On the way into the office today I decided to tune into CBC for some classical music.  Yes, I’m into that from time to time, and no, I don’t currently have satellite radio in the car.  It’s not that I’m against satellite radio by any means, but for the most part I’m always interested in the latest local and national advertising campaigns that can be found every few minutes via local radio.

While it might seem strange, I do this when traveling too.  I’m intrigued how local advertising is shaped and how for the most part, local radio seems to be sticking with “same as it ever was” approach to what some c-levels might call “client acquisition strategies”.

In any case, my trip through the various local radio options was longer than expected as CBC was playing a more rock-alternative format this afternoon.  On the way up the band I stopped on a classic station which happened to be playing The Beatles.  It was a welcomed surprise as I had been singing my heart out to “Yesterday” earlier today and was actually thinking about a Beatles-branded IPOD edition that would include the entire collection.  They have that don’t they?  The next few songs were from the sixties & seventies and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I started reminiscing about my childhood.

On the drive into the office (yes, sometimes weekend work spawns magic) I heard a few ’70′s songs in a row and started thinking about this crazy world we live in.  Born in 1971,  I was a child of the late ’70′s – early ’80′s so I guess that makes me today’s target market consumer.  

It was surreal hearing some of the songs that became the backdrop of my youth while checking into Starbucks via 4Square and consequently ousting the current mayor.  As I sit at my desk typing this blog post in an iPad I can’t help but feel caught somewhere between Sundown and The Jetsons.

Working in technology has afforded me countless opportunities to be part of the early adopters of tech trends.  And while I come from a line of gadget guys (thanks Dad), it’s entertaining to say the least to be alive today working the way we do with the tools we have.  There is a balance, however, which likely lies somewhere between staying in the loop and knowing when and how to un-plug.  

When I figure that balance out I will surely post about it on my blog and let you know via a tweet that you will likely read on your smart phone or device of choice.

It happens to everyone despite our best efforts to avoid it – you get your laundry out of the dryer and a sock has mysteriously vanished.  Now you have one lonely sock that will end up in the garbage, as a dust rag, or as a puppet.

Every day, we can make choices to simplify our lives.

A wise man once decided that he would no longer fight the dryer and vowed to cure his lost sock syndrome.  As a solution, every six months, he rids his sock drawer of all remaining socks and buys 7 new pairs of identical black socks.  Now if a sock does go missing, a replacement sock can easily be found with no stress to the wise man.

What will you do today to simplify your life – personal, social or business?

We have all heard the saying “It takes a village to raise a child” and the same is true for creating websites.  It is rare that a web design company is a one-man (or woman) show.

It is our responsibility to our clients to engage all the right people to make every project a success story.

On any given project, the webAssist team consists of:

• a Sales rep, who finalizes the scope of the project with our client
• a Project Manager, who works with our client to get the necessary website content, and works with the developer to produce and complete the website
• a Designer, who creates the website design
• a Developer(s), who builds the website
• a Quality Assurance & Testing specialist, who dots the I’s and crosses the T’s

Each team member brings their core strengths and skills to the project.  With everyone working on the section of the project at which they excel, the client has the best experience as possible and we produce our best work.

Contact us today to get our team working for you.

When discussing your project with your website team, take into consideration the following tips for productive communication.

• Expand on your dislikes:  At times, it is easier to articulate what you “don’t” like.  Try to expand that thought with why you don’t like it or what you do like, instead.

• Remember the positives:  Expand on and explain what you do like.

• Communicate any new information:  If something is your business process has changed since the first meeting, tell your project manager.  It may affect how the website works more than you think.

• Be honest:  If something isn’t working, tell your project manager about your concerns.  They can’t do anything differently if you don’t tell them, and you won’t hurt their feelings.

Your website team wants every project to be a success story.  Use these tips to help reduce any stress related to communication breakdowns.

Interested in working with webAssist.ca?  Click here to contact us.

As of yesterday, August 23, 2010, Facebook’s Pages (pages for businesses or products) have a new, thinner format.

Up till now they’ve been sized to 720 pixels wide, but starting yesterday they’ve begun to reduce the size. They announced this change almost a year ago, and they’re now slowly implementing this new width so that people can catch up and limit their tab sizes. This mostly applies to custom landing tabs. Other tabs on the Page will not be affected as much, but due to the fully customizable feature of landing tabs, they will have to be fixed.

So now is the time to fix your Facebook landing page. If you don’t have one, or want to get more info, ask me.

At webAssist we feel very passionate about branding.  Over the past year or so we have gone through a transition to incorporate our domain name into our corporate identity.  Luckily it wasn’t too much of a leap; webAssist Inc. to webAssist.ca.   A revision to our logo had been on the agenda for quite some time and ironically enough it took me getting out of the office for a week to stand up in a fiend’s wedding (in the Dominican Republic no less) for the wheels to finally get in motion.  The adage or cliché is very true for me and all entrepreneurial spirits – you need balance your time and focus between “in” the business (day to day stuff with a minutia potential) and “on” the business (strategic, blue sky, anything is possible) initiatives.

I’ve been interested in sonic icons for a long time.  These are the small sound bytes that are attached to a company identity and often used in various mediums from radio and television to telephone IVR systems.  Think Intel, Rogers, McDonald’s etc.

Through Trish Basanyi, one of our voiceover talents, we hooked up with a sound looping guy and set out to create a “webAssist” music bed that is punctuated by a sonic icon.  As the project came together we were all very excited to pontificate all of the places where we could extend our brand identity.  In addition to podcasts, radio, and client demos and presentations, I started thinking about the potential for IVR (or the automated attendant) as we have all come to know it.

