The Thursday, October 16th evening event opened with the table being laid by our dinner hosts, Dave and Silke Monnie. Silke prepared a german style repast: hand made Spatzle enrobed with nutty Emmentaler cheese & accompanied by Caramelized Onions. Brats, Mustard, Pumpkin Cookies & Gingerbread and beverages rounded out the evening's meal.Warm conversation, table round networking and the introduction of guests was the first order of business. Each member introduced themselves with a short elevator speech. Then members welcomed guests: a new area entrepreneur, local insurance agent and a former member. Some folks had attended at the suggestion of others, viewed the AHB business brief in The Bee or googled PDX home business.
No matter what method guests used to learn about the AHB, attendees enjoyed the meal, camaraderie and the educational topic. The evening progressed to the subject: Enhancing Inexpensive Online Marketing techniques. Lights were dimmed and attendees experienced Power Point Presentation. Handouts were also provided by the evening's presenter, Zoe Johnson.
As the owner of USquared, Zoe utilizes several online resources to promote her services on the Web. She is a self professed expert and CL junkie, using Craigslist while enlisting easy posting techniques and free services to bump up a listing's visibility. These methods are low cost promotional tools which enhance a small business owner's ability to present themselves inexpensively and professionally. The tools Zoe demonstrated are a timely counterpoint to today's business environment.Zoe discussed the visuals of a general listing on Craigslist . She then used her expertise to walk attendees through the process of creating a professional layout inside the Craigslist posting interface. Photos, pre-prepared copy and collages were used to generate a simple posting.
Using a simple technique incorporating the free vFlyer program, Zoe created a mock flyer for posting online. The vFlyer program provides ready made templates for marketing services, autos, real estate or roomates along with variety of pre-created service templates. While viewing the vFlyer template, attendees learned how to establish an account for 5 free vFlyers and set repetitive tasks to auto-populate in flyers. The free program also allows logos and repetitive information to auto generate when publishing the flyers online.
The results of working in the vFlyer template creates HTML code. Examples were shown on Craigslist with the BEFORE (general CL posting) & AFTER (cut & paste the html from vFlyer).
The presenter fielded quesitons from members interested in the vFlyer technique. The capability of vFlyer to provide additional posting exposure was mentioned and Zoe expanded upon the answer: checking the option tickboxes for Oodle, googlebase, vast & geebo would self populate in a variety of other web mediums and search engines.
Designing small html codes and using blogs as an additional resource were also introduced during the presentation. Zoe's technical and online marketing expertise was appreciated by all!
Following the question and answer discussion, the group gathered for clean up, networking and to discuss next month's meeting.
On Thursday, November 20, 2008 presenter Sally Rhys of Coaching for Perspective will discuss the timely topic : Business Ethics Build Business.
Meet with us for dinner from 6-9 pm at the Smile Station (8210 SE 13th Ave, 1 block South of Tacoma) on Thursday, November 20th. Please reserve your seating by contacting us at the AHB website. Registration is required for our dinner meetings. Looking forward to sharing your company and the benefits of attending our monthly Association of Home Business meetings!
Please visit the AHB Blog Memorial Page for information on long time member Jerry Auker who passed October 31, 2008. We will all miss Jerry's presence at our monthly meetings! Our deepest condolences to his wife Gloria Auker and his family.
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