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New Resource for Alleghany, Ashe and Grayson Counties

Aunt Emma Jean
Emma Jean

Imaging Specialists is working on a new resource for our area. Emma Jean’s Blue Ridge Almanac will feature information for Alleghany and Ashe Counties in North Carolina and Grayson County, Virginia.

The almanac will be packed with calendar info, area services, humor, advice and lots more! This new resource will also include affordable ad space for area merchants and a reasonable selling price!

For more information on ad pricing or sales, to submit recipes or questions for Emma Jean or to just contact us, go to www.emmajeansalmanac.com.

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Web Site Tips

The web reaches further than your immediate area. It is your storefront to the entire world. It never closes. Here are a few tips for your web presence:

  1. Plan for who you want to be on the internet. A single-person enterprise can look like a huge company and impress potential clients or a chain of restaurants can look smaller and give off a more intimate, warmer feel online.
  2. Build visibility and exchange links with others. Links are an inexpensive way to increase traffic to your site. Linking to others will also encourage them to link back to you, so that both parties benefit.
  3. Create an e-newsletter and send it to your customers, linking back to your site. We send out these news updates periodically and several people return to the site to see what is new.
  4. Subheads and bullet points make it easy for visitors to read your site. The majority of visitors to your site will scan the page, rather than read every word in each sentence. Make it easy for them to understand what is most important.
  5. Clear, meaningful home pages allow your visitors to quickly understand what you offer and make it easy to find out more. Its alright to add your policies, mission statements, or other wordy documents- but on separate pages. Anyone who needs to find them will.
  6. Feature your customers’ testimonials on your site. You do good work, but sometimes it can be difficult to blow your own horn. Contact some of your current (or former) clients to see what they have to say. Their words will reinforce your claims.
  7. Build visitors trust. Explain what you support, your history, your mission statement. If your visitors trust you from the start, they’ll be more likely to use your services.
  8. Have contact information easily accessible on your site. Let your customers contact you in different ways. List your email address, phone and fax numbers, even your mailing and physical addresses. Potential customers like to know where you are- (At the very least for shipping purposes) and rightly shy away from sites without contact info.
  9. Need information from your visitor? Build a custom input form. Or let your client fill out a PDF while online to print out and send in. Typed information is easier to read than handwriting. And it uses your visitor’s ink and paper instead of your own. PDFs can be protected, also. Contracts can be signed and returned without risk of alteration.

If you’re considering a new web site, want to redesign your current site, or just need to have a few tweaks done, email claire@imagingspecialists.net. Or for more information, just check out our Web department.

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1st Annual Alleghany Empty Bowls Event

Imaging Specialists was fortunate to be able to assist Alleghany Ministerium’s Solid Rock Food Closet with their 1st annual Empty Bowls event taking place April 16, 2010 at Village Park in Sparta.

We printed Announcement Letters, Event Admission Tickets, Flyers, Posters, and Raffle Tickets. We also created a web page for the event. The Raffle Tickets were for an original pottery piece by Alleghany Artist Bet Mangum, in whose honor the event will be held. We shot photos of the pottery and printed them onto the tickets and flyers and added them to the website.

Continue reading 1st Annual Alleghany Empty Bowls Event

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Alleghany Historical Society Newsletter

We are getting ready to go to press with the latest (March 2010) Alleghany Historical – Genealogical Society, Inc. newsletter. A large section of the newsletter focuses on the 75th anniversary of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Alleghany County is proud to celebrate this anniversary because of our close relationship with it. A few notable ties are:

  1. Work was begun on the Parkway at Cumberland Knob, Alleghany County, N.C. September 11, 1935.
  2. Midpoint of the Parkway is in Alleghany County near Mahogany Rock Overlook, elevation 3436′, mile marker 235 of 469 total miles. (Mahogany Rock is also a popular hawk watching site.)
  3. First section of Parkway to be completed and open was 7.641 mile stretch from U.S. Highway 21 to Air Bellows Gap in Alleghany County, N.C.

    Sculpture of Robert Doughton on the Alleghany County Courthouse lawn.
    Sculpture of Robert Doughton on the Alleghany County Courthouse lawn.
  4. Alleghany native, U.S. Representative Bob Doughton sponsored original bill.
  5. Doughton Park in Alleghany & Wilkes Counties is the largest recreational area in the entire park.
  6. The Blue Ridge Parkway is the most visited U.S. National Park.

We’ve also added an article on the 50th anniversary of the monster March 1960 snows and efforts to develop a county historical museum.

Imaging Specialists regularly generates and prints the Newsletter for the Historical Society and several other groups in the area. Contact Claire today for pricing. Call 336-272-3002 or email claire@imagingspecialists.net.

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10 Hot Marketing Tips For Your Business

Wondering how you can improve your marketing? Here are some tips.

  1. Update your website regularly. Keep current information online. Your visitors will keep coming back if your homepage is always fresh and new. (If your site is hosted by Imaging Specialists, image and text updates up to an hour per month are included in our standard hosting plan.)
  2. Take advantage of all marketing options available such as your web site, email, mailings, newspaper and magazine advertisements, brochures, and flyers.
  3. Advertise in the newspaper, radio, and on your local television station. Broadcasters can help generate your ad or you might consider calling ISI for help. Just supply your information and we’ll put it together in the correct file configuration each outlet requires. Great, professional advertising- just the way you want to be represented.
  4. Keep the same message, logo, and look in all your marketing materials and paperwork, from advertising and brochures, to invoices and receipts. Changing your look in different places could possibly confuse your customers.
  5. Invest in indoor and outdoor signage. It’s seen every time a potential customer passes by or comes into your business. Make sure it fits your location and your company’s image.
  6. Develop flyers and brochures. They can be used to promote “sales” or other promotional events your business or organization is hosting. They can be an inexpensive way to quickly get your message “out there.” Contact the Chamber of Commerce to learn where brochure racks are around town and the region.
  7. Join community organizations, such as the Lions, Rotary or the Chamber of Commerce. Club meetings, service projects and the Chamber’s “Business After Hours” are good opportunities for networking and the local Chamber is often the first place new residents look for local services.
  8. List your web site and contact information on all materials you hand out. Help your customers get in touch with you. Additionally, consider making your policies and forms available online as downloadable pdfs. You’ll be able to update them in one place and everyone will be able to access the latest versions. It will also cut down on your printing costs – they download and print the forms, themselves. (Don’t forget to add your contact info on each pdf, also.)
  9. Follow trends that affect your market. You love the field you’re in- that’s why you do it! You already know more about your products and services than anyone else. Take time to become the most knowledgeable in your field and people will rely on getting their information from you.
  10. Sponsor local television and radio events. Your name and message will reach potential clients in the region and WCOK Radio and Alleghany Community Television offer reasonable rates and the advertising revenue stays in our area.
  11. BONUS TIP
    Contact other websites and ask them to link to yours. Are you in an industry organization? Find out if they have a directory that you can list with. Links increase your visibility to search engines and, of course, to your potential customers.

Contact Imaging Specialists for help with these (and your own) ideas to promote your business.