CookSister | WhaleTales Blog by Chris von Ulmenstein

Yesterday was a day of reckoning for the bloggers of South Africa, who had been judged by a committee of three, and voted for by their fans, in making the short-list of ten finalists in 25 categories of the S A Blog Awards. We are delighted to have been selected as a Finalist in the Most Controversial Blog category, and thank our loyal blog readers, friends, commenters, and Twitter followers for their votes in making the Finalist selection possible.

Now we are like Idols contestants, in that we please request your vote for our Blog, to win in the category (there is no prize, other than a badge that goes onto the blog). The Most Controversial Blog category is quite far down the list, and you need to please click on our blog name to vote, and then to scroll down to the bottom of the list, to enter your e-mail address. You are allowed to vote for us every 24 hours, per e-mail address, until the competition closes on 17 September.

The Whale Cottage Blog had been nominated in a number of categories, including Best Food & Wine Blog, Best Blog Post, Most Controversial Blog and Best Travel Blog. Being a unique blog that does not fit fully into any specific category (e.g. Food, Travel), we were delighted to have made the finals (somehow we never got to enter last year). The Most Controversial Blog category is a new one introduced this year, and it seemed to suit us ideally! If we have created a unique identity for our blog, it has been to be “independent * incisive * informative”, and it is described as being controversial, due to our lack of fear to write the truth, no matter the consequences.

We are in excellent company in this category, with 2Oceansvibe being a fellow finalist – last year its editor ‘Seth Rotherham’ won almost every category in the Blog Awards, and his blog became the benchmark for many of us (this year a blog can only be nominated in two categories). The rest of the Finalists’ list is a little more dubious, sex and swearing broadly summarising the content of the other blogs in the Most Controversial Blog category.

The WhaleTales newsletter has been distributed for the past nine years, and has been the foundation of our writing about controversial issues. It has not always been easy to be outspoken, in that we have experienced the following:

* being told to not come back to the Opal Lounge, due to an unfavourable review that we wrote (in fact the instruction to not return was issued telephonically by the co-owner before the review was written and published)

* being escorted out of Beluga by the police during a invited lunch for members of an association of guest house owners in Camps Bay, of which I am the chairman, because sister restaurant Sevruga received a Sour Service Award on this blog for a Cape Times book launch lunch, which the restaurant handled poorly, both food and service-wise

* being threatened with legal action when we tackled Carne about falsely claiming that all its beef, lamb and game served comes from its Karoo farm and is organic, our most controversial blog post in the two year history of blog-writing. This blog post was nominated for Best Blog Post. The Carne blog post, and its follow up, took investigative journalism of the bravest kind, in obtaining documentation from the suppliers of the meat, and in obtaining (by luck) a telephonic admission by a supplier of meat to Carne, resulting in Carne withdrawing its legal threat, declaring the matter closed, and taking the dishonest claim off their website.

* being on the receiving end of FEDHASA Cape’s attempt to cancel our membership, which resulted in my resignation as a Director of the hotel old-boys’ club, when I wrote about the dangers of small accommodation establishments signing with FIFA’s MATCH for the World Cup, over the past five years. My views about MATCH were not in line with the hotel interests which dominated the FEDHASA Cape Board, and Nils Heckscher, GM of the Winchester Mansions, tried his best to get me off the Board. Ultimately, we were vindicated in our advice when MATCH cancelled the bulk of its booked small and hotel accommodation throughout South Africa, the Winchester Mansions being one of the hotels badly hit by the cancellation of booked rooms by MATCH.

* being threatened with legal action by the Cape Whale Coast DMO, after our blog post of 28 December 2009 raised questions about the conflict of interest created by Clinton Lerm being the Chairman of the Hermanus Tourism Bureau and of the DMO. Nothing has come of this threat to date. Yesterday we published a follow-up story on the DMO’s lack of transparency.

* writing critical restaurant reviews, without “white-washing” them

* awarding Sweet and Sour Service Awards on the blog every Friday.

We would also like to recommend the following blogging friends and colleagues, for your vote:

* Food & Wine Blog category: Cooksister (Jeanne Horak-Druiff), My-Easy-Cooking (Nina Timm), JamieWho? (Andy Fenner) and The Foodie (David Cope) (all of last year’s finalists have dropped out of this category, other than Cooksister and My-Easy-Cooking)

* Best Travel Blog category: SA Venues and Cape Town Travel (Cape Town Tourism)

* Best Twitter Microblogger category: Relax-with-Dax, Gus Silber, and Spit or Swallow

We thank you for your support and your votes.

