According to the American Marketing Association, Integrated Marketing Communications is

A planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.

This is the work of SpinningSilk Multimedia. We provide services and products with consistent branding using web, print, audio, video and other communications. Our core customer bases are small businesses and organizations and in particular churches, agencies and other organizations in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church* denomination. We have also done work with some fine local organizations in the Greenville, SC area. The for profit businesses that we have experiences with are construction contractor companies, business coaches and small business e-commerce stores.
Why is Integrated Marketing Communications so important to us and why should it be important to you? I don’t know about you but I hate having to run all over the place to get work done when it’s much better to have a central point of contact where you can be on the same page.

It’s incredibly easy to go the “free route” on so many things from restricted or ad supported free web services, do it yourself business cards or brochures,etc.  Some of these solutions are just fine for certain situations and I have nothing against someone printing their own business cards on an ink jet printer when they need an emergency run but for the long term you need to think long term and develop a relationship with a company experienced in the skills of communications, branding and marketing.

If a business or organization is serious about meeting long-term sales or donor goals, having a consistent brand and a central resource of experts is crucial. Can you do the work of Integrated Marketing yourself?  Maybe. Are you an expert in that area and how much time will it take away from what you are an expert in?  Marketing and sales don’t have to be overly expensive but you don’t want to do it on the cheap either. You’re business or organization needs a consistent branding program. Here is a checklist of things to consider and ask when seeking out and Integrated Marketing, graphic design, web design, print shop, etc.;

1. Does the company have graphic designers who know the difference between optimizing your images for the web and print?
2. Does the company know how to craft your content in such a way to make it compelling and search engine friendly?
3. Is it evident the company is paying attention to the latest trends in technology and marketing?
4. Even if the company is specializing on one aspect of marketing communications do they partner easy with other companies to get the work done?
5. Are they about showing themselves off or showing you off?
6. If you would like to do some things for yourself does the company give you the tools  like an easy web site content management system or files for printing short runs of business cards, etc?
7. Does the company practice what they preach? Do they have their own blog, professional business cards, etc?

Yes, I’m trying to “sell my companies services” in this post.  This post describes what we do as a business and we would love to meet with you to talk about your communication and branding needs.

*We didn’t design the web site for the main denomination web site. That one is done in-house but we have developed sites and helped with other issues for several of the denominations agencies.

2007 was a turning point year for SpinningSilk Multimedia and our parent company, SpinningSilk, LLC and the first month of 2008 seemed to have as many positive milestones and the whole year of 2007. February 2008 is looking great as well!

Milestones reached in 2007–

Established downtown Greenville office
Became a LLC after a few years as a sole proprietorship
Became more active in the PNC–involved in two networks
Became an active organizer of the Upstate Entrepreneur’s Forum
Established a business partnership with CHIC Magazine
Increased sales by 48% for the year!

Milestones Jan. 2008

Joined the Greenville Chamber of Commerce
Participated as a stop in a virtual book tour and interviewed Seth Godin
Prepared to launch E-mail defense service
Launched new Blog & Business Card package

Future 2008 Goals…so far

Our first in-company podcast
podcasts for our clients and our own original shows
Selling managed services to protect and restore your valuable content
A seminar for local business people on the importance of new media in their marketing efforts

I learned today that one of my favorite podcasts, Photoshop User TV, is going to now be available on a cable television channel! Photoshop User TV which is produced by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) and features three hosts, Scott Kelby, Dave Cross and Matt Kloskowski. The majority of each show features wonderful tips on how to maximize the potential of Adobe Photoshop. I learn something new each time I watch the show. They also provide news about new products (this is the kind of commercial I don’t mind at all), upcoming seminars and the show also has a weekly contest. I love participating in the contest because not only to I have a chance to win great prizes but the act of participating in the contest helps me learn something about Photoshop I probably would have never discovered on my own.

I use Photoshop a lot in my product photography, photography for print publications, web design products, etc. It’s a wonderful tool that helps me develop compelling content for my clients and my own work.

Perhaps you may not have access to the cable channel that Photoshop User TV will be on but it will still be available as a free downloadable podcast viewable on your computer or maybe better yet via a device like Apple TV. Have you enjoyed Photoshop User TV? What other podcasts would you like to see recognized by the old media? Wouldn’t it be great if people started producing quality local content and local stations decided to rebroadcast that content? I would love to see local podcasters in the upstate and Greenville, SC area recognized by the older media markets and reach a wider audience. I plan on doing what i can to make this a reality for my clients.

