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Bloxham Marketing Life Random thoughts Technology Work

Full to the brim

That’s how my life feels right now. It’s just so jam-packed… and I love it! Okay – I’m up again, on my computer, posting at 5.52 am, after settling Mr 3 at 2.48am and again at 3.52am, and then deciding to just stay up because I’ve got so much to do anyway…

So the weekend before last, Hubby and I spent Saturday together. No kids. (Yes, this is actually rare enough that it rates a mention. Sad, really…!) and we visited IKEA. We’ve been married almost 18 years, and only now am I learning that his dislike of ‘clutter’ means that he dislikes bookshelves. He prefers furniture with doors – cupboards, wardrobes, buffets, etc etc). Rather a revelation for a wife who loves books (yes, @jobeaz, the physical variety! I haven’t really warmed to the whole idea of eBooks yet!) and who has lots and lots… and lots of them.

Never mind; I’m adaptable. So I started planning how to ‘de-clutter’ (without spending too much money, of course!) and this meant that yesterday was furniture-moving day. I re-worked the girl’s bedroom (Miss 7 got the shock of her life when she got home from school!), Mr 3’s bedroom, our bedroom, the dining room, and have started on the lounge room. This Saturday will see two large pieces of lounge room furniture moved to my in-laws, to make room for the new TV/entertainment unit (not yet purchased, but it’ll be coming from IKEA) and the new lounge (again, not yet ordered, but this will be from Fantastic Furniture because I really like their ‘storage’ lounges) – oh, and the orientation of the furniture in the lounge will also change 90%. So it’ll be (eventually) like a whole new house. (And maybe that’s why it’s been over 15 years since I visited IKEA!)

So that was yesterday. On the work front, I discovered last night that a tweet I sent got retweeted by three people.
https://twitter.com/BloxhamMkting/status/224774127473541120
One of these accounts has over 19,000 followers! And a reply tweet I got form another of these people (in South Africa, by the way) said that she loved my link; and that her friends were currently sharing it around on Facebook. So how COOL is social media!!!

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Bloxham Marketing Random thoughts Technology Work

Being lazy…

It’s Monday. It’s 4.54am. I’ve been up since 2.30, courtesy Mr 3 and a couple of nightmares. I’ve just finished my weekly blog entry for Bloxham Marketing, and I’m pretty proud of it (considering the time of day, and the lack of sleep, I’m quite impressed with myself) but right now I’m feeling too lazy to think up another post for “Hmmm…” for my regular Monday entry… so I’m going to cheat and re-post the same content here. Sorry! (Actually, I choose to think of it as sharing my granule of wisdom with my ‘personal blog’ audience as well as my ‘work’ one… LOL) Plus there’s a bonus – it won’t be posted there until 8.30am today. So – those of you who are up early – get to read it first. Yay! (LOL again) Here tis:

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The ‘Survivor’ Guide to tweeting for your business

Survivor: Outwit. Outplay. Outlast. It’s exactly these three ideas that you probably want for your own business, right? To stay ahead of your competitors; to remain viable in your marketplace? Me too! So – what can the Reality TV show Survivor, the creator of this phrase “Outwit. Outplay. Outlast.” teach us about using twitter for our businesses? Read on!

1. Form alliances

From that very first season, the importance of ‘alliances’ was obvious. Those in an alliance, got to the final tribal council. And the strongest member of the alliance, won. It was as simple as that. On twitter, we need to do the same. Form alliances. Follow others. Engage with them (retweet their good stuff; reply; converse) and respond genuinely when your followers retweet, reply to, or engage with, you.

And the idea here is to be genuine. People don’t readily ‘form an alliance’ with automated tweets. Okay – I admit it – I used an auto-responder on my @BloxhamMkting account for a while back there, which automated ‘Thanks for the RT” and “Thanks for the mention” and “Thanks for the follow” – until I realised just how quickly this was turning off the exact sort of people I wanted to engage with. The genuine ones; the leaders in the fields I was seeking to be a part of; and (of course) my own followers. I also realised how much I hate automated responses filling up my own @mention stream – even worse, my DM inbox. This convinced me. Now I use auto-responders only for the tweets I send (and no, not to just send the identical content to Facebook as well!) Want strong ‘alliances’? Engaging with others is the best way to form them.

