blank screen, not knowing where or how to begin. The longer I spent watching the clock and worrying about what to write first, the worse it would get.

The feeling can be familiar in any creative field; photography, art, music, design, we all face moments where the creative juices just seem to dry up.

I’ve now worked as a writer, in print, online and radio for over 11 years, I have studied a degree in Creative Writing and a post grad in Newspaper Journalism and in that time, I’ve learnt from friends, teachers, colleagues (and my procrastinating self) how to get past the occasional bout of writer's block. Of course, it will still show up from time to time but now I know how to overcome it.

So, for anyone who has ever sat and looked at an empty page or canvas and despaired, here are a few of my favorite ways to get back on track:

1. “The Morning Pages”

An old friend and spoken word writer/performer told me about the Morning Pages sometime around 2002/03 and to this day I still thank him for it. It’s a great creative hack for anyone who wants or loves to write. It's simple: keep a pen and paper next to your bed and every morning when you wake up, before you do anything else, sit up and start writing. Don’t think about what you are writing, don't worry about punctuation, just allow a stream of consciousness to flow. I guarantee that you will be surprised at what you produce in your half-awake state. Granted, the combination of words may not make sense but the Morning Pages will kickstart your day in a creative way. Once you get into the regular habit, you will see the positive effects on your writing.

2. Take a Walk

If the words just will. not. come. and your ideas are feeling stale, a walk can be one of the simplest ways to recharge. Fresh air, a change of scenery and exercise always has me coming back to my computer in a much clearer frame of mind.

3. Inspiration From Others

Ever read a line in a book and feel inspired to put pen to paper? I find that the more I read, the more I write and I’d urge anyone who wants to write as a career to read as much as they can, from as many different sources as they can. Visit a second-hand bookstore, dip into the newspaper and magazine section in your local Barnes & Noble, leaf through a dictionary, read online articles. Carry a notebook and note down interesting words or phrases from real people out on the street. It will all help to inspire and shape your writing.

4. Caffeine and Music

It’s a failsafe combination and one I use every single day. A good cup of tea/coffee and some music in the background is how I start every writing project (in the afternoon, I normally switch to water). The music keeps me stimulated and eases boredom, the caffeine energizes and helps me stay focused. It makes me type faster too…

5. A Change of Scenery

It can be hard to stay creative when you sit at the same computer, in the same place, day after day. Especially if you work from home where the distractions are many. At least once a week, I like to take my laptop to a nearby coffee shop, connect to the free wi-fi and work from there. This week, try working in another space, it’s amazing how change can affect your output.

6. Write

You have to train your body and your brain to write, just as you would with running or any form of exercise. Don’t worry about writing Pulitzer-prize winning material, just write. Trust me, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

7. Skeleton First, Flesh Later

Before I start thinking about writing an intro or how I want my article to be structured, I will write down all my researched facts, statistics and quotes. This is done in no real order, it’s just a matter of getting the most important points onto the page first. This forms the framework, or "skeleton" of the piece. Then I move the parts of the skeleton into an order that makes sense for how I want to tell my story/get my opinion across, before getting creative and fleshing the rest of it out. It might not work for everyone, but I find this approach very useful, especially if I am writing an article that leans heavily on stats and research. 

Have any questions or comments? Please get in touch. Thanks for reading!

Laura

Happy New Year!

How best to describe 2016? Well...it was certainly eventful and, like most, we weren't too unhappy to bid farewell to those tumultuous 12 months, come December 31.

But wait! Last year wasn't all doom and gloom and certainly, in a business sense, it was very good to us.

As sisters who love online marketing but have very different skill sets, we'd casually toyed with the idea of setting up our own company for a while, until we decided to go for it in early 2016. Officially registered as a business in April, Cake Media emerged as a new Maui startup and we are delighted to have worked with so many great Maui businesses since then. Also, we must admit, we've been pleasantly surprised at how our small company has grown in such a short space of time.

We'd like to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone that worked with Cake Media over the last year. Social media management, graphic design, SEO work, content writing, consulting and more, we are so lucky to be doing what we love and feel honored that so many of you have chosen to work with us.

Happy New Year to each and every one of you and here's to a healthy, happy and prosperous 2017!

Laura and Jenny

Instagram: New 'Likes' and Comment Control

Instagram announced more changes yesterday, with a range of comment control features that are intended to make the social media platform a “welcoming place for everyone.”

