It’s currently Friday morning and there’s no time to panic now. Just focus focus focus. The only thing I’m panicking about is that I have been writing lists everywhere, just to get things down on paper whilst I remember them, and I really should’ve been keeping them altogether – in my big red book! So hope I don’t slip up and miss something.
I really wanted to write this last night because so much was going round in my head that it would have been useful to spill it out onto here, but by 10pm my head was ‘mashed’ and I just didn’t have the energy. One good thing is that I’m sleeping well! And so’s Luke, which is a good job because I need to be full of beans every morning at the moment to plough on (you know, in between bathing Luke, washing up pots and sorting his breakfast, boring daily things that are just getting in the way at the moment. I’ve got to say though, he has been a treasure. And I couldn’t have managed without grandparents and friends (& Gregg when he’s not working – deadline’s for him too at the moment, marvelous timing!) who have been looking after him for a few hours to give me complete concentration. But at the moment he’s eating his breakfast and watching Noddy so I’ve got an hour or so I think before he’ll need some attention. And the library books are due back today, so I’ll take an hour out to go there.
It’s really like that at the moment, counting every hour and using the time as efficiently as I can. Today is going to be really key, because we need the admin suite (the ‘back-end’ where we enter content for the site) back as soon as possible so we can check it all works as we need it to. One of the web design team can’t work tomorrow (Saturday) and I’m not sure if he’s contactable on Sunday. So it could be a very late night tonight, going back and forth with them, giving feedback. I’m taking my laptop and mobile connection with me everywhere today, in case they need me to check something. An hour wasted at this point is going to be crucial.
On the plus side it looks fantastic! So much better than the last version, with a more stylish design, expanded features (like the RSS feed and news items) and it is still very easy and quick to use.
We had a slight hiccup yesterday with the charity we wanted to support. They couldn’t get all their various committees to act quickly enough, and our contact there said realistically it was going to be at least 3 months before they’d be ready. The bureaucracy surrounding the charity rules can be ridiculous sometimes, they’ve already had about 3 months. They are missing out on possible donations, but I understand their viewpoint, and our contacts are extremely disappointed.
So potentially I was going to have to go ‘cap in hand’ to Steve at Fluid to change the site again. The design had been set to account for potential charity donations from members on the joining page, and at that stage it was highly unlikely that we’d have a charity to donate to. But then the PR contact we had for the charity, told us she is also a committee member for a much smaller charity, Holidays with Help. They are a fantastic group of ex British Red Cross volunteers, who take around 300 disabled children to Pontins twice a year. They rely totally on donations, and it fits in really well with our site, so the decision was made pretty quickly! They don’t have the committee structures that most charities do, and so they granted us their permission within about 2 hours! Phew, that was a close call. But actually it’s turned out so well. By supporting something as small as this, hopefully we can really make a difference.
I wrote the press release for the launch yesterday and sent it out (initially by email) to various publications, websites and press agencies, a much more thorough mailing list than we’ve had for any press releases we’ve sent in the past. I'll post it on here on the next post. It’s already had some attention and I’ve had journalists contacting me asking for complimentary media membership (which we offer so they can review the site). I’ve also suggested to publications that we can give them a reader offer of 15 months for the price of 12, if they agree to give us a regular featured column. We’re trying to uild these up a bit more now, we already have quite a few publications taking monthly contributions from us, but we’d like lots more.
I think I need to keep a control of this a bit more though, as the numbers grow I need to schedule the articles in a bit better so that we always hit our deadlines. Something else for the list! I have been doing a couple more things to try and get more organised, mainly categorising my ‘in box’ a bit more. We are receiving emails for lots of different things now. Journalists who want media memberships, publications who want to feature us, attractions who want us to feature them on the site, etc, so I’ve split my folders up into ‘To Deal with’, ‘Press release responses’, ‘New events’, ‘Old events and other’ (!) ‘Bambino’ and ‘Beta testers’. This is making it a lot easier to focus on the ‘To Deal with’ items, although worryingly they seem to be getting longer too.
Talking of Bambino, things have picked up apace on that too. I’ve sorted the event insurance out, bought the PPL licence (for broadcasting music – we’re going to have a CD playing background music, nursery rhymes probably!), bought extra fleeces and jackets for the rest of the team. Can you believe there are actually 10 of us now! And they all needed some branding clothing for the Bambino show as they will all be there at some point over the weekend. I now need to take them to the man who embroiders our logo (on Bury market!) and go to the card and party warehouse I joined so I can buy the helium cylinder to blow up the balloons on the day. Still to do – health & safety policy and training document for the team, buy party hats (we decided to have our launch party on the stand!) , buy tablecloths, waste bins, spare lamp for the projector, clipboards, print off joining forms, design the posters etc etc. The list goes on. Ross has quite a few jobs for this too. He’s designing the stand layout, incl planning cables, power sockets etc, and buying the mounting card and Velcro to put the posters up.
Our promotional posters and cards arrived, along with a bill for £1,000! Apparently they look great, but I haven’t seen them yet because Ross picked them up yesterday. We also asked the printer to print a couple of images from the site on A3 card, so we can hang them from the ceiling grids at the show. And Ross says they look great.
It’s hard trying to visualize how everything will look, but I’m just trying to make sure we appeal to all the senses (hence the background music) and use all the space well, without it being too cramped. We have a 4m x 2m stand, so we have plenty of space – I think!
I’ve been trying to find a water dispenser, those that dispense cool water into plastic beakers, but I can’t find a supplier who will hire it for just a few days. They’re all on contract for months at a time, and whilst it would be lovely to have one of those in my kitchen, it’s a bit of a luxury I can’t afford unfortunately! So please get in touch if you know anyone. Even the exhibition furniture specialists don’t seem to stock them. I’ll keep looking. Stop press! Found someone! Aquapoint, they’ve fantastic customer service too. That’s why I was getting to frustrated, I’d left messages and filled in online enquiry forms and just hadn’t heard back from anyone.
But I’ve just done another quick google search specifying ‘water coolers Yorkshire’, and came up with Aquapoint. Job sorted, the order’s being faxed over to me. And I wasn’t cracking up, the sales manager did say that most companies don’t offer this service. So if visitors (& their children) can have a drink of water whilst they look at the site, they may stay a bit longer, well that’s the thinking anyway. We came up with this idea because I remembered back to when I attended a similar show when Luke was a baby, and you always get so overladen with things, you’re hot and quite thirsty. But you don’t always want to sit down at the café. Pregnant mums will probably be grateful for a (free) cup of cool water too.
I’ve drafted the email to everyone who’s registered on the holding page, and Lee’s going to design that, and then send it out on Monday. These people qualify for 15 months for the price of 12 aswell, if they’ve registered their email address on entertainthekids.com before we launch.
I met Rebecca Baron last Tuesday (sorry, seem to be jumping all over the place!), our new ‘editorial assistant’, and she’s been given her first task. We’ve made her responsible for liaising with the regional publications in Greater Manchester, to try and increase our profile in our local area.
I’ve also rewritten the copy for all the website pages – again! Made it much punchier, less wordy and focused. When you’ve been looking at something for so long, it’s really hard to stand back and try and see it as a user would for the first time. But the feedback from the preview evenings really helped here, plus some comments we’ve had from our beta testers. It’ll need refreshing every so often anyway, so I’m sure it won’t stay the same for long.
Tons more to do. Content to prepare for when we get the admin suite back, then content to actually enter over the weekend. Media packs to complete and issue, mailing to prepare for potential referral sources, and so it goes on. Good job I’ve got childcare sorted for the full weekend. But first, the library!
Kirsty
entertainthekids.com
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