Category: Bloxham Marketing

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Bloxham Marketing GoodOldTalk Life teaching Technology Work

The calm before the storm…

Today is the *last* day of the working week. Ha! I can’t recall when the last weekend that I didn’t work. Months ago? Years, more like.  I think, prior to conceiving the idea for GoodOldTalk.com – back when Mr 3 was 9 weeks old – I had some weekends where I wasn’t in front of the computer screen. I would have been busy with young children though. Is that just work of a different kind? Anyway, straying off topic here…

I love my job. Which is why I don’t keep regular hours. I often send emails between the hours of 9pm and midnight, or will blog in the early hours of the morning (I’m currently writing this at 3.54am) because that’s when it’s quiet and I can get stuff done. And if a kid wakes me in the middle of the night, as Mr 3 did just an hour or so ago, I’ll generally just stay up and work. And that’s okay with me. Truly. Being self-employed, if I don’t put in the hours and get the work done, I’ll lose my client’s respect – and then their business. Which is not good. So I work, and am happy to do so.

When it gets tricky though, is managing when I’m offered relief teaching. Since teaching means good money, and we need that, I only pass up these opportunities when I’m ill, or one of my children is. So missing a good 8 working hours out of a day while I teach means that I inevitably have to catch up that time elsewhere. And that’s where my organisation, of necessity, goes into overdrive.

Take next week, for example. I’ll be the St Paul’s Prep C teacher Monday through Thursday. I’ve also organised a branding photo event next Monday for the school – so the brilliant Greg Parsons will be shooting some additions to the St Paul’s library of branding photos. And normally I would assist in this event – but I can’t, because I’ll be in the classroom. I’ll also be in the classroom on Tuesday when I would normally be updating websites, on Wednesday during my Skype appointment with Hervey Bay, and on Thursday when I’d be interviewing sources for my weekly news stories that I submit on Fridays. See my problem? I need to re-schedule all my marketing activities for non-school hours… and not forget my mum / wife duties too (swimming lessons, shopping, cooking, washing clothes, helping with homework etc etc etc).

Sometimes life can be tricky to sort out. Lucky I’ve got this weekend to prepare it all! (Oh – and I apologise in advance. I doubt very much that I’ll be posting anything over the next several days!)

CC Image courtesy CC Chapman at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cc_chapman/480188435/

 

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Bloxham Marketing Random thoughts Technology Work

Working differently, working smarter…

I was working on my iPad early this morning, then I was called away to attend to my children. Upon returning to the iPad, my first thought was that for some strange reason, it hadn’t put itself to sleep. Then I got closer and realized that it wasn’t that I could still see the keyboard on the screen, but that the screen was black and I could see the reflection of my fingerprint smudges. LOL!
So I’ve been thinking quite a bit about my iPad this morning. I use it a lot, and couldn’t live without it’s calendar – and I absolutely adore the iPad version of HootSuite, but I want to use it more. Currently, I’m using my MacBook for around 90% of my workload, I’d say, and I’m still using it in meetings / presentations etc etc. but it’s cumbersome, and I now have an iPad, so I want to do things differently. Work smarter, not harder (Well, I can’t fit any more into my life, so I need to work smarter anyway!) and this change might work for me.
So, I’ll keep on thinking about it… And let you know what I come up with!
(and yes, I’m guessing that for this move, from Mac to iPad, to be more successful, I will also need to figure out the problem with my Pages not syncing between the two, so that I can transfer my word processing over to the cloud rather than relying so heavily on my Word for Mac…)

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Bloxham Marketing Work

Blogging for work

You may or may not know, I have another (current) WordPress blog, over at www.bloxhammarketing.wordpress.com – current because I also have other, inactive WordPress blogs. But let’s not get in to that here.

I started blogging for Bloxham Marketing in November of last year, thinking that ‘If I want to grow my business, why not do a bit of the “practicing what I’m preaching” kind of thing.’

Initially, my entries were similar to these here on hmmm… – as in, they reflected on the happenings of my work day. What campaigns I was working on, what successes I’d had with getting free advertising, etc etc. Which was all well and good, but I didn’t really feel as though it was working as well as I’d liked.