2. Honesty – always the best policy

On “Survivor”, it’s always easy for the audience to spot the fake. Watching the show then becomes more interesting, as we’re waiting to see when the double-crossing character finally gets ‘caught out’ in their lies and deception. Often it’s those who’ve been the most ‘honest’ who get the fartherest. Likewise on twitter. If you’re tweeting for your business, realise that there are people out there who don’t like your business (especially if you’re a big company!) and that you’re going to probably get some flack for things that you have, or haven’t, done. So be honest when people tweet that negative stuff. Acknowledge that something’s gone wrong. Use the instantaneous nature of twitter to try to rectify the problem. Your community will appreciate the honesty.

3. Loyalty will get you further

Loyalty. Let’s face it – in business, that’s what we want, right? A loyal customer base. But there’s only one way to get their loyalty – be loyal to them. Be dependable. Be consistent. Be the brand that they know that they can rely on. On Survivor, those who remained consistent throughout, engendered the most respect – and that’s whether they were consistently ‘nice’ or consistently ‘evil’ (to use ‘Survivor’ terminology, here) – wholly and solely because they were consistent. The people who formed alliances with them, respected them because they were dependable. Those characters who (again, using ‘Survivor’ terminology) flip-flopped, back and forth between different choices or different strategies? They lost the respect of the other players extremely quickly. When you’re tweeting for your business, this is the last thing we want! We want the respect of our customer base, right? So be loyal. Be consistent. Be dependable.

4. Have a strategy

Think ahead. Know your business plan. And – sparingly, and where appropriate – share parts of that plan with your followers. Use your strategy to inspire your loyal customer base, just as those who were the leaders in their tribes shared their vision of the next strategic move with their allies. On twitter, use the functionality to reward those most loyal; and also to get your message out and extend your reach. New eBook? First mention of a new product release? Just a thought – let your loyal followers be the first to know! Whatever your strategy; devise it, and follow it!

5. Adapt to the situation

Some of those ‘Survivor’ challenges are absolutely crazy. But that’s what makes the show so entertaining. Likewise, some situations in business are going to see you doing things that you never would have expected. Three years ago, you never would have been reading a blog post about how to use twitter for your business – and what tips a reality TV show can give you on the topic!!! But you’ve adapted, you’ve changed, as the world has changed. Kudos to you! Just don’t stop now. The world *is* changing – faster than we can even realise it – so we need to adapt. Yes, today we need to ensure that we’re tweeting for our businesses; retweeting, replying, and genuinely engaging with others, however… who knows what may lie around the corner? We’ll need to rise to conquer these new challenges. If we don’t, we’ll end up in the business equivalent of Tribal Council, where the real world equivalent will snuff out the remnants of all of our hard work and say “The Marketplace has Spoken”. And none of us wants to be there, so we?!

So – five ideas that ‘Survivor’ can teach us about tweeting for our businesses. What did you think? Did I miss any? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Well, that’s been my thinking over the past couple of hours (in between settling my little man from his night-time horrors). Sorry again that I’m not feeling up to writing a whole heap here. But I’d love to hear what you thought of my BloxhamMarketing post!

And have a great day, dear readers! (I think I might head back to bed now. It’s cold out here and it may (please, God!) remain dark and quiet for another hour or so yet…)

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family anecdotes More about me Random thoughts

My dogs

When I was growing up, I was a ‘cat’ person. I never really thought about being a ‘dog’ person. To me, they were smelly, loud, rough creatures that I knew of but had little do to with. My family had a cat. We had ducks. We had mice. We had guinea pigs, and fish. But no dogs.
So the first time I bought a puppy, I was 23 years old. Hubby and I had been married for a couple of years, and we owned a gorgeous grey “Ragdoll” cat named Rascal, but we were just browsing in a big pet barn one day (I have no idea why we were there; we just were…) and we both saw him at the same time. And it was love at first sight.
He was a male German Shepherd puppy, 7 weeks old, all floppy ears and huge floppy paws. We named him “Smudge” and he was a great dog. Huge (eventually), dominant, but completely loyal. And he loved us, and he loved chasing Rascal. But mostly he loved Patch, the blue healer we bought about a year later. The two became inseparable, and so it was hard when we had to put Smudge down. But that same afternoon, a very emotional Hubby bought our second Shepherd, Storm. She was from a breeder, and had a ‘glamour’ coat, which is halfway between a long haired and a short haired coat. Again, she was a gorgeous dog. Very sweet nature. She coped tremendously with a grieving Patch, and when he eventually needed to be put down (cancer), was more than happy to accept a black labrador pup, who we named Max.

