This newsletter is one that I do only about 2 times each year. It is a pretty good sized newsletter with lots of input, so it takes a while to complete: very pleased with this issue, both design-wise and content-wise. We managed to add in more reference, teaching-oriented information into this issue than ever before (at least since I’ve been doing the newsletter–and that’s been about 5 years).
alabama
Photos from my Trip to Gee’s Bend and the Black Belt
Well, my intent is to add these photos as a slideshow so they’ll be visible within the blog page, but, for some reason, Slideshow Pro’s upgrade to their Lightroom plugin isn’t really working in the way that it did before. For now, I’m just creating a completely separate page for the slideshow.
These photos are some of the photos I took on a trip to Selma, Gees Bend and Camden (and all points between). There are some interesting photos…I’ll wind up using many of these photos on the www.alababmafrontporches.com website.
Scenic Byways Workshop in Birmingham
It has been a busy week. Monday was filled with the usual Monday busywork, along with catching up on several projects that are ongoing. Plus, I spent some of Monday on last minute details for the workshop we held at the Barber Motorsports Museum. Yesterday was taken up with a full day of a somewhat participatory workshop on Tourism-oriented wayshowing (helping travelers find their way to the places that they are looking for). It was a good workshop and we brought down a couple of people from the America’s Byways Resource Center in Duluth, Minnesota. 40 people attended the workshop from around the state. We hope to have more.
Alabama Outdoors–an update to my customer service problem
Final Update: read the entry located here. *the story ended with what I asked for in the first place.
UPDATE:
Well, this is just an update to my earlier complaint about Alabama
Oudoors, the Birmingham, Alabama based outdoor sporting goods store.
Alabama Outdoors has not responded to my website submission to their
website alabamaoutdoors.com, or to an email sent to
info@alabamaoutdoors.com. I’m very displeased with their performance.
Sorry to take away from my otherwise pretty positive blog. This is more
of a test than anything else just to see how much of an impact
mentioning Alabama Outdoors in a negative context along with saying
things such as Alabama Outdoors provides a negative customer service
experience in Birmingham, Alabama has. I’m really curious to see what
sort of an impact I can have in the search engines by mentioning my
displeasure with Alabama Outdoors in some repeated fashion–all the
while obeying the cardinal rule of making sure that any mention of
Alabama Outdoors really makes an important reference to Alabama
Outdoors as an Alabama based outdoor clothing company selling products
in Birmingham, Alabama.
I’m hopeful that, as my previous post
did accomplish, a search for Alabama Outdoors in google or some other
search engine will pull my blog post about my experience with Alabama
Outdoors will show up. Right now, Alabama Outdoors complaint shows up
pretty well, but Alabama Outdoors by itself isn’t quite there yet.
Hopefully this post about Alabama Outdoors, a Birmingham, Alabama based
outdoor clothing and outdoor gear store, will help bring Alabama
Outdoors to the forefront for complaints!
I’m planning to add to this post about Alabama Outdoors for the next
week or so, but for now I just wanted something out there that
expressed my distaste for the Birmingham, Alabama based outdoor
clothing and hiking gear store Alabama Outdoors. I have been shopping
at Alabama Outdoors for most of the last twenty years. I can’t recall
the very first thing I bought there, but distinctly remember buying a
nice tent from Alabama Outdors, several pairs of boots, several
backpacks, camping stoves, jackets, lanterns, socks, shoes, sandals and
no telling how many pairs of pants, shirts and shorts. Oh, and that
doesn’t include the shoes, boots, expensive jackets, clothes and more
Ann has bought at Alabama Outdoors over the years.
Well, I
bought two pair of shorts from Alabama Outdoors (AO) last week and wore
each pair one time–I’ve owned the brand for years (grammici’s) and
have always loved them (always bought them from Alabama Outdoors, too).
The belt buckle on both of these new ones frayed and came apart–on one
it happened shortly after I put them on. I took them back with receipt
in hand with a desire to simply exchange them for new, undamaged goods.
I was told that they couldn’t do that but would send them in for
repair. I told them that I wouldn’t be shopping there again. That
didn’t seem to make an impact on them. (It was a young, inexperienced
boy who said he, I think,he was the manager.) I’m really upset by this
lack of customer care and consider this a strong complaint against
Alabama Outdoors. I’m not a big complainer, but feel that this bad
experience with Alabama Outdoors requires a complaint. I have emailed
Alabama Outdoors customer service and sent them an online message
through their customer care online for (at alabamaoutdoors.com)
and plan to call them on Monday. I am a strong proponent of buying
locally whenever possible. I will try the other store in town (Mountain
High), but if that doesn’t work out, I’ll be shifting my purchases
online and I surely won’t be going to Alabama Outdoors to experience
their lack of customer care again.
Alabama Outdoors has lost a
customer and I’ll do everything I can to make sure that my complaint is
heard as loudly as possible (mainly by mentioning Alabama Outdoors and
complaint in this post and possible future posts as many times as I can
mention Alabama Outdoors and the word complaint–you’d be surprised at
how much mentioning a name like Alabama Outdoors in conjunction with a
couple of key words like complaint and problem and upset can have on
search engine rankings. Just give it a few days and hopefully, anyone
searching for Alabama Outdoors and complaint will find my post about
complaining about Alabama Outdoors and the poor customer service they
provided me yesterday. We’ll see.
Cataloging Photos of Alabama Scenes
I’ve always liked this shot (taken in 2003 between Selma, Alabama and Montgomery, Alabama). The grass is green and the water and sky are blue–thanks in part to a little touch up work in Adobe Lightroom. I’m thinking of using this photo in a project I’m currently working on for the Southwest Alabama Rural Tourism group (www.alabamasfrontporches.com). It is in large part thanks to Adobe Lightroom that I’m even able to track it down. I’ve since gone through and done a better job of keywording some of my photos with place specific tags (they already have keywords relating to the specific city/town but not to the larger region. I’ve gone through and tagged about 500 or more with Southwest Alabama in addition to rural or byway or Marion or Greensboro. Hopefully, this will help me in this project and in the future.
Reaching 10,000 People in One Month
I’ve been busier with newsletters this month even more so than usual. I’ve completed the Alzheimer’s of Central Alabama Spring 2008 newsletter (complete with a redesign), the April 2008 issue of the Sierra Club’s Alabama Sierran, the Birmingham Chapter of the American Institute of Architects Birmingham Chapters March newsletter, a Your Town Alabama newsletter and CGH Insurance Group’s newsletter. Who knows, I may be forgetting a newsletter.
Some of these go out via mail (about 9,500 of them) and about another 1,000-1,200 go out via email. (Both of the mailed newsletters do get posted on the respective websites, so they get additional views as well.)
Anyway, I was adding up the number of people these go out to collectively and I realized that, probably for the first time, I’ve hit the 10,000 person mark for newsletter communications. It just seems pretty cool to me. No real significance to it, really, but I find it secretly pleasing.