Tony Attwood's Blog

Over the years one or two people have been kind enough to suggest that my occasional ramblings about the mythical pub, the Toppled Bollard, should be recorded in some sort of book form.

And, always anxious to please, I have done it. I have written a novel which incorporates a variation on the Toppled Bollard – a sort of Toppled Bollard one hundred years ago.

The novel takes the form of a diary of a Fleet Street journalist 100 years ago, who while covering the demise of a small time football club, discovers that the government appears to be up to no good. He follows the trail that leads him to Winston Churchill (the Home Secretary), the head of the newly formed MI5, the mayor of Fulham, and a variety of other characters of the day.

If you would care to read the opening few pages I have posted them on http://blog.toppled.info/2009/10/27/the-toppled-bollard-100-years-ago/

And if you are totally smitten, there is an order form at the end of the piece, so you can buy multiple copies!!! You can even ask me to sign one if you like.

If you never enjoyed the Toppled Bollard stories this probably won’t appeal – but if you did, well, at least you will know I take notice of what people say when they comment on my work.

Tony Attwood

So, the postal strikes go ahead, and it looks as if the two sides are not going to be able to agree on anything. According to the CWU an agreement was reached on Tuesday night, but then vetoed by the top managers who have not attended any of the negotiation. If that is true, the outlook is bleak indeed.

The alternatives are emails and blogs – but although both look simpler than the post the reverse is true.

Just sending out emails using lists that can be bought off the shelf, often makes no odds. Likewise, writing the occasional blog without much sense of continuity and without much attempt to encourage a readership, does not do much good.

With emails the most effective list is the list of people who have, made a purchase, expressed an interest or made an enquiry. This list takes a while to make, and quite often I find myself talking with people who say, “I don’t have such a list,” and then go back to using off-the-shelf lists which they claim don’t work.

The fact is if you don’t have an email list of past customers etc then today is the day to start building it, either by recording addresses of enquirers now, or getting on the phone and going back over past enquirers and building the list that way. You’ll also need some software to handle the list if it over 100 addresses long.

Then there is the issue of what you send out. Repeated adverts will just bring a lot of requests to be taken off your list, so you need to communicate properly, to talk about issues of interest, and to keep their attention. As I said it is more complex than direct mail.

Finally there are the blogs. Blogs, carefully nurtured, can reach large numbers of people. The one I started two years ago now reaches 100,000 readers a month and has become a useful advertising tool.

If you would like to talk about any of these topics, do drop me an email Tony@hamilton-house.com or give me a call on 01536 399 013. Always happy to have a chat.

Tony Attwood

Just on two years ago I started writing a blog. I started with minimal knowledge and a huge amount of conflicting advice, most of which came from people who did not write successful blogs.

In September 2009 my blog was read by 108,425 different people, with each person looking at, at least two articles.

On that basis I think I can now say, I know how to do this. That’s not to say I can do that for anyone, but there’s a fair amount of information now available.

I’m happy to talk in general terms about blogging with you, and indeed to talk about working with any company that wants to get such an audience.

But of course the blog has to have a point. It might be to express your views, or it might be to sell some product. In my case I started with the idea of learning about how blogging worked and how one might get an audience. Then having got the audience up to around 30,000 a month my colleagues and I started exploring what we could sell via the blog.

In terms of link through advertising there is an income – although it is more of a “helpful addition” rather than “shout it from the rooftop” level of income. So, we decided on something else – to try and develop our own product to sell on our blog.

This is of course backwards – what we all normally do is start with the product, not the market. But backwards or not, we have now got our product and in 3 weeks time we launch it through our web site. I’ll let you know how it goes – but as I say if you want to talk about blogs and how to make them work, then do give me a call. At least I can now boast that I have done it.

Tony
01536 399 013

s it possible to combine a shared mailing and an email campaign?

We think so, and so to demonstrate this, in October we are offering a free Personal email promotion with each secondary shared mailing.

It is simple: you book into a shared mailing and then also send us your advert as a word document (straight text, no illustrations, with a link to your web site). We’ll send out the email within a couple of weeks of the shared mailing going out.

You can see the full list of personal email lists and the number of teachers you will reach free of charge at http://www.emails.gs/PersPrefLists.html

The offer is available on all of these lists except Deputy Head and Modern Languages.

There’s details of the shared mailing programme on www.shared.org.uk - or you can talk through the details with Chris, Stephen or myself on 01536 399 000.

Tony