Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Web Design and Development

Hello readers and welcome back to the Silentblast Blog. This article is more or less a follow up to the blog article I did on Blogs– To Allow or Not Allow Comments but more specifically to the issue of responding to commentary on your own blog posts should you have made the decision to allow comments on your blog.

What most of you should and will have to understand about commentary on blogs is like all things in life there will be good and there will be bad. There is a saying so to speak that is more or less an equation; Internet + Anonymity = ***hole. There is a lot of truth actually in that equation. I have been across various blogs and forums and you will be sure to read commentary to an article or forum post that has been hijacked in some shape or form by an individual or group of individuals who post way off the topic in usually the most vulgar form of way to their commentary.

With a blog, you can set the commentary permissions so that you have to go into the “Dashboard� using WordPress as your blogging engine as an example and approve the commentary. Free speech purists view this more or less as censorship and while there is no argument to the context of the meaning of the word censorship as they apply it; I think they fail in understanding sometimes that speech or the written word comes with responsibility.

So where is the line in a commentary you may receive on your blog that will determine whether you approve it or not; let alone as well you have the ability to edit them? The line so to speak is up to the individual or business that is operating the blog in my view. For example I control the blog for Silentblast and decide what commentary is approved or not. I have been pretty transparent in my approving in that I have allowed comments that were not entirely favorable; mainly to me or what I have written about. As long as they didn’t cross over into outright attacks or vulgarity; I have allowed them and then commented on them.

In my responses I have endeavored to not attack back because it is not professional from a business perspective. This I would highly recommend because all that is going to happen is a back and forth match that just makes your blog look bad, your business and the person writing the articles. Now if you answer with some tongue and cheek type humor to me that is fair game as long as you’re generally nice. In my view, nothing is wrong with a bid of a scolding because at the end of the day everyone should play nice in the sandbox.

Do you have to respond to each and every comment? I don’t thinks so. But if for example you receive 6 comments on a particular blog posting and they are all generally commenting in the same fashion or asking possibly the same line of questions; you should respond at least once in that thread of comments and absolutely answer the questions.
If the substance of the questions are significant enough you should create another blog post specific to the questions as a follow up blog article. It is positive to your blog obviously but it also shows you are actively responding to those who do comment on your blog. You should as part of your business blogging strategy set aside time to review comments to your blog and answer the questions or comments that other leave.

Doing so will begin slowly a culture or commentary on your blog which is good in the development of your blog. It takes time to get responses to articles. I will be the first to readily admit that I love seeing comments to articles I have written. I don’t think there is a blogger on the planet that doesn’t like some type of positive commentary obviously. Bloggers just understand that sometimes the comments will not be nice and you just have to deal with it professionally.

Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Web Design and Development

Canadian owned and operated, Silentblast is a professional web design and development company in Toronto serving small and mid-sized companies in the GTA, Brampton, Vaughan, North York, Markham, Mississauga, Oakville, Richmond Hill, Scarborough and Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Silentblast also develops mobile web site design and development and mobile applications for the iPhone and other mobile phone platforms.

Website – www.silentblast.com

Silentblast Blog – www.silentblast.com/blog

Twitter – http://twitter.com/silentblast

Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Web Design and Development

Hello readers and welcome back to the Silentblast Blog. Today I am going to speak generally about business blogging. I know I have talked about blogs and blogging in general and why businesses should consider having a blog but I never really discussed business blogs from the perspective as part of a business plan.

As everyone should be generally aware a “business plan� is essentially a formal statement of planned business goals. The web design and development of a web presence for example can be included in a business plan. Even more important if the business tends to derive most of its revenue and deliverables from the internet; than the business plan will certainly have significant areas of the overall business plan where there is focus on internet, website development, search engine optimization or SEO as it’s commonly referred to and content development.

Somewhere definitely in the mix of will be most likely as well social media sites such as Twitter, FaceBook or LinkedIn and of course blogs. One of the things that have to be clear for business decision makers will be what is the focus, direction, goals and objectives for the business blog. What are the expectations of the blog as it pertains to the focus, direction, goals and objectives and then of course how the message is delivered and who delivers it?

