Quick W.I.T.S.

Those of you who have followed me on social media for awhile now may recognize the name Denise Alison. She's the owner of Stratigro Business Consulting, and just like me she helps small and medium sized businesses improve their online presence to increase their success. Over the past year, I've shared a few of her articles on my own page, and we've traded comments back and forth on each others' content quite a bit. Denise recently reached out to me about a new online course she's offering, on using live video content to grow your business. This is a subject I'm very interested in - I've been thinking a lot about different ways to expand a company's social media presence. Video content is proven to get a lot more traction than written articles alone, due to its ease of access, and the personal rapport you can develop with your audience by appearing on camera. I've always been a little reticent to pull the trigger on video content myself (I'...

Hello, friends and followers. It's been a long couple of months, I know. Mea culpa! This is just a quick update to let you all know that I am starting up my social media activities again as of today, including more helpful and interesting business articles. I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to resume posting 5 days a week yet, or what my exact schedule is going to be, but I'll figure that out over the next week or so. In the meantime, I hope everyone had an excellent holiday and new year, and please stay tuned for more content very soon.

Hey all, Things have gotten pretty hectic around here the last couple weeks. I have a couple of big projects due soon that I need to focus on, and it's also nearly the end of the year. I was planning to take a week or two off to spend time with the family anyway, but since I have these deadlines that have to be met, I've decided to increase that time off from the blog and posting to get everything done. As such, I'm putting the blog on hiatus until the new year. Have a great winter break, and I'll see you all again with new posts in January. To be clear: I am still working! If you need help with something, if you need web services or you're an existing customer, feel free to reach out to me the same as always. I am just temporarily suspending my social media activities. In all other respects, I am open for business. Thanks for your understanding. Have a great holiday! -- James

Hello, readers. Just a quick note to say I have some personal stuff to take care of this week, so there will be no blog post today. Normal posts will resume next week, and part three of Tools of the Trade will come out on Thursday, November 16th. Nothing's wrong! I'm just busy. Have a great weekend.

Those of you who read my blog regularly will know that my old work laptop is dying, and I've been in the process of ordering a new one over the last month or so (covered previously in my  worst customer service ever  article). Well, good news! The shipping tracker says my new laptop should finally be arriving today or tomorrow. After all the hassle with the last new computer and its defective parts, I'm a little surprised to realize that I'm still excited to have the new machine, even though a part of me is exhausted from it all and just wants it to be over. Getting a new computer is a pretty huge ordeal... for computer nerds, anyway! We don't generally settle for machines that you just open the box and turn on, and you're done. There is a lot of customization that has to be done, optimizing components, installing the software programs we're used to using, getting used to new software already on the machine and deciding whether or not to keep it, etc. I expe...