Friday 27 June 2014

Being effective at social media, whether for business or personal use, means capturing people who have short attention spans. They're only a click away from a picture of a funny cat, so you have to make your thing more compelling than that cat. And that can be a high bar. Alexis Ohanian

You know that when the holiday postcard from your dear family member/ friend doesn't come through the letter box but into your inbox or onto your phone that the ways that we are communicating are changing. When even 'creaky old back-packing travelers' start to embrace different forms of social media then the times they really are a-changing (to paraphrase Bob).

And so it must be with our businesses: The Old Bakery enterprises which include The Bakehouse holiday cottage; the preserves division and the photography retail section; Gladstone Coaching - training, coaching and mentoring and linking in with The Old Bakery enterprises - Starting a B&B course and coaching retreats; and now Norfolk Patch - patchwork lessons, workshops and talks across Norfolk and quilt retreats in The Old Bakery.

Having just reduced my time with the NHS to 4 long days a week, I now have Fridays to devote to the administration and marketing of our various enterprises. I've drawn up a spreadsheet to make sure that we are organised about how we will start to use social media appropriately and regularly to increase our presence in the wider world.

We'll wait and see what impact these have but this is where you'll currently find us.

Facebook: You can find The Old Bakery and Norfolk Patch on Facebook. We mainly post photos of the B&B, the garden and the local wildlife and pictures of my quilts on Norfolk Patch. 

Twitter: We tweet at @gladstonecoaching and @norfolkpatch. Finding something to tweet about once a week is a big challenge but I'm reliably informed that we should be tweeting 4 or 5 times a day to make it worthwhile. Who knows if we'll even manage one a day and whether it will make a difference. We'll report back!

Pintrest: In case you've not come across Pintrest it is just up my street. A chance to create online photo boards that you can share with others and pin new photos that you come across onto the boards that you create. I have one in my name which is also known as Norfolk Patch - along with quilt boards, coaching quotes and various recipe boards I also have one for all things cauliflower (the wonder veg we are eating in place of rice, potatoes and anything else that is laden with calories - cauliflower wine anyone?)

LinkedIn: The professional job and networking site (the business equivalent to Facebook where you can post you CV). You'll find me here too - not that anyone has offered me a job yet!

Blogs: This blog is not one we share with our guests; although we are careful to make sure we don't talk about our guests on here in case they come across it inadvertently. I've started a blog to promote Norfolk Patch; you can read about it here: http://norfolkpatch.wordpress.com/

The next task will be to start again with my Gladstone Coaching blog - I did a few when I first left HSBC but this needs to be done regularly to be of any worth. Stuff on management, leadership, coaching etc - well I'll enjoy it and there are a few out there like me that may read it. More importantly it will enable me to provide helpful information and show what I know and that may drive business.

Wherever all this tweeting, pining and blogging takes us we need to be mindful that ...
"Good social media is authentic. What makes social media work is actually having something to say."
(Steven Levitt)





Wednesday 18 June 2014

The return of the Creaky Old Backpackers.

Where have we been you may ask. Well the short answer is Scotland, busy with guests, down the allotment, Jam making, cottage maintenance and gardening.


SCOTLAND

Firstly we took a ten day jaunt up to the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. With just a rucksack each we flew to Edinburgh then wandered through Scotland by train ferries and buses. We got full on sunshine and at times drenched by rain but we had a really great time and plan to do something similar next year in Europe. Having traveled around on so many holidays by car it was, for us, a really interesting exercise in packing the bare minimum especially knowing that we could expect a huge mix of weather. We did seriously discuss the possibility of posting our dirty underwear home but as the temperature back home was in the high twentys we thought that they might hum a little by the time we got back. We also considered what if they went missing but decided we wouldn't report it, just too embarrassing, so there would be the same stinky package sitting in some poor guys office for the next 3 years.

Anyway just to make all our friends absolutely sick of us and our bloody blogs we created a new one purely as an extended 'postcard' of our trip. So if you wished you may view it here...  "The Creaky Old Backpackers".


 FYI the card actually starts at the very bottom of the page that you are signed into and then progresses up the page.


At the end of the holiday I was concerned that Alison seemed to have gone native in the ways of the Scots...


BUSINESS
 We have been very, very busy and so far this year between the bookings that have already stayed and those that have booked to do so we have already matched the Total amount of  bookings achieved last year and it is only early June!Our Tripadvisor reviews have reached 45 all of which are excellent. Consequently we are proud to have received a Certificate of Excellence award for 2014.


