Friday, March 26, 2010

CYT-Spokane's historically accurate portrayal of The Legend of Pocahontas

CYT-Spokane is a non-profit, theater arts organization providing instructional sessions and live musical performance opportunities for youth ages 6-18. The organization offers three fully staged musical productions performed at the Bing Crosby Theater this year. On May 21st CYT will debut The Legend of Pocahontas with four separate show times.

“When people hear Pocahontas, many associate it with the Disney production. What is different about CYT’s Pocahontas production is that it is a historically accurate portrayal with original songs and dances,” stated Lydia Kinne, CYT’s Box Office Manager and Registrar.

This original CYT musical tells the story of the Algonquin Indian tribe and their princess, Pocahontas. The production has a cast of eighty-one, which is a particularly large cast for CYT, offering the opportunity for a large number of local youth to participate. The cast will sing and dance to live music performed by volunteer musicians, showcasing a variety of musical instruments and talents.

When asked what is unique about CYT’s productions, Kinne explained, “The comradery of the cast. When watching the show you can see the strong friendships and bonds that have developed as a result of the production.”

CYT-Spokane was the first branch established outside San Diego in 1998 and since has strived to maintain its current mission while adapting to the changing needs of the local community. Nearly 1,000 children participate annually in the educational programs and theatrical productions with approximately 12,000 patrons attending the shows hosted at the Bing Crosby Theater.

The organization has opened up limited opportunities for sponsorship of their productions to local companies interested in supporting youth arts in the community. There are three levels of sponsorship; Gold, Silver, and Bronze. Each level offers a combination of solid advertising before, during, and after the shows through various routes of media.

To get your company involved in supporting this annual community event, contact Andrea Estes with AE Consulting at (206) 355-7514 or andrea@ae-consulting.net.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Establishing an Online Presence for Your Small Business, Part 1 of 3

According to a recent Kelsey Group Study approximately 97% of consumers use the Internet to research local products and services. This number proves the necessity for all businesses – regardless of size and services – to have an online presence to generate new customers and retain existing ones. This surprising statistic prompted AE Consulting to write a blog series highlighting our top three approaches for businesses to establish their presence online.

In this series of articles, we’d like to outline your options and let you choose which suits your needs and budget best – the recommendation is that you’ve opted to do at least one of the options suggested once you’re done reading the entire series.

The most common and popular form of online presence is a website. The ideal option is to hire a professional services company to design and develop your business’s website design and content. This option is best suited for companies that intend to be established and growing for more than two years. If you intend to dissolve your business under two years, we’d recommend taking a more inexpensive route when establishing your web presence (Learn about these options in parts two and three of our series). Hiring these services is an investment, but one that will prove its return in a matter of months.

Before you hire a web designer it is important for you to understand what makes a successful website. The overall design should follow basic design principles to garner positive attention and relay your company’s message (learn about website design). Your website must also be strategically laid out for usability to promote user experience (learn about usability mistakes). Most importantly, your website needs to utilize search engine optimization (SEO) – implementing various design and content strategies to position your website to appear toward the top of a list when someone conducts a search. SEO ensures that people actually visit your website, providing your business a return on investment (learn about SEO). Without strategic writing, structure, links, meta-tags, etc., your site will be a dime a dozen in cyberspace.

Web design prices vary depending on skill and amount of work involved. If you do decide to go this route, do your research. Find a web designer that has extensive experience with website design, usability, and SEO tactics (learn about considerations when hiring a web developer).

AE would like to know your thoughts. What challenges are preventing your company from developing a website? This concludes part one of our three-part series. Next, we will discuss the second option for establishing your business’s online presence if a professionally developed site is not your ideal option.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Best wishes to our intern, Chang-Peng


AE Consulting would like to recognize Chang-Peng for his solid research work done as our marketing research intern over winter quarter. He completed several research projects for our start-up and did so with patience and persistence. Chang-Peng came to us through the MBA program at EWU's Spokane campus due to his interest in marketing and desire to get some real world experience before graduation.
Many thanks for your contributions and best of luck in your career in the business world! You have a bright future ahead of you.