Just a few years ago, Storm passed on. She’d eaten something she shouldn’t and her death was sudden and very traumatic for Hubby, who had lost his sister just a few months prior. Max soldiered on, half blind, mostly deaf, and partially lame, and bravely dealt with the puppy attacks of Aksel, Hubby’s next German Shepherd pup (short haired, this time). Then late last year, when we knew that Max was getting the worse for wear  – Aksel was just too boisterous for him – we bought Rocky. He was a 7 month old Blue Heeler, whose owner, being physically disabled and about to move into a home, was no longer able to keep him. Aksel and Rocky bonded pretty quickly, and although they both were confused by Max’s passing in early January this year, their close friendship meant that there wasn’t the ‘grieving’ that our other dogs seems to go through.

Phew! That was a longer story than I had expected it would be!

Anyway, I started this entry with cats, so that’s how I’ll finish it. You see, I miss having a cat. But I don’t know how one would fit into our lives right now…

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Random thoughts

Back into it…

So it’s Wednesday again, and Term 3 has started, so that means that Hubby and Miss 7 are back at school, and Mr 3 and I headed to his ECDP this morning, followed by speech therapy, in between phone calls to clients to discuss and make decisions on various current projects.
I’ve found that the battery on my iPhone isn’t lasting as long as it used to, so when it dies while I’m busy at ECDP, not only do I get a far more peaceful time with my boy, but also I end up with a lot more missed calls and phone messages than normal! (Funny, that!)
So yes, it would seem that we are ‘back into it’, well and truly. Holidays (well, a slightly quieter two weeks, anyway) are quickly receding into distant memories. Sad, really. And this constant drizzly weather isn’t helping matters. I’m a person who loves the sunshine, so this greyness upon greyness is draining. Oh well. It’ll be sunny soon enough, I’m sure.
Image: my little man saying, “Go, go, go!” as he races balls on a toy this morning. Speech therapy seems to be working!

20120711-133858.jpg

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Random thoughts

Tax time

In earlier posts, I have bemoaned my mathematical abilities. Honestly, I’m *really* not so crash hot with numbers. So tax time gives me the heebie-jeebies. I don’t like it, I’m not entirely sure of all the ins- and – outs, and frankly, it scares me just a little. (well, a huge amount, really!)

Especially since starting my company three years ago, with Hubby and my mum as co-directors, and then deciding that, six months ago, it would be best if I were the sole director. And that my regular H&R Block man doesn’t *do* company tax returns, and Hubby (who has done them since the company existed) was also not happy to do them anymore because of how convoluted the businesses all were (three business, subsidiaries of the one company, however my marketing work is kinda shared unequally between one of the businesses within the company, and my personal sole-trader-ship business, that I set up years and years ago). See my problem?

Enter a very recently employed book-keeper. She managed to – somehow!! – get my papers in some semblance of an order. Enter tax appointment, 9am today. The tax accountant also managed to – very slowly – explain to me what I had done right, what I had done wrong (and needed to fix, or undo) and give several ‘suggestions’ – which I’m now thinking I should take as gospel. And I’m also wondering if it’s all worth it. Cos I’m going to be losing so darn much in tax anyway.

And you want to know something else I learned today, for the very first time? That the government taxes the interest you earn in your personal bank account. I can’t believe it! That’s absolutely insane. I think our country’s gone mad. Like I think I’m about to. Mad as in insane. I’m too incredulous to be the mad-furious variety.

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Uncategorized

Unbelievable!

It’s not the clearest photo, I know.

