Marketing Monday: Affordable Acadia

Every Monday, the BE Blog profiles an individual, business, or non-profit doing something cool online to promote themselves. If you have an idea, please let me know!

Affordable Acadia: Striking the blog balance between useful information and 'hey, buy our stuff'.

The owners of Affordable Acadia are great about updating their blog with information about area activities, festivals, local issues, events, and history. They even have their posts by category like “Day trips” and “Good eats” so readers can find the information they are looking for.

From a design standpoint, the blog is also easy to skim.They post great, large format paragraphs for easy skimming. The font is large with good contrast and overall, the appearance (clean and professional) matches what’s written on the page.

This Week In Business: The I Have The Power Edition

It’s been an interesting two weeks in the life of my company. The highlight (ok low point but viewed in an optimistic way) was when I took down my own website for about 12 hours last week.

Apparently, I am tech savvy (but I guess in this case, more tech un-afraid) enough to do semi-powerful things, like take my site down. Please note clients reading this: I would never do this kind ofexperimental behavioron your sites.

With a few frantic phone calls and text messages to people smarter than me, all eventually became right in the world. But these two weeks, I feel like not only have I had enough power to do some damage but to actually make some real headway in a few directions. Here’s what else has been going on:

I planned and executed my first solo workshop for Downeast Learning.

My friend Matt and I are on month three of our monthly technology workshops, which we’re branding as Downeast Learning. Matt is on vacation so I thought for the first solo workshop, I’d tackle Facebook for Business. This is a topic I’m pretty comfortable with, or so I thought as I started planning the slides.

It’s funny when you have to teach something how much more about it you have to learn. Those times where you have to do something ‘just good enough’ and think ‘I’ll look it up later’. And it was finally time to try all the ideas I’ve wanted to do on my own Facebook business page, or at the very least think about step by step how I would do them.

Eleven people came and I think most everyone was pretty happy about how things went. I know I had a really fun time doing it. Based on feedback we’ve gotten, the next workshop will either be about Business Blogging or Google Analytics. If you want to sign up for email alerts when we have these sort of events, go to www.downeastlearning.com.

I wrote my second largest proposal.

It’s always interesting to get an RFP from a potential client, especially a larger business or organization. So much potential yet so many ways you can mess it up if you don’t know their bottom line, who is looking at your proposal, or some other detail that could give you a bit of an edge.

Too Cute Tuesday: Paper Beads

Every Tuesday, it’s friends, a craft, and a cocktail. Want to get involved? Start your own TCT chapter, read old Too Cute Tuesday posts, or join the fun on Facebook.

Christie: Official DJ, bartender, and beadmaker... all at once.Dorrie found this paper bead craft awhile back but we were waiting for our wallpaper connection to come through. Tonight, Dorrie had to work late and other people were gone, so it was just Christie and I.

No doubt we have all made these paper beads a million years ago when we were in elementary school but with more grown up materials, they are still fun now.

Linked here is the original post. (You have to click through and see how these beads could come out. Inspiring!) That said, we did ok.

Materials
Wallpaper book
Scissors
Glue (Elmer’s is fine- squirt glue preferable)
Takeout chopsticks (or some other disposable round wooden object)
Twine/string

Cocktail of the Night: Christie’s Mix: Some mixture of grenadine, lemonade, rum, orange juice and/or triple sec

1. Have the longest week ever. Get to the point where you are almost dellerious with stress. But wait, it’s time for Too Cute Tuesday!

2. Have friend (Christie) show up at Craft Central and make you a cocktail and remind you that it’s time to craft! Stick nachos in the oven and take out the wallpaper book Dorrie got from an interior decorating friend. Note: Primitive patterns would be something my sister would enjoy.

Too Cute Tuesday: Chocolate Whiskey and Beer Cupcakes From Smitten Kitchen

Every Tuesday night, it’s friends, a craft, and a cocktail. Nothing like accomplishing something small while hanging out with friends. (Let’s face it—everyone is busy on the weekend but Tuesday…people could stand for a bit of weeknight fun!) Feel free to suggest crafts to us, start your own Too Cute Tuesday chapter, or otherwise participate either on this blog (all the archived entries are at www.toocutetuesday.com) or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/toocutetuesday.

Awhile back, my friend Kate/enthusiastic supporter of Too Cute Tuesday sent me the cutest little cupcake recipe involving chocolate, beer, whiskey, and Baileys. For two weeks now, we’ve been meaning to make these cupcakes.

Christie and Sarah get ready to follow directions. Isn't it good to be back, Sarah?

It worked out perfectly that we decided to make them when Sarah was visiting. (You may remember Sarah, who moved to St. Louis about a year ago and started a Too Cute Tuesday chapter there.) Sarah arrived in Maine just in time to get unpacked and craft with the group.

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