The Big Win

Posted on February 12, 2012 by carl

So who at the HomEXPO scored a big win?  Did you make money?  Save money?  Was it Dustin from Wireless Zone who sold us a Droid Razr smartphone and then spent a lot of time helping us get a mobile hotspot set up?  Were we worth it?

Was the smartphone worth it or were the challenges too much and too many?

I passed out business cards with my blog URL highlighted and either a dollar sign beside it or the word WIN?  My goal, to show how technology DOES help get the word out for less which is our goal at Local4All, whether advertising in on our placemats, online, or printed on the back of out-of-date, already-replaced placemats and donated to nonprofits.

If it were not for the $199.99 investment for the Razr, I would have to migrate to Panera Bread, Sears, or Dingbats to have a strong enough WI-FI signal to post this.  It’s complicated and I hope to clarify what I mean over the next couple of hours.  More later, promise.

The big win for me?  Helping a local farmer who, to sell bushels of fresh peaches to Giant Eagle, needs to access their online form and tell them what he has and when he can deliver.  Without computer skills, he has to depend on others who may or may not have the time.  Check in later and I’ll tell you more about David S. and how we helped him deal with the modern marketplace.  I enjoy helping so David, thanks for giving me the opportunity.

Best regards to all,
Carl

Posted in Easy Self-Publishing, Heart-warming, High Tech | 1 Comment

Map for Free Computer Classes at the HomEXPO

Posted on February 9, 2012 by carl

Just to make sure people can find us easily, I’m posting a downloadable map for the room location and there will be a clickable link to a page with directions to Pittsburgh Mills Mall before I’m done.  If anyone has trouble with these or has suggestions to make it better, please let me know asap.

Map to Pittsburgh Mills Mall in Google Maps
Map to Pittsburgh Mills Mall in Local4All Maps (pointer is really close to Room 304)
Room 304 marked in a downloadable gif image.

This blog post will be used in the class to show how new technology helps get the word out for less, something our company has been helping with since 2001.

 

Posted in Events, Local Tech | Leave a comment

Friday the 13th, ummm

Posted on January 23, 2012 by carl

It’s a great day to reflect on everything that goes right in life. Anytime works as well, but this last Friday the 13th was a humdinger.

It started out as the worst day for placemat deliveries so far this winter season. Snowy and cold, I drove over to Bill Crytzer’s BUD Transport to pick up placemats for delivery to three areas. As I started to move boxes from Bill’s trailer to our van, it struck me that something looked strange. Instead of our signature word search puzzle having a white background, it appeared with white lettering on a dark blue background. Strange!

Next I noticed some pictures within different ads were shown as picture negatives. On D&D Auto Salvage, the business name stood out but the rest of Dave’s ad was a blur, like gray on a darker gray background.

The worst was Dr. Katie Supik-Resick’s photo. If you can imagine picking up a family photo album and all it had were the negatives instead of prints, that’s what it looked like. Not even close to usable. In fact, the more I looked, all of the placemats were unusable except for the Cindy’s Place Special, a total of 5000 out of the 107,500 ordered.

Ouch!

I knew I had to do something or a lot of restaurants would run out of placemats before Friday night, let alone last until replacement mats could be ordered and printed. AND! I knew I had only about 2700 sheets of white 11×17 in the office that I could run through our Riso digital duplicator.

The next couple of hours was a blur!

  • Print 1500 Butler area placemats for restaurants that were very low (Riso + paper   + ink = blessings)
  • Print 1000 FNS placemats
  • Load ‘em up and hit the road.  )Remember, this is the worst snowy day so far this winter <grin> – Chicora first, then looping down through Butler and Saxonburg)
  • Head even further south to Xpedx Paper in Pittsburgh.  Goal, to buy 10-20 boxes of paper so I could print more.  (They didn’t have the brand I liked, so I bought five each of two other brands.  Sometimes the Riso would balk if the paper was too flimsy and would jam a lot.)
  • Drop off 800 of the FNS at Phillippi’s in Natrona Heights, saving the other 200 for whoever needed it most.  (I would make calls later and end up leaving them on the shelf until Sunday.
  • Arrive at Kittanning and tote ten fifty-pound boxes of paper into the office.
  • Load up one master after another, printing about 8000 mats before the day was done.
  • Crash for the night, knowing the roads would still be ‘kinda’ bad on Saturday while I was making deliveries.

