Prime8 – the weekly GGA web roundup 11/08/2014

Two things happened this week that, by themselves, would be perfectly fine. Non-eventful. Not worth discussing. However, because they happened in parallel with each other they have caused a big problem. That’s right, it’s the perfect storm of the start of Great British Bake-Off and the GGA team working from home. I’ll explain…
 
The start of a new series of Bake-Off means my partner makes cakes. Lots of cakes. And donuts. Oh man… so many donuts. We are also still trialling our GGA remote working experiment, which means I spend hours a day glued to my comfy sofa with a laptop on my… lap. See the problem? Cakes + lack of movement = new hole needed in belt.
 
And we wonder why developers have a certain stereotype eh?

An exciting tale of a boring startup
We’ve recently started using a tool called Slack for our internal team comms. It’s brilliant and has pretty much revolutionised the way we work (hello remote working!). What’s even more brillianter though (apart from my grammar) is the story behind it. An engrossing tale of a boring story.

Stop burning out
Ah the age old problem of being too busy yet being non-productive. We’ve all experienced the burnout that comes from relentless multitasking at work. We make a big deal out of ‘working smarter not harder’ here at GGA, so we’re always happy to show-off new ways to help stop the burnout and stay productive. Standard!

Your social audience is 4 x bigger than you think
It’s easy to monitor who views and interacts with links you put out in your social media output, but did you know that your audience is approximately 4 x bigger than the most basic metrics suggest? Say hello to your ‘invisible audience’.

Growth Marketing like a boss!
We love lists like this. Here’s the top 21 tools the pro’s use for Growth Marketing and getting customers. Really – try them all and see what fits. We swear on some of these (literally sometimes).

Tweet better! 
Did you know, from a company point-of-view, you should send out a minimum of 4 tweets a day to even start to engage your followers? On top of this you need to make those tweets stand out from the crowd, and not just stuff content into your timeline by RT’ing and copying the auto-generated Twitter text on sharable web pages. Here’s a few tips on giving your Twitter output some much-needed personality. 

Ghost in the machine 
We love it when someone takes an existing piece of tech and hacks it to produce something original, fun and just a tiny bit pointless. Read how this guy hacked a SONOS device and used a Raspberry Pi to create a spooky bit of silliness. 

GGA’s website of the week:
A true ‘multi-media’ experience: an engaging dive into the Seven Digital Deadly Sins. With rich layers of information, including live action video, articles from The Guardian and user-generated statistics.

… and finally.
How could we not show the ‘Apparently Kid’. If anyone was destined to become an American news anchor its this fella. Apparently.