So much has been happening at A Place to Write in the past two months that it's been difficult to catch my breath! Aside from two excellent retreats with wonderful writers of all genres, we have:
migrated our booking and payment platform to WeTravel
gone live with our new brochures for Writing Retreats and Shakespeare Holidays
been working closely with a social media expert to maximise our online presence
plus
launched the new A Place to Write Community for writers who have been on retreat with us. To say it's been hectic is an understatement but now I can finally explain what's actually been happening and how it's helping us develop and grow...
WeTravel
Shifting our bookings and payment platform to WeTravel.com will not only help us keep more efficient track of bookings and payments, but it also makes booking and paying easier for our guests. Payments can now be made in installments, add-ons can be easily added at the time of booking, and communication between guests and ourselves - and with retreat groups as a whole - can be streamlined. One feature which we are particularly delighted with is the reviews section: I was always poor at collecting and collating reviews and now that important function is done for me (we're currently 5 stars from 4 reviews, as you can see from the image below, so we're especially happy while that lasts!)
Overall we've had some teething problems, and I am still working out how some of the integration functions, but we hope it will save significant time and make things much more accessible for everyone in due course.
New Brochures
One of the functions which WeTravel allows is the download of a brochure for our retreats. The availability of this option, coupled with evidence of a number of potential guests downloading the brochure to find out more, has prompted us to develop a more thorough and useful document than the limited information pack which we had hitherto used. The new brochure combines imagery, quotations from guests, information about the retreat content, our USPs, and more. Early responses to the new brochure for A Place to Write have been positive and we are looking forward to this publication helping to raise awareness of our unique brand of retreats in due course. If you want to sample the brochure, it can be downloaded from the WeTravel website booking page for any of our retreats: https://www.wetravel.com/trips/3-march-2025-tutored-retreat-a-place-to-write-83917003
Social media presence
In January we began working with Abbie at Visualise Marketing to find ways to use social media more effectively in the promotion of both our retreats and our guest house. During February's untutored retreat Abbie joined us for a morning to capture photo and video content (including drone footage) for a social media campaign. The result is all over facebook, instagram and elsewhere - you may well have seen one of the reels or carousels already - and we have seen a distinct rise in engagement with our various products and services. It's too early to tell how much this raised awareness will result in increased bookings but it's reassuring to know that we are certainly reaching parts our previous half-hearted efforts failed to touch! The number of visits to our website and the time spent on our retreat pages and upcoming dates pages certainly suggests that we are reaching interested writers and Shakespeare enthusiasts with our campaign.
If you have any feedback on any area of our social media promotions, please do let us know. Plus, we currently have just under 500 followers of our page - please like and share it too (assuming you're also following...?)!!
Writing Community at A Place to Write
On our most recent retreat the idea was mooted that we should find a way to help writers from retreats stay in touch with each other. This suggestion had been made before and we were looking at ways to do this that were practical and efficient. Prompted by the latest retreaters, I put a question out to my friends and family, seeking ideas for doing this. The response from my future daughter-in-law was exactly what I was looking for: a WhatsApp community where participants belong to the community as a whole but can also divide into mini-groups for more focused chats.
A little investigation led me to set up the Writers @ A Place to Write WhatsApp Community with sub-groups for both genres of writing (e.g. non-fiction/short stories/memoirs/etc) and for specific retreats which we have hosted (e.g. 'February 2025 Tutored retreat'). Invitations have been sent out in the last 24 hours to all the writers who have visited A Place to Write since the start of 2024 (if you're one of these, have you received yours yet?) and I am delighted that, at the time of writing this, nearly 20 writers have already signed up. The community should allow writers to keep in touch, share tips and ideas with each other, and develop friendships around writing. It will also allow me to share news and quickly spread word of very special offers and such like to the most deserving recipients (i.e. those who have been here on retreat already!). What's more, I will be offering a very important free service to anyone who joins the 'goal-setting' mini-group in the community: a fortnightly connection to help focus the mind, set goals for the period ahead, and achieve a degree of accountability in working towards towards those writing goals. As in goal-setting sessions on retreats, this will be a friendly nudge rather than a pressurising push! There are always other things that get in the way but I hope that benefits will accrue all round from an accessible goal-setting opportunity with people you know.
If you want to be part of this community - have been on retreat with us, but haven't received your invite - let me know.
Well, these are just a few of the key developments over the past few months. Our guest house site - www.Bronygraig.com has also been undergoing development and more news about all our retreats and projects there will follow in due course. Oh yes, and I almost forgot the most significant change! This is simply the rebranding of Bron Y Graig from a 'guest house' to a 'guest house and retreat centre'. It's seems a minor thing in some ways, but it is undoubtedly the principal signal of the start of phase two of the development of our business in Corwen. Over the coming months our non-writing retreats will be marketed under the Bron Y Graig Retreat Centre brand, but writing retreats will continue to be marketed under the A Place to Wriet brand. After all, A Place to Write has been central to our development in phase one, and will continue to be our Signature retreats!
That's all for now. So much has been happening and I'm sure you can feel my excitement at the possibilities which our recent development has opened up!
Until next time,
Nic
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