by Nicole Ouellette | Jun 22, 2010 | Marketing Monday
The Chinah Dine-ah has an email list of hundreds of people and a Facebook page with thousands of fans, which is not obvious when you look at their site. The reason? They’ve come up with a systematic way of asking people to keep in touch and consistently produce a little piece of Maine people can follow online.
Diners, upon receiving their check, also get a little card to fill out if they want to keep in touch via email. Because it’s easy, many people do.
The owners of the restaurant send out weekly updates not only about their specials but about staff, area events, and other news. They also have a weekly drawing for a gift certificate to the restaurant. And every week, owner Norm includes his ‘column’ called From The Corner Booth.
by Nicole Ouellette | Apr 1, 2010 | Blogging
The honeymoon is officially over, folks.
Last week, I got a cute skiddish dog named Gidget. This week, it has been all about establishing calm assertiveness à la Cesar Millan and getting the now outgoing (and oddly vocal) Gidget trained. The good news is I’m more stubborn than a 30 pound Corgi mix but that doesn’t mean this has been a cakewalk. There has been whining, panting, and other attention seeking behavior (her, not me). But I am firm and so far, I’m winning very small victories with crate training and basic commands. Who knew she could
sit like a meerkat?!
Trying to work through the whining, here’s what’s been happening at Breaking Even Communications:
Flickr had me convinced that I was going crazy.
So I saw there was a breakingeven user on Flickr and I was pretty convinced it was me. I set up the account a couple months ago…only I couldn’t remember what email address I had set it up with. I’ve been wanting to look more into image sharing as part of a project I’m working on for a client but I wanted to set it up my Flickr presence with ‘breakingeven’ if I was able.
by Nicole Ouellette | Mar 23, 2010 | Marketing Monday
Note: The Village Emporium is a client of Breaking Even Communications.
My friend Dorrie runs The Village Emporium, a clothing and gift shop in Bar Harbor and
launched her website a couple months ago. As the summer season approaches, Dorrie was looking for a way to begin populating her email list while getting ready to open the store to its regular full-time hours May 1. She also just started a Twitter account for the store to complement the Facebook page one of her employees started last year.
I told Dorrie she should have a giveaway of some merchandise in the coming weeks and she ran with it.
by Nicole Ouellette | Feb 8, 2010 | Marketing Monday
Marketing Monday talks about an impressive internet marketing effort by a business, person, or non-profit. Have an idea for the series? Contact Nicole; she’s always looking for new features.
I had the pleasure this past weekend of getting the heck out of town and finally checking out Rabelais, which is a bookstore in downtown Portland with all books about food. Interesting concept.
What I found more interesting is their online presence, complete with website, blog, and Facebook page. And they are leveraging it all rather nicely. Here’s how:
Rabelais Bookstore comes up third on a Google search for ‘Rabelais’. Impressive.
by Nicole Ouellette | Dec 7, 2009 | Marketing Monday
Every Monday, I profile a person or company doing cool things to market themselves online and offline. Got an idea for me? Let me know!
This Marketing Monday was not inspired by my happening upon something cool in the digital world but something I saw in the real world which reminded me of the power of retail.
One of my friends hosted a girls’ weekend at her place in Vermont these last few days. Besides hanging out and catching up in a general way, we also did a few fun local things, one of them being a visit to King Arthur Flour, seemingly one of the area’s largest employers.
I would like to say I am not a shopper. I am a get in and get out kind of girl when it comes to a retail experience. Also I am not a baker. Stopping at a store that sells flour sounded about as fun to me as visiting the dentist while watching paint dry. But when you’re with friends, you go along with this sort of thing and try to have an open mind.
Twenty minutes later, I was a convert. I left the store with French style flour and a baguette pan. I happily handed over money. King Arthur had successfully made me, a self proclaimed terrible baker, want to make the perfect bread. In my opinion, here’s what King Arthur is doing right: