I’ve got something new to share with you – Baby Swap or Shop. Thought up by Carrie Safford when she was on Maternity Leave with her second baby. It’s a brilliant idea and we’re so pleased that they picked us to do their PR going forwards. I’ve asked Carrie to tell you more about them..

Hi I am Carrie, we’re so excited to be working with Liz Weston and Weston Communications as we’ve got lots going on with Baby Swap or Shop and she’s going to help us tell people about it as we go forwards.

How Baby Swap or Shop started: I was on maternity leave with my youngest son; I have two boys but with quite an age gap so there was no handing down, we bought everything brand new, which cost a pretty penny and that’s after nine months of maternity wear that I no longer have use for. Whilst dressing my baby and realising the top I had just washed and ironed ready was now too small I realised that he was outgrowing everything at such a fast rate. I wondered how other growing families manage to keep up with demand; especially in these times of financial hardship. Before any ‘wear and tear’ has a chance, the stuff is not used anymore and I was left with sackfuls of perfectly decent baby clothes that could benefit another baby – after all, we are encouraged to recycle wherever possible!

From small acorns…

So Baby Swap or Shop was born – a free way for people to swap, sell, share and tell each other about their un used, or no longer needed new and used or previously loved items. To test it out, I set up a Facebook page to see what people thought of it. I was astounded at how quickly the fan base grew, there was clearly a need for recycling baby items as well as for bargain hunting for new items, parents and mums to be were joining in droves actively selling, swapping and buying maternity, baby and toddler items and the page became extremely busy; it became a full-time job! A business?!…We listened to our fans and also set up many local area pages. We now have a combined total of over 100,000 fans on Facebook!

Making it easy for parents…

As we embarked on the huge project that putting together the website quickly became, we always asked our customers what they wanted. So in essence the site has truly been designed with them in mind. This was possible due to our huge presence throughout social media, it is so easy to communicate with them en-mass!We used our Facebook experience as a real learning curve, taking on board our fans’ suggestions and gaining feedback. We have also added a Marketplace area for small businesses and work at home parents caring for youngsters to advertise their products and services for a small fee in order to help attract our many parents, I felt it was important to help in these areas as well, especially now I am a work at home mum whilst looking after a very active one year old!

Our national website finally went live in November 2010 and traffic has increased greatly in the few months it has been going – but the work doesn’t stop there though! We are constantly developing the website and have many ideas to help evolve our one-stop shop for parents and mums to be. www.babyswaporshop.co.uk is officially now THE site to visit in order to source anything pre-birth through to toddler stage, products or services! And with both new and nearly new items it well and truly caters for all budgets!

So that’s us and our idea that’s turned into a thriving business. Please check us out at www.babyswaporshop.co.uk and email me at carrie@babyswaporshop.co.uk to tell me what you think of it.

We’ve got a guest blog from one of our own clients today, Dean & Steph from Daddynatal and Bump, Birth & Beyond. They’ve had a brilliant week, going from teaching local classes, to national coverage via a TV appearance. I thought it would be really helpful for other people who have small businesses to hear that opportunities for national coverage are out there, if you’re prepared to work hard and make the most of the opportunities available….. 

While everyone else seems to be winding down for Easter things have never been busier at Bump Birth and Beyond Ltd. It has been a hectic week, but a very positive hectic week!

Our busy week kicked off on Saturday, listening to the first interview Dean had recorded for The Baby Show broadcast on Star Radio. The interview was focused on the role of the dad in pregnancy, and very exciting for us, as it was the first ‘official’ interview Dean had done, and it definitely was a great learning experience.

Then, Sunday saw us officially announce our partnership with Peterborough City Hospital at Peterborough Baby Show. Bump, Birth and Beyond are now running DaddyNatal and Active Birth Classes, on behalf of the hospital, free to parents. How fantastic to have a Head of Midwifery who is so forward thinking, she really is one of the first in the country to recognise that fathers/birth partners have huge antenatal education needs which have never (until now!) been met.

There was an excellent response to the news of the classes, with signups both on the day and since. Both courses are already 10% full, and we are still awaiting the formal press release and for the community midwifery team to start promotion yet!