20120707-064109.jpg
But that’s my bedside clock. And it reads 6.32am. And I took that photo just now… when I woke up. I can’t believe it!!! (Normally I’m up pre-4am or pre-5am, and DEFINITELY before 6!) or I’m woken, rather than wake up myself (yes, there is a BIG difference, isn’t there, mums?!!) so to wake, myself, with my clock reading 6.32, is just absolutely incredible! (worth a blog post, even) and now I should just go check that my 3 are still alive…
(Update… Yes, they were…)

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Uncategorized

Audio recorder on iPad2

For some reason, mine’s decided to go on the blink. Which is not particularly helpful, seeing as I’ve just discovered and downloaded some fantastic new apps to help Mr 3 with his speech therapy… apps which record his sounds and replay them so he receives immediate feedback. Apps which don’t work as well if the audio recorder isn’t working.
And the trouble is, I have absolutely NO idea if the problem lies in the iPad settings (being a curious lad, he’s always changing settings here, there and everywhere, investigating what happens when he clicks on various things) or in its hardware (a result of being thrown onto a concrete floor in the midst of a tantrum…)
So, this is me asking for help again, dear readers. Any ideas on how to fix the problem? The audio recorder works sporadically across a variety of Apps, also sporadically within the same App… leading me to believe that it’s probably more the latter reason than the former… but I’m more than happy to be proven wrong!!!
So… Any ideas??!

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#blogjune Life Random thoughts

Challenges

What is it about challenges that makes us want to rise to them? Is it the thoughts of bettering ourselves? Is it that we have a measurable amount of achievement? Or is it, in a more public challenge, that we have an audience to try to impress?
Whatever the reason, I wondered if everyone is like me, once the challenge is over. Case in point: #blogjune. Here, on this blog, I attempted to post an entry on every day in June. For the most part, I was successful in meeting this challenge. In addition to blogging daily, I also wanted to try and blog before 10am. I wasn’t always successful at this, however I was pretty proud at how many times I *did* manage to!

And overall, in the whole #blogjune challenge, I think I only missed one day. And seeing as I caught that day up, on the following day, and I also posted an extra one on the “100 books meme” that inspired me, I feel as though I achieved in this challenge far better than I had hoped for. Especially when you compare it to last year’s #blogjune challenge, where I missed  about a dozen days, and decided to try and catch them all up, right at the end of the month!
However… that was then, this is now. The blogging challenge finished last Saturday. And, in this public arena, it is now obvious that I haven’t posted on here since then. So, what is it about the ‘challenge’, that makes us want to rise to it? Why could I blog daily every day for 30 days, and yet as soon as the challenge finished, find myself too busy to continue the habit? It’s a bit sad, really. (And thanks for the nudge, @joeyroo1, for even getting this one posted!)

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#blog12daysxmas #blog5daysAustenese #blogjune Random thoughts

Getting older, getting wiser?

Today is the last day of June. Today I’m finishing this #blogjune challenge, where I’ve tried diligently to blog every day. This was my second attempt at #blogjune, and I’m proud to say that I was a lot more consistent this year!

So, according to my calendar, I am one year older. I wonder however, whether or not it’s possible to measure if I am one year wiser?!

I certainly had a lot of new experiences this year. Since my last #blogjune, I have (in chronological-ish order):
– Studied an elective outside the LIS sphere. I didn’t like it.
– Added six new clients to my new “Bloxham Marketing” business.
– Started, and finished, gymnastics lessons for Miss 7.
– Started, and have continued with, swimming lessons for Miss 7.
– Used the #blog12daysxmas challenge to start blogging regularly again.
– Read so many Jane Austen novels that I initiated the #blog5daysAustenese challenge… and had four brave fellow bloggers join me in the journey!
– Presented a 3 hour digital marketing presentation live on LEQ TV.
– Plucked up enough courage to see if Mr 3 was autistic.
– Had my daughter’s eyes tested, and sure enough Miss 7 now wears glasses for reading.
– Supported a good friend who was doctoring in New Guinea. We’d meet each other daily, online, and hold each other accountable in our Christian walks.

– Scored a HD in INN530 Online Information Services, courtesy of the truly wonderful @katiedatwork (still can’t believe that one. SOOOOOOOOOO majorly STOKED!!!!!!)

So… older? Yes. That bit’s inevitable. Wiser? I’m not so sure. I certainly hope so, though! And here ends the #blogjune challenge for another year. I wonder what will happen between this one and the 2013 version? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

Thanks for sharing this journey with me, dear readers. Your support is far more of an encouragement than you could ever know. You guys rock!!!

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#blogjune

Autism Quote Number 5

I love this one. Hope you like it, too!