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

The first ever Food Bloggers’ Conference in the southern hemisphere was held in Cape Town on Sunday, and was attended by some 60 food bloggers, so dedicated to their craft that they gave up a whole Sunday over a long weekend to attend the Conference.

One of the attractions to attend the Bloggers’ Conference was meeting bloggers and Twitterers that one has read or one follows. JamieWhoSA, Michael Olivier, Sam Wilson (speaker) and CookSister (speaker) were in the audience. At the end of the day, a number of friendships had been formed, and new followers were added to Twitter accounts.

The key lessons learnt throughout the day were the following:

1. Decide whether you are a cook who likes to write, or a writer that likes to cook. This will guide one’s writing style and content

2. Bloggers love an audience, so they must write for them, and not for themselves. That means that one must research one’s audience, and find out what they like to read and why. Measurements may have to be “translated” to suit the American market, for example. Alternative product/fruit/vegetable names may have to be provided for names used in other countries.

3. “Find your inner voice” – you must love writing to blog. If you are struggling, change direction.

4. Punctuation, spelling and grammar accuracy are of paramount importance

5. Have focus about what you are writing, and it can be as wide or narrow as you like

6. Keep motivated – 60 % of new blogs close down after one month

7. Photograph everything you eat or prepare or are served, so that you can use the photographs at a later stage

8. Take inspiration and motivation from comments, and delete and ignore the negative comments

9. Evolve the blog, “shake it up” and make it better all the time, to keep it fresh

10. One’s blog writing is a permanent record on the internet, and therefore can be a reflection of one and one’s brand for many years to come.

11. Recipes should be treated with reverence, to show respect to women who came before

12. Not all celebrity chefs can write recipes, e.g. Jamie Oliver, and they have a team of food editors, stylists etc that do that for them

13. The headline or title of the blog must be snappy, interesting, mouth-watering, evocative and say “bite me”. It also is important for Google searches, more so than the blog content.

14. The first paragraph must summarise what the post is about. It should not be too long. It should not contain any whining, complaints, excuses or excessive bragging. It must want to make the reader read the rest of the post.

15. The picture must go in the top half of the post

16. Ingredients in recipes should be listed in order of usage, can be categorised in sections, and must be accurate. The method should be written with precise instructions, to realistic serving sizes, without the use of jargon

17. Natural light is the best light to use to photograph food. Use a muslin cloth to soften it if the light is too bright. Avoid using the flash.

18. Choose a blog template that suits you and your needs, i.e. ability to accept comments, to have RSS feeds, to have links to Twitter and Facebook. The template will influence what your blog looks like.

19. Be realistic about the time blogging takes, and the blogging frequency you can keep up with.

20. Don’t write about what everyone else writes – be the first to write about a new topic.

21. Check the appearance of the blog on different computers, as it can be influenced by browsers. Avoid light type on a dark background. Check the font size and type. Avoid clutter.

22. “You are the heart of the blog, it is about you, show yourself, be yourself” (CookSister). Stay in touch with your readers.

23. One’s Facebook, Twitter and blog persona must match. Decide upfront how much to reveal of oneself.

24. Use YouTube, Ning, BlogHer and Stumble It!

25. A picture creates read-appeal. Contrast dark and light colours in styling food for a photograph. Less is more. Props must be photographed out of focus. Tag photographs.

26. Copyright is a consideration. Ingredients cannot be copyrighted, but the preparation method can. Add a copyright sign to the blog and each post.

27. Do not be too intimidated by a lawyer’s letter re defamation and copyright, but don’t fight it if they are serious.

28. Free products/meals must be transparent in a review

29. It’s OK to make money out of one’s blog, as it costs money (e.g. restaurant visits, ingredients) to write it. Do not slant the blog to sponsors’ products or services if they take an ad. It will blow one’s credibility.

While many improvements can be made to a Food Bloggers’ get-together in 2011, the Conference was enjoyed by all, and all were delighted by the many give-aways, as well as heavy-weighted goody-bags they received. It was R 430 well spent. The Giggling Gourmet, Jenny Morris, served a very generous and delicious lunch in her new Cook’s Playground test kitchen on Napier Street.

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