Sunday also marked the completion of the first part of training for our new Daisy Birthing teacher, Alison. Courses have been so successful that Steph cannot keep up with demand on her own, so we are extremely excited about Alison’s arrival. She will commence teaching in June which will allow us to offer more courses in even more locations.

On Monday and Tuesday evenings, Steph was out teaching her regular Daisy Birthing classes in Peterborough and St Ives. Steph teaches classes to around 40 pregnant ladies a week, as well as managing all the bookings and day-to-day admin of the company. And she looks after our two toddlers full time as well!

Little did we realise what more the week still held in store… At 10pm Wednesday evening, Steph arrived home from yet another Daisy Birthing class to the news that Dean had been invited down the next day onto The Vanessa Show on Channel 5 to talk about fathers at birth. Turns out a producer had heard his interview on The Baby Show website and wanted him there for a discussion segment about birth! How could we refuse…?!

So scrapping all previous arrangements for Thursday, Dean travelled to London to record the show. To say he was nervous would be a major understatement! He was petrified to be doing his first TV appearance only a few days after his very first ever live media interview! But, of course, he was also really excited. The people were brilliant and he had the pleasure of meeting and talking to Pearl Lowe and Christina Hopkinson, as part of the segment on the discussion of fathers at birth. They were lovely and certainly put Dean at ease (although nerves kicked back in once the cameras started rolling!). You can see his appearance here and judge for yourselves how Dean got on at The Vanessa Show.

Feel free to comment as we would love to hear your feedback. It was a long day though – Dean left home at 11.30am, and didn’t get home again until 8.30pm (luckily Thursdays are Steph’s evening off!)

But there was still work to be done… Friday saw us at a meeting at Peterborough Hospital to discuss some of the logistics of our partnership, and then followed by an agreement that we would produce contact and reference packs for the community midwives, so that became our focus on Saturday!

However, the support and excitement of what we are doing, coming direct from the midwives is so refreshing. It really is a pleasure to be working with them all.

And finally, we finished the week on Sunday with one of our Couples Antenatal Workshops in Kettering. Our classes are jointly run between the both of us, to make sure that we cover all the essential points from both the mum and birth partner perspective. It was a really great class – we thoroughly enjoyed it, and then arrived home in time to spend the remainder of the afternoon in the garden with our two children.

So a busy week made busier by some unforeseen media appearances! A great experience though and we look forward to seeing what the next few weeks brings us.

So that was our hectic week how was yours?

It seems like the press have very much highlighted the fact that Mariah Carey has decided to decorate her bump and her tweet about it after going into false labour over the weekend.

To me it seems a great bit of fun to be had – and to be honest has probably helped some of the boredom during those last few weeks of pregnancy.

I decorated my bump, with clothes mind you. But does everyone feel that sense of pride in showing off thier bump? I wore lots of stripey and tight tops to highlight the fact I was growing a little person. I loved the attention I got but I know that others feel completely different.

So if you want to show off your bump feel free to do so below and even if not tell us your thoughts on decorating your baby bump

Am I too busy to be inspired?

On Friday I drove for nearly eight hours to have a two hour conversation with someone.

On the way there, I wondered if it was a good use of my time. I’m so busy right now with our Weston Communications projects, there’s two New Baby Guides waiting to go to the printer and the Young Families Watford Bump, Baby and Toddler Show in eight days time!!

So with all that weighing on my  mind, I got there ten minutes early, put my make  up on, tried to do my hair to something I could live with (I *still* hate it, but it’s growing, albeit slowly) and reviewed my notes.

And I’m so pleased I did.

The next two hours were spent in the company of a woman who was down to earth, experienced, makes a habit of being nothing less than successful, taught me new things about manufacturing and processes and made me smile. She wasn’t a big story teller but I just wanted to keep asking her about her life, what she’d done and where she thought the future lies for the maternity and nursery industry.

Thankfully I was able to teach her something too, about Hootsuite, so it wasn’t really a fair swap of expertise, but I’m sure that will come later. I’m was so pleased with the outcome, that I didn’t mind the journey home even though I was sat on the A14 car park for hours. And I still got home in time to see my boys before bath and bedtime.

