So I know you’ve heard me talking a lot about our new site design and it’s FINALLY live at Chess Media Group.com thanks to our friends over at Blue Sail Creative.  We were anticipating that it would take us around 30 days to go from design to going live – boy were we off.  I think it took us around 100 days because we kept going back and forth with design and functionality elements.  This new site launch actually means quite a lot for Chess Media Group; essentially it’s our first real site geared towards the enterprise and mid-size market.  If you recall, our previous site looked pretty much like a blog.  So what does this site new mean?  Well, actually it means quite a lot and this change is probably one of the most significant changes to Chess’ brand, but first let’s talk briefly about our vision and where we want things to go.

I should state that our (mine and Connie’s) vision for Chess Media Group has been to create the top social business consultancy that works with organizations on both internal and external collaboration strategies.  This means quite a lot but I’ll leave it at that for now.  We are not interested in growing to a company with thousands of employees.  Instead we want to stay small, nimble, and focus on the toughest challenges in the space.  Think of the show “House,” – that’s who we want to be for social business (but nicer!).  Chess Media Group has been getting a lot of positive attention lately and with the release of some of our whitepapers, research, and upcoming projects; we’re hoping that attention will continue to grow.  Everyone involved with Chess Media Group is absolutely passionate and fascinated by the social business space and that is an absolute key requirement for individuals and organizations that want to partner with or join us.  We are quite literally going to try to evolve business organizations into collaborative enterprises and although it’s a long journey filled with obstacles and naysayers, we are quite confident that we can succeed.  Chess Media Group is dedicated to sharing and collaborating with our peers and thought-leaders in the space in an effort to jointly move the social business space forward.  We run our company the same way a grandmaster plays chess: with precision, strategy, patience, creativity, and a long term holistic view that takes into account every move that is played and how it affects the overall position of the board.  We do this not only because we want to and because our clients deserve it, but because we love to.

So back to the site:

First of all although we have had a strong focus on Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0.  We never actually conveyed that across in our current site so we are now officially (finally) adding SCRM and E2.0 strategy consulting services for enterprise and mid-size clients (and in fact, making this a core focus of what we do).  We still are incorporating social media but as I stated in a post a few weeks ago, what most people are calling “social media” is really an entry point into SCRM.  Making E2.0 and SCRM our focus is really the most significant change on the site in terms of a company direction.  We don’t view simple social media strategies as a scalable or long term approach to social business; we want to take this deeper – much deeper, hence the key focus on SCRM and E2.0.  You will also notice that we have added some advisors to the company including Gil Yehuda and Esteban Kolsky (top E2.0 and SCRM thinkers in their own right, respectively) as well as a roster of accomplished folks who are going to work with us on E2.0 and SCRM strategies (Mitch Lieberman, Dan Keldsen, and Carl Frappaolo) who are all recognized by their peers and the industry as leading practitioners and thought leaders.  We partnered with and have aligned ourselves with the other leading SCRM and E2.0 folks in the industry in order to make sure that we can provide the absolute best possible strategy and service to our clients.  You will also notice that we have partnered with some of the leading vendors in both the SCRM and the E2.0 space and are anticipating that our roster of partnerships will continue to grow.

Here is what the old site looked like:

If you visit the Chess Media Group site now, you will see the new site!

Visually speaking, the site has undergone a complete overhaul and literally looks absolutely nothing like the old site we used to have up.  The new site design has many purposes among which are:

  • to clarify our service offering
  • to better design our service offerings geared towards servicing enterprise and mid-size organizations
  • to be able to showcase and offer resources that Chess Media Group creates, i.e. whitepapers
  • to showcase the numerous events, conferences and news that we are a part of
  • to quite simply, make the site look great!

The journey for us thus far has been very exciting and we appreciate all of the support we have been receiving from the community – it means a lot to us.  We also love all you clients, partners and friends out there for letting. us know that we are doing things right – or not, which helps us to improve what we are doing.  🙂

There is still a long way to go for Chess Media Group (and for the SCRM and E2.0 space) but we’re excited about the challenge and are making strategic moves to plan for the future and win.

What do you think of the new site, our vision and company direction?  Do you have any thoughts, comments or questions?  We’d love to hear from you!

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