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

Hello Silentblast Blog readers. I get asked this question a few times whenever I get into discussions about blogs. Do I allow comments or not allow comments? I usually follow-up their question with further questions to get a greater sense of what they are trying to achieve with their blog, what is the focus or theme of the blog, do they have time to respond to comments and maintain the blog beyond just placing articles?

Blogs I think are great for many reasons. They have allowed the common person to express an opinion or view on literally anything and publish it at very little cost for the world to see. With expressing an opinion I still believe one has to take responsibility mind you but even still there are very few boundaries that have not been transcended by blogs.

I manage a couple of blogs actually. I manage this one and one that is part of a professional association where there is editorial, opinion, notification of events and so forth. With the Silentblast Blog there was a decision made to allow comments from people who visit the site and on the other blog I manage a decision was made to not allow comments.

While in essence the media; blogs, are the same. The message or theme is different. If your posts are written as such that invite commentary I think to allow comments can be positive. Ultimately you will pick and choose which comments to allow or disallow. No different really than mainstream media that allows comments to news.

If your blog is more informational in such things as specific products, services, or educational seminar details or courses, then allowing commentary is in my opinion a coin toss. Some have argued and commented on other blogs that a blog is just another website if comments are not allowed. But to me that is like saying a book is not a book unless it has a cover. Yes not quite complete by the definition of what we all know a book to be but still arguably a book. I would counter that a blog is absolutely on the web, and absolutely a site by virtue of a specific URL; so in essence a website. How that website interacts with its audience should be up to the discretion of the owners.

Some argue that by allowing comments it becomes a measuring stick to the popularity of your blog. Actually I would tend to favor the web statistics on the back end as the measuring stick. Others argue that if you don’t allow comments you are doing nothing more than preaching to the masses. My opinion on that is if you speak to something and you can captivate a live audience or a virtual one, it is in essence preaching.

Ultimately the final decision is up to the individuals or organizations that have incorporated a blog in either their web development or business strategies.  For Silentblast the strategy is primarily providing content that speaks to the many different facets of business and how the internet and having a web site can be more than just slapping up your virtual billboard on the net. Blogs can help your website presence with search engine optimization by providing relevant links and content to your customers and potential customers.

But a blog is also a medium of communication and if you use it for nothing other than virtual link farm than I believe the essence of blogs and blogging go completely out the window. I think you have to as a blog owner, stand in your audiences shoes at times and really think that despite the positive strategies and techniques for search engine rankings there can be down sides. I would personally not open a newspaper if for example every 10th word or so were highlighted in bright yellow or pink.  That would be annoying as… well you can add whatever word you feel is best. You probably wouldn’t bother reading papers ever again suffice to say. Personally and in my opinion the same applies to a blog.

Admittedly I do “some� back-linking into the main Silentblast website… look… I just did it. I use it sparingly. SEO purists would comment I don’t do enough. I won’t argue with that. I know from an SEO perspective I don’t provide maximum potential back-linking but I also believe a blog is a strategy that goes beyond pure search engine optimization.

Ultimately the decision for strategies on blogs and in particular to allow comments or not allow comments is up to the persons or the businesses operating a blog. I believe in blogs for business especially because of one thing and actually the most important thing in business.

Communicating with your customers.

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. For this article I am going to mix it up a bit and since having read some articles on the Google Chrome OS; I thought that throwing my thoughts out there on the topic will bring something a little different to the blog.

Firstly, let’s look at some of the things Google does that are core to business and I am discussing this from a business perspective and not from a personal use point of view.

Internet Searching – by far the leader of the pack. Google is without a doubt the Alpha male in the wolf pack of internet searching engines out there. The word “searching” when referenced often in conversations is pretty much being replaced in many ways with the word, “Google.” The lines and differences between the word “searching” as it applies to internet and “Google” are fused more together than probably most people realize.

Gmail – A very popular webmail based application; as long as you are not using it for business in my opinion. Stick with your company branded email address for business. G-Mail being used for business just gives off that sense of you can’t afford to have your own business domain name and an email plan. G-Mail is perfect actually as a secondary dumping site for business email. I forward business email to it merely as a means of mass storage.

Google Docs – Google’s efforts of creating a “cloud computing” environment where the masses will do their documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online has come with mixed results. I believe that it is not widely adopted primarily on the basis that the features of installed software such as Microsoft Office or the open source equivalent Open Office are not available in Google Docs.