As seen in Tuesday’s blog from Instagram co-founder and CEO, Kevin Systrom, users now have the ability to like individual comments and—as the feature rolls out throughout the week—you may notice that each comment now has a heart next to it.

As Systrom wrote, “Liking lets you show support and encourages positivity throughout the community.”

From a social media marketing point of view, this is a great time-saving and engagement-building feature. Some Instagram comments certainly call for an individual response, especially when it comes to customer service queries. However, when you simply want to acknowledge a comment or show your appreciation to a fellow user, you can now tap the heart icon in much the same way that you’d give the thumbs-up on Facebook, double tap an image or ‘like’ a tweet.

The photo-sharing platform has also introduced a way of turning comments off on any post, allowing the image to stand on its own and removing the opportunity for cyberbullying and offensive remarks. Trolls, zero. Instagram, one.

Users can also now remove followers from their private accounts, without blocking them and without notification. As Systrom added, “In the past, once you approved a follower, there was no simple way to undo that decision without blocking them. Going forward, if your account is private, you can remove followers by going to your list of followers and tapping the … menu next to any person’s name.”

There’s more. Another addition to Instagram comments is the ability to anonymously report self-harm posts—connecting people who may need help with helplines and organizations that can offer support.

Making the internet a more welcoming place, taking on online harassment and adding another way to engage with fellow users, we are all in favor of Instagram’s latest changes.

Released this week, the new features should now be available to you. Engage and enjoy!

Thanks for visiting, Laura and Jenny

SEO Work For Aric Becker Photography

It has been such a pleasure to work with Maui photographer Aric Becker in recent weeks. 

He is an excellent sports, commercial, editorial and portrait photographer, who relocated to Maui from Seattle in 2013. 

For Aric and family, a move across the Pacific brought about plenty of changes, including the need to start his established photography business again from the ground up.

Golfer Jordan Rodgers, shot by Aric Becker on Maui in April, 2016.

When Aric approached us to inquire about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services for his website, www.aricbecker.com, we were excited to help him continue with the growth of his Maui business.

For those who may not be familiar with SEO, in short, it is a way of combining a range of creative and technical techniques to improve organic (unpaid) search engine rankings. The goal is to increase the visibility of a website, rank higher on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing and, ultimately, to bring in more site traffic and paying customers.

At Cake Media, our client work will always begin with an informal chat and we met with Aric several times over coffee to discuss our services, strategy and to examine the existing content on his site. Once we had a clear idea of what he wanted and how we could help, we delivered a bespoke proposal, outlining our plans for increasing SEO.

Aric is great at getting out there, shooting a wide variety of subjects and cross-marketing on social media. His easy-to-navigate site already had a wealth of high-quality visual content, including shots from portrait sessions, editorial work and photography from local sporting events such as The Maui Invitational (basketball), The Hyundai Tournament of Champions (golf) and the NFL Pro Bowl (football).

However, after completing a full audit of Aric’s site, we knew that we could be of assistance in several areas. 

We started with Jenny working on the technical side of things, including research, development and implementation of keyword strategy, adding and/or optimizing URL slugs, title tagging and more.

Meanwhile, Laura began work on content development. Creating unique written content is something that we love to do and It so important to have fresh, error-free, readable copy with relevant keywords on your site. It offers an insight into you and your business, makes for a much better user experience and, done the right way, will drastically improve your search engine rankings. 

After interviewing Aric, we rewrote his Bio to tell the story of how he became a photographer.  He has a great story by the way, you can check it out here.

We also created a new FAQ page, where site users could easily discover the answers to any immediate questions. This also gave us the opportunity to work in more relevant keywords, to tell prospective customers more about Aric's work and, of course, to encourage users to spend longer navigating around the site.

Then we began the process of working back through Aric’s blogs, dating back to January 2015. We increased the length of the posts, edited the spelling and grammar, added in more background information and—you guessed it—worked in those all-important keywords.

As with any SEO project, this is not a fast process and requires plenty of updates and staying on top of keyword trends. We'll be revisiting Aric's site many times in the coming days and weeks to analyze the effects of our work and to adjust aspects of our strategy accordingly.

Do you need help with SEO? Don't know where to start? Get in touch with us today and we can help!

Thank you for visiting, Laura and Jenny