Tag Archives: 2010

Celebration: Reaching the milestone of 1000 blogposts!

Today we have reached an exciting milestone on our Whale Cottage Blog, in that this is our 1000th blogpost.  We thank our readers for their support in reading our blog, and for providing feedback, to help us improve as we developed over the almost three years. In numerology, 1000 symbolises multitude and perfection, we have learnt from Google, and we dedicate our next 1000 blogposts to be worthy of this definition.

Highlights have been making the Top 10 on the Most Controversial Blog category of the 2010 SA Blog Awards, achieving a cumulative unique readership of just under half a million in the last 16 months (about 30000 per month on average), and setting up the Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club last year.

So what have we learnt about blogging and our blog in the close to three years:

*   Restaurant news in general, and reviews and special offers specifically have attracted the greatest interest on this blog.   Our most widely read restaurant reviews, since we went onto Google Analytics 16 months ago, are for Tokara DeliCATessen, Sotana by Caveau, Gaaitjie, Pierneef à La Motte, and Duchess on Wisbeach.  It was the enjoyment of writing the review of Portofino restaurant, owned by Cormac Keane, that got us started with reviews, and we have written more than 100 reviews since then.  We have seen negative reaction to some of these, and have been banned from the Caveau group of restaurants (including Sotano), the Caviar group of restaurants (Beluga and Sevruga), Opal Lounge, and Café des Arts as a result.  Restaurants generally are poor at Social Media, and only a handful blog and/or are on Twitter.  This means that a restaurant’s information most often is provided by a blog rather than by the restaurant’s own website, which can be to its advantage or diadvantage, depending on the reviews that are listed on the first page of Google.  Other highly read blogposts are the Winter and Summer Restaurant Specials lists, the Table Mountain vote for the New7Wonders of the World, Prince Albert and Charlene Wittstock’s visit to Fresnaye in January 2009, and the Disney service training programme instituted just days before the World Cup. 

*   Tourism topics have also attracted attention, probably because there are far fewer writers on this topic.

*    Word spreads quickly if a blogpost is controversial, and brings in new readers to the blog.  Despite all allegations to the contrary, we have never written a blogpost to be controversial.  It is the reaction to it by our readers that causes the controversy. 

*   Comments have become harder to manage, and increasingly cowardly commenters write anonymously to slate the writer of the blog or the subject of a blogpost.  If one deletes such comments, one is criticised; if one publishes them, one is equally criticised!

*   While blog readers enjoy honesty, and probably read this blog for it, those that are on the receiving end of it plus their friends do react with venom, rather than using the feedback to improve their service and quality. The nastiness in ‘unSocial Media’, our new name for it, has been shocking, especially in a campaign by David Cope on Twitter, where anything goes!

*   Blogging has become very competitive, as bloggers chase readership, and want to be the first to review a new restaurant.  Achieving a first page Google listing for a restaurant, for example, can attract readership over time to the blog by new users when they Google the name of a restaurant.    

*   Readership is disappointingly low on public holidays and weekends.  Saturdays have the lowest blog reading numbers, dropping by up to half of weekday readership. Our highest readership of this blog was on 16 June 2010, during last year’s World Cup, when a tag for ‘2010’ was widely linked to this blog, attracting 9000 page views on that day alone. 

*   Although most readers are unknown to the writer, one carries a huge responsibility in shaping people’s opinions through what one writes.   We try our best to remain objective in presenting information at all times.  We have been blamed for wishing to destroy restaurants and new initiatives, yet supply news about restaurant openings and specials all the time.  Attempts were made last year by Michael Olivier (Editor of Crush!), David Cope (The Foodie Blogger) and Skye Grove (Cape Town Tourism PR Manager) to have this blog closed down.  We moved our blog hosting to America, to prevent this. 

*   Information as well as images are most likely to bring traffic via Google to the website, followed by Twitter.   Facebook is far less likely to draw traffic.

*   The weekly Sweet & Sour Service are enjoyed by readers, and many readers read the blog on a Friday, to check who has received the Sour Award, and then catch up in reading the blogposts of the pevious week.  The Spar Sweet/Limelight Sour Service Awards attracted an unusually high readership, and still do.

Looking forward, we plan to continue being honest, no matter what the cost.  We will endeavour to remain relevant, and to remain heard in the increasing Social Media ‘noise’, as more and more blogs are started, and existing ones reinvent themselves.   We will try to write shorter blogposts!   We will continue helping others to become better bloggers, and will endeavour to never stop learning from others too.

Thank you 1000 times for your readership and support!

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com  Twitter:@WhaleCottage

World Cup Social Media Marketing boom, beats Food news

If Social Media Marketing performance is anything to go by, the World Cup is an outstanding success.

Twitter has shown record usage since the start of the World Cup on 11 June, often crashing due to overload when a World Cup match is underway, fans of a particular team egging on their players to do better, or to praise them for a good performance.  Twitter has a “fail-whale” sign when it is over-capacity.