So if you look at all the above, Internet Searching which can be part of just being connected to the Internet as a whole, Gmail, and Google Docs; you have the three primary tasks associated with computers and business. So what does this have to with Google developing an OS? A lot actually. The OS is what will allow your computer to function and connect devices and ultimately perform the aforementioned.

I don’t think Google is going to create an OS like we know an OS to be; whether it be a Windows OS, Apples OS, or Linux and its many sub-derivatives. I believe that the OS will be more or less a program much like their Picasa graphic program that fuses and merges Google’s core utilities or services they have. I think more or less it will be a beefed up version of their browser Chrome.

From an impact perspective on Google Chrome OS taking over as the OS of choice I would be cautious of betting on that. Despite the efforts of Apple with their computers and their OS alternative and even free installations of Linux; the company and OS we all love to hate, yet still gravitate to is Microsoft and the Windows OS.

Curiosity seekers will of course try it. If by chance it is a full blown OS that essentially replaces the current OS you may have I don’t see business adopting readily. I would guess even personal users would be cautious of making such a move as well.

Where I see Google Chrome OS possibly having an in-roads is in the Netbooks market area. But Microsoft is pretty entrenched so far in this market in providing the OS and it will certainly be an uphill battle for Google to remove Microsoft as the current leader.

But there is certainly interesting times ahead for Google and of course computer users; no matter which OS you’re currently using.

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 of the Silentblast blog and welcome back to the final part on the basics of Business Continuity Planning. I will be rounding out the remainder of the Business Continuity Planning Cycle but truly if some of you have done your homework and I hope you have; you will have Google’d some of the information I provided and it leads to valuable resources out there on the Internet.

Business Continuity Planning Cycle Continued…

Testing and Acceptance – You can have all the plans and best intentions in place or even in your mind but if you don’t try them in some measure as a test to you and your staff and business processes; the plan is not worth the paper it’s written on. In my professional line of work as a Risk Manager I often encounter businesses that have gone through great efforts and money to produce literally volumes of plans and procedures; yet have not tried testing of the plan in any way. How are you going to know truly if the plan you formulated is going to work? You won’t until it’s too late and that is usually when some form of crisis or disaster has struck.

I would argue that aside from the thought of having some form of business continuity plan in place; that the Testing and Acceptance of the plan is equally important. So don’t just create a plan and cross your fingers hoping it will work; chances are it won’t because the testing and acceptance phase of Business Continuity Planning will show very clearly to you and your employees what works and what doesn’t work.

Acceptance -We all get that memo right… you know the one; from some office, someone you may have never met, all of sudden telling you, “there are changes.” Chances are, after reading it; you roll your eyes and go, “whatever,” and file it. Change and acceptance to change is hard for some to embrace; especially when you may be implementing something like a Business Continuity Plan. Most employees or people will understand the meanings of the words but not the concept or importance of Business Continuity as you or a company would see it. So getting employees and staff to “buy in” to the concepts and importance of business continuity is very important. Why? Because they will be the ones that will be charged most often in performing the tasks and functions necessary in order to get your business processes back up and running.

Depending on the nature of your business will determine how often you test the plan. Most businesses that have some form of business continuity plan usually do testing of some kind on given business processes anywhere between 6 months to annually.

Maintenance - The maintenance of the business continuity plan depending on the domains associated with your company business continuity plan will determine to a degree your Maintenance phase. In brief the Maintenance process is the continual updating of the Business Continuity Plan as your company changes.

These can be broken down in some examples:

-          Company employees change or are promoted to higher positions of responsibilities

-          Changes with clients and contract details

-          Changes in suppliers that form part of your business processes

-          Department changes, additions, product/services additions

-          Company investments or mission statements

Some other factors to consider in your Maintenance phase of Business Continuity are:

-          Are all your work processes for absolutely critical business functions documented

-          Has there been any changes in those functions

-          Is there checklists specific to functions and staff for them to follow

-          Is the documentation and recovery tasks supporting the recovery and allowing staff to meet the goals of the business continuity plan

Now this may all seem like a lot of work to do. It is actually; but so is trying to recover from a crisis or disaster from scratch with no plan to help guide you. The idea however is to keep it simple and manageable your Business Continuity Plan and not have it morph into binders upon binders of information and processes that would take just as long to read as it did to create. Stick with basic things like checklists and step by step instructions. It is easier to manage for the people formulating the BCP and easier for the people to implement the BCP should a disaster or crisis strike.

