What is it about February?
Maybe it’s the ability to breathe after the busyness of the holidays and the inevitable re-evaluation of all things that happens around New Year’s.
That one-one punch, along with the fun and challenges that come with our continued growth seems to hit Smirk New Media in February as well.
In 2012, it was the first major overhaul of our website. In 2014, it was the launch of Social Network Staffing. Today, it’s a brand new version of our website – the best yet. We felt like it was a critical time to do it for a few reasons, a few of which we hear echoed by clients.
First, is this whole February thing again. I don’t think it’s just us who get antsy about flexing our creative muscles, and trying out new ideas. All our pals at the most popular social media platforms have been bowling us over with changes since the new year flipped. Twitter has added native video, group direct messages and continues to improve promoted Tweets. Facebook tweaked the rules for promotional content and is turning social media video on its head. Pinterest is getting deeper metrics. LinkedIn’s muscular content publishing abilities are growing. Instagram is opening up ads to more brands and Snapchat keeps being gross.
With the challenge of keeping up with those changes is one of our most important roles — to provide great social media strategy — the Smirk New Media brains have to be the first line of defense for our clients. We wanted our site to reflect that speed of change and how important relevance is in what we do.
Second, words are important. We do words. We aren’t designers or developers, coders or conductors. We create great online content, on social media and on the web. It was time our own “words on the web” got an overhaul. Each one counts. It counts for us and it definitely counts for other small businesses looking to break through to a larger audience. Words matter to search engine optimization (SEO), words matter for strategy, words matter in content strategy. Honestly, I was getting tired of using the “shoemaker’s children” excuse as to why our site was older than the web sites we’d project managed. No more excuses. Only results.
Finally, here’s to flexibility and personality.
When we talk about “Smirk New Media” to someone new to us, there’s always that puzzled look of “You’re what now?” about the name of the company. When I get a speaking engagement, I often hear about my “unique” or “laid-back” speaking style. We have a Smirk New Media way of doing things. We’re not a huge, full service agency. We’re small, we’re scrappy, we have fun and fight to do the best job we can in space that drives us crazy and makes us happy. We want a site that reflects what we try to explain to everyone about the Smirk name and what we do. A smirk is an intersection of a ridiculousness and seriousness. We know that’s what we do and we’re glad to do with with more and more clients in new and improved ways.