Back in the 1990s, when Paul Chato was in the business of creating corporate videos, he knew he was on shaky ground during a new client pitch when the vice-president of marketing stormed into the meeting and demanded, "Who the [expletive] are you people?"
As the discussion continued, recognition dawned and the VP's icy exterior began to melt: "Paul Chato ... The Frantics ... You're Mr. Canoehead!"
It seems that Mr. Chato's aluminum-headed, crime-fighting comedic alter ego can still save the day, even in a hostile boardroom. "She basically came to fire us, but instead we got the job," Mr. Chato says.
It's been 30 years since Mr. Chato, Rick Green, Dan Redican and Peter Wildman formed The Frantics comedy troupe. And while the group still performs for fun, Mr. Chato now spends his days as president of Electramedia, a Toronto website design and development firm. Its clients include Mercedes-Benz Canada Inc., JDS Uniphase Corp., Cadillac Fairview Corp. and McDonald's Restaurants of Canada.
Mr. Chato, 55, took a circuitous route to Web development. He graduated from Ryerson's Radio Television Arts program in 1974 and became a full-time comedian in 1979 when The Frantics was formed. The group created 120 episodes of Frantic Times for CBC Radio. And while the TV show Four on the Floor aired only 13 episodes, perpetual reruns made the group, and Mr. Canoehead, Canadian cultural icons. "We were the Star Trek of comedy," Mr. Chato laughs.
In the late '80s, the CBC hired Mr. Chato as head of TV Comedy. A self-described geek, Mr. Chato started Electramedia in 1991, a company that initially created corporate videos, 3D animation and dabbled in computer games before concentrating entirely on the Internet in 1997.
In 2006, Mr. Chato launched Your Web Department, a user-friendly, self-serve version of Electramedia's website management system. YWD puts into the hands of small business owners the tools to design, optimize and update websites without having to hire an outside webmaster.
These days, Mr. Chato sometimes finds himself in the role of therapist to entrepreneurs.
"The dirty secret of small businesses is that they love everybody else's websites, but they hate their own," Mr. Chato explains. The amount of time, effort and resources it takes to keep a site up to snuff "makes them feel stupid."
Very small businesses are less likely to have a website, according to recent research by IDC Canada. A poll of 200 small- and medium-sized Canadian businesses found 26 per cent of those with fewer than 49 employees did not have a website, while 16 per cent of companies with 50-99 employees did not have a website.
Mr. Chato says small business owners have to realize their website is a business and marketing solution. The first step is to take ownership and responsibility for your site.There's no excuse for paying large sums to an outside webmaster to update and manage a site, he says.
Next, it's important to realize that a website is the centre of a marketing strategy, Mr. Chato explains. To put yourself in that frame of mind, pretend your print materials such as business cards, posters, flyers, newspaper or magazine ads do not exist. Before you design a site, understand what you want it to accomplish. Articulate the company's unique selling proposition, Mr. Chato advises. What does the owner love about their business? What is your brand positioning?
Content is crucial. One approach to developing content is to think about your website as a magazine, and the story is your business, he says. If you want to be the next Debbie Travis, talk about yourself. Alternatively, you can talk about the world around you in a third-person way. And it's important to schedule time to update the site. If you're time-strapped, don't design your site around a blog, Mr. Chato advises.
"People say 'Oh my God, the blog didn't work.' Well, that's because you had no strategy for the blog. What was the point of it?" Mr. Chato suggests hiring a professional writer/project manager who can help develop an easy to follow content strategy. Once you've got a handle on your content, "the silver bullet is tone," Mr. Chato says. Is the tone of your site irreverent? Fun? Serious? Are you Zsa Zsa Gabor or Beyoncé?
When Mr. Chato helps clients develop their sites, he takes them through an exercise called Show-Do-Tell to get them thinking about how to tell professional and personal stories using visuals and text. "People have more interesting jobs than they think they do. And they don't realize what an amazing business they've built."
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BIG ON THE WEB
Here's how to get Google to love your website:
Be searchable
Search engines get a better grasp on who you are if the home page has at least 200 words of text that clearly define your business.
Develop keywords
Hire a search expert to develop keywords and long-tail key phrases. A phrase like "Kitsilano-based children's advertising copywriter" might result in fewer hits than "advertising copywriter," but you're more likely to connect with the right clients.
Be descriptive
Make sure you accurately reflect the content of each page in the "title" tags and "description" meta tags.
Forget Flash
Avoid using a Flash intro page or a website built from Flash since Google spiders have trouble crawling through and indexing them.