If the Whale Cottage Portfolio WhaleTales blog is anything to go by, then the blogosphere has reached record heights.  With steadily climbing unique readership of about 30 000 per month, the current unique readership for the first 21 days in June is already at 84025, meaning that the total for June could be close to 120 000, an unprecedented performance.   The unique readership peaked on the opening day of the World Cup on 11 June, at a record 8182.   Of the stories that have been written on our blog to date, the following posts have been the most widely read this month, proving that the World Cup dominates interest over any other topic, such as restaurant reviews:

               1.  Cape Town Restaurant Winter Blues specials

               2.  Table Mountain only SA new 7wonders nominee

               3.   World Cup 2010 FIFA flop

               4.   FIFA Ticket Collection Sweet and Good Food & Wine Show Sour Awards

               5.   Restaurant Reviewer receives harsh reviews about review

               6.   Cape Town parties through the World Cup

               7.   World Cup match attendance: staying on the FIFA ball

               8.   Cape Town blows the largest vuvuzela

               9.   Cape Town drowning in hotel beds

              10.  World Cup puts SA into focus, some bad, most good 

Tags (blog-speak for keywords) too are of interest, and reflect the world’s focus on the World Cup, and the following were most used tags, connecting Google and other search engine users to the Whale Cottage Portfolio website:

               1.   USA Today

               2.   Minister of Tourism

               3.   World Cup 2010

               4.   Confederations Cup

               5.   Fan parks

               6.   Grant Thornton (the tourism consultancy that did forecasts of World Cup attendance)

              7.    Ivanka Trump (who spent her honeymoon in the Cape earlier this year)   

              8.   Vuvuzela

              9.   2010

              10.  Prince William (attended the England versus Algeria game)

Ten days ago the Whale Cottage Portfolio Whale Tales Blog was registered with www.amatomu.com for  the first time, a Top SA Blogsites site measuring web traffic.   The growth in traffic has moved the Whale Cottage Portfolio Blog to the top 20 list, being in 16th position of all blogs in South Africa today.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com

FIFA “FOUL!” kicks up a fuss!

A new book by British “investigative sports reporter” Andrew Jennings, called “FOUL! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals”, has kicked up a fuss just days ahead of the start of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, reports The Times.  The book is critical of FIFA, and its “corruption and greed”.  

Jennings is one of few, if not the only, journalist to be banned from FIFA media conferences, having focused on sport corruption reporting for the last thirty years.  He started his “stirring” with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch, having discovered his political past during the Second World War, leading to three books on the subject, and 5 days in a Swiss jail.

The IOC and FIFA shared the same marketing company, International Sport and Leisure, and this led Jennings to investigate FIFA, amid allegations of bribery by the marketing company to secure marketing contracts and television broadcast rights, with kickbacks to FIFA, before it went into liquidation.  

As far as the South African bid for the 2010 World Cup goes, Jennings alleges that Jack Warner, a FIFA executive from Trinidad and Tobago, wanted one thing above all – access to Nelson Mandela, and he was only prepared to vote for our country if his wish came true!   Jennings is disparaging of Warner, and his debt to the 2006 World Cup team from these two countries, who still have not been paid, it is alleged, despite a British court order to this effect. 

The FIFA ticketing and accommodation agency MATCH has not escaped Jennings’ eagle eye, and he blames MATCH for “… has milked the fans”, particlarly given the world’s economic recession, which meant they could not afford the excessive cost of the hospitality packages MATCH was selling.  FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s nephew Philippe Blatter is a director of MATCH.   “Not even the American wholesaler could sell the overpriced hospitality packages.  For Match it was just greed, greed, greed”, he writes.  “What matters is the percentage of the commissions they make.  So they push the prices higher to make it a bigger commission.  But the corporates won’t spend money in this economic climate”.

Jennings cynically states that there was never a shortage of tickets to the matches as we were led to believe at one stage, and that South African municipalities are buying tickets “because we have to believe there is a scarcity value; there has been a political move to cover up the scandal. Blatter is dishing out tickets to the unemployed – you are going to get screwed” he added.  He goes on to allege that any profits that FIFA makes will go to the FIFA official headquarters in Zurich.   The Local Organising Committee receives a lashing as well :”Officials and the government have sold South Africa down the river”.  His final parting shot: “..after the final whistle blows, South Africans have nothing to look forward to but a mountain of scandal, debt and  – in our shiny new, expensive stadiums – some rather large white elephants”!

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com

Travel and Tourism Trends for 2010

Tourism and travel in 2010 will remain depressed, but travellers will demand more individualised holidays, and will be seeking value for money, in the form of good rates, travelling to countries that offer good exchange rates, and joining clubs that offer exclusive discounts, according to the website www.mrandmrssmith.com, reports The Star.

Stark minimalist hotels will be replaced with homely “granny-chic” ones, which are comfortable and “homey”.   “Green” travel becomes more important, with travellers checking out the “green credentials” of their destinations.

The Top 10 specific travel and tourism trends highlighted by the website are the following:

1.   “Cheap-chic holiday houses and apartments”, opening up more self-catering accommodation with higher levels of service and presentation

2.   Guest Houses and B&B’s will become “Boutique”, as have their hotel counterparts, to give them “come-hither sexiness”

3.   All-inclusive packages, with no hidden service charges or extras

4.   Hotels are increasingly becoming environmentally independent, to lower their carbon emissions – water from a local spring, solar energy, saving seabirds,  etc.

5.   “Bleisure” travel will increase, whereby business and leisure travel are combined, with business travellers wanting their corporate travel needs met, but within a leisure environment, or adding on extra time to a business trip, to which they invite their partner.

6.   Mexico, and surrounding countries, have increased in attractiveness as a luxury travel destination

7.   “Traincations”  will increase, with high-speed train travel across Europe.

8.   “Flashpacking” is backpacking with a higher budget and more style, closer to 5-star accommodation than youth hostels

9.   “Granny chic” is a move away from “look-don’t-touch minimalist” to “traditional-with-a-twist homey comforts” hotels.

10.   “Hip hotels” that are family friendly – they not only “tolerate” children, but welcome them and make the family holiday an enjoyable one.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com