Featured blog post..with Vintage Vacations...

Who are you? 
I’m Helen Cunningham,living in Ventnor with my husband Frazer and our daughter Faber. 

What do you do? 
I run a holiday business with my husband Frazer … we were the first to bring American Airstream holidays to the UK and have just had our 10th season(which seems unbelievable ….Time flies!)This has grown into our full-­time jobs with the addition of some wonderful buildings that we are lucky to have been able to acquire. I guess our USP is our love of ‘old stuff’, quirky architecture and muchos kitschos that shines through what we do and attracts like-­‐minded folk. 

Where can people visit you/see your work? 
During the summer months we are at out Airstream site over at Ashey most days … we also hold regular ‘events’ throughout the year at the Airstreams or some of our other locations which have proven to be a great way of meeting new ‘Island’ people. Details on the ‘Special Events’ page of our website. 

Do you have a website? 
vintagevacations.co.uk is our website address 
Facebook page is www.facebook.com/pages/vintage-vacations
and I am @vintagehelen on twitter. 

Have you always lived on the Island? 
I’m from London and my husband is from Edinburgh but we have lived on the Island for about 8 years now full time. We first built a small holiday house here that is now our all-­the-‐ time home. 

If you could have 1 wish what would you choose? 
Oooooh *chews pencil* could everyone just play nice please? Failing that could every summer be like summer 2013! 

Stuck on a desert island what 3 items would you choose to have with you? 
My photo albums, trusty sewing machine and an everlasting supply of Montezamas chocolate buttons.

If 1 of your 3 items had to be music what album or artist would you choose? 
The whole Nile Rogers back catalogue. #cheating 

Is there anything you would like to see introduced on #Wighthour? 
Maybe Q&A’s …. On odd things – maybe you have seen a peculiar sign or an interesting house on the Island and would like to know more about it? 

If you could choose the next person to be featured on the #Wighthour blog who would you choose? 
@ventnorartsclub …. I’d expect some interesting answers!

Getting the most out of #Wighthour

I hadn't realised how quickly the weeks had passed doing #Wighthour but we have been going and growing for just over 4 months now slowly but surely getting more people to join each Monday evening with our mostly general chatter.  I spoke to a few members recently and they admitted not using #wighthour to its full potential and I did admit that I felt that at times it feels like it loses its way a bit (I love the fun chat so please don't despair) but that I feel that alot of Island businesses are losing out on a really good chance to promote themselves as much as they could with #wighthour. I appreciate that not everyone is especially twitter or tech minded so I am going to explain my idea behind #wighthour in very simple terms :)

#Wighthour

Using your business twitter account on a Monday evening between 8:30-9:30pm write a tweet describing your business/services/offers you do and somewhere in that tweet include #Wighthour (You don’t have to write the tweet to @Wighthour I will still see it).

I will retweet any business / useful/ informative tweet that includes the #Wighthour hashtag.

If you are promoting your business using #Wighthour then please retweet someone else who is doing the same, the idea being the more people who retweet each other then the more people get to see your original tweet and that will hopefully lead to more business coming your way.

To give you an idea of what I mean:

Imagine you only have 10 followers—you may think #Wighthour is pointless for you as ’who is going to see my tweet?’ but if you include #Wighthour in your tweet even if I am not one of your 10 followers yet then I will see it and retweet it to my 500+ followers  and some of them have 1000’s of followers so if they join in #Wighthour and retweet your tweet that I have retweeted then suddenly the answer to your question of ‘who is going to see my tweet?’ is potentially thousands of people!

I hope that makes some kind of sense! Please just say if you have any questions!

See you at #Wighthour

Do you want to be featured?

I am looking to feature a different island business here on the wighthour blog each week, if you are interested @wighthour or by email @ wighthour@gmail.com
in being featured please contact me either here by leaving a message in the comments box below, on twitter
I will send you a few questions to answer so you can be featured as you wish - in your own words! I will gladly include any images you want (so long as they are yours!)
I look forward to hearing from you all! I will feature people in turn in the order I get their requests!

Sarah @wighthour