Marketer minds her business â€“ and her neighborsâ€™ too

“Once you”™ve been to the mid-Hudson Valley, you will always want to come back. Or, maybe you”™ll never leave.”

So speaks Melissa Hewitt of Accord, founder of the High Falls-based www.VISITvortex.com. A transplant from Long Island, the entrepreneur was lured to Ulster County in her love for nature, the mountains and the tight-knit villages.

To fulfill her dream of being permanently in the locality, Hewitt grabbed the reins of her future by entering the marketing field in Kingston and ultimately setting up a business to ensure she would not have to leave. Today, through the commercial Web site she has established, she has embarked on a two-prong effort. On one hand, she inspires residents to support local businesses; on the other, she endeavors to humanize these businesses, increasing their revenues.

“We started in Ulster and are expanding to Dutchess,” she explains. “Eventually we will extend the site north and south.” She works cooperatively with Ulster County Tourism and Dutchess County Tourism, which provide her VISITvortex Web site with data, while she shares her pertinent videos.

Hewitt”™s efforts have not gone unrecognized. She points to a grant from Explore NY in partnership with I LOVE NY because of her Web site”™s being a tool to increase tourism and support local economies.

A viewer contemplating a mid-Hudson Valley visit can zero in on individual communities to view histories, planned events, restaurants and shops. The site solicits comments from “locals” about why their communities “must be seen.”

The site offers varied options, including a free listing giving merely name, address and phone number, with location indicated on an accompanying map; a photo slide show storefront with text and nine photos, and a video prepared especially for each business which the enterprise can display on its own main Web site.

The site was launched with more than 50 videos and 35 photo slide shows, as well as thousands of free listings in Ulster County. By partnering with freelance videographers and the not-for-profit Poughkeepsie-based CMP Productions, Hewitt believes that VISITvortex has established an affordable way to provide Web videos to local business owners.

Hewitt does her own interviewing. “I always ask what made them start the business and what is its most unique feature,” she says.

She points to Gina Marie”™s, a client in Rosendale “who makes custard from an original recipe from Coney Island. You don”™t get it anywhere else,” she remarks.

Selling is just one side of the picture. “You have to build traffic,” she notes. She is distributing postcards to potential viewers, sending bi-weekly e-mail blasts and running a video contest, inviting citizens to display what they love most about their communities. The winner will get a “staycation” enjoying the area”™s recreational and restaurant features, she reports.

Raised in Patchogue, Hewitt worked in her father”™s print shop in Bohemia, N. Y., overseeing graphic design.

Together with her brother, Chris, and his wife, Nicole, she embarked on a magazine called Xpress, devoted to cultural and environmental matters, which they published for several years.

Next came three years as a free spirit, traveling throughout the United States and Canada. “I started with $2,000, but never wanted for anything,” she recalls. “I always had whatever I needed whenever I needed it. I did odd jobs related to art, like face painting.”

She frequently visited her brother and his wife, who had settled in Stone Ridge. “I was sad every time I had to leave,” she laments. She eventually made the move, working on graphic design and campaigns for Clark-Thompson when she eased into VISITvortex, gradually devoting more time to her new endeavor.

Challenging Careers focuses on the exciting and unusual business lives of Hudson Valley residents. Comments or suggestions may be e-mailed to Catherine Portman-Laux at cplaux@optonline.net.