Grateful for My Super Hero Mum on Black Friday

“Hi Mum, do you think you could bring my laptop in? I have forgotten it”. It’s a cold Thursday morning and in the busiest week in the retail year I have come into work 2 hours early to find that I have left my laptop at home.

Living 40 minutes away and looking at having to take face a 2 hour round trip now the morning traffic is building I am now not just looking at losing the benefits of getting up at 5:30am this morning but now being late for work entirely. To top off this nightmare I am asking my Mum (my husband doesn’t drive) to carry out the round trip on her day off and her only lie in of the week.

Working at a Voucher Code Website My Favourite Voucher Codes we supply the discounts and vouchers for over 1,600 merchants and we have to ensure that every merchant has every discount on the busiest day of the year. In turn we donate 20% of our profits to charity so we want to ensure that we earn the most money on the busiest day to donate to a worthy cause.

Nicky to the Rescue in her Onsie

So my Mum turns up outside our offices in Bath dressed in her teddy bear onsie, a big smile and a knowing smile that means I will be picking her up from the Theatre on Sunday at 11pm. So this week I am grateful for Mum because she Black Friday or not she always does what is needed to rescue me, even if I am 33 years old now.

Shout out to my Mum “Nicky Sandell” who is always the first person to offer to help you clean the house, empty your loft or pick you up from the airport. She works for the Civil Service and has done for 25 years dealing with some of the most horrific family cases with little thanks for hard work and gruelling cases. She loves her family and is always babysitting, offering a shoulder to cry on and generally being one of life’s good guys – So please raise a glass to “Nicky” My Super Mum in her own superhero onsie!

My Very First Post

Hi

My name is Tegan Groombridge, I am just 33 and live in Bristol, work in Bath and have strong Welsh roots. I play rugby for Chipping Sodbury Ladies and for this season i am part of the Social team. I work as a Digital Marketing Manager for in the main voucher code websites with our flagship site My Favourite Voucher Codes being our main site and an example of what we do.

In 2016 i steppped up my career by taking this role and although i have wanted to write a blog for a while i have finally gotten round to doing it. The main aim of this blog is to start documenting my work, life, and ideas for me to be able to work with and deal with them when i have time or when i start to struggle for ideas. Its also to enhance my writing, enhance my work and to start developing my outreach and pr skills.

If you have stumbled across this site expect to find posts about rugby, running, weight loss, marriage, Digital Marketing and PR all hopefully mixed up with some humour, tips and a small insight into my life.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any comments, there will be in time a Facebook page and maybe even a more serious premium page if i can get this going but like all my endeavours i dont buy all the kit till i know i will stick at it.

Enjoy, dont take it to seriously and speak soon

 

Overwhelmed Stepping Forward

So we are three weeks into my new PR course and I have had one win with a local newspaper story and although we have been making connections for features in stories we have been unsuccessful in having anything published or biting the bullet and actually pitching stories.

What I have achieved since my initial success is to slowly become more and more overwhelmed by the task ahead of me and get bogged down in old habits and bad ones at that. Every voice in my head that said you are not a writer and what do you do first and can I do this seemed to envelope my thoughts more than just sitting down and doing it. Right up to the point that I was going to do it on the weekend and I cleaned the kitchen and lost my glasses instead.

We start week three with a perfectly timed group call in my new course Soulful PR for Starters and I get to ask Janet Murray the question that really has been holding me back and she simply answers very simply and although she is telling me what I know it helps to be told to get my head out of the sand and go for it with sound advice;

• Journalists want stories about people and they are not interested in how wonderful your business is
• Be the expert in your own field
• Try something new and collate your ideas

The group chat even offer their own suggestions and in all honesty sitting there and hearing each person voice in some way the same struggles I am having regardless of business type, size or experience was encouraging that “we got this”. We end the call and I clear every admin, day to day task that I need to get finished and clear my diary for 2 days to start writing articles and pitching ideas. I sit down and work out what do I need to do to create the time to fit this work in each week and get some success and fortunately for me with a new Digital Executive starting on Monday I plan out their and my workload so we can actually take this bull by the horns and start making headway.

