At the close of the year you will find all kind of web site and blog tell you about the “best of” for the year closing. One of the sites I frequently visit and subscribe to is Problogger.net . One a recent post the author posed the question, What was your most popular post in 2007? I left a response myself that my most popular post (In terms of comments and visits) was one called, The Power of real conversation in marketing your business. Interestingly enough I read what some others stated as their most popular post and they seem to have a fairly similar theme to my most popular post. One was called, Top Bloggers Reveal How To Build Traffic Offline Without Spending A Dime and the other one I felt needed a mention was Top 10 Ways to Use Facebook to Promote Your Business for Free.

What free resources are you taking advantage of to promote your business or organization? SpinningSilk Multimedia has a Facebook group of which you can be a fan as well as a Twitter account we just set up. Both are not that active but I have been experimenting longer with my own personal profile at Facebook as well as my personal account on Twitter as well as linkedin.

Also don’t forget to put links to your web site, e-mail address and select social networking sites in the signature of your e-mail as well as online forums you may participate in. Don’t forget to subscribe to this blogs RSS feed and encourage your blog readers to do the same. Here’s to a more connected 2008!

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.

One of the greatest challenges SpinningSilk Multimedia faces as a company is being innovative in a large field of competitors in our local market, Greenville, SC and the surrounding upstate. You will find a lot of companies do the same kind of work we do from very large advertising/marketing agencies to independent freelancers. On the surface the average consumer may view web design, web development and portable media as being “innovative.” Because technology is the basis for a lot of what we do to get our clients’ message out to their target audience it often gives the false impression that those things in and of themselves are innovative.

Innovation is so important to me and our company that I’ve given myself the “fun title” of Captain Innovation on my name tag but I’m concerned that the term innovation is becoming nothing more than a cool buzzword that people like to throw around just to gain sales or funding. It’s easy for me to tell people in conversation that we are an innovative company because we constantly keep up with new technologies. Yes, it’s very important to keep up with new technologies in order to find effective tools and be aware of risks but “keeping up” is NOT innovation. Keeping up for all practical purposes is following the conversation but innovation is having the insight and vision to step in and lead the conversation and make it go somewhere.

How are we going to lead in the year ahead? First of all our goal is not to step away from what we are doing and invent something new just to stand out and “be innovative.” Our goal is to look at what we do, find opportunities for improvement in niches within those services and create value for our customers. Yes, we may create a new process, piece of software, etc. I currently see big challenges and opportunities in teaching and making RSS more user friendly, helping clients create their own compelling content from articles to photography to audio and video and finally helping clients “find the time” to create compelling content amidst their daily work and area of expertise.

Meryl.net has a good 2 part series called, Is a blog right for your business. Part 1 covers topics and if a blog is suitable to your workflow and schedule. Part 2 goes more into community participation and more in depth of blog topics. We do like to encourage our customers to have a business blog on their web site. We also realize that a lot of businesses have a hard time devoting resources to writing articles everyday but we do suggest the following when it comes to compelling content beyond the typical articles.

• Daily Photos - Pictures can say a lot, space the postings out
• Calendar items - Got events and news items to mention?
• Sales
• Press Releases

Do you think your business could benefit from a blog or the ability to distribute compelling content on a regular basis. We could love to help you.

Write to a blog with out letting others know about it first hand is basically like talking to yourself. Sure the search engines may find you better with the content but forums, podcasts and social networks are great ways to extend your blog. One way I am extending this blog is by participating on Facebook, posting micro-blogs to Twitter and connecting them together through a service called Twitterfeed.

Problogger.net has a good article on this very subject.

I also participate in forums where people gather to discuss specific issues like local concerns, web development. I also post images to my Flickr Pro Account and create community and connections there as well? How do you extend your network?