Beech Tree Inn -- Bed and Breakfast in Brookline, MA

From the contemporary, chic Inn at English Meadows in Kennebunk Maine, down to the charming country style Beech Tree Inn – Bed and Breakfast in a quiet charming neighborhood in Brookline, MA. Pat and Trina have finally found themselves at their final New England destination within the restful, sophisticated elegance of the Inn at Cape Cod to attend the New England Innkeeping show.

The morning started with an expanded version of a continental style breakfast at the Beech Tree Inn,

containing plenty of homemade goodies, including, but not limited to, homemade butter, granolla, apple spice cake, muffins, fresh fruit bowls and homemade apple sauce. The Beech Tree Inn Bed and Breakfast, unlike The Inn at English Meadows, had one common table where you will find yourself mingling with guests from a variety of locations in the world and having some very interesting conversations.

At the Beech Tree Inn — Bed and Breakfast, one can find comfort within the company of tasteful antiques, hand painted furniture, and turn-of-the-century Victorian architecture. The Beech Tree is walking distance to shopping, many restaurants and pizzerias, historic culture, Universities and most parts of Boston, MA. Beech Tree Inn provides a place for rest and relaxation in the heart of a big, busy city, with gracious hospitality.

Pat admiring Plymouth Rock, MA

Onward, south to Cape Cod, stopping at Plymouth along the way, Pat and Trina had a chance to view the Mayflower replica and the one and only Plymouth Rock. This short stop was a great opportunity to see an important piece of U.S history and really get a feel for the area surrounding New England Innkeepers, not to mention how wonderful it was to sample more Lobster!

Meeting new faces, learning, and sharing in Hyannis, Massachusetts for the 2012 New England Conference & Trade Show

Arriving in Hyannis, Massachusetts for the 2012 New England Conference & Trade Show hosted by the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (paii), the tired InsideOut travelers were excited to set up the booth and get stared with learning, mingling and sharing.

Peter and Suzan from West Hill House with Trina at the InsideOut Solutions booth

The first day went well, and the InsideOut booth was greeted by both new and familiar faces. Among those were Peter and Suzan, the Innkeepers of West Hill House Bed & Breakfast located in Warren, Vermont. InsideOut is launching their brand new website very soon. Trina had an opportunity to show Peter how he will be managing his brand new site with one simple log in, and the easy to use content management system of WordPress. They are very eager to have the new website launch and are very pleased with the beautiful fresh look.

Pat and Trina look forward to meeting new faces on Wednesday’s conference day.

A beautiful Saturday Morning in Maine

After settling in their rooms, Pat and Trina headed on down to the wine bar, ‘Old Vines’,  recommended by Eric and Liz, this place was seconds from the Inn. Starving, they were excited to try out the local eats… and this place was a winner. Plenty of menu choices, delicious New York style thin crust pizza, and an extensive drink menu. Old Vines had a young, hip sophisticated ambiance, perfect for the younger folks The Inn at English Meadows attracts.

The perfect start to a Maine day

After a restful night, morning greeted the new visitors with a beautiful, sunny, mild day. Breakfast was served at your choice of individual tables, or the main table if you prefer. Hot coffee and fine teas were served with homemade bread, then came the delicious apple crisp and the main dish. Everything done with the utmost care and creativity.

Lobsta! Lots of it.

The Landing Store and Deli

Next stop, Boston. Yet, first things first, they MUST get a Lobster Roll.

But, with such a great breakfast, the appetite was just not quite ready and Eric and Liz came to the rescue once again. If you hear a food suggestion from them, listen! They recommended a place called ‘The Landing Store and deli’. A little charming country store, with birdhouses made from old painted buoys outside, a front porch and a cute little deli in the back, this is where a large Lobster Roll was prepared, cut in half and wrapped for the trip back down south. The roll was a wonderful lunch after arriving in New Hampshire off highway 1 (the scenic route).

A quiet country Inn, nestled in in the City

Navigating through Boston after the quiet country setting up north came as a challenge, yet soon Pat and Trina arrived at their second destination, The Beech Tree Inn- Bed and Breakfast (soon to get a new design by InsideOut). A charming country style Inn nestled in a quiet city neighborhood of Boston Massachusetts. The smell of freshly baked goods greets you as you carefully walk on a path through the massive amount of tulips, daffodils and other spring delights.

Stay updated for Monday, the big day in Cape Cod, meeting more passionate and amazing Innkeepers of New England!