What’s my point?  Without some bad, we don’t appreciate the good enough.

  • To the restaurant owners who gave me a little slack, thank you.
  • To waitresses who poured me free cups of coffee for the road and gave words of encouragement, thank you.
  • To God, who is above us all and behind it all, I appreciate Your sense of humor.

Excellent!

Best regards,
Carl

Posted in Armstrong County, Life in PA, Placemats | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Welcome to 2012, Happy New Year!

Posted on January 1, 2012 by carl

As 2011 comes to a close and 2012 takes over, the Pittsburgh region is blessed with lower unemployment than many places in the country and was designated one of the Top 20 destinations to visit in 2012.  Ladies and gentlemen, it is in our interest to make the best of it.

Keep an eye on Local4All for new developments and have a great year!

Carl and Julie

Posted in Events, family-friendly, Heart-warming | Leave a comment

Ford City Light Up Night 2011

Posted on November 18, 2011 by carl

The Klukan’s phone number?

If you look for Ford City Light Up Night on the Armstrong County Tourist Bureau calendar, all you’ll find is the date and “For more information, call 724-763-nnnn“, a phone number I recognized because Barb and Paul are friends of mine and we’ve volunteered side by side with several nonprofit organizations.  My question to Barb when I called was “why?”

Apparently Barb had sent the Tourist Bureau information which they were not willing to share with the public via their website because Barb and Paul were not individual members, nor was the Ford City Renaissance Committee, a newly formed nonprofit, a member.

My question to the Tourist Bureau, “what’s the problem?”  I don’t know exactly how your contract reads for the website, but do you have to pay a surcharge for a non-member event?  Almost certainly not.  What about your members, don’t they want to know?  I’d dare say that you have a few members who might want to enjoy the Ford City festivities.  Why not share the information?

Here at Local4All, we are not a membership organization.  We sell placemat advertising and occasionally a bit of business advertising on the Local4All website but it’s our policy to share good community information with others in the community whether they buy from us or not.  For those of you interested in the FC Light Up activities, here are the highlights, but also there is a link below so you download and print the very detailed schedule that Barb emailed me.  It’s a one-page document in PDF format.

Event:  Ford City Light Up Night 2011
Date:  November 19th, 2011
Displays open:  2:00 pm
Opening Ceremonies with Mayor Marc Mantini and others:  4:00 pm
Welcome to Santa and music by the Ford City Jr/Sr High School Chorus:  4:45 pm
Santa arrives:  5:00 pm
Festivities winding down: 7:00 pm (ish)
For music + dance, join Jimmy Beaumont and the Skyliners at the 10th St. Station: 8:00 pm until ?

This is just a sketch of the schedule, there’s much more.  Download Barb’s detailed schedule for Ford City Light Up Night 2011 by clicking here.

Posted in Armstrong County, Events, family-friendly, Heart-warming | Leave a comment

Roxy’s “Special” Placemats

Posted on November 17, 2011 by carl

For smaller businesses in the Prospect area, we are selling space on our second issue of “just at Roxy’s” placemats.  To share this information with others, give them the URL http://roxysmats.local4all.com.

Single issues in the near future:
01B Roxy’s 2012:  60 days Holiday mats, your ad on 5000 placemats for $75.  Time frames are roughly late January through March
02B Roxy’s 2012:  60 days, 5000 placemats March-May for $75.

Combo:
01B and 02B (10,000) for just $89.

Additional information:  If interested in a larger area of distribution than Roxy’s only, see our website at http://placemats.local4all.com.  Linked pages have our schedule, lists of restaurants in different areas, prices, and most of the discounts we offer on a regular basis.  For example, a significant number of our advertisers belong to our ‘ongoing advertisers’ group where they earn a % discount for one area and a 14% discount if they are ongoing in multiple areas.

Please call Linda at 724-568-2979 if you have questions or need help getting started.

