Chadstract's Beat

Well, it’s finally here. My long-awaited website www.chadstract.com is published and operational! It has taken many trials, errors, bad designs and much rethinking over the last seven years or so to get to this point. And I find myself grateful for the experience, because much has changed for small business owners during that time.

For instance, a blog used to be a jargonized way of saying weblog or online journal. Now blogs are a major part of any mass communications platform. Blogs are ubiquitous in their ability to share information and more commonly opine, and it seems that just about everybody has some sort of blog. To remain competitive in a sea of endless voices, I find a blog to be a necessary part of my own platform.

Next, it is important to factor in the growing usage of so-called smart phones. Many people are rapidly shifting their web browsing from home PC-based applications to mobile phones. In fact, I’m writing this blog entry completely on my newly acquired smart phone. The creation and implementation of these intelligent mobile devices raises the bar of what is possible today as compared with seven years ago.

Finally, social media used to lie at the fringes of online business, but is now absolutely integral to successful marketing. When I started trying to establish my online presence, I relied mostly on transient social sites such as MySpace. Now, Facebook has become the social glue that binds us all together. I find myself relying heavily on the outreach capacity of Facebook. But as popular as Facebook is now, I believe that it will fade from the spotlight, eventually giving way to the next trend in social networking. The real substance of the internet has always been true websites.

It is in this spirit that I present to the world, www.chadstract.com with the hopeful adage: “If you build it, they will come…”