So I started reading other marketing blogs. Lots of them. And using a Bloxham Marketing twitter account, separate to my @KRidwyn account, to follow a ‘marketing’ crowd rather than a friends / Library / education / tech crowd. And what I found surprised me. There are marketers out there who are FULL ON!!! I thought I was pretty intense, but they take the idea of ‘marketing’ to a whole new level. And I don’t want to be like that. They seem so insincere, so money-focussed, so self-promotionary (I know. That’s probably not even a word.) But there’s no real substance there. No relationship to build (even though that may be, exactly what they’re pushing!) because they’re just so in-your-face about sell-sell-sell. Yuk.

Some of the ideas though, I liked. I liked the idea that I could use my blog to help others. My clients, for a start, could learn more about the techniques behind what I do, through the topics I could write about. “If I’m suggesting that they get blogs, and update them regularly, then perhaps I could help them to do this successfully by giving them hints / tips etc on my blog,” was what I was thinking. And this gradually developed.

I also like the idea of series-writing. Where my readers could get a more in-depth look at a topic because I could expound my ideas over several posts, rather than cramming all my advice into one entry. This concept also gives me posts to tweet about – and to continue to tweet about in the months ahead, as the content won’t date too much.

So I think I’ve found a happy medium. At times, I’ll series-write. At the moment, I’m part-way through a series on “How to Create a Headache-free Yearbook“. I’ve also written a series reviewing ifttt.com; “Website Design“; “Enhancing the High School Library“; and “Planning for Successful Blog-Writing“. I’ve interspersed these with one-offs, such as “6 Lessons The Big Bang Theory can teach us about Blogging” and “Why I’ve left Pinterest“. I’ve also, on occasion, written reflective pieces on what was happening in my work day – announcing my upcoming presentation at LEQ’s Digital Marketing PD; tweeting the #iPadexplore mini-conference; and creating CoverPhotos for Facebook Page timelines, to name a few. And I’m happy with aiming for three posts a week (Mon, Wed, Fri) whereas my aim here on hmmm… is for daily entries.

So, that’s it. Ceridwyn at work. Just thought I’d share.

Oh – and happy birthday, Mr 3!

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Bloxham Marketing GoodOldTalk Life Technology University studies Work

Code? What code?!

If you’re a regular reader of hmmm… you may remember I’ve written before about GoodOldTalk.com – a social network for Seniors – that I launched back in August 2009. I still run it, with my mum. We were fortunate enough to obtain the services of the brilliant Sean Bannister and Mindy Chaplin to create the site for us, and at their recommendation, used the Drupal content management system. All well and good – since its inception, I’ve grown familiar with how to run the administration of it all.

Fast-forward to July of 2010, and witness my entrance to the world of post-grad studies. A Masters in IT, majoring in Library and Information Science, to be precise. And one of the main pieces of assessment for one of my first units? Keep a WordPress blog. Happy to! Since GoodOldTalk. I’d kinda become familiar with blog-keeping. WordPress was unfamiliar, but the concepts were easily transferrable. And by the end of the unit, I could see enough value in the idea of a personal blog that I didn’t need too much convincing when @fionawb issued a #blog12daysxmas challenge – and that became the impetus for starting hmmm…

Fast-forward again, this time to February of 2011. Jobless, I pitch the Principal of St Paul’s Lutheran, Caboolture, to pay me to run his marketing. He agrees, and suddenly I’m a self-employed marketing consultant. With administrative rights to the St Paul’s website. Which is based on Joomla! (If I had my way, there would be no exclamation mark at the end of that sentence…!) Again, the skills are transferrable. Which was good. Adding St James Lutheran, Hervey Bay, as a client in September of that year – and Caloundra Christian College just two weeks ago – both of whom have websites based on Joomla! – is also rather helpful, as it has meant that I’m not being pushed too far out of my comfort zone.

But what I love about this Masters I’m studying is that it really challenges me. As in, REALLY challenges me. I’m pretty proud of the fact that I’ve received 7’s and 6’s (that marketing elective I did, Sem II last year, I’m counting as a major aberration. I was seriously NOT happy with the outcome of swapping across to the Business faculty for that elective!!!) – and  I’m also pretty chuffed that because I was among QUT’s top 15% of students, I was invited to become a member of the Golden Key International Honour Society. I know I’ve worked my butt off, and (with the exception of one assignment to date) I’ve immensely proud of the work I’ve submitted.