Now to associate BCP with Silentblast and their services is fairly straight forward and easy to explain. If your business is primarily online; Silentblast’s hosting services are perfect for business. Information that is critical to your continued business success is stored off your physical business address. That information is mirrored and backed up automatically on a daily basis. There are lots of hosting companies on the internet, some are really cheap and it may be enticing from a cost perspective to be attracted to that but be wary. What is their Business Continuity Plan? If they don’t know what it is; move to someone else.

The same can be applied to email. With Silentblasts hosting services, you get email and while it can be downloaded to your computer and set up in an email program like Outlook; you can configure your emails to be forwarded to several email addresses, such as a Google Mail account, or retained directly on the server. In the event your computer goes down; you can literally use any computer to get on the internet, and still be in touch with your clients and suppliers.

Well I hope you have drawn useful information from these series of articles on Business Continuity. If your thinking about it; that’s a good thing. If you are considering on doing it, even better. If you commence the process; that’s great.

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. It has been a while since I last wrote in the blog and for those keeping an eye on the blog I apologize for the length of time away. My work and continuing education studies have taken the majority of my time and to a degree I had to put the blog on the side for a bit.

But for those of you who have been reading through my previous blog articles and in fact I wrote an article about blogs in general and how they can impact your business; rest assure it is fine to step away for a bit. Unless your book of business is journalism or a specific requirement to have a daily entry into a business type blog it should be fine to step away for a while and return. How else would you end up going on a vacation? Yes you could blog even while away from the office and on vacation; but you are on vacation.

So; the last I wrote about business continuity I spoke in simple terms of data back-up as an important part of business continuity. Just to reinforce the thought; sit back and look at your computer for a few minutes and think about all the data you have on it; emails, photos, songs, work data; whatever you have that if you lost, it would be missed. For some the scale of importance pertaining to each data type they may have on their computer is different.

But hopefully you are thinking more about backing up data you have currently and how important it truly can be. For business; it can mean being in business one day and virtually not in business the next.

So for today I am going write about some of the different aspects of the business continuity cycle. There are actually variations of it based on a specific domain be it; logistics or IT as an example, but this is more the grassroots version that literally can be used across any domain or business type. I won’t write about them all in this blog post. I will continue the remainder of them in the next post.

Analysis

In a nutshell; this is where you decide across your business model what is crucial and non-crucial. In truth all parts of your business is crucial. But to keep it really simple; it’s the choices you have to make on if a disaster happened what you would truly need to get back up and running again as soon as possible.

Solution Design

This phase essentially tables the most cost effective solutions based upon your analysis of the requirements of your business in order to get up and running again. I like to refer to this phase as the difference between requiring a new computer and a coffee maker. I am over-simplifying it in many ways, but in the end it’s about making hard choices.

Implementation

This is the phase where you simply enact the Solution Design phase. If for example you decided that will you will have a computer or several computers at a second location that stores your crucial data; it means getting those computers or services and commencing the controls and processes to actively move or transfer that data in a timely manner and on a regular basis.

Now to those reading; some of you may be thinking there is not a lot of substance to this article. I would even argue yes to a point. But the purpose of this article I am trying to achieve is to get you thinking about business continuity in some shape or form. Each business is different from each other. The requirements for business continuity changes in proportion to the business type, size of the business, location or multiple locations and a myriad of other factors. It would be impossible for me to write a boiler plate “do it all” article on business continuity.

However if you think about your business and begin to formulate scenarios in your head such as floods, fire, earthquakes, which are natural disasters and then consider other things like power outages, data loss and even theft.  Your eyes should begin to open wider that if you never considered those types of disasters affecting your business it might be prudent to begin thinking about them and what you would do in the “event of.”

Hopefully everyone is having a great summer and I will be back shortly for the remainder of the Business Continuity article to finish off the remainder of the business continuity cycle.

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

Hello readers and welcome back to the Silentblast blog. Today I am going to mix it up a little bit from the previous posts I have done which focused on you as a business communicating with your clients, customers and potential customers. Today and possibly the next few posts I am going to talk about the advent of some form of crisis or disaster that has affected your line of communications and more importantly previous lines of communications.  Again my focus is more so the current client base of Silentblast, the small business sector and even right down to the personal level.