Who is inspiring you at the moment? I find it’s a movable feast, depending on where I’m at with the business and in my personal life. So people who have inspired you at different points would be just fine as well.

Who do you think is inspirational? Anyone you could suggest for me to look at as well?

*Image courtesy of worldofstock.com

With thanks to Nikki Pilkington (all round social media queen) and her blog for giving me the heads up on this one.

There’s an interesting bit of software that lets you know how other people are seeing you on twitter. I’m going to use it with my clients as it’s a quick and easy way to show them how others perceive you.

Here’s mine:

Marketing Week talks family stuff

This article in Marketing Week made me think today, about how organisations that market to people in pregnancy, the new baby / newborn phase, toddlers and beyond, really need to think a bit more about how they talk to people.

Because the person buying the buggy / travel system / stroller / cot bed is not neccessarily the parents. And marketeers need to think about this a bit more when they talk to people. When we bought our double buggy my parents and my in laws both wanted to check it out. Which I found a bit weird, but as they were paying, I went along with it. And I saw at the Baby Show in London the other week, that they do grandparent tickets, which is a smart move, but I wonder if the could go further, I don’t know how – but I think there’s mileage there.

And if you’re going to be leaving your Precious First Born, Ignored Second Child or Feral Third Child etc with grandparents for any kind of childcare you want to be sure that you are leaving them with kit that they can use – that is functional, light, works in the long term and is going to fit in their car boot as well as yours, surely?

So whose buggy is baby friendly and grandparent friendly? Anyone know of one? Would be interested to hear in something that’s marketed as being easy for everyone to use, including grandparents who are going to influence the purchase of things in one way or another….

I read this article with great interest. A Manchester hospital is introducing tagging but security guards are no longer being employed or services decreased.

Is this another cost saving initiative that will go wrong or a clever idea?

My 3 day stay after the birth of my daughter was in a labour ward where visitors had to buzz to get in and staff had a code to tap in. To me this felt quite secure. Visitors had to report to a desk and I am pretty sure that a security guard was pacing the halls at night.

The tagging system discussed in the article does make me wonder how ‘safe’ this is, how secure and how reliable. Although the hospital still have their security measures, such as the ones I encountered above, how soon will staff become reliant or relaxed because they have this in place? Is this system really needed? No where are statistics shared on the effect this has on child abduction or the electronic waves pulsing next to baby’s skin.

Relying on electronics where a person can do a job is not always the way forward. Failures in systems, false alarms happen and although I am sure that the tags are probably put through their paces we cannot rely on them fully.

In the long run will this only cost more money?

It's a *sign*, I think...

It’s happening. Spring is on its way. DH has informed me that the daffodils are now sprouting. We planted them together as a family on the patch of grass outside the front of the house, so I’ve taken it as a ‘sign’ of good things happening.

The boys are both having a growth spurt too. They’re moving into the next set of clothes – and I feel proud that they are growing in size, strength and independence, but also a touch of sadness that they aren’t babies any more and we’re not the sole focus of their attention….

DH is changing too. He’s thoroughly enjoying the shed project that we’ve got going on at the moment and is really getting in his stride with the stay at home dad thing.

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And me, well, I think I’m having a growth spurt too. When one of my clients told me they didn’t think they needed me in January, I wasn’t surprised, because they too, are growing  and changing. It was the first client that I’d stopped working with, so I didn’t know what to do other than wish them all the best going forwards! Luckily, I’ve now got five new lovely clients either on board or coming on board, so everything is growing in the right direction.

My goals for 2011 were take start working with six new clients, get 12 linked in recommendations, and to grow the New Baby Guides and Young Families  Bump, Baby and Toddler Shows as and when opportunities came along. It’s February and I’ve achieved 83.3% of the first one and the others are progressing nicely too, but not in a way that I can put figures on…

So what’s happening with you? Was January the month you expected it to be? Mine was so much better than I could have ever hoped for – new relationships, new clients, new opportunities and lots of repeat business for the New Baby Guides.