But I’m nervous about this semester. On the suggestion (demand?! ultimatum?!) of Hubby, I’m only studying one unit. INN530, with @katiedatwork. Which I’m pretty excited about… but… one of the 50% assignments is a coding one. In HTML5 – with maybe a bit of CSS thrown in for good measure. And I’m scared. I’ve skimmed the Wikipedia entries on both topics, and I’ve gone ahead and checked out an online tutorial on HTML5 coding, and I’m feeling WAAAAAAAAAAAY out of my depth. Really. And truly, And very, very, very scarily!!!

So… wish me luck! This semester’s going to be a biggie!!!

CC Image courtesy Jesper Rønn-Jensen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jesper/355128797/

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Bloxham Marketing family anecdotes Life More about me Random thoughts Technology Work

Been busy…

So I’ve found the time to blog for Bloxham Marketing today – which has meant that I’ve had less time to write a post here, on my personal blog. Because I’m trying, in-between helping Miss 4 make a rocket ship (see left)

and supervising Mr 2 on my iPad (see right), to organise Mr 2’s entry into  the Early Childhood Developmental entree at Tullawong Primary College. So I’m going to cheat a little, and paste that entry below.

* * *

Image-based promotion

Posted on March 12, 2012 | Leave a comment | Edit

Over the past two weeks, St Paul’s has had a poster campaign running at Morayfield Shopping Centre. We used the same posters that we had up over the Christmas period last year – and I’d like to credit the record number of enrolments the school received, to these posters. Well… it may not have been to these exclusively, but nevertheless…!

And last week, I was inspired by @connectyou‘s post on the new Covers for the Facebook Page Timelines – to be rolled out on the 30 March, but which are able to be ‘published’ beforehand. So yesterday, I got busy. Evidenced by three cover photos. Check them out!

Caloundra Christian College:

St James Lutheran College:

And last but not least… St Paul’s Lutheran Primary School:

So – what do you think?

* * *

And now all I need to do is create Cover photos for the Bloxham Marketing page – and for my personal one too, of course!

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Flattened.

Squashed. Like a bug that’s been steamrolled. That’s how I’m feeling after this week. I mean, I knew it was going to be a biggie, going into it, but didn’t really expect to be feeling like this at its conclusion…

Monday was work day. Head down, bum up, get-a-heap-of-things-done day, because the rest of the week would be drive-around-like-crazy day. It didn’t help that I had negative-gig left in my data quota due to a mix-up with Telstra this time last month. But, I had to get it done, so done it got.

Tuesday morning I spent at St Paul’s, getting stuff done on campus – stuff which would have been nigh-on impossible to do remotely, then it was pick-up-the-kids-from-care-and-drive-up-to-Minyama for my last (sob) Speech Therapy session with Suzanne at Sunshine Coast Speech Therapists. Lovely lady. Truly lovely. And even though that nodule on my right vocal cord isn’t gone yet, at least now I have some techniques to speak properly without exacerbating it – and hopefully it will go over time. Then I taught that evening.

Wednesday morning was meant to be playgroup-before-podiatirist, but Miss 4 and Mr 2 weren’t going to cope too well with that, so we ended up just visiting our neighbour in the morning, then heading out to collect Miss 7 early form school and driving down to Brisbane for her Podiatry appointment, then driving back to Caboolture for her swimming lesson, before driving to Morayfield for a *fun* time grocery shopping, then finally back up the Coast to home.

Thursday was diagnosis day. Miss 4 got dropped off at my mum’s at Currimundi while Mr 2 came to Nambour (Selangor Hospital) with me. Autism diagnosis confirmed, he then spent the afternoon back at my mum’s villa while I visited Tullawong Primary College, Medicare, the Family Assisstance Office, CentreLink, and finally Telstra (Yay! Got the internet working on my iPhone again!) before collecting the kids and heading home exhausted…

And Friday, I relief taught a very full-on Prep class. And Miss 4 managed to lose one sandal at care. One half of her favourite (and only!) pair of sandals. And Hubby fell victim to an unfortunate accident – our HUGE German Shepherd pup tripped him up badly in their morning run – which not only meant that a) he spent the majority of the day visiting doctors (X-ray of right wrist revealed just tissue damage thank God!) and dentists (teeth shaken about and chipped, but little other damage) and b) being laughed at because he’s limping and looks a sight – and his dog did it to him, but also that he’s completely out of action when it comes to helping with the kids because they don’t understand that they can’t jump on him anymore – plus he has zero use of his right hand / wrist anyway.

And Saturday morning was family-time. Half-great; half-tragic. I guess it’s no wonder that I spent most of Saturday afternoon yawning, if not dozing / less-than-conscious. Which is why I’m blogging now, at 3.07am Sunday morning. Nuff said?!

