The Blog Studio

It’s an exciting time to be a geek in Toronto! Social Media Week Toronto is headed your way, and of course The Blog Studio will be right in the thick of things. We’d like to invite all our old friends, new friends and friends we haven’t met yet to join us for a good time on at our offices on February 1, 2010.

Leave your pom poms and megaphone at home! We aren’t hosting a panel, we’re not giving a talk and there definitely won’t be a slideshow. There will be good eats, cold booze and Toronto’s smartest people (that’s you!) having an honest discussion about what is actually going on in social media. We aren’t selling anything, we don’t have an agenda, and social media ‘gurus’ and ‘mavens’ will be stopped at the door.

I’ll be your hostess with the mostess, while we all sit down for a chat about our industry that might end up anywhere. Submit your questions and RSVP beforehand to . I really hope to see you there. There are some more details below, and keep your eye on Social Media Week site to find out what else is going on during Social Media Week: Toronto.

No Cheerleaders Allowed: An Honest Conversation About Social Media

You ever get the feeling that the social media ‘experts’ are only telling half the truth? Do you get the distinct impression that the Big Time social media mavens and gurus are painting a pretty picture because it benefits them directly? We do to.

Join Managing Director of The Blog Studio, Lucia Mancuso, for an intimate, no holds barred discussion about the on the ground state of affairs in the wired world. Submit your questions anonymously beforehand. Then join us February, 1. 2010 at the The Blog Studio space in downtown Toronto for apps, booze and a rollicking discussion about what’s really going on. No punches pulled, no smoke and mirrors and no self-proclaimed experts. Just a diverse group of smart people who engage the social media space talking about their ideas and concerns.

Afterwards we’ll compile a list of the sharpest, wittiest, nastiest and most useful answers to see if we can make sense out of what social media is, and what it might become.

Please RSVP as soon as possible. Space for this event is very limited.

RSVP to

2010 is upon is. We’d like to thank all of our clients, co-workers, friends, freelancers, geeky colleagues, fellow tech workers and everyone else that we’ve met and worked with in 2009. You’ve made the last year absolutely wonderful for us, and we’ve enjoyed every interaction. The great people we talk to everyday are what makes everything worthwhile. We’re extremely proud of the work we’ve done in the past year, and we’ve had some brilliant successes. Thank you, thank you and thank you again.

We’re looking forward to the upcoming year. Thinking about our plans for the future, we realized that there is always room for improvement. We want to share some of the goals, ideas and improvements that we’re going to make happen immediately in the upcoming year. Everything we want to do comes down to one thing: providing you with best web presence to make your business successful.

Put You First
The most important thing we can do is improve our customer service. You, our clients are the sole reason we exist, and we want to treat you even better than we do now. We want to get things done more quickly, do them better and create the best sites that we can. We want you to be happy with us. In order to help things along, we’re expanding our team so there is more of us to go around. Your project always comes first. This is a promise we take seriously, and if something falls between the cracks let us know and we’ll make it right.

No Agency BS
We’re not an agency, and we’ll never be one. What does that mean exactly? We’re a boutique size business with small to large size clients. You won’t get your project passed off to an underling after we win your business, because we don’t have any underlings. We’re a team. We’re proud of every project we’ve done, and take it personally if something isn’t right. We don’t care about running up billable hours, that isn’t how we work. We’ll quote you for your project, and we’ll stick to that quote. Since everyone at The Blog Studio does a little bit of everything, you don’t have to pay for a bunch of unnecessary management costs. There aren’t a bunch of overpaid executives sitting in our office that need to keep the Lear Jet gassed up. We all get our hands dirty, so all the hours you pay for get your project closer to perfection. We’ll never pad your bills, we’ll never give you the runaround, we won’t bill you for vapor work, and we’ll make sure the work is done right. In short, we’ll treat your business the way we like people to treat our business.

Adding New Services
After we finish a site, many of our you have asked us for help getting the word out, creating content strategies, advice on copywriting and how to get a PR program started. We’ve got you’ve covered in 2010. We’re happy to say we’ve expanded our menu of offerings in these areas, and we’ve brought in some new staff with loads of experience in these areas. So whether you want to learn about how Twitter can help your business, what taglines work the best for your site or how to get your business featured in a big name magazine, we can help you build a program to expand your brand.

Offering More Advice
We’re very proud of our blog, and the most popular posts are the ones where we share advice on how to get things done. In 2010 we plan to post more how-to’s, more software reviews, and more of the methods we use to get things done. We love to share our ideas and working methods with you, so you can make your business better. The ongoing conversation in our comments section teaches us a lot about what you want to know more about. From WordPress to Google Wave, we’ll try our best to cover it all. If there’s something you’d like to hear more about, please drop us a line and let us know. We’ll also be offering more advice and continuing to answer your questions on Twitter @TheBlogStudio, so stop by and say ‘Hello’ anytime.

Keeping Up With the Joneses
Technology wise, things are moving faster than ever. We keep up with the newest of the new, so you don’t have to. In the coming year we plan to work even harder to ensure that every site we build is compatible with the new best of breed browsers like Google Chrome. Our improved cross browser support and testing will make certain you don’t miss a single slice of your online audience. We’ll be extending this testing to all the software, plugins and code that we use. We want every site built by The Blog Studio to work flawlessly in every situation, every time. 

Thanks for making 2009 a great year, and here’s to 2010.

Cheers,

The Blog Studio