Firstly what exactly is Business Continuity Planning or BCP? Well, in laymen’s terms it is the ability and capability of your business to recover and continue operations after a critical component/s of it has been either been disrupted, damaged, severed or destroyed. There are many levels regarding BCP, from the workforce, IT, product and service deliverability, supply chain, to other physical concerns such as your business locations, offices and warehouses.

Disruption of a business can take many forms from a BCP perspective as I described above but also to illustrate and maybe as a food for thought; have you ever considered your action plan in the event of a major data failure or disruption? A lot of people and for that matter small business don’t factor in the probability of failure of their data. There is a common misunderstanding that every time you turn on your computer, it will work like a charm. Despite mass media stories about various virus threats that have plagued both personal and business users there are still those who take the risk of “it can never happen to me.”

Even those who do take precautions from an anti-virus standpoint still have issues of threats from spyware and malware and to cap it off; backing up data. The backing up of data has to be one of the least practiced small business responsibilities that are not done. If you believe that partitioning your hard drive into two virtual drives and copying files from one to another is doing the trick someone has either completely misinformed you. It is still the same drive. If the drive goes; the data goes, no matter how many times you have partitioned it.

So what should you do really? Well, to keep it relatively simple let’s just look at a single computer. Most computers today come with a minimum of a CD burner but more than likely a DVD burner. A CD will hold roughly 700mb of information and a DVD will hold either 4.7G as a single layer or roughly 9G as a duel layer. The later takes a special DVD burner that is slowly becoming standard; but the blank media is still more expensive for DVD duel layer.

If you are installing a DVD burner as an example into a machine you most likely will be given some form of SE Edition. Essentially a dummied down version of a full blown media suite to copy or make photo CD’s, copy files for back up by an internal “drag and drop” utility of some kind and other media related sub-utilities.

Personally I would look into more specific software for backing-up data. One that comes to mind is Norton Ghost 14.0. I have made the name into a link so you can read on it from their website and see if it is for you.

In addition I would also highly recommend a backup drive (external). There are so many on the market right now and the cost are really reasonable. I have one that is 1 Terrabyte is size and I throw everything on it just to keep my internal computer hard drive as empty as possible. What I really want to preserve long time I just burn to DVD (usually two copies) and file in a CD wallet.

How often you do backups is entirely up to you. I would advise that if your adding a significant amount of data within a day that is critical; then probably daily you should be backing up. Minimum though should be at least every week. So I would do it something like the Friday; before closing the down the office computers for the weekend if your business is not operating on weekends.

So this ends Part 1 and I will write more in other parts regarding Business Continuity Planning. But as a final thought remember that one of the aspects of your business, being a website when hosted by a reliable service provider will perform daily backups as the norm. All of Silentblast’s current customer base are hosted on servers that are backed up on a regular and continual basis.

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. This entry is going to be somewhat shorter than my normal postings of late. It is more focused actually on a specific question I was asked by an associate of mine. Will blogging affect a websites search engine rankings?

Well in my research across various websites, other blogs and in fact performing a Google search on the topic itself the shortest answer is yes a blog can assist your business for example in ranking in the search engines. The caveat on the matter and I am no particular expert on search engine optimization but know enough that I can say if you provide reasonably significant and relevant content that pertains to the overall context of your website with content and specifically key wording, increasing your ranking status is very possible.

For example, if your blog is part of an actual overall web site strategy it is the avenue by which you can relate as I do for Silentblast product and services that are readily available. This is done by providing linking within the site to other web pages that should have content that is also relevant. However if I was to write about only topics pertaining to racecar driving for example there is very little if nothing relevant to Silentblast in that context.

The goal of course is to provide not only information that works for your website or blog in moving up the search engine ranks but also to provide information that a person can use. Consider also that each blog entry specifically is the equivalent of you adding another page to your website. If you have built your own website and constructed pages or had a web development company such as Silentblast build a website for you; each page takes time and obviously money. A blog once established within your website is something that you will be responsible to maintain. The continued cost more or less is you committing time to contribute to your blog.

