Our Area Businesses Are Awesome!

I'm so proud of all of the area business people who have been coming out to the free monthly social media workshops!  A number of them have been able to come to all three so far, and every month we also have new participants. A few of Monday night's participants are in the photo at right.

Ben Capozzi, Director of the Business of Art & Design Program at Southern Virginia Higher Education Center helped out with the Twitter workshop this month.

More workshops to come, so put your creative marketing thinking caps on!

Last night we welcomed Autumn Burch of Patrick Henry's Red Hill in Campbell County - as well as two guests from Switzerland!  Kim Crawley, a Halifax County native, has lived in Switzerland for 12 years. She and her husband are visiting her parents, heard about the workshop and joined us. That was so cool, and validated to us that we're doing something worthwhile for businesses.

The group was so into it last night that our 1-hour workshop ended up lasting 2-1/2 hours!

We had to limit the number of people who could attend each night of the Twitter workshop this month because we had to have it in a smaller room due to a scheduling conflict, and we had to turn away a number of people who wanted to register. Sorry about that, but you can watch the video as well as download a pdf of the slides we used.

Next month we plan to feature blogging.  If you don't do anything else, you should blog on your site. It enables you to create more content for your site, which helps with search engine results. Sharing your expertise helps establish credibility, and we have found that just the act of blogging encourages clients to pay more attention to developments in their industry because they're always looking for something to blog about. You win all the way around!  You learn more about your industry while also helping others, which comes back around to help you.

A big thanks goes out to:

  -  the Halifax County IDA, Halifax County Tourism, and Halifax County Chamber of Commerce for sponsoring the series
  -  Jeff Reed of the IDA for helping coordinate the workshops
  -  Kristy Johnson of Riverstone Energy Center for setting up the video equipment and troubleshooting tech issues
  -  Ben Johnson of Riverstone Energy Center for editing the videos and preparing them for the web
  -  and to Ben Capozzi for all of his help!

See you next month for blogging!