Next week begins the travel season for the InsideOut Road Warriors.  This year, Silas Fuller, Sales and Business Development will join Patricia McCauley at all Conferences and Trade Shows.

First stop, January 18th–20th, Cody Wyoming for the annual Dude Ranch Association Convention. Patricia and Silas will jointly be giving an interactive presentation on, Critical Elements of Effective Websites, Social Media, Trying to Stay on Top of the Continual Changes, Smartphone Websites, Do You Need One?  We love the Dude Ranchers, they really know their stuff when it comes to the value of the Internet and the conference is always really well attended and FUN! Yahoo!

Next stop, January 23-25th, Little Rock, Arkansas for the Professional Association of Innkeepers conference.

We will be at Booth 523, so come by and say hello. We will also be taking appointments to review your Internet marketing and branding strategies.  These appointments are with both Pat and Silas, double the expertise, register online at  insideout.com/paii.  Looking forward to seeing so many of friends who are also clients.  See you in Little Rock!

Many other trips are planned for this year including Montana in April, PAII New England,  and the South East PAII conference in South Carolina just to name a few. If we miss you this trip hope to catch you down the road at one of the other shows.

Happy New Year, and let’s keep traveling!

InsideOut Roadtrip! Making our way to PAII NW

It isn’t very often that we get to drive to a conference without first getting on a plane. How delightful to spend time with colleagues wending our way from the northern edge of Washington State in a 4+ hour drive through small towns, misty forests, hugging salty inland waterways replete with oyster beds and fishing boats on our way to the 2011 Northwest Innkeeping Conference and Trade Show held just south of Portland, Oregon in Clackamas.

With the conference located in such close proximity to the offices of InsideOut Solutions in Sequim, WA, it’s become possible for a good number of the staff to travel to the conference to meet innkeepers from all over the Northwest, including Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.

Having clients in each of these states and BC, means we’ll have the opportunity to meet many of them face to face, some for the first time. Representing the Web Department at PAII NW this year is Beth Logan, Lisa Lidback and Corey Edwards. Shawn Kerr is attending his first conference as the Online Marketing Manager. Skyla Grimes offers technical support and is the New Client Point-of-contact person, also attending her first conference as a Representative of InsideOut. Pat McCauley, President of InsideOut Soultions, along with Beth Logan, Lead Designer, will be giving a presentation during the conference on Best Website Design Practices for Today’s Market.

As for the rest of the InsideOut Team, we’re back at home base, taking care of servers, coding new sites, designing print materials, and improving Search Engine visibility for our clients.

Steven Dunston, our SEO Manager, will present “15 Minute Marketing Makeover: Refocus your Revenue Goals with the help of Web Statistics”. This is a great presentation on how to read your web site stats and use them to help your online marketing. We have given this presentation at past B&B conferences and have had standing room only, so show up early to grab a seat.

We hope to see you at the conference and go here to sign up for your one-on-one meeting.

Because there were five InsideOuters at the event, we had the chance to break up and attend different speakers covering subject matters that most applied to our job descriptions and interests. Katie, Gail and Laura attended Aaron Hockely’s presentation on how to successfully launch a blog, while Kailey and Corey went to hear about WordPress plugin programming.

InsideOut Staff Corey Edwards, Katie Pate, Kailey Lampert & Laura Alisanne, posing with the Fremont Troll in Seattle after WordCamp 2009

Scott Porad of icanhascheezeburger.com was also a speaker, and Mark Jaquith spoke on WordPress’ version of Facebook, BuddyPress. There were also spontaneous sessions on a variety of topics, many of which included Twitter. Gail attended one about the legal repercussions of using others content. She said she broke out in a cold sweat at how easy it is to break copyright laws on the web!

The day ended with some “ignite” sessions: tiny 5-minute presentations on a variety subjects, ranging from self-hosting to various methods for creating WordPress themes. These were fun. Lively, and a great way to cover several subjects quickly. Laura and Katie commented that they would have enjoyed some of these presentations at regular speed in another half hour session.

The last speaker was Liz Strauss. She was almost more like a motivational speaker than someone speaking about effective blogging; she echoed the theme of being yourself on your blog. After all, that is why people come to your blog, to hear what YOU have to say.

Overall, it was a great chance to make some interesting contacts in the Pacific Northwest WordPress Community, and learn some new information from other WordPress users.

