What kind of social media and traditional and online marketing make sense for your business? How can small businesses thrive in local, state, and global markets? A free workshop on marketing, social media and branding for small businesses will be held on Thursday, March 9 from 9:30 to 11 a.m. at the Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission office, 297 Bath Road in Wiscasset.

The workshop will feature DreamLocal Digital founder Shannon Kinney, Kris Folsom, marketing and communications director for Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, Bill Card, economic development specialist for the Maine Small Business Administration, and Jaimie Logan, governor's account executive with the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development. 

Kinney is founder and client success officer at Dream Local Digital. She has over 20 years of experience in the development of successful Internet products, online sales and marketing strategies. She has worked on the teams developing successful Internet brands such as cars.com, careerbuilder.com, and over 60 online media properties for newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. Prior to that, she spent over 10 years in media sales and sales management in Maine. Kinney has served more than 40,000 small businesses in online marketing workshops. She been recognized as a Woman to Watch by Maine Biz, and as a Local Digital Innovator by the Local Media Association.

Folsom has a passion for branding, strategic planning, and marketing metrics. Since arriving at the Gardens in 2011, annual visitation has increased from 87,000 to 188,000 guests and Facebook followers have climbed from 5,000 to 30,000. Kris attributes this to having a fantastic product but also to utilizing her marketing efforts to harness the power of word of mouth advertising to achieve organizational goals.

This session is free of charge and is presented in conjunction with the Small Business Development Center and the Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission. The snow date is Friday, March 10.

To register, please go to www.lcrpc.org or call 882-5983.