Last Friday, Sean went to Coleford in the Forest of Dean to attend a workshop held by Charlotte Greenman from Accredited Marketing Ltd.Below is a photo that Charlotte took of the class! It was great to network with others who are also looking at ways to improve their sales strategy. Many ideas were explored and business cards exchanged. The course runs every fortnight and will continue into the summer. Looking forward to the next session on the 6th of May!
We have been busy updating our banners for Great Days Out! As always, Stephen Holdstock has been busy in helping us to produce more eye catching ones. We decided that we needed to look at ways in how to better promote our services across social media. On our request, Stephen knocked up a few alternatives which are displayed below. We think these are great!You may have noticed that each one of the banners above are slightly different to each other. The first one is our standard banner. The next one is the banner for Animals, then Family attractions, Historic buildings, Indoor leisure, and finally Outdoor adventure. Already we have started to place some of them on some of our Twitter and Facebook accounts!
It must be a good sign when a website directory designer uses his own website!Well that is exactly what happened a week last Saturday. I was going out for the day with my wife and we were meeting our son and all of his family - his wife and 2 small children. We had planned to go somewhere in the Cardiff area which was half way between our home in Gloucester and their home in Baglan, Port Talbot. We needed somewhere where we could have shelter if it rained. Unfortunately the place we planned to go to was being redeveloped so we needed another idea.Thats where www.great-days-out.co.uk came in. Sitting in the back of our car, driving to Wales along the M4, I quickly found the Great Days Out site on my mobile, selected Cardiff and found the various family activities being promoted. There weren't many at the time but one looked a great option... Parc www.parcplay.com.So pleased to be able to click straight through to the website and find out all about the Cardiff childrens play activity centre! I didn't want any off putting reviews and was pleased to find out straight away what the attraction was keen to...
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Some of you may have noticed over the Easter Weekend that there has been a change in our Social Media advertising!We felt that our Great Days Out branding needed a 'touch up', so we had Stephen Holdstock from https://www.heartco.co.uk/ come up with a few ideas. He has been instrumental in helping the Quoakle team with website design over the years and is a valued asset.After a few ideas, we all came to a decision as to what looked the best and now what you will see across all of our Great Days Out Twitter, LinkedIn, Google + and Facebook accounts is our brand new banner!You can see that we have incorporated a lot of symbolism, representing various images of what the Outdoors in the UK has to offer. We hope you like it!
Now that Spring is just around the corner, we can all look forward to enjoying longer days and warmer temperatures! There is so much to do in the great outdoors. The UK has some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.For example, why not enjoy award winning outdoor activities and days out in Go Ape's tree top adventures for both seniors and juniors, including forest segways and zip trekking. Or join Aerial Extreme for a unique, exciting and fun packed experience on their awesome High Ropes Adventure Courses? There is also Rock UK who have 4 adventure centres in stunning locations around the the UK in Kent, Northamptonshire, South Wales and the Scottish Borders. Even Treasure Trails can offer the perfect way for all ages to explore different areas across the UK!You can find these websites and so much more here : https://www.great-days-out.co.uk/ as this offers a simple guide to help families find Great Days Out in the UK!
It is so important these days to make sure that businesses are visible across the ever changing landscape of the Social Media world! We have seen an explosion of different ways to promote businesses on the internet over the last few years.As we are a Graphical Directory, it made sense that we should optimize what is out there on the internet. A BIG player on the World Wide Web is Pinterest, so a few years ago we set up our own webpage - https://uk.pinterest.com/quoakle/. Another growing presence is Instagram. We only recently set up our own Great Days Out UK account.Obviously with all of these different ways to advertise, it can be time consuming for many. Trending, tweeting, hashtags, etc are always being updated every moment of the day. Because we have a wide and varied presence on the Web, we can help companies, both large and small with advertising. We have several Twitter accounts which can help businesses gain exposure as well as our Facebook pages. See, https://twitter.com/greatdaysout and https://www.facebook.com/DaysOutUK/ as just some of the examples.So, feel free to get in touch.
We are grateful to Acorn Farm and many other businesses like them who we advertise on our Great Days Out directory who have given their time to help promote us on their respective websites! You can see their advertising link here : https://www.great-days-out.co.uk/merseyside/Below is an example of one our banners on their home page :We also have a link of ours placed without one of our banners. Climbing Works have placed it on their Sponsors webpage located just above the Day Out with the Kids banner. See below :We have dozens of businesses across the UK now who are promoting us with either just a link or with one of our banners. This helps our ranking on Google as we both benefit from the linkage.
I can't believe how long ago it is that I lasted posted on Quoakle News... 5 months!Well so much has been happening ...SEO for Australian Public Speaking Trainer, Sarah MeijerMore Australian work for a company supplying and installing Artificial Grass.The first in a series of new websites and conversions of current websites to fully responsive designs - Books for Schools using the Buntington ThemeNew websites for Ellis Sweeps and School Playground Markingsbut the most development and growth has to be on Quoakle's UK Days Out Directory ... Great Days Out!It was during Autumn 2013, that the Quoakle team began developing a graphical Days Out Directory for families – Great Days Out in the UK. The domain name, great-days-out.co.uk, was bought quite a while earlier. It was nearly discarded as not being needed but having missed the date to cancel the renewal, director, Nigel Steele, decided to give it a go!The team drew on the valuable experience gained through the development of Quoakle.com, the local business directory. They used the same geographical structure, and in addition expanded the reach to include Scotland and Northern Ireland. Stephen Holdstock again played a major part in the design.It is really since February 2015 that this website has...
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More good news from the Quoakle office! Over the past five years, Quoakle's graphical directory has made searching for local businesses quicker and easier for thousands of users. Since August 2009, Quoakle's innovative page layout and simple presentation of information has enabled users to connect with local websites literally hundreds of thousands of times. The most recent statistics from Quoakle's CMS reveal the passing of the landmark half a million click-throughs to local websites. With the current dramatic expansion of the Days Out and Leisure Directory, the Quoakle team is aiming to reach one million click-throughs within the next twelve months.
A year ago, on the 'Introducing Quoakle Video', director Nigel Steele said "Our aim is to spread right across every county in the United Kingdom". Last week the team made major steps in that direction with the launch of 14 new counties, from Cornwall in the south-west to Cheshire in the north-west. The first topic within these counties is Days Out and Leisure. Having observed Quoakle's rise to number one on Google for the search term "days out in Gloucestershire", Nigel took the decision to push ahead with this major expansion of Quoakle's Days Out and Leisure Directory. Soon users will be able to flick from county to county looking for great places to visit and family activities and finding hundreds of websites with just one click. Nigel is pictured above next to the newly launched Days Out in Cheshire page. The expansion into Cheshire was something which gave him particular pleasure, having been born in the Cheshire market town of Nantwich.