On Monday, Katie Pate presented on “Internet Marketing with Facebook”. It was wonderful to see such interest in this new marketing platform, and we had another full audience. There were lots of good questions, like from our client Grover McMains, who owns a North Texas Bed and Breakfast in Fort Worth. He asked us about the important steps to having a modern web site before starting to focus time and energy into Facebook Marketing.

On Tuesday Steven spoke again on using a blog as a powerful marketing tool for your Bed and Breakfast web site. Referencing some of the tips and advice he covered in this Marketing Boot Camp, he explained how a blog can allow you to capture additional traffic for attractions and activities searches by creating content about these on a blog, and expanding what your site can be about, and therefore attract new potential clientele to your site.

Pat generously donated an ipod nano for the giveaway to the innkeepers. Many of the other vendors and speakers have known Pat for years, and as always, they were thrilled to see her again and get an update from her on all the new news from InsideOut.

Along with all of the education, we also got to see some of our current clients, like Carol Davis, the current president of the TBBA, and owner of Blisswood Bed and Breakfast, a stunning Wedding Destinationin Texas; and Jerry & Laurie Pinnix from the Mt. Gainor Inn, a Dripping Springs TX bed and breakfast. It is wonderful to check in with them, and give them some more tools to add to their marketing toolbox.

We also saw Jay Karen from PAII, and discussed with anticipation the next annual PAII convention to be held in Austin, and what the TBBA will be doing to help with PAII be gracious Texans hosts.

We want to thank all of the innkeepers and TBBA staff that made the event a success, and treated us so well as our thoughtful Texan hosts. See you in March!

Steven Dunston, myself (Katie Pate) and company President Pat McCauley will be leaving this weekend to fly over to Granbury Texas for the annual Texas Bed and Breakfast Convention. We are pleased to be presenting on multiple subjects throughout the event, including Facebook marketing, blogging and general marketing makeovers. In fact, SEO Manager Steven Dunston will be presenting the kick off talk, “Web Stats Boot Camp”.

Steven will also be presenting some of the great results we have seen since launching the new Texas association site about one year ago (in September). Not only did we design the site for them, we are also helping them with their blog, and running AdWords for them.

InsideOut is heading to Granbury TX for the B&B Association Convention

It is going to be great to share with the Texas association how all of their different marketing efforts have really paid off for their members!

We are also looking forward to sharing our insights on the emerging marketing opportunities that are present in blogging and Facebook. Since we began giving lectures on Facebook last Spring, the format for the social networking site has gone through adjustments, and we have learned more about this ever-growing social platform.

Of course we will also be giving out our complementary ranking reports to all innkeepers that registered ahead of time for the conference . We look forward to seeing current clients, and maybe making some more new friends!

See ya’ll in Texas!

Dunleith Inn, a historic Natchez Bed and Breakfast

Our very own Steven Dunston took a solo flight into the deep South for the Mississippi/Louisiana Bed and Breakfast Association Conference last week. After a quick visit to New Orleans over the weekend, he headed upriver to Natchez Mississippi where the function was being held at the Natchez Conference Center. The conference included a tour of the area’s extraordinary historical sites and antebellum mansions, many of which are bed and breakfasts.

Steven gave a presentation on Facebook Marketing, where he shared some of the insights and techniques for developing an effective marketing scheme on the ever popular social networking site Facebook. Many of the innkeepers Steven met expressed that their main sources for reservations were international clientele and word of mouth. Interestingly enough, these are the same qualities that make Facebook advertising so appealing.

Facebook is an international site, functioning in 60 different languages. It is designed to be a place for friends, coworkers and associates to keep in touch with each other. With this in mind, using Facebook to connect with your prior guests is like a form digital word of mouth. Many of the innkeepers that attended Steven’s presentation already had personal Facebook accounts, but were interested in learning about adding a business page.

He was also pleased to meet again with industry colleagues including Peter Scherman and Rick Wolf of The B&B team and Jay Karen, CEO of Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII). Jay presented some fascinating statistics from PAII’s latest innkeeper survey, showing that despite the economic tumult, the bed and breakfast industry remains strong.

The next conference we attend will be in Granbury, Texas for the Texas Bed and Breakfast Association (TBBA) next month. We will also be presenting about Facebook there.

If Jay Karen is going to be at your next conference I highly recommend you attend as he has so much great industry news to share. He has really ignited PAII with fresh ideas and leadership. He has been meeting with Trip Advisor on a regular basis to work with the issue that plague B&B’s on their site.

Photos from the conference