24 hours in to my next day and I have a list of content ideas that I want to start pushing forward with, ideas on what to include in our blog, what to pitch and a clear direction as to how I am going to achieve this, more importantly I have written two articles that did get some interest when I pitched and one has been sent and the other I will look at again tomorrow with fresh eyes.

In 48 hours I have gone from feeling like my first day on my first grown up job since University to being back in control with a plan on what to do, I will do this attitude and more importantly how I can do this. I must admit though there is only one problem that now I am looking at signing up to another course so I can smash this a bit harder. Good job my husband likes cooking as he might be doing a bit more of it next year.

Using #journorequest for PR

This weeks challenge is to start interacting and engaging with journalists and press requests via a number of channels but importantly straight from Twitter. From just one week it has become apparent that I need to utilise my own social media to push my (personal) brand out there and more importantly engage with a wider audience.

This blog has been created to write my thoughts and share my experiences but we have now linked this to my twitter account which under advice aim to use to connect with Journalists and show the professional side of myself. All due respect my Facebook is not for professional consumption and my rugby socials are really not going to enhance my Marketing Career although could make front page news is stories from tours were to be told.

So it seems that taking the bull by the horns again this week we have contacted a few #journorequests on twitter with degrees of success. Mind set at Money Saving Expert and Brand Ambassador for the My Favourite Voucher Codes we have contacted a few places.

1. Request for women who snore stories, although not brand related I did think this would at least have me engage with a freelance journalist and build a relationship, unfortunately this was for a publication my husband does not agree with so I respectfully declined to take part once speaking to the journalist. A shame but some rapport built and a new connection on Twitter (who knows)
2. Local Restaurant looking for bloggers to review the restaurant, I have a meal booked for two (free) and I will write a blog to be placed on our website. Directly links to my business, hopefully the place will be great, I will have a date night with my husband and lots of social shares from the restaurant when we post the review, always an opportunity for local media to pick this up and for it to rank in Google.
3. Direct contact with a blogger about a personal story which I have emailed a pitch for and yet to hear back. If they are looking for something more light hearted this may not be a piece for me but nothing ventured nothing gained.

As a weekly task I think I have another flying start along with my idea to pitch to Huffpost to start blogging for them it will be a busy week of answering journo requests to try and develop some momentum, build relationships and understand what I can achieve.

The challenge continues to find engaging content about the business without a particular personal level and with no actual product to share and unlike other people on the course I am working for a business founder so the story isn’t mine and I need to ensure I respect the business I work for, although my boss is very relaxed this comes with constraints.

However, I start my week engaged, excited and ready to go and find that next big link for our business.

My Very First Win

This week we started Soulful PR a course my boss has kindly paid for to help with my personal development to benefit myself and the business. I dont lack confidence in my role but the usual doubts and butterflies have flown this week wondering whether i really will be able to do this and whether i will achieve anything from the course.

Following a Facebook live i was boosted with confidence as the group talking gave me ideas of how i can pitch the business to the media to gain exposure that will increase our brand and hopefully our traffic. It also gave me more long term ideas of how we can get the beautiful and interesting evergreen content to a wider media, something i am very interested in doing long term.

So sitting at my desk i plug in my headphones and i listen to the video, i read the blogs and i go through the course material, i interact with the group and i am away with a renwed confidence and a can do attitude.

Well i am pleased to say that the first win has been achieved i have contacted a journalist in my local newspaper as requested in my course and i have arranged to talk about our business and our first PR is under way. I am so pleased, the idea is mine, the work is mine and the results is mine.

So lets just reveal for the moment as not all PR requests will be successful but the first one has built my confidence and 5 women, 5 years and £50,000 pounds might just see our business start to grow.