A website overall is still obviously the way to highlight key specific aspects or facets of your company or organization in a more static approach unless you have something like CMS (Content Management Systems) in place that change specific aspects of a given web page or pages. A blog and its purpose in my opinion is to provide continual content from a personalized approach that complements an overall web presence.

As you provide blog entries over time they archive. So imagine for a moment if you had a business you could write something about at least once a week. Overall that is 52 articles; 52 pages of relevant content and key words with links that point within your website in a given year. Again the more you contribute the more content you are providing and it should not be hard because in reality you should have an opinion or viewpoint on your business and be knowledgeable of it. So as you are providing content the search engines are indexing not only your website but also your blog. If you are not doing a lot of changes with your core website doing something with a blog will be of benefit.

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

Welcome readers to the Silentblast Blog. Antonio and I hope you have been reading through these blog entries and implementing some of the suggestions into your business strategy in an effort to increase your overall web presence but more importantly leveraging your current business marketing strategy to bring in new customers and most importantly informing your current customer base.

If one thing you notice as a centralized theme as I discussed briefly in my last blog post is the importance of “communication.” Quite frankly despite all the methods and means of today’s technology a lot of businesses still fail somewhat in the communication aspect of their business.

It should be no surprise and in reality I am more or less preaching to the choir when it comes to the majority of the suggestions put forth in this blog. However, if you know it but have done nothing sometimes it is good to hear it again but without the pressure of a heavy handed sales pitch. Further if you notice I have not really pitched Silentblast services. Reading between the lines however, you know as well as I do, discussing things like blogs for example is a product service offering Silentblast can assist you with.

So Email Marketing as a Business Tool. If you look at your current business and all the customers you have; there are in effect continual and residual income streams that can be tapped into. But it is also a way of notifying your customer base of current and future product offerings or services. Case in point; some time ago I signed up to the www.makeitseven.ca website. If you read the news you might know that the CEO of Research in Motion (Blackberry) Jim Balsillie is currently striving to bring an NHL franchise to S/W Ontario.

So I went to the website; signed up using my name and an email address to be kept informed of future news regarding his efforts. Just a few days ago; I received a very well written email from Jim Balsillie outlining his current efforts and also to visit the website again as they now have areas for people to voice their views on the issue. It is estimated that by Friday May 15^th2009, the website had over 120,000 people sign up. So I visited the website; read some commentaries by people, and even bookmarked it in my web browser.

So you may be going; “yeah so what, big deal.” Your absolutely correct; but in the wrong context of what a big deal is. It is a huge deal. As this effort grows in capturing names and email addresses they are in effect growing a potential customer base.

If Jim Balsillie is successful in being able to bring an NHL franchise to S/W Ontario he now has 120,000 names and email addresses and counting to lean on from a marketing perspective to potentially sell tickets, advertising, corporate sponsorships to. He is also the CEO of Research in Motion aka Blackberry. You don’t think he might throw that in the arena once in a while in an email to over 120,000 people.

Another example is I am involved in a professional association and I am responsible for the updating of the website and our mass email/newsletter campaign. In June 2008, my mass email database had roughly 530 members. It now has over 1000; including an increase overall to our membership, substantial increases to our seminars and events, increases in corporate sponsorship and huge increases in terms of visits to our website.

A lot is attributable to a well designed website, continually adding information and content on a regular basis and more importantly direct communication to the membership through a professional email marketing service. Without even really no effort, the website I manage on behalf of the association I am involved in typically captures between 10-30 people a month by them voluntarily signing up for our email/newsletter service. That is without even trying.

Imagine what you can do if you were even able to target email market 10% of the customers you have currently. It might be a small number customer wise but it could represent a huge number potentially to your bottom line depending on your product and service offerings. Both ways, there is potential for something simple as an email and turn it into a viable income stream for your business.

Now, realistically depending on your needs and the size of your customer base an email marketing system will cost money. However, in comparison to other forms of media such as newspaper/periodical ads, TV spots and the like, it is vastly cheaper and its target marketing. You are connecting with customers you already have, or those who voluntarily want to potentially do business with you.

Silentblast is positioned to help you with an email marketing campaign solution. I know, as I had the Association I am involved in not only approve Silentblast to design our website but also the recommendation for email marketing as a tool to communicate with our current, potential and future members. Oh yeah, before I forget, remember my last post where I talked about business potential from family, friends, associates. Family friends and associates are potential customers too, never forget that! The Association I am involved in has not only used Silentblast services initially, but several times; in database development, content management, search engine optimization but also implementing our email/newsletter campaign for our members.

