Startup Marketing

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This month I’m going to spend some time explore StartupMarketing strategies and how they can impact your business as well as the content you share with your audience and community. This is the first in a series of posts I’m going to share the next few months and if you’d like to explore the idea a bit more, check my upcoming posts about Startup Marketing.

Startup Marketing is critical to the success of your business. Why? Because without them a sale is just a sale. Possibly a one-time-only sale. But apply backend marketing strategies, and now you have a customer who is invested.

Now you have a customer who has not one, but two experiences buying from you. And that customer (if you approached the backend sale correctly) now feels appreciated, catered to and well-served.

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Wine and Food Pairing

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Trust your mouth. You know what you like; enjoy it

So says Jeffrey Saad, 25-year food industry veteran and restaurateur. I recently returned from a Wine Bloggers Conference where I had the great pleasure of seeing this dynamic personality give a presentation on food and wine pairing. The following video will teach you more about pairing wine and food.

Now, back to Jeffrey. He asked us who in the audience would pair a Coke with pizza so that he could make a point about why the combination works together. A big laugh came from the crowd when not even one hand went up and he mused, “Wow, you guys really are a bunch of winos!”

Key pointers:

  • Pair acid with acid, such as salad with vinaigrette paired with Grüner Veltliner.
  • Pair fat in food with acid in wine, such as goat cheese in buttery phyllo cups with Argentine Torrontes.
  • Pair protein or animal fat with tannin such as Kobe beef with Cabernet Sauvignon.
  • Pair sweet with sweet. Sweet food spanks the fruit right out of the wine if the wine isn’t as sweet.
  • Pair spice with sweetness. Spice does not like tannin; it accentuates it.
  • Make funky ingredients a part of a dish, not the main flavor.

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Should You Still Create Your Brand’s Facebook Presence?

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Whether you are a small startup or a blogger looking to help grow your reader base and increase your traffic, creating a Facebook page is your first step. Or should I say WAS? I don’t think so.

Facebook is still the most relevant platform and is still the most affordable option. If you don’t have the budget to hire a social media professional at this stage of the game then that means the responsibilities will fall to you, or someone on your team. So let’s check it out, should you still create your brand’s Facebook presence?

Your Facebook page is still very important. it should reflect your brand’s or your personal style, your personality, and professionalism as is often shown very well by moms on the “Cows In The Barn” website.

This post is intended to only cover the very basic steps of starting your Facebook page, there is much more information than I can cover in the space of one blog post that you’ll need to know. I’m not going to cover things like choosing an avatar, or a cover image.  Those are self-explanatory in my opinion.

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A Colorful Life

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In pickle green and retriever gold, a new house charms like an old. Design is what it’s all about and this stunning piece of property makes the sunshine get into it always. It’s a colorful life in this wonderfully designed house. The architecture is classically beautiful, the colors are thoughtful, and the setting is nothing less than stunning. It truly is a colorful life!

You’d expect the house of paint-store owners to be gloriously colored. The new home of Mary Hall and Ken Schuricht, proprietors of Winslow Paint Co. and Winslow Hardware and Mercantile, exceeds all expectations, with its brick-red and gold exterior trimmed in richest eggplant and radiant chartreuse.

Viewed from across the wild wetlands that stretch from house to Puget Sound, the silvery-metal peaked roof and multipaned façade look like a child’s drawing of an eccentric grandma’s house. Street-side, the wings of the house spread to embrace twin carports, each housing a matching Honda Element looking more like car-shaped cartoons than actual vehicles.

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