Phew! And it looks as though this coming week will be almost as full on…!!!

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Bloxham Marketing family anecdotes momentous events More about me Random thoughts Technology

*Thursday*

I did it again: wrote the post, scheduled it to post at a ‘daylight’ hour, rather than at the just-prior-to-midnight-ish of actual writing, then realised days later that it was set to ‘Private”. LOL Whoops!

So anyway… this (below) was my Thursday:

* * * * *

My day today was non-stop. But perhaps it could be easily remembered through these three snippets.

1. My 4.11am entry on my church’s wiki – a few of the ladies in the church are reading through a chapter of the Bible each day, and recording our thoughts / whatever we’re going through, and are supporting each other / keeping each other accountable. Today’s post was on Galations Chapter 1. I wrote:

A new month – a new beginning…
I’ve been absent recently, both virtually and in head-space. But I’m now longer in denial that Mr 2 lies somewhere on the autistic spectrum, and that’s been the biggie over these last few weeks; coming to terms with this fact. He’s booked into a paediatrician next week on the STRONG advice of our local GP, so I guess we’ll have to take it one step at a time. And work’s been full on (yesterday was particularly crazy) so when I saw that today was the 1st of March, I thought it opportune to start again here, in Galatians 1.
What I love about this chapter today is verse 15. Paul was ‘set apart at birth’. Me too. And my son. Set apart to do His work, is the places and ways He has chosen for me, and for my son, to be in and to do. So who am I to argue?
I pray that today I might see God’s ways – and walk in them.
Have a lovely day, ladies.

2. This second snippet is taken from the end of my day – a fb update at 10.49pm:

Mr 2 was stuck on a particular level playing Wall-E on the PS2 today. I tried helping him – and then Miss 4 entered the room. “I can help, Mummy!” “Sure, sweetheart…” I answered, handing over the control. And she did – about a gajillion times faster than I ever could.
How’s that for an eye-opener!

3. And finally, a snippet of IRL, that occurred in between the beginning and end of my day (well, naturally! D’Oh!!!)…

I signed another client for Bloxham Marketing. Woohoo!!!

* * * * *

So. It’s now Sunday morning, 5.46 am, three days later. And life just has NOT slowed down enough, since, for me to write again – let alone realise that I’d set this to private. LOL Whoops!

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My online identity – part two of two

Yesterday I posted (well, re-posted, actually!) an entry from my first-ever (and now inactive) blog. It outlined three questions that I return to again and again, when considering my online identity.

1. What do my images say about me?

2. What am I saying about me? and

3. What am I not saying about me?

Well, that was a little over 18 months ago. So what has changed? How do I now view ‘success’ in creating and maintaining my online identity?

Source: Uploaded by user via Megan on Pinterest

18 months ago, I was just starting out with online tools. Sure, GoodOldTalk.com had been up and running for a little over a year, and I had an inactive twitter account, and I had been on Facebook for a while, but that was about it. No flickr, no YouTube, and so on – and I didn’t even know that tools such as TweetDeck, HootSuite existed – let alone EverNote, Instagram, DropBox, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, etc etc etc.

Now however, I’ve been self-employed for a year. I’ve been running my own Marketing business, and not only have I seen the need to be in social media for Bloxham Marketing, but creating and maintaining social media accounts for my clients is an integral part of my business. Which has meant that I’m a lot more ‘out there’ than I ever have been.

This blog has also played a major part in the evolution of my opinion regarding my online identity. I started it Christmas 2010, using @fionawb‘s #blog12daysChristmas as an impetus. My PLN, formed for the most part by Librarians on twitter, was integral in maintaining this blog throughout its development, to what it is today. Through the relationships I now have with online friends, I have come to see that it’s probably okay to relax a little from that hard-liner stance I had, 18 months ago.

1. What do my images say about me? That’s been a toughy. I like to add an image to each of my blog entries, however when I want to write about my kids, and I don’t want to upload their images to the net, that’s a little problematic. So a few weeks back now, I dedicated a post to each, and included their photo (albeit, not a particularly identifiable one!) Plus, in my recent exploration of Pinterest, and its ability to easily embed (and attribute, of sorts!) into WordPress, that’s made my life a little easier. Now I feel as though I can show a little of who I am / what I like through the images I display – even though these images don’t necessarily have me in the frame or behind the camera.

