Launching Soon...The Highly Anticipated Adult + Kids Classes Guides

 
It's finally happening...the Adults and Kids Classes Guides at A Little Beacon Blog. This is a collection of classes that people living in and around Beacon really want to know about. These Guides will be a part of A Little Beacon Blog's Things To Do In Beacon Guides, and will be maintained and promoted throughout the year.
 
There are many ways to participate: 
 
1. If you are teaching a class, please submit your information to editorial@alittlebeaconblog.com. Those added will be added at a Basic level to a related category (like LANGUAGE, or PAINTING). 
 
2. If you teach and you want your listing to stand out and get into our social media streams, you can start an advertising subscription as a Featured Business, details are in the Advertising Package which you can download here. Please note, you do not need to do this in order to be included at a Basic level in the Adult and Kids Classes Guides. This is for if you want to step it up a notch.
 
3. If you work for a business or corporation who supports the arts and community events, we are working with sponsors of single Guides or of all of the Things To Do In Beacon Guides, which includes Restaurants, Classes, Shopping, Beauty, etc. This major sponsor level helps us maintain and promote these Guides which helps smaller businesses and artists get the word out. To get your logo on the flyer and to be part of the initial launch of these highly anticipated Classes Guides, please email katie@alittlebeaconblog.com 

Look for it soon! We are adding classes on a daily basis and perfecting how we want you to see it.

Love Note to You

Dear Readers,

Thank you so much for reading A Little Beacon Blog, and for finding value in the stories we share, and the obsessive organization we take pleasure in with the Things To Do In Beacon Guides. Thank you to each and every advertiser who has invested in A Little Beacon Blog, using it as an outlet to reach readers just like you, encouraging them to frequent these hard-working businesses, both the growing ones and those long established in this area. Without you, the way in which we produce this blog - with the varying degree of frequency, image production, and social media sharing to reach long-distance readers, following Beacon from California, Vermont, New York, all over, who are all vying to move here (for real...it's not just folks from Brooklyn!), as well as lifers who grew up here and are loving the changes - it would not be possible. You see, this blog is my business. When you visit this blog, you are standing in front of my storefront, and deciding to come in and explore.

Always obsessed with magazines, I wanted to write for them. Jane Pratt of Jane Magazine was my idol. I sold newspaper ads for the college newspaper and wrote a love advice column called "Dear Trudy." I went on to be the editor-in-chief of the school's literary magazine after it had started to fall apart (as I had a knack for graphic design), laying the whole thing out, and working with a team of very different people to produce a unified publication.

The business person in me (before I knew I had a business person in me), and the creative person in me, wanted to create a magazine. That is a bold statement, to be sure, as I had no idea what it meant to produce a magazine. Keeping that in the back of my mind, I tried other careers. I worked for a season on Law & Order as a production assistant. I learned the fascinating ways that people measure other people's likes and dislikes while working in the Research Department of the Food Network. I learned the ways of contracts and sifting through book ideas as an editorial assistant at Harper Collins. I took writing courses at MediaBistro. And then I fell into website production while taking costume design courses at FIT. This is also where I discovered blogging, which circles it all back to creating a magazine.

While blogging on the side, and after working for three years as the website editor for a national nonprofit organization, I quit my day job and hung my shingle as a website designer and producer. It was there that I started working heavily with small businesses to produce their dream websites, to sell their products and services. I was honored to work with a nonprofit who built schools in Africa, a yoga teacher who produced DVDs for pregnant women, and so many other shops on the web that you would love. My career morphed into another business that is a training platform for small businesses to learn to get the word out about their businesses using websites, PR, social media, and more. This began my opportunity to work with corporate advertisers like Capital One Spark, who contracted us to blog about the film crew they hired to make videos about business owners, getting to the heart of why they started and what made them tick.

When I moved to Beacon from a nondescript area of Manhattan, BOOM, the blogging fire was lit! Suddenly, so many story ideas began unfolding in my head, and fit perfectly like a puzzle. The local scene is so different from the national one, and so special. I have loved learning about how it works, and being a part of it. The businesses, large and small, are run by people who live here and are just like us, who have put their necks out on the line to live life on their terms to build a business that people hopefully frequent and love. And so this blog, this online magazine of sorts, was born in 2011, with this first post, from my iPhone.

Last year, I decided to make blogging about Beacon (one of) my full-time jobs. Nobody hired me; it's a job I made up. So far, you have liked the articles and return to read more. Those articles and Guides have been supported from businesses in this area with advertising, and I am so grateful. It means I can keep doing my job and keep on creating words and pictures you will hopefully like. :)

A huge thank you to these advertisers who supported A Little Beacon Blog in 2015:
Major Spotlight Sponsors

Single Guide Sponsors

Article Sponsors

Featured Businesses in Guides

We have more of what you love coming to you, and new stories and feature articles being planned in our editorial calendar. If you are a business who wants the inside track to articles we are working on, sign up for this business newsletter.

If you would like to join this list of supporters, please see our Advertising Packages page, and/or reach out directly to me at katie@alittlebeaconblog.com.

Thank you, everyone!

So If You're Looking For New Stuff Daily From A Little Beacon Blog...



We so appreciate you reading A Little Beacon Blog! We are out and about a lot, checking in on what is going on, visiting new programs in town, trying the latest restaurants, and coming back to the computer to type it all up to show you - or sometimes just tapping it in via the iPhone. There are many digital outlets we fill up with thoughts and pictures that you may be missing, so here is a rundown:

Get more of A Little Beacon Blog on:

Instagram: www.instagram.com/alittlebeacon
Really teeny and colorful details of what makes living in Beacon so wonderful, like the first signs of snow, or these hand-stamped initial charms from Copper Fern Designs at Beacon Flea, or this amazing jump into leaves.

Twitter: www.twitter.com/alittlebeacon
Sharing #beaconny links we like - for example, this particularly picturesque one - and anything else we can fit into 140 characters, even live-shopping during the high season.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/alittlebeaconblog
Highlights of what is going on here at A Little Beacon Blog. But be warned! Facebook really alters what you see in your news feed. Even if you have clicked to Like your favorite business or bakery, you're not necessarily seeing all of their updates. There is a lot of science and (frankly) money behind what appears in the feed, so just know that to see every highlight, you'll want to be hooked into A Little Beacon Blog's e-newsletter for sure! To learn more about how Facebook works, if you need it for your own business, reach out to StudioPixelated, our sister digital strategy agency, who helps small businesses with digital marketing. To learn more about social outlets that give a projector to your creative side, check in with Tin Shingle for Tin Shingle's weekly newsletter (of which I am a co-founder), which produces educational articles and webinars weekly.

Newsletter: Our favorite way to send you all of our best content. Be sure to sign up right here so that you don't miss the best of what A Little Beacon Blog produces. Are you a business? Sign up for advance notice of story ideas just in case your business is a perfect fit to spotlight or if you have something to contribute.

Speak to you soon in all of these digital networks!


A Little Beacon Blog is on Pinterest!

A Little Beacon Blog on Pinterest
We are happy to announce that A Little Beacon Blog is now on Pinterest!  When you live in a place as beautiful and visual as Beacon is, with a backdrop as stunning as the Hudson Valley, you know there's lots of eye candy to share! We have boards like "Handmade in Beacon," "Nightlife in Beacon," "Eat and Drink," and "Services" - even one for "Lovely Letters," because one can't have a Pinterest account and not obsess over typography!

A Little Beacon Blog on Pinterest


We have pin boards for each of our guides, with lots more to come! Are you on Pinterest? Let us know your Pinterest user name in the comments below, and don't forget to follow us at pinterest.com/alittlebeacon!