One of our core business slogan and commitments is, “Committed to creating, organizing and delivering compelling content.” However I’m learning more and more that a better strategy is to not say everything or as the poker players say, “Lay all your cards on the table.”

Sometimes the greatest impact in a piece of music is the rest right before the big notes. Anyone remember the time of silence right before the movie Star Wars started? Before you heard the loud majestic notes of the theme song as the title scrolled across the screen you were presented with a still frame with the words, “A Long Time Ago In a Galaxy Far, Far, Away…. ” and then Boom! To me that we an excellent transition from the “real world” and the fantasy world of Star Wars.

If you look at this web page you will see a significant amount of white space. Without it it would be hard to digest the words you are reading.

Think about photographs you view. What has greater impact? A scene where you see a lot of stuff or a focused subject and a blurred background?

In conversation with clients we may know a lot of technical facts but more often than not it’s best to keep our mouths shut and our ears open. What are some examples you have encounter in media and working with companies where receiving too much information was a problem? I’d love to hear your stories.

I had to attend a local business network meeting at lunch today and when I left the office I decided to leave my large laptop bag (I have a smaller one for short trips that fits into the bag with all the extras) and power adapter at the office so I wouldn’t have to carry as much. My reasoning was that I wouldn’t need to carry that much extra weight when I might not even use the stuff in it over lunch. All seemed well but when I returned to the office I picked up my larger laptop bag but forgot that I left my power adapter on my desk.  As soon as I arrived back at my home office I realized I left the power adapter on the desk at my downtown Greenville,SC office. Needless to say I was angry with myself because I would have to “waste gas” to drive back.  I did however need to make a bank and post office so the trip wasn’t totally frustrating. I figured I might as well take advantage of the situation and write an article about it too.

As mentioned in a previous post I am the kind who hates to spend money yet  I’m also in a business that pretty much demands one spend a  bit more on new technologies from time to time. Thankfully it is money I am putting to good use by turning it around to provide great services and products to my customers. I can take comfort in that I am not the only one with these struggles.  Many potential clients are afraid of spending more money than they have to but as I have discovered with myself I am often better off spending a little more with some added features than having to go through an upgrade process when if I had the tools in front of me I could have saved that much more time.

Take it from someone who has been there.  If you think you might need something go ahead and get it or have it with you. It can make the difference in getting a sale or losing precious time. It doesn’t save you money  to take a bargain route if you will need to make a return trip.  Sometimes the return trip is across town or it may be lost time in not having what you need to get the job done or the ability to get the word out.

Odd that in less than positive economic times I  am thinking more about the times I should have spend a little more upfront. What are your “packing light” or going minimal mistakes of the past? What would you have taken with you or invested more in times past?

The official story we have on this web site only tells the official part of our business in recent years and doesn’t go into the very beginning of when I first started exploring web design as a new skill I was learning in the mid 90’s. I created two web sites almost back to back. The first one was my first attempt at starting a business or service online. The web site was called, “The Creation Station” and it was my intent to offer custom writing services. I had intentionally first bought my computer as a tool to working on and store creative writing, photography and graphic design projects.

I had first learned about the ability to design web sites via someone I meet in a chat room on the service known as “Talk City” which I learned about from a friend of mine. I think the first service I started learning web design on was called Angelfire one of the many “free” services that started springing up at the time. I soon became dissatisfied with the limitations of Angelfire and discovered Geocities. This was before Geocites was acquired by Yahoo.

The site I developed on Geocities was called Bridging the Gap. By this time I had learned about how to incorporate images, layout a site in table and add other features like forms and other more, “advanced” features. Today Bridging the Gap would be called a “personal development site or maybe a personal development blog. At the time I was interested in the whole concept of developing the whole person; mind, body and spirit.

The technology I used back them pales in comparison to what I have learned since then but another thing I have learned since then has nothing to do with technology but rather more along the line of being a more focused person. Both the Creation Station and Bridging the Gap had very high ideals but they were also too broad in scope. In some ways I am doing the Creation Station through this web site and business by providing custom web design services, photography and graphic design with a focus on compelling content that is optimized for both search engines and the minds of potential customers.

Bridging the Gap is another story. If I was relaunching Bridging the Gap today I would do in the form of a blog and only focus on some key areas. Instead of exercise in general I would probably focus hiking or maybe even a more niche area like suburban or urban hiking. Instead of an overall mental development I would probably focus on something like business innovation, strategies to keep ones brain young by thinking like a child, etc. Instead of a general spiritual focus I would probably focus on prayer, evangelism, etc.

