Watts Consulting

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A Very Busy Week: But a Good One

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Our house is under siege–or at least that’s how it feels. Renovations are progressing nicely, though. Acoustic Tile ceilings are out, smooth ceilings are in–or almost. Windows are about to be ordered, hopefully. Lots to do….

Much to clean up this weekend, of course.

Working furiously on several projects at once. Just wrapped up a newsletter for Alzheimer’s of Central Alabama. Working on the website for Tyler Eaton Court Reporters–this time I think we’ve got a winner! Finishing up an invitation for Alzheimer’s and another for the MS Society.  Making changes to Brombergs and the Birmingham Historical Society websites. Trying to finalize the website for ClasTran here in town. Wrapped up the monthly newsletter for the Alabama Sierra Club early this week and just trying to catch my breath!

Oh, my friend Ben posted his version of our trip to the Black Belt earlier this year: http://www.davisdenny.com/blackbeltben/. Entertaining reading! I also added a few new photos to my flickr page.

Trip to Perry County, Alabama: What a Busy Week

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Had a very productive week this week. Lots of work on Brombergs website, most of the way done with the Tyler Eaton website, setup of the Mid-South RC&D website, a trip to Bibb and Perry County to do some work on a couple of tourism websites, the Highway 14 Antique Trail and even got to meet with a couple of potential new clients, including someone that raises all natural, grass-fed beef on their family farm that somehow they’ve managed to preserve as a family since the early 1800’s. It was a really nifty place with a good supply of historic old buildings, a general store (long since closed for business) and a house that they are considering turning into a Bed and Breakfast–something the Black Belt really needs. Did not have as much time as I would have liked to snap photos, but plan to go back to the farm and Highway 14 in the coming weeks for some more photos. Here’s one of Judson College, where several of my sisters attended.

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The Busiest Week Ever

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Well, I’ve officially been overwhelmed this week with work. I try very hard to avoid working after 5 p.m., but sometimes I manage to work a little late–I tend to make up for it by working, as I am this morning, early and on the weekend. I completed a complete redesign for American Mining Insurance Company’s online newsletter,  www.americanmining.com/newsletter/, I just completed my 38th (I think) Alabama Sierra Club newsletter, I’ve just about finished an annual report for the Alabama Association of RC&D Councils, I started working on a new client website, brombergs.com and, well, I guess the list just seems to go on and on.  I’m very pleased with the masthead I created for American Mining’s online newsletter, though. We went through several revisions, but the end one really turned out best. Here it is:

A Busy Week AGAIN!

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Seems as though I haven’t had as much time as usual to play with my blog. I think I’ve gotten a bit caught up playing with flickr, plus I’ve just overall been really busy working on several projects. Getting finished up with a program manual for the Alabama Communities of Excellence and finished a newsletter for AIA, Birmingham chapter. I’ve been pounding out ads for Underwoods (sister company to Birmingham-based Bromberg’s Jewelers). Oh, and I wrote a reasonble itinerary for the Alabama Front Porches website that I posted on the blog I created for them. Need to scan some more old photos in. Haven’t really made anything interesting to eat in over a week–busy and boring.

Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Oh My

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There are just too many social networking opportunities out there right now. I’m giving all the above a try. I’ve been on LinkedIn for a long time, thanks in large part to an old college buddy, Dale Kiefling years ago. I’ve been on Facebook for a lot less time, but still pretty interesting. Twitter is pretty new to me–I’m still getting the hang of exactly why I’m using it, but sort of secretly like it. Plaxo–pretty lame overall, but keep it up for a certain crowd.

And, I just joined Flickr today. Flickr is basically a photo-sharing website that lets you upload and organize your photos. Never been very into that sort of thing as I never saw a need–after all, I can post stuff to my blog anytime. Finally broke down and joined and uploaded some photos, though. It seems pretty cool so far.

And the reason for all this? I want to understand the social media networks in order to use them effectively for my own personal benefit and particularly to benefit my clients. There are many, many opportunities to market to a whole new crowd and in a completely different way. So here goes!

Another Sierra Club Newsletter Completed: November 2008

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One of the monthly newsletters I work on: The Alabama Sierran. I did the first newsletter for the Alabama Chapter of the Sierra Club in January 2006 and have done one each month since then. This is an 8 page tabloid-size newsletter printed on recycled newsprint. You can download the full newsletter at alabama.sierraclub.org. In addition to working on this newsletter, I just finished an online newsletter for Birmingham, Alabama based CGH Insurance Group (www.cghinsurance.com/newsletter). And, perhaps most fun right now, I’m working on a website on tourism–particularly historical and ecological–in Bibb County, Alabama. I’m developing it almost entirely in Movable Type (using a little Dreamweaver to help me handle the CSS stylesheets). Pretty interesting stuff. Not that far along yet, but I’ve built the shell: www.bibbtourism.com. Other than that, just the usual blog updates at Your Town Alabama and Alabama’s Front Porches.