We continued down that road, had everything expertly voiced by Trish, and spent quite a bit of time mixing editing everything together until it was perfect.  Working with our Hosted PBX supplier, we had all of the tracks uploaded and tested and were all set.

I have yet to flick the switch.

As we sat there, launch pad loaded and anxious spectators waiting in anticipation (OK, that’s a bit of a stretch), it occurred to me that why on earth would we want to subject our clients to our brand through the introduction of an unnecessary barrier?  Brand is the collective sum of many parts including ID, culture, staff empowerment, and how you make clients feel (to name a few).  Every day you help to play an active role in defining your brand by your actions.

As a company we strive to empower everyone in the organization to evoke the feeling of satisfaction in our clients.  In short, we just pick-up the call whenever possible as opposed to sending the caller through our fancy system with the great sonic icon.

In retrospect this seems extremely clear and simple, but it’s easy to miss if you’re spending the greater balance of your time “in” and not “on” your business.  Hmmm. Maybe it’s time for another trip?

More information

If you’re looking for an easy read on the subject, check out Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com – I highly recommend it as it touches on so many aspects of enhancing the client experience.

If you want to hear our sonic icon, please drop by our offices as we sometimes sneak it into the background music in our creative space.  Hit me up on twitter @gregortbach if you’re in the area and be sure to check-in with foursquare for a tip.

If you’ve ever been on Twitter (and maybe if you haven’t), you will probably have seen the dreaded ‘Fail Whale’. What it is, is a screen that comes up, like a ‘404 Page Not Found’ page, that tells you that Twitter is over capacity. That is, there were too many people trying to Tweet at the same time. This isn’t an everyday occurrence, except during the World Cup this summer as the world wanted to get their voice heard during the games, but it does happen occasionally.

Last week, Posterous.com, a social network to post images, text, and other content, had their servers go down on multiple days due to “Denial of Service (DoS) attacks”. This made it so that no user could post anything onto the web service. It took about 6 days, off and on, for them to move to a new data center and restore the website. Posterous successfully used other social media avenues to keep their users up to date on the fixes, but the outage did still happen.

The reason for these stories (and there are probably more for most social networks), is to show that relying on one social network for your business’s online marketing is never a good idea. The chance of an network outage happening during a major campaign is a possibility, the same as the chance for a power outage spoiling commercials during a NBA game. Diversifying your campaign over multiple social networks not only strengthens your brand and plans ahead for the unknown, but more importantly gives you the chance to touch more people. Its the ‘never leave your eggs in one basket’ scenario, and for business on the web you have to have a plan.

Have you ever tried to describe your house or apartment to someone over the phone?  Chances are, when they end up seeing your house or apartment for the first time, they’ll say “This isn’t what I was picturing” because they have pictured something completely different than what you have described.   The same is true for website designs.

When going into a meeting regarding your website, especially during the design planning stages, it is extremely helpful to have a list of reference sites that you find visually appealing.  These reference sites provide valuable information to the Project Manager and the Designer, for what kind of look and feel you want for your website:

• Layout
• Style
• Colours
• Special features

Take some time to visit other company’s websites, ranging  from those in the same field as you, same city as you, or well-known household names.  Write down the website address, as well as what you like about the site.  By doing some research on your own, you are able to illustrate what you like and want to include on your website.

Taking inspiration from others, we take that information and sketch out where the important elements (logo, contact us/call to action, images, etc.) will land on the page.  This sketch evolves during the design process from sketch to website design.

Click here to view examples of our website designs.

Monitoring your brand is an important part of any social media plan. Watching what people say about your company leads to better customer service, starting new conversations and evolving into a better brand.
Gatorade and its parent company Pepsico have figured out that listening to what people say over social networks is of great importance.

Gatorade has a ‘Mission Control’ for monitoring social networks, which consists of a room with 6 big monitors that show constant updates of keywords and visualizations related to the brand. It has up to 5 people at once monitoring what’s being talked about, and acting upon it. Recently, while monitoring a commercial campaign involving a rap song, they saw that the song was being heavily discussed. Within 24 hours, they had the rap artist release a full version of the song and gave it away to Gatorade followers on Facebook and Twitter. They saw a trend that was activated by their followers and jumped on it, creating something unique and fun that strengthens their brand.

While Gatorade is at the top end of the monitoring scale, Pepsico’s Global Director of Digital and Social Media, Bonin Bough, knows that not every company can match the resources of Gatorade’s team, and that you can only do as much as your team can allow:

“If you don’t have the means to have a person on Twitter 24/7, then don’t do it that way….Have [something like] Follow Fridays were you spend two hours talking to the community if that’s all you have to work with.  There really are no set rules.”

Using social media encourages conversations between your company and your customers, and knowing what people are saying can make or break the break you’ve worked hard to create.

It can be overwhelming to come up with content for your website.  Where to start?  You have a million and one ideas running through your head.  One suggestion to make coming up with and organizing your content is to use your site map as a framework.

Consider it this way: what happens when you go to the grocery store without a shopping list?  Chances are you…

• can’t remember what your need
• come home with items that you didn’t need
• have to go back the next day to buy missed items

Think of your site map as your grocery list for your website content.  Your site map helps you visually break down the entire website into more manageable sections and pages.  You can then take your time and focus on one section at a time.  This strategy will help you write clearly and concisely about your business.  This also provides you an opportunity to take an inventory of what you are telling your customers about your business: add new information, edit existing information and remove irrelevant or unnecessary content.

Not sure where to start, contact us today.