A while back we decided on the phrase, Harmonious New Media, as our company “tag line.” As of today, June 21st, 2008 I have decided to make that the official name for this blog as opposed to the more generic “SpinningSilk Multimedia Blog” as it’s a part of our company web site. You might not notice a change much on the web site immediately but the RSS feeds, and the way we link from blog comments, etc. will start using that title. Official the “long title” will be - Harmonious New Media - The blog of SpinningSilk Multimedia. The reasons for doing this are as follows;

• Showing the difference between the blog and the web site as a whole
• I want to keep that mantra in my head and also the heads of my readers
• Harmonious is part of our consistent branding promise and I want to communicate that on a daily basis
• I want to showcase the fact that “New Media” is our core focus, not just web design per se but how that is a hub for graphic design, photography, podcasting and online video.
• It’s my desire that the majority of posts will focus on the concept of harmonious new media
• As we get ready to produce a podcast associated with this blog I want to focus of it to be the same

I also plan on changing the header graphic slightly for the blog portion of this web site.

We have received the comment more than once that we do a lot of different things and people have commented that we appear to be a “jack of all trades”. That not quite true. Our name is SpinningSilk Multimedia and we do employ different form of media to help our clients get the word out about their products and services but we have definitely boundaries.

I remember as a child I would visit the home of an aunt and uncle and across the street a man had a sign in his yard the advertising Tax Preparation and Lawn Mower repair. To this day that sticks in my mind as one of the oddest combination of business services I have seen. Maybe the guy was very skilled at both lawn mower repair and tax preparation but advertised together it looked very odd and naturally I would have a hard time trusting the same person who repairs my lawn mower with also preparing my taxes for the simple fact they are two very diverse disciplines. This doesn’t mean a person can’t be good at two completely different things but they should certainly advertise them separately if nothing more than on two separate signs.

I have to admit however when we first started out business we verged on doing exactly what the guy who did taxes and fixed lawn mowers although not at those extremes. Originally we did everything through the SpinningSilk.com domain and promotes two different things; web site design and piano and voice lessons. We were just starting out and both services were very part time but since we have gone full-time in the past few years we split up our business into three active divisions; SpinningSilk Multimedia which is our core business featuring web, print, photography and other business marketing tools, SpinningSilk I.T. - covers the more technical end of our business however most of the business through that is outsourced or residual income through selling service. It’s technically not a lot of stuff we “do” in the sense we don’t provide services where we will fix your computer or come to your place or business but we are working with other contractors in the area who we feel provide the best service in the arena. Finally my wife who was a music education major/graduate from Furman University teaches piano and voice lesson as well is available for performing at events. You can find out about those services through SpinningSilk Music.com .

For the sake of argument, why would someone come to this web site and think we were a “jack of all trades?” The services we offer on this web site include, web design, print design, photography and podcasting. It does sound diverse but in reality it isn’t. Web design alone is all about being multi-disciplined, that is if it’s done right. A web design should know about back end programming of web development, graphic design, SEO, usability, e-commerce as well as various forms of visual and audio media. It’s just a fact of life. Maybe designing print documents vs. web documents looks very diverse and at one time it would have been but with software like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign those skill barriers have narrowed. The important thing is knowing what is media needs in terms of graphic quality, fonts, document dimensions, etc.

Are we a jack of all trades? In the area of media production we provide a lot in terms of our services but we definitely are disciplined in “all trades.” Here is a very short list of things we don’t do in terms starting with things people think we do but don’t;

• Repair computers
• Fix printers
• Setup Quicken finance software
• repair lawn mowers
• prepare taxes
• Windows (neither the kind on your building or the operating system)
• groom pets
• paint your house
• clean viruses of your computer
• mow your lawn
• cut down trees

Their is a reason we offer the services we do and believe it or not that are very connected to each other and conform to our motto, “Harmonious New Media.”

As time progresses we will look at what we do to make our business and how we market ourselves better based on customer demand and feedback as well as trends in the marketplace. We have changed some broad categories into more focused niches. We are also making the fact that we are about providing marketing services for our clients and are committed to consistent branding more obvious. We used the word, “share” to describe the final part of our 4-step work flow and now we have replaced it with the word, market or marketing. Our new motto of “Harmonious New Media” also reflects this.

We are making our photography service more prominent and instead of covering the broad category of “portable media” with are going to focus on Podcasting as a service. We will continue to explore other areas for future products and services but those will be feature and discussed in a “labs” section to be announced at a later date. You will probably see those innovative explorations at our portal site, SpinningSilk.com . One new service we are offering is an enterprise level/server based e-mail service via MXLogic. You can find what we are offering at our SpinningSilk.com Marketplace.

The past couple of days have been fantastic days of growth and the feeling of a turning point in the history of our company.  We’ve been getting more and more calls for current clients to take on new web design projects, an upswell in photography assignments from clients has been encouraging and we are making big plans for a greater focus on podcasting aspect of our company. Last night I attended an excellent webinar hosting by Cliff Ravenscraft of gspn.tv where I learned many of the aspects of podcasting that will help us streamline and bring better service to our clients. As a result of attending the webinar I spent a good part of the morning testing out some audio editing programs and as a result I’m looking at getting a piece of software I don’t currently own, Sound Studio 3.  More than likely I will take advantage of the MacUpdate Promotion which not only includes a copy of Sound Studio but also several other pieces of software that will be interesting to try out including a copy of Parallels so we can run Windows on one our our Mac laptops that currently aren’t running a copy of Windows.

Tonight I plan on doing further work on the web site I mentioned in a previous post. The task will probably take several days as I work on it between client projects so please be patient as some things will be renamed and moved around in the following days. I want to close by saying I appreciate all of those who have thought of us for their small business marketing needs such as web site design and development, custom photography, small print jobs and online media distribution like podcasts, etc.

We have been going through some reorganization and refinements in our company. Technically we’re not doing anything different in terms of the services and products we’re offering but we are changing the way we communicate who we are and what we do.

If you look at our menu on this web site you will notice some wording of  categories and terms has changed.  “Internet” has been changed to “web” and while we are still exploring and optimizing web sites for portable devices we are making podcasting our singular focus within the realm of portable media. Our photography services will also be displayed more prominently.

Another area of clarification is we will start using the word, “market” instead of “share” to better focus on the fact we are helping our clients market their business, organization or personal brand. We are still in the process or making these changes but thanks to valuable feedback we have gotten from clients, business partners, friends and family we are making a step in the right direction to bring greater clarity to communicating the products and services we provide. We will be going over this site in the days ahead according to the same work flow procedure we provide our clients.  In addition expect to see news about our parent company, SpinningSilk, LLC in the days ahead. Exciting days are ahead.