2. What do I say about myself? Again, I’ve probably been more vulnerable than I had ever thought I would be. From entries about my gambling addiction (coming up to 20 years not being at a BlackJack table – as much as I still think about it more regularly than I’d like!) to my miscarriage, from my employment problems to my time in a cult, I’ve exposed quite a lot about myself… but then again, “my friends IRL know this stuff about me, and I’m comfortable sharing with them, so why not others?” is how I see it. Obviously, I keep my personal stuff on this blog, and my Bloxham Marketing blog is all about the work side of my life, however when I think of my online identity, I’m trying to reflect who I am as a person. As much as I’d like to cover up the yuk stuff, and pretend to be something I’m not, I have a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to keep it up for too long, and then you, my dear readers, would see right through it – and then, where would I be?!

3. What do I NOT say about me? Again, this has changed, in the light of my being far more open online than I had expected I would be. I’m still wary of PII, however as a self-employed business owner, I need to be contactable by potential clients, so my contact details are accessible in what I feel are the appropriate places. And as for embarrassing myself with inappropriate photos / videos / stories? Yup – pretty much all of them are in the “not sayin’!! basket”!

So – this is me. What do you think? Agree? Or disagree? I’d love to hear your thoughts…

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Toys for toys?

Today was Day 2 of LEQ’s Mini-conference, exploring iPads in education, on the Sunshine Coast. Again, another very cool day of exploring what iPads can do; how Apps, App chains, and even the tool itself, can be leveraged for better outcomes for our kids. Very very very cool stuff.

Amongst the myriad of sessions and workshops were two standouts for me. Firstly, the very tactile ‘app-cesseries’ – extra bits and pieces that accessorise the iPad (or iPhone, iPod, etc) to give it added functionality. My favourite – in the photo – would have to be the mini-Mater (from Disney’s Cars movie) that you could move on the iPad to explore the world of the movie.

 

And the other standout would have to be my extreme surprise at one of Greg O’Connor’s slides. Still can’t believe it, but there was a screenshot of hmmm… up there. Yes, you read right – he had my last night’s blog entry “The Good Stuff” up there on the screen, and was talking about this ‘cool blog he had found last night’. Absolutely INCREDIBLE!!! I was just so surprised, so grateful, so humbled! (If you ever read this, Greg – thank you SO much!) Absolutely stunned to think that everyone at this conference had, in a way, “visited” my blog. How COOL!!!

So yes, these were my highlights of the day. And if, by any chance, any of my readers also happened to attend the LEQ conference, please feel free to add below what your highlights were. And if you weren’t – then I’d love to hear what you think of the Mater truck!

(Oh, and I’ll be writing a blog post on the other great Apps / links, on the other page – “The Good Stuff”. Hope they’re helpful!)

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Tweeting a conference

Today I attended my first conference in a number of years. In fact, I have a feeling that the last one I attended was the Middle Years Schooling Association (MYSA) conference at Jupiters Casino, back in 2007. I was (just) pregnant with my middle child, who is now 4. Wow! That really *was* some time ago!

A lot has changed as conferences go. I read somewhere a couple of years back that “conferences can be awkward – but never for a twitterer”… and I realized the truth of this today.

I shook hand with people that I had interacted with online, but had never met face to face. I laughed as people recognized me from my twitter photo, or my handle (let’s face it, “Ceridwyn” is rather a unique kind of name!) and I felt as though I was more comfortable in a strange situation than I had been at such events in the past.

Then it came session time, and workshop time, and I was finally able to engage in tweeting the conference happenings to my followers… again, something I had never before done, as this was my first conference since I joined twitter. (Come to think of it, twitter didn’t even exist during my last conference! That’s pretty bad, hey, that it’s been so long ‘between drinks’!)

So back to my story, I tweeted away madly and probably bored my followers stupid with my #ipadexplore tweets. I wondered later at the whole ettiquete thing with regard to tweeting a conference. How much is too much? When does it become spam? Or if you don’t tweet enough, is that indicative that the conference is a bit of a dud one? Questions for which I don’t have any answers. But I guess I’ll work it out… especially if I don’t have any followers left after the conference winds up tomorrow!!!

Anyway, long story short, today was a brilliant day. And I’m looking forward to Day 2, tomorrow. And if you’d like a blow-by-blow description, join me following #ipadexplore, or follow me @KRidwyn – I’ll try to tweet as long as the dodgy WIFI holds out!

Til then, dear readers!

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