I really enjoyed the last series I brought you on design. Another aspect of what SpinningSilk Multimedia does is helping small businesses and organizations with their branding efforts. What we do specifically will be covered in part 10 of this upcoming series. The term branding can sound very intimidating but in reality it can boil down to some very simple principles that a business of any size or individual of any size can follow. I plan on sharing my thoughts on the following topics over the next several days;

1. The Aspects of Branding - Part 1: It begins with the product or service
2. The Aspects of Branding - Part 2: Brand Management
3. The Aspects of Branding - Part 3: Naming, logos and slogans
4. The Aspects of Branding - Part 4: The Myths of Brand Engagement
5. The Aspects of Branding - Part 5: Brand Community
6. The Aspects of Branding - Part 6: Brand Loyalty
7. The Aspects of Branding - Part 7: Small Business Branding
8. The Aspects of Branding - Part 8: Religious and Non-Profit Branding
9. The Aspects of Branding - Part 9: Are you branding yourself?
10. The Aspects of Branding - Part 10: Integrated Marketing Communications
11. The Aspects of Branding - Part 11: Recommended books, blogs and podcasts

I enjoy following other blogs that focus on this topic and look forward to contributing and extending the conversation to you. I look forward to your participation, questions and contributions in this next series.

This is the last official article in this series unless I decide to crank it up to 11. The current mission statement of my company is organizing and securing your information with the most up-to-date portable media and web technologies. (I may change that slightly in the near future to say compelling content instead of the generic term, “information.”) One of the most overlooked or last things that come to mind in regards to design is preservation or in a broader term, security. Is the first thing that comes into your mind when you hear security someone stealing your assets? That is certainly a consideration but it’s important to remember all of the following;

• Preserving original files
• Backups
• Protection from theft
• Legal Precautions

Before you even consider official backups you need to consider if you are deleting or throwing away assets that should be saved. It’s tempting to throw away original material once a project is done in order to save space or even get rid of things you think are not worthy of being saved.

Backup media is cheap. If possible, save original files and even if you think something is junk it may have a use down the road. This goes beyond digital assets. If you are restoring an old photo that is scratched, yellowed, torn, etc. hold on to it! Yes, You may be able to restore it nicely in Photoshop but who knows what kind of technology advances in the future might be able to do an even better job? Scott Kelby has a great book out called the 7 Point System for Photoshop CS3.  It’s amazing what can be done with seemingly mediocre files however a lot of the tips in the book require using the original file in the original RAW or at least the original image size.  Look the the 7-Point Flickr group to see what people have done with images that otherwise may have been deleted.

How does one go about preserving and securing your designs or the creative assets of others? As far as digital assets go the most important thing you should be doing on a regular basis is creating frequent and dependable backups. I tell people over and over that insurance can cover and replace equipment but no amount of money will ever bring back data lost through natural disasters or more frequently, accidental over writes and deletions. While it’s important to have a good local backup to quickly retrieve data it’s even more crucial to store your backups “off-site.” This can be done by manually taking backups to another location or better yet using an online backup service.

Finally, theft can take many forms. The first thing that comes to mind is a sneaky individual coming into your home or office and running off with valuables like televisions, stereos, laptops, jewelry, wallet, etc. Of course the worst of those things to be stolen, in my personal opinion, is computers like laptops or wallets, because they contain valuable information that can lead it identity or intellectual property theft.

Yes, it’s important to protect yourself and company in such instances but the greatest danger doesn’t come from your typical crook. That sad and scary thing is most intellectual property that is stolen is actually “given away,”  maybe not given away on purpose but it’s really easy to put things on the Internet without thinking of how it will be used.

I’ve told clients if they are concerned about someone accessing their creative works and using them then don’t put them on the Internet in the first place. Even by putting things in a password protected area is not a 100% guarantee your assets will be safe. A lot of people think that by just converting a document to the PDF format will make it non-editable. That’s not exactly true. Converting a document to PDF makes it harder to edit unless you take extra security procedures.

Are you taking the legal precautions by registering copyrights and trademarks, etc?

Look at your practices.  Are you preserving assets for potential future work?  Are you backing up to secure location, not only away from your computer but also away from your home or office. Are you taking legal precautions? and finally are you keeping thinks you don’t want people to access away from the Internet?