At Ignite Social Media, Kevin will work on our partnerships with key accounts, as well as our partnerships with third-party firms to evaluate the best platforms and services for our clients and the best way to implement those solutions.

Needless to say I’m pretty excited about the change. It’s not only a move across the country, but an opportunity to work with a team that is doing some amazing stuff around social media for major brand (Intel, Microsoft, Nature Made) marketing initiatives. More to come later.

As for this blog, my new job will shape my direction here. I hope to start contributing to the social media blog over at Ignite, and will mirror some of those posts here. I also plan to significantly pick up the pace and post at least a few times a week. A name like “Social Mallard” is just too odd to let go unused after all.

So the “Services” and “Clients” pages here will go dormant as I focus on transforming this back to a personal view on things that inspire and impress me in social media marketing. Should be a fun ride.

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What better way to start off a new blog, for my new consulting effort, than to talk about the things that inspire me? In this case, companies that embody the attitude, model, and style I’d love to emulate – either via Social Mallard or some other effort down the road.

What do I view as inspiration? As the title says – small companies making beautiful things. Code, icons, videos, sites, books, whatever. They are companies who believe that staying small and keeping things simple have their own virtue, and delight in creating things that have style, beauty, and personality all their own.

Companies like Panic, Common Craft, Balsamiq, and Iconfactory. Panic (“Shocking Good Mac Software”) has my heart thanks to Coda and Transmit, two OSX applications that are not only superbly useful but, especially with Coda, a marvel of simplicity overlaying powerful utility. Common Craft has a unique backstory and awesome niche, producing videos that are the very definition of fun, light, beautiful, yet powerful. Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni, founder of Balsamiq, is trying to prove he can make it as a “micro-ISV” and has built an addictingly useful mockup tool that makes it hard to believe you’re doing work while you’re using it. Iconfactory, a small ISV in North Carolina, creates wonderful icons, dabbles in swag, and creates some great OSX applications including the most visually appealing (IMO) desktop OSX Twitter client in Twitteriffic.

Can Social Mallard go down that path? Well, this is a consulting business which by definition sells services and time rather than tangible products like those on my list, so by strict definition, no. But they are the kinds of companies I draw inspiration from, and like them I hope to inject a bit of beauty, a focus on simplicity, and a goodly chunk of personality into every project I deliver for my clients.

Speaking of, some client work awaits…

Photo by ePi.Longo on Flickr, via CC license

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