Tony Attwood's Blog

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