Audrey Rawnie Rico

When people ask me for a good website platform to build their small business or personal brand’s website on, Squarespace is always one of the first I recommend. It’s super easy to navigate—even for beginners—and has some of the best design tools you’ll find on a website platform. In this Squarespace review, I’ll dive deep…

In a world inundated with digital screens, flyers give you a more personal and local feel—helpful if you’re marketing to your local community. Good flyers need to be well-designed enough to catch the attention of passersby. For instance, you can explore hand-drawn illustrations to stand out, offer coupons, or insert QR codes. Regardless of the…

For small businesses in any industry, one of the most effective yet underrated marketing strategies I always recommend is collecting Google reviews. If you’ve ever Googled a local business and decided to try it out because it had dozens of positive reviews, then you know just how powerful reviews can be. They instantly make a…

Postcards, like coupons, event invitations, sales announcements, and real estate postcards, are a tried-and-true way of marketing small businesses, especially if you’re marketing to your local community. Even in the digital age, postcards are still a credible, well-established marketing strategy—even more so with ads and screens on every corner. The key to making them work…

Every small business owner should have a good business card. But you don’t always need to spend a fortune on it. Fortunately, there are ways to get free business cards from online platforms, whether through free trials or free sample kits. Some even offer 100% free custom business cards with no strings attached. Below, I’ve…

An email blast (sometimes called an e-blast or eblast) is an email you send to hundreds or thousands of recipients at once (hence why it’s called a “blast”). It’s often used to send general announcements or messages to your entire subscriber base quickly and easily, like store announcements, seasonal greetings, or event invitations. Email blasts…

Remember when email was new and you had the most fun thinking up creative and unique email addresses? Those were fun times. But if you’re in the business world, your emails must be professional and polished (not many people will open a sales pitch from punkrockfan91@hotmail.com). But don’t worry: Learning how to create a professional…

GoDaddy is one of the top web hosts and site builders I recommend to many beginners and small business owners for many reasons. For one, it’s free to start (for the website builder) and one of the easiest platforms overall. But I won’t lie: GoDaddy isn’t perfect and has some notable drawbacks as a web…

If you’re looking to get a free email domain, you’ve come to the right place. But first, a disclaimer: very few platforms provide a 100% free domain for email addresses with no strings attached. They’ll mostly come as freebies with your email host, website builder, or even your domain registrar, so there will likely still…

Is there a publicity stunt that has particularly stuck out in recent memory? By nature, publicity stunts are meant to be a little (or a lot) disruptive, extraordinary, and surprising. They’re meant to make audiences stop and really take notice. While they can be notoriously high-risk (and high-budget), the potential reward is a lot of…

Squarespace announced its 2024 Squarespace Refresh in September, aka the rollout of brand-new features to its (already very capable) platform. Squarespace’s new features include a bunch of handy new tools, most notably the integration of AI into its website builder (Squarespace’s entry into the AI game) that can significantly help grow your brand online. That’s…

One of the biggest benefits of AI’s recent rapid developments is website building. In my opinion, it’s also the area where generative AI has been most reliable and accurate. Like most of the world, I’m generally new to AI, only using an AI website generator for the first time about a year and a half…