Weekly review

Source: myrecipes.com via Cristina on Pinterest

This week has been quite a huge one. Not only did the St Paul’s poster campaign finish at Morayfield Shopping Centre, we also ran our flyer campaign through the Australia Post, to several thousand homes in and around the Caboolture area. Unfortunately, non-stop rain – and at times the odd storm or two – prevented the brick wall at the front of the school from being painted, so even though the 3D signage was manufactured and ready for installation on Friday, unfortunately that’ll have to wait until the weather clears. Meaning that it won’t be installed before children return next week. Oh well. Can’t win them all. Friday also saw several last-minute phone calls organising a newspaper ad campaign in two of the  local newspapers, so that’ll be some designing work to get stuck into, this weekend!

At St James in Hervey Bay students return on the 30th, so that leaves one more week for the newspaper enrolment campaign, which commenced last week, to take effect. Even so, there’s been quite a surprising amount of activity on the College’s facebok page, considering the term hasn’t yet commenced. But it’s great to see a school community so involved in engaging with their school through social media.

Online, both the St Paul’s website, the St James website, and GoodOldTalk have had tweaking done, ready for the explosion of activity over the next week or so. In particular, the newly created ‘Admin blogs’ on the St Paul’s website will be a marked difference to the amount of up-to-the-minute content on their website! The Bloxham Marketing website has also had a bit of a facelift, with a daily blog joining the regular tweets and facebook page updates. This week, posts focused on How To’s – firstly, how to successfully plan for writing a blog; and then, after my discovery of www.ifttt.com, an introduction of same and a How To – get started with ifttt in 5 easy steps. Alexander Tibbets, the “go-to guy at ifttt” continued to amaze me with exceptional customer service, topped off with an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. So now one of my 40 connections is one of the creators of ifttt! I impress even myself at times…

All in all, a very productive week. I don’t know about you, but I look forward to seeing what next week brings!

Bits’n'pieces

It’s been a bitser of a day. A non-stop one, but still it’s hard to pinpoint tangible ‘stuff’ that’s been achieved. Unless you count the (almost!) completely updated St  James website, that is!

In the last 24 hours, I’ve changed dozens of pages, added several policies, application forms, Kindy information, a couple of dozen images, and re-worked the Home Page. Still waiting on a few gorgeous Kindy photos courtesy of Kaz at the Hervey Bay Independent, and maybe even a ‘welcome’ vodcast from the Principal, and then we’re pretty right for the potential influx of site visitors from our ad campaign on Wednesday / Thursday. And I’m hoping that we’ll get a bit of traffic – I’ve done quite a bit of work on that site!!! Our main newspaper ad will feature the St James website URL as a QR Code, so hopefully that might generate some interest, as I don’t think school ads have used QR codes before. Wait and see, I guess! Oh – and we might just change that facebook slider (that I raved about yesterday) to something called a ‘social slider’. Apparently it will open up our facebook, twitter and youtube accounts at once, so that might be rather cool…!

I’ve also been bits-and-piecing with one printer regarding that St Paul’s ad to go through Australia Post, and am negotiating poster proofs with yet another printer…

Speaking of Australia Post, how cool is this: yesterday at 4pm, a hard copy proof of the St Paul’s Yearbook was dropped off to the Caboolture Post Office. This morning at 8.30, I was speaking with John Bastoni from AcademyPhotography, in South Australia, who was holding that same copy IN HIS HAND. Impressive or what?!! So yes, finalising errors in the 2011 Yearbook was another bitsy-thing I’ve achieved today. Oh, and said errors have rather shaken my faith in DropBox, too, I must admit.

Throughout all this, I’ve been being interviewed via email for GoodOldTalk.com. Emma Chapman, journalist with the Townsville Bulletin, is running a piece on Seniors using the internet to keep in contact with other Seniors, and wants an in-depth look at the workings of the website. So that’s been pretty interesting – I’ve never been interviewed via email before! And getting free, positive publicity, is always an excellent idea, in my opinion…

And finally, I had a lovely phone conversation with the newly-appointed Director of the St James Kindy, discussing campaign strategies. I think I’m going to like working with her!

Well, time to go check whether I’ve got those Kindy photos in my DropBox, ready for uploading to the site in preparation for tomorrow…

Til then, dear readers!

The *new* gmail and Australia Post

As I write, today has so far been all about emailing. I decided to jump the gun and switch across to the ‘new look’ for my main gmail account; and while I was at it, sync my 3 accounts into one, with the idea of saving time in the future. I’d also like to retrieve the email from my non-gmail email account that’s been playing up significantly over the last couple of months, but that wasn’t a possibility today.

Another interesting discovery I made today regards Australia Post. I am in the process of organising a DL advertisement to be delivered to certain suburbs in St Paul’s catchment area, and whilst organising the booking of said deliveries, was informed that 1) from booking day to delivery day takes around three weeks, meaning that had I booked today, delivery would be December 15 at the earliest, and 2) every year on December 1, Australia Post increases its prices from 15.5 cents per flyer to around double that amount. Rather interesting information! Suffice it to say, we’re now planning on booking a Jan 16 delivery day. So our DL’s will then arrive in people’s mailboxes the day after our signs come down from their AdShel spots in Morayfield Shopping Centre, where they will have been for a month. Pretty cool!

Later today I’ll finalisng the Weekly Updates for tomorrow’s midday deadline, and also talking billboards and Open Days in Hervey Bay. Oh – and discussing the potential inherent in QR Codes too, of course…

Til tomorrow, dear readers!