This week’s post was written by Ray Sidney-Smith of W3Consulting, social media consultant and facilitator of the monthly Roundtable for the Alexandria SBDC.  On April 21st the Alexandria SBDC Business Development Roundtable tackled the evergreen topic of determining your target market. We started the conversation off with defining the target market. Some of the responses… Read more »

This week’s post was written by Ray Sidney-Smith of W3Consulting, social media consultant and facilitator of the monthly Roundtable for the Alexandria SBDC.  Terrestrial radio started in the early 20th century when broadcast technology became a reality for the first time. It was then that wartime broadcasts could literally be heard around the world and… Read more »

This Tuesday, we hosted our monthly business roundtable, which focused on multimedia marketing. Ray Sidney-Smith, our resident roundtable facilitator, filmed this short recap of the conversation for those that were unable to make it. In the video, Ray gives an overview of several of the topics discussed, including localized marketing, developing a multi-channel strategy, and… Read more »

This post was written by Patricia Frame of Strategies for Human Resources, our guest author for our solopreneur blog series. Most of us know that referrals are a wonderful source of business. And we hope for them. But do you have an active program to help you get referrals? Even a brief online search yields… Read more »

This post was written by Paul Williams, marketing expert and founder of Idea Sandbox and the do-it-yourself local store marketing website LSMGuide. When you think of a destination, what comes to mind? Probably a vacation spot. A place worth going out of the way to get to. A place worth planning to go. A place… Read more »

Alexandria’s Winter Restaurant Week is getting ready to kick off. From January 23 – February 1, 2015, restaurants will be offering dinner for two for $35 or a three-course dinner for $35. This year, for the first time, several restaurants are also offering lunch specials, too. As consumers, it’s clear why we all love restaurant week… Read more »

On January 13, Maurisa Potts presented a workshop on Marketing Trends for 2015. This workshop focused on the top marketing trends that small businesses need to be aware of and gave ideas on what to do to take advantage of these trends. While some of the trends were familiar to many small business owners, such… Read more »

We’re all used to the practice of making resolutions at the start of the year about things that we wish to do in our personal lives, whether it is losing a few extra pounds, finishing a degree or obtaining additional training or education, working out on a regular basis, or spending more quality time with family… Read more »

Our resident social media expert and blogger extraordinaire Ray Sidney-Smith discusses the importance of having a cohesive marketing campaign for the holiday season. For nearly the last decade, here in the United States, the biggest shopping day of the year has been the day after Thanksgiving. We all know it as Black Friday. However, for the savvy business owner especially… Read more »