 

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Do it yourself PR

Posted on November 9, 2011 by carl

New ideas come easily to me but not always fast.  Although I created do-it-yourself forms for self-publishing AND another form for creating shortcut URLs, I never thought of creating DIY.local4all.com as a place to get started.  Or should it be DIYPR.local4all.com?

Let me know what you think.  If you have an even better idea, you get bragging rights!

Do it yourself PR is free as long as you do the typing.  Family-friendly content only, please.  Unlike FaceBook Public Events, ours is sorted by zip code.

Free4all.local4all.com – forms via a short tutorial.
Forms.local4all.com – a straight shot into the list of forms

Posted in Easy Self-Publishing, Online Advertising | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Chicora Setting Up New Community Library

Posted on October 20, 2011 by carl
A citizen's group is setting up a public library in donated space.

Thank you, Chicora Medical Center for your donation of space for this project

Local4All is pleased to help the Friends of the Chicora Community Library, a citizen’s group taking action on behalf of their neighbors and the future of Chicora.  Until recently, the community was served by a bookmobile that parked in several locations so books could be borrowed and returned.

Cindy’s Place has a naturally nice atmosphere for planning meetings and that was where I met with volunteers to discuss how to best get the word out about their ongoing efforts and here are a select few items of what we came up with.

  • Cindy’s Place Placemats – maybe that’s how you ended up reading this
  • On the Internet – here you are
  • Downloadable posters and flyers – click here to download
  • Downloadable flyers going up on local bulletin boards, in employees’ lunch rooms at bigger companies, etc.

How you can help:  Tell others what’s going on! 

We don’t know yet if the best way to reach the most people at the lowest cost with be through the Local4All website, a new website, the Butler County Library website, all of the above or none of the above.  Maybe it will be Twitter or FaceBook!  What I’ve learned from the past is that the future is unpredictable.  The most important thing to remember is “the more we tell the public about what we need, the more likely we are to find a volunteer who can help get it done.”

Thanks go to:

  • Chicora Medical Center for donating the use of two rooms for the library
  • The Butler County Library for their past support and help in transition
  • Volunteers without whom this would be immensely difficult, expensive, probably impossible.

Sponsors:

Chicora Medical Center
Local4All Advertising (Cindy’s Placemats, online, etc.)
More to follow

Fundraising:  As you can see on flyers and placemats, donations can be mailed to Mary Jo.  We at Local4All are also allowing FOCCL to keep 100% of revenue for the first five new placemat ads on Cindy’s mats and also a percentage of future ad revenue from their new customers (similar to a commission but donated directly to the project).

Posted in Butler County, Life in PA, Placemat Advertising | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Armstrong Community Theater’s Fall Craft Show in the Wings

Posted on October 7, 2011 by carl

FALL CRAFT SHOW

 On Saturday, November 19th, the Armstrong Community Theater will be hosting a Fall craft show.  There will be a variety of vendors selling various items. Some of the vendors include: Pampered Chef, Lucy Bella Bowtique, Tastefully Simple, and a variety of crafts.  The craft show will take place at the Worthington Civic Center. The doors will open from 10am to 3pm.  If you have any questions, please contact Cathlynn Bowser at (724)525-0363 or at cath...@windstream.net or at i...@armstrongcommunitytheater.org

Posted in Armstrong County, Events | Leave a comment

Armstrong Community Theater presents a comedy Nov 3,4,5 in Worthington

Posted on October 7, 2011 by carl

The Armstrong Community Theater presents the comedy “Crumpled Classics” November 3, 4, & 5, 2011 at 7:30 pm at the Worthington Civic Center.

The play is about a quirky cadre of students who take it upon themselves to pull together the school’s annual “Classics on Parade”, acting out famous stories that they studied in their literature class, but with a twist.   It’s a comedy treat sprinkled with outrageous takes on some very familiar characters.

Be sure to come see this talented cast of youth and young adults as they perform this comedic production written by Craig Sodaro.

Tickets are available for $8.00 at The Quality Inn, Baer Beauty, the Worthington Library, and at the door.  Seating is limited.

Posted in Events, Humor | Leave a comment