THE ALLOTMENT

This always plays second fiddle to the B&B and Cottage work and so I often get behind with it making it all the harder to play catch up when I do get some time down there. That said we have been serving The Old Bakery Strawberries in our fruit salad for several weeks now and we have served our beautifully tender Broad beans to our guests that had an evening meal here Oh and served them our classic Rhubarb & Orange crumble made with freshly picked rhubarb. The New Potatoes have also started to be harvested.
Last year we lost all of our Gooseberries to the pigeons, currents to the sparrows and Blackbirds and the Cabbage Whites even managed to squeeze through our netting and decimate the brassicas. So this year Alison joined me to erect several fruit and veg cages.


Rather than messing around with makeshift 'cane' or 'pipe' tunnels I decided to invest in some metal cages which have a long life.
As I write this I am pretty much on top of the weeding, but a little bit of sunshine and rain and I'll have my work cut out for me. We have had practically no rain for several weeks and I am relying on the 2,000 litres of stored rain water that I had collected over the winter months. The long days have afforded me the opportunity to be hoeing as late as 9:30pm which is why I am not too far behind.

The allotment is just too far to pop down to and back quickly unless I cycle so it has been a chore to move plants and stuff down there up until now. Sad as I am I asked for a small trolley for my birthday (thanks mum, dad, and mum & dad in-law) and so now I can move bulk quantities of things in my truck, all I need now is a Yorkie chocolate bar.

JAM MAKING and PRESERVING.

Well the season is still in it's early days but we have made about 30 jars of Strawberry jam which is selling fast. we have also frozen over 7lbs of Rhubarb securing the raw ingredient for our most popular winter dessert, the aforementioned Rhubarb & Orange crumble. The Gooseberries look almost ready to harvest and so that will be our next job.


THE COTTAGE 



Being well over 200 years old naturally the fabric of this building requires a lot of TLC and so it is a constant battle to keep the old girl in a fit condition. There is rising damp, a little woodworm and some movement but nothing too severe yet but that's enough about Alison! The tiles in the Self catering cottage's shower are slowly easing themselves off the wall and whilst I have made a temporary fix to get us through the season I can see that this will be a winters task (unless they fall off any sooner!).
However the general condition of our cottage is still excellent and we have just been graded by the Visit England tourist agency and once again achieved a 4 STAR rating.







 THE GARDEN
 


 



Many comments about my 'Fedge' and 'Stumpery' most impressed, a lot want to create one in their garden and a handful just think I'm nuts. "Why an earth do you put the stumps upside down?" "But what does it mean?" Or simply an incredulous "Why?" That's all fine because we have already had one small child stay who loved having stories read to her whilst she sat on the bench in the stumpery. We add a little 'magic' to the area by hanging some Ikea lanterns from the walls and the arch. The lanterns have been pimped by my sister in law, Helen who gave me lots of stained glass replacement windows for the lanterns and they really make the area magical.

Once again we have had lots of birds nesting in the garden with fledgling Blackbirds, Goldfinches and Blue Tits. The Blackbirds and Tits both had two broods and sadly I have had to lock our cat in on several occasions because the fledglings were out and vulnerable. One of the Goldfinch fledglings even entertained my guests at breakfast by clinging onto the wooden french windows for about 5 minutes, very odd.

The blackbird had 2 chicks in the first brood and 5 in the second! It was comical seeing them all squeezed into the nest. It looked like a group of old ladies crammed in on the top deck of a bus on a shopping trip. The Mother Blackbird has been a real nuisance continually making it's warning call, really irritating. My Dutch guests got so sick of it that they tried to download a Hawks call to see if it could be scared off, but sadly to no avail.



The breeding season is a good time of year for spotting some of our more hidden birds as they have to get out and feed their young. For the last few weeks Alison has seen a Barn Owl just down the road as she drives to work and so she suggested I take my camera down there.
I only really had one opportunity this week because I had breakfasts on most days to cook, so I jumped on my bike at 7:45am and cycled down the road to the farm.

I stopped a fair distance away and eventually I saw a Barn Owl enter a barn then I cycled down and waited. When it appeared I followed it and then found a good spot to wait for it's return trip.
The subsequent photos are my best ever of a Barn Owl and so I feel compelled to show them right here....

The Owl's chicks are at the back of this Barn and after a quick shake she headed off for more food...

I followed her (or him) and then waited for it to return.

Then silently it came straight towards me following the route of the road with a mouse firmly held in it's talons.

And nearer...

And so close that my zoom lens struggled to focus on it.


The poor mouse swinging helplessly below it.

Then resting for a moment with the mouse held under it's left foot befor disapearing into the barn to feed the chicks.

AND FINALLY....

Why Dorothy shouldn't let the 'Tin Man' use a Scot Rail toilet.
 Talk about being stuck on the loo all day!