One of the key things I remember about Bridging the Gap was an image I found elsewhere online of a couple people walking across an bridge at what appeared to be an old college campus. I’m seriously thinking about creating a set on my Flickr account where I can post my own custom photos of people crossing bridges of various types.

Some of these early attempts at “web design” were basically “kicking the tires” but I’m glad the services were available for me to explore and learn the technologies. Not long afterwards I started setting up “real” web sites under domains I could fully control. What were some of your early explorations in Internet technology and what have you learned as far as skills and even your mindset since then?

If you’ve been on the Internet or involved in any kind of business development I’m sure you have heard the term, Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short. This is nothing new. Ever since search engines or directories have been on the Internet companies have wanted to be at the top of the listing.

I hate to use the term “early days” but the previous mindset regarding preparing a web site to be easily found by a search engine involved some back-end technical steps which at one time made sense when search engines and portals had more of a directory approach.  The initial approach involved adding what is known as “meta tags” in the code of the web site and while some of these are still important to a degree modern search engine optimization is focused and hopefully will always be focused on the actual content in terms of text, images and other non design elements.

In terms of marketing this is actually a huge advantage in terms of competition, making updates known quicker and standing a better change at being found. Provided a web site has compelling content and is updated frequently.

What are some ways to to optimize, design and develop a web site so one can make frequent updates and provide compelling content? Here a few things to consider;

• Have a web site designed around a content management system - The makes it easier and faster for the non-designer, i.e. owner or employee of a company to update a web site without asking the web designer to make those updates.
• Incorporate a blog feature on your web site - The search engines love frequent content and writing on the topic related to your business on a frequent basis increases your search engine ratings
• Register your domain name for more than one year. The more years the better as search engines like Google rate domains with a longer registration period higher as it makes them look less, “fly by night.”
• Include words in your title tag you think people will use to search for a business like yours
• When writing, write naturally. Be sincere and don’t try to trick the system by stuffing keywords in the document.

These are just a few tips but they are ones they have helped us tremendously in the past few years to the point we rank on the first or second page of important search terms, many of which we have a lot competition.

Some SEO resources you may want to look at include;

• The Search Engine Academy of South Carolina
• The Wikipedia SEO entry
• Google’s page about working with SEO companies

Again these are just a few resources. We are constantly looking at ways to optimize web site for our clients and also our own business so we can not only get more customers but also practice what we preach and become more experienced to help others. If you are struggling with getting good search results for your web site contact us and find out what tools and resources we have that can help you be more successful. Of no one can guarantee you will be number one, that’s impossible and always changes but we can help you get achieve greater visibility amongst all the other choices out there. What are your SEO Success stories or concerns?

I find it very interesting that some companies will brand themselves by the product they produce or service they provide and another company that does the exact same thing will brand themselves by the problems they solve or even long standing  industry terms.

Take our company for example.  We provide design and development services in the realm or web, print, photography and podcasts. You will have advertising agencies that provide the exact same services, you have other companies who say they are “marketing” companies also provide the exact same services. What gives?

It’s true that a bulk of the work we do is web design and web development, especially e-commerce and content management. It’s where we started and and it’s not big secret that it’s one of the easiest businesses to get into because of the low cost of entry. It’s probably one reason we have so much local competition within that realm. In the mid to late 90’s web design was the cutting edge technology and to a large degree it was an experiment in the early days when most people were on dial up and the design specs were restricted to the limitations of the technology at the time. We do consider our web work as a “hub service.” Whenever possible we want our print products to lead people to our clients web site, Podcasts which take on a “life” beyond the a web site definitely call the clients web site home and a majority of the photography work we provide is optimized for the web as a way to effectively tell a story.

If you are looking for a company to design a web site ask if they provide other media marketing services as well/ You may be surprised that they do! If they only specialize in web design what is their mindset in regards to integrated media and consistent branding? Of course we are not talking against other companies who call themselves web design firms, marketing firms or advertising agencies but we do want to make it clear the we provide many of the same services they do but our niches and clientele may be different.

What are your perceptions who you hear the terms, graphic designer, marketing firm, ad agency, web designer, creative professional, etc?  Is it confusing to you?  Do many tend to do the same things from your perspective? Have the industry names not caught up with technology and skill sets of the work force?

What can we do to better communicate SpinningSilk Multimedia doesn’t “fix computers” and how can we make it clearer that we provide more services than web design as some people we have talked with are so easy to latch on to in conversation?