But back to;

Silentblast is partnered in my opinion with the leader of professional email marketing solutions. There are aspects of it that can even be implemented directly into your current website, such as voluntarily signing up for your mass email/newsletter. So seriously consider discussing this business tool with the Silentblast team.

You’re free of course to explore your own options or solutions. Again the centralized theme over the last few blog posts is that communication is important in your business model. Look at all options available to you and if you are interested email us, talk to us… send a smoke signal. There are many keys to business; and communication is a very important key that you do not want to lose or misplace.

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 another entry of the Silentblast blog. So far so good on my end helping Antonio on providing content that goes beyond somewhat the ordinary that would be expected of a web development company. Antonio and I believe that these blog entries not only will provide content for his website that relates to his business model but more importantly provides information that can help customers of Silentblast. Also let’s go on a limb here. If you’re current web development firm is not preaching this stuff as well, maybe it’s time to reconsider who your partnered with when it comes to developing internet strategies to bring your business to the next level; and there is always a next level. Don’t sell yourself short because someone else say’s they or you can’t do it.

But back to the topic at hand, Social Networking for Business.

If you look at your business; you’re social whether you know or realize it. From the moment a customer comes to your door, to the moment they leave; hopefully after purchasing a product or service, there is a cycle of social activity. What’s your storefront look like, how are your staff engaging in customer service, the décor of the interior, questions asked/answered, do you afford an opportunity to continue communications if they left without buying and so forth.

Now I discussed earlier about Blogs and the social aspects of them that could help your business. Building it and just putting it on your website or having it just as your website and doing nothing will bring in minimal to no results. Like your business, you have to work these elements like a blog for example in order to see results. Do nothing… expect nothing. Do something… based on efforts you should see results.

There are a couple of other tools in your business arsenal you can use such as Twitter www.twitter.com or Facebook www.facebook.com

Ok, so you’re maybe rolling your eyes and going “not a chance.” Fine, then you just literally slammed the doors closed on potentially 15 million plus users on Twitter and Facebook has an astounding 200 million users. So now you’re saying, “I get the numbers but realistically my business is located in this given area” (points to map and concentric circle). Fair enough, and in that concentric circle your telling me there is not one potential Facebook or Twitter user? That I doubt. I can walk out my front door and already knowing in fact; there is at least 10 of my closest neighbors on Facebook alone. I haven’t even left the street yet. Throw in work colleagues, friends, family, extend to their friends and family. If your family is like mine, you can probably fill a bus or two. Somewhere, someone on that business bus at some time or another will or probably could use a service or product of yours.

“Yeah I get that, but they are family and friends and they know about my business already.” Really!!! So you crack open your family and friends phone book every time a new product or service becomes available in your business and call them all to tell them about it right? Wait… what’s that sound… (crickets chirping)… yeah I thought so.

Chances are you are not and the next person that tells me “they don’t have time” to do something relatively simple they are basically telling me they don’t have time to develop me into a potential customer let alone develop their business. You must be content then with your bottom line and going about your business dusting the shelves and waiting for the phone to ring or customers to walk in. I apologize then, please continue about your business.

For the rest; who know that getting a customer is hard work and takes time and effort, Social Networking can help you. It won’t be the end all to your business of course, but compared to other media in terms of cost like newspaper ads, TV spots, or advertising in periodicals it is extremely cost effective. Last I checked; both Facebook and Twitter were FREE!!!

If you place your Facebook and Twitter link on your website or blog, put them on your business card and marketing materials and provide even a link to it in your email marketing campaigns; the Social Network sites you maintain will grow gradually and steadily into a stable of customers and potential customers to communicate with on a regular basis.

So if you have been reading these entries in the Silentblast blog for the past few weeks you may be wondering; “what’s my message?” Well the message is actually really simple. Communication. Despite the advent of cellular phones and computers I am still of the belief despite those tools, businesses don’t communicate enough to their current customers or potential customers. If you don’t believe me, ask them the next time you’re speaking with them… in person. I think you will be surprised by the answers they give which are comments you might consider implementing.

So what is this email marketing campaign I mentioned earlier? Oh yeah that! Next blog entry, next time I communicate with you.

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