As you can probably tell I am making more blog posts in one day that I have in quite a while. I’ll probably be very busy the next several days with holiday activities but as the year winds down I wanted to give a retrospective of what has been going on with SpinningSilk Multimedia over the last year. The title of this post refers to three things that we focused on in 2007 and feel sets us apart from other companies like ours in the Greenville and Upstate South Carolina market. We are known mainly for our web design, web development and small print jobs like business cards and brochures. Essentially marketing and communication services for small businesses and organizations.

We however had opportunities the the realm of photography, using the technology of RSS within our web work and 2007 was the year we became involved is networking with other businesses and made great connections online.

Photography - is certainly nothing new. Of all the “high tech” forms of communication it is one of the oldest going back over a 100 years. What have we done with photography that was unique or were great opportunities? For starters we help our web and print customers develop compelling content. We develop a lot of e-commerce sites and with that we have provided our photography services for products our customers wish to showcase. We have also developed a relationship with a media company from Atlanta, GA auditing billboards for major advertisers. We also developed a great relationship with a local magazine by photographing the individuals profiled each month.

Feeds - What are feeds? By feeds I mean the technology of RSS feeds, also known as news feeds. These special lines are what have made blogs, podcasts and innovative social networks like Twitter and Facebook popular. Not only have we been in the process of optimizing our clients web site to include the RSS option for their site visitors but we have also given presentations to local business networks explaining what a useful tool RSS is for the business person.

Friends - 2007 is also the year we became really active in networking. Yes we were involved with business and special interest groups in the past but 2007 was the year we made it a top priority. Heather and I have both taken leadership positions in a local networking group, Professional Network Connections as well as becoming very active in the Upstate Entrepreneur’s Forum, The Greenville Mac User’s Group as well as other groups and meetings associated with the Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson Technology Council.

Our prime commitment is still the use of multi forms of cost effective media so our customers can get their message out and tell their story and in turn sell their product or service. The above are aspects and tools we use in web, print and portable media and we hope to carve our special niche in our market by providing expert services our customers are seeking.

At SpinningSilk Multimedia we believe the concept of portable media is going to become more and more important to our clients and their customers or in the case of organizations, people who use their services. People love portability and the ability to accomplish tasks easily on mobile devices but print media is not left out in the cold. Some of the most used “portable media tools” are in the form of print items. The following is a list of things we will be focusing on in 2008 and beyond to make life easier for people when they are out and about;

• More creative and functional business and calling cards
• Podcasts that teach, inspire and sell
• Web sites optimized for the mobile web
• mobile web applications that will allow you to optimize the information you create and distribute
• instructing our clients and other interested parties on how they can use portable devices to create compelling content including photography courses, portable audio recording and effective note taking on the job and when traveling

Portable media devices we will concentrate on will be digital cameras, portable media players like iPods, iPhones, Zunes and other popular media devices. Most important will be the class of devices know as smart phones and small Internet tablets like the iPhone and devices by Nokia, etc.

SpinningSilk Multimedia has a listing of our holiday 2007 shopping recommendations.The items we are showcasing are ones related to the work we do year round but also a few fun items in the mix like the Wii, Playstation 3 and XBox 360.  Feel free to look around the rest of our Amazon store from the comfort of your home or office in a stress free shopping environment. We are thankful for the customers that have come our way in 2007 and are excited about what 2008 has in store. I’ll post more detailed reviews and recommendations in the days ahead.

Announcing our new corporate holiday cards, featuring quick turnaround time to make it easy for you to send holiday cards to your clients in plenty of time for Christmas.
Choose from 5 original designs that you can customize by specifying your own message for the inside of the card.
Orders will be received for this holiday season until December 17th.

Click on any picture below to see more information.

One of the biggest challenges of companies that create content, software or even engineering projects for clients is the long payment process. The bulk of the work our company does is producing web sites and print materials for clients and full payment is not due until we deliver the final product and insure the customer is happy. We are passionate about creating artistically pleasing and user friendly web design and it means just as much to us to not accept payment until the project has been satisfactory finished as it does to the customer. That being said, October has been a very challenging month for us (my wife and I) both personally and in regards to our business. Earlier in the month our dog of 10 years (we have been married 11 years) died of liver failure, we too have had our own health concern and because we have been working on several long term/large projects all at once but not yet completed or invoices have just recently been sent out we have been going through a lean and trying time.

Some of the things we have been learned this year are the need for more detailed contracts, the need to niche in our offering yet be diversified in that niche. Finally, while it is important to work on big paying projects their is also strength and security in offering smaller upfront payment services and projects.

What are we doing to address the above concerns? For one we have recognized one of the greatest things that put web design projects in a “holding pattern” is the content. If you ask any web design or web development specialist you will find this to be true. We making the creation or acquisition of compelling content our first priority in our projects. It hurts me nothing more to see customer sign off on a site an not take advantage of content management features we provide. My personal belief is if you don’t content ready for print or especially web then you are not ready to begin the process or developing those projects. Of course with a blog you will not have all your content ready since it’s an ongoing process but it’s important to have some beginning content ready. We have recently started offering a service of content creation that includes photography, copy-writing and other media creation that clients can pay for upfront so they not only have the content ready for the projects we create but for other projects that may get done by other vendors as well.

What does your company do to fill in the spaces in a quality way between the big projects?