From a business standpoint unless your business is comedy per say, the blog will tend to be more of an informative, editorial, press release sort of tone. While there are blogs that are satirical in nature or adult themed in both content and language that tends to not be the approach of business if they wish to incorporate a blog.
So for business the focus, direction, goals and objectives for a business blog can be some of the following if not more:

• Public Relations – mission statement, company vision, new developments

• Education and Product Information – giving your customers information on your products and services and even information on how to use them

• Development and Research – garnering feedback and suggestions from your clientele

• Community Development – developing a client community around your products and services, charitable efforts of your company

• Marketing and Sales – announcing new products and services to your customers

Blogging for business ultimately will take time and if there is no inherent commitment to invest time into the development of a business blog than it should not be high on the list of business priorities. All stakeholders within a business have to believe in the process. If you wish to establish yourself or are already established as a professional business, your blog has to reflect that.

Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Web Design and Development

Canadian owned and operated, Silentblast is a professional web design and development company in Toronto serving small and mid-sized companies in the GTA, Brampton, Vaughan, North York, Markham, Mississauga, Oakville, Richmond Hill, Scarborough and Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Silentblast also develops mobile web site design and development and mobile applications for the iPhone and other mobile phone platforms.

Website – www.silentblast.com

Silentblast Blog – www.silentblast.com/blog

Twitter – http://twitter.com/silentblast

Silentblast Interactive - Custom Web Design and Development Toronto - Styles Model Management

Silentblast is pleased to announce the web design and development of the Styles Model Management Inc. website. Currently there is a teaser/microsite up that Silentblast designed that you can visit below.

Styles Model Management Inc.

Current Site Features

• CSS/XHTML
• Custom Web Design
• Web Standards Compliant
• Teaser/Micro Site

Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Website Design and Development

Canadian owned and operated, Silentblast is a professional web design and development company in Toronto serving small and mid-sized companies in the GTA, Brampton, Vaughan, North York, Markham, Mississauga, Oakville, Richmond Hill, Scarborough and Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Silentblast also develops mobile web site design and development and mobile applications for the iPhone and other mobile phone platforms.

Website – www.silentblast.com

Silentblast Blog – www.silentblast.com/blog

Twitter – http://twitter.com/silentblast

Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Web Design and Development

Hello readers and welcome back to the Silentblast Blog. Interesting news article I read some days ago about a couple from the US, Mellisa and Jackson Brandts were hiking in Banff Alberta and decided to take a photo of themselves for keepsakes. They had set up their camera to auto-shoot some pictures when they were noticing this little squirrel scurrying all around them checking them and the camera out. When their camera snapped a shot of them sitting down the squirrel at that moment decided to stand up and look directly into the camera.

It didn’t take long for the power of the internet and of course some encouragement from friends to submit their photo to National Geographic and then CNN also did a news story on the couple and their camera adventure with the squirrel. From that moment, the squirrel, now more affectionately known as “Crasher Squirrel� has taken the internet somewhat by storm.

The picture of Crasher Squirrel seems to be popping up everywhere; including Silentblast. Here we have a photo of him popping up in front of a billboard with the Silentblast logo.

To read the original “Crasher Squirrel� news article you can find it here; “Web Goes Nuts for Crasher Squirrel�

There is also a website where they have the Top Ten Crasher Squirrel Pics

To modify your own pictures to include the Crasher Squirrel visit The Squirrelizer

Have some fun with it; bring Crasher Squirrel into some of your family photos, wedding pictures and your travels.

Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Web Design and Development

Canadian owned and operated, Silentblast is a professional web design and development company in Toronto serving small and mid-sized companies in the GTA, Brampton, Vaughan, North York, Markham, Mississauga, Oakville, Richmond Hill, Scarborough and Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Silentblast also develops mobile web site design and development and mobile applications for the iPhone and other mobile phone platforms.

Website – www.silentblast.com

Silentblast Blog – www.silentblast.com/blog

Twitter – http://twitter.com/silentblast

Silentblast is pleased to announce the deployment of ASISCanada.org ASISCanada.org is the future gateway for Canadian ASIS International members and visitors to visit in order to learn more about the Canadian ASIS International Chapters as well as ASIS International membership and certifications. Silentblast was chosen to web design and develop a Teaser/Micro site to bring awareness of this new website while it is still in the planning and development stages.

The site can be currently viewed at www.asiscanada.org

Current Site Features

• CCS/XHTML
• Custom Web Design
• Search Engine Optimization
• Web Hosting
• Web Standards Compliant

Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Web Design and Development

Canadian owned and operated, Silentblast is a professional web design and development company in Toronto serving small and mid-sized companies in the GTA, Brampton, Vaughan, North York, Markham, Mississauga, Oakville, Richmond Hill, Scarborough and Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Silentblast also develops mobile web site design and development and mobile applications for the iPhone and other mobile phone platforms.