I have to confess, that I’m finding it all rather strange, to be back in the sleepless nights phase again, it reminds me of when I first started out to be honest and was working like mad to get going. Then there was steady growth, primarily with the New Baby Guides, so I could outsource that and it’s working nicely. But with the Marketing and PR, I’m not sure what to do – there’s only a finite capacity I have, and what do I do when I reach it? Outsource and then give approval before it goes to clients? And who is marketing us, Weston Communications? I’ve not got time to at the moment, so that’s another thing to think about.

I’m sorry, I’m whittering. It’s 1.20am. I can’t sleep, there’s so much to do, that I’m loving working on. It’s hard to sleep when you’re having a growth spurt eh?

*image courtesy of Moving Right Along – don’t think it’s a good idea to go outside and take photos at 1am :)

How does this bird help me make money?

I had a hot chocolate today with someone whose opinion I value dearly. Whose guidance and support I seek as often as I dare, as she’s an uber busy lady. She’s just taken to an iphone after being attached to her blackberry for work for a number of years and doesn’t ‘get’ the twitter thing. So I got her a little book for Christmas with what’s what and how it works. As she doesn’t follow many people, she’s just seeing me on her screen, so I felt very conscious of that tonight as I was whittering away.

She asked me how I make money from twitter? So I thought I would share it with you as well, because it’s kind of simple but still hard work… The short answer is that it brings me clients. Literally.

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I saw someone tweet the other day that they were thinking of hiring someone for PR and Marketing so I messaged them to say “Hello, I’m here and busy, but depending on what you want I may be interested”. We skyped. I explained what I have to offer, and what questions to ask of other people, to try to gauge how to compare everyone they would speak to. They came back yesterday and asked me to do 6 months with them.

Someone else follows me on twitter and can see that I’m in the NHS, New Baby, Family and Parenting market. She called me out of the blue, I was on my way out and she asked me if I’d like to look at working for her with a new product she’s got coming out. I said “yes, of course” and I’m meeting her next week, with our respective non disclosure agreements to hand, to work out a way forward together.

So twitter is great. It sends people to the Weston Communications website, and people call and email me to ask me to work with them. Simple. Eh? Not quite. I put a lot of work into being engaging and not sycophantic with people. Lots of people do the latter and it irritates me. I don’t do link swaps or anything like that, so I know that the people and businesses which follow me are genuinely interested in me. And vice versa.

Twitter – my online life, and my real life have been so great to me. I’ve never actually written a pitch, or presented a business pitch to anyone. It’s all been word of mouth. Whether on line or offline and I’m actually seeing that as a strength now, because there’s no better introduction than a recommendation eh?

The rising cost of living means that many mothers have to return to work much sooner than those of previous generations. In turn this means that childcare has become a fast growing industry and rates of nurseries and childminders have increased swallowing up around a quarter of a families income.

Sure Start Nurseries give parents the opportunity for a subsidised facility relieving the stress of high childcare bills. This article from The Telegraph and Argus about the loss of funding in Bradford just highlights to me how important Sure Start is.

A similar problem is happening in Brighton with the possible closure of Bright Start and a group of parents here are looking at ways to run the nursery themselves in an attempt to keep the nursery they love as well as keep the costs down. I am hoping that a collective like this will be the way forward.

I returned to work in 2010 when my daughter was 7.5 months old. Financially we couldn’t afford to live on Statutory Maternity Pay for any longer, savings depleted and our nursery asked for a month in advance. Going back to work for 4 days a week means that we are £50 a month better off, if I went back for 5 days that would add a measly £12 a month. Our salaries are enough to pay the bills but with our nursery coming to more than our mortgage payments it does make me a bit cold.

With tax credits lowering from 80% contribution for low income families to 70% shortly it does make me wonder how many parents will be able to afford to live in a time where VAT has risen, debt has risen and the chances of owning your own home become a distant dream. Sure Start is really important for these parents – they want to work and provide for their children.

Sure Start is not just for childcare. Breastfeeding support is very widely needed, health and educational advice as well as a variety of parent and baby groups. If the funding goes from much needed childcare subsidies first it does leave me questioning where next? And when it does go are we encouraging a debtors society where people are priced out of jobs and out of enjoying life just to live.