Website – www.silentblast.com

Silentblast Blog – www.silentblast.com/blog

Twitter – http://twitter.com/silentblast

Hello readers and welcome to the Silentblast Blog. One of the questions I get asked from time to time is whether blogging is for the person, or the right thing to do as part of a business’s web development, content management system or web design.

Well there are some easy and difficult answers coupled with some easy and difficult choices. From a web development perspective implementing a blog as part of a strategy to increase web traffic and awareness should be one of the features you should consider.

Blogging for business is more or less a do it yourself public relations strategy. Every company or organization considering some form of public relations strategy should consider a blog. It is especially something to consider if your company cannot afford to implement specific content management modules that are often highly customized, but come at a greater cost than a blog.

Blogging can help your company in the following areas:

• promote your company and services to a wider audience
• place the human factor to your business
• help establish your company services, products and brand
• reaching out to potential customers or current customers
• increase your visibility on the search engines
• over time, increase your profit potential
  

As a company and the individuals charged with the responsibility of the blogging strategy and providing content to the blog you have to be committed to the blog and its ongoing development in order for it to be successful. In other words, if you implement a blog as part of your business strategy you have to treat it as part of your business processes. You have to set a pace or schedule for regular development; meaning articles added to the blog. In doing so, you have to thus maintain the blog by continually providing information.

I will be discussing more about blogging for business in articles in the future as part of the strategy of Silentblast in not only promoting the web design and content management systems we can implement for business; but also to assist our clients in developing their web development strategies.

Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Web Design and Development

Canadian owned and operated, Silentblast is a professional web design and development company in Toronto serving small and mid-sized companies in the GTA, Brampton, Vaughan, North York, Markham, Mississauga, Oakville, Richmond Hill, Scarborough and Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Silentblast also develops mobile web site design and development and mobile applications for the iPhone and other mobile phone platforms.

Website – www.silentblast.com

Silentblast Blog – www.silentblast.com/blog

Twitter – http://twitter.com/silentblast

Hello readers and welcome back to the Silentblast Blog. Today I am going to discuss your continual on-site web development for those that want simple steps to increasing their website content either through developing their own form of content with what they may already have in place on their website or with website development verticals that are relatively inexpensive yet can present significant long term ROI.

Content Management System

Today content managements systems are not as complex for the end user as they may have been in the past. The vast majority of content management systems are developed in a WYSIWYG input format. If your website is currently just static pages and beginning to look stale in terms of its time-line freshness; it might be time to greatly consider a Content Management System CMS to breathe new life into your website. Try something simple like adding a News and Events CMS module for example where you can add timely content as it happens in your company.

Graphics

Even art galleries move their pictures around and bring out different collections to freshen up their art display. Your website should be no different. Using royalty free graphics is a good idea to avoid copyright issues. Use graphics that speak to the topic and to the content if you are associating a graphic with a particular area. Build up a stable of graphics that you can do at least a switch out of graphics every 6 months to a year. Remember that your graphic selection can have an impact on your overall web design so it would probably be advisable to discuss this with your website development consultant.

Streaming Video

Did you know that YouTube is currently the 2^nd most popular search engine on the internet behind Google. Video is huge in today’s world. Case in point; everyone wants to know what companies are going to have those precious 30 second spots and what the message is going to be for the NFL Super Bowl games. A well planned, thought out, professionally done video can be greatly beneficial to your audience. But also, implementing a content management system module that handles video streaming can be done by you as well. The entrepreneurial video is highly popular; especially on YouTube where literally hundreds of thousands of people are just grabbing their video cameras or web-cams and making video.

Blogs

Firstly; the search engines love blogs. If you can write about a topic that speaks about your company, products and services; you can and should have a blog. Blogs are becoming very sophisticated. In fact some blogs are the primary website presence for a lot of people. You can add text, graphics, videos, links for example into a blog. It can be part of your website development and search engine optimization SEO strategy.

That is it for the time being Silentblast Blog readers. I will be back soon with more blog articles on how you can further enhance your website development process.

Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Web Design and Development

Canadian owned and operated, Silentblast is a professional web design and development company in Toronto serving small and mid-sized companies in the GTA, Brampton, Vaughan, North York, Markham, Mississauga, Oakville, Richmond Hill, Scarborough and Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Silentblast also develops mobile web site design and development and mobile applications for the iPhone and other mobile phone platforms.

Website – www.silentblast.com

Silentblast Blog – www.silentblast.com/blog

Twitter – http://twitter.com/silentblast