Tag Archives: Google search

Discovery updates its members about Vaccinations…. yet many questions remain unanswered!

 

In an email received as a Discovery member from Adrian Gore, the Medical Scheme CEO, it is clear that while Discovery will pay its members’ vaccination cost, it is awaiting Government action and announcement as to which of its members will be eligible for the vaccinations and when.

Not sharing how many members it has in total, Gore does reveal that 5000 of Discovery members and 12 of its staff have died from the Corona Virus. A Google search revealed that the company has 3,5 million members.

Discovery estimates that half of the South African population has been infected with the Corona Virus, vastly different to the official Health Department figures.

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Restaurant Specials top of Top 10 Whale Cottage Blogposts!

Our Blog is two and  half years old, and we have been dedicated to keeping up our initial goal of writing a blog post a day, with only a few exceptions.  Blog writing is scary initially, as one does not know if anyone, and who, is reading the blog, until one reads comments from readers, if they reveal their real names.

Out of interest, we checked the more than 400000 unique pageviews of our blogposts for the past twelve months via Google Analytics, widely regarded as the most reliable benchmark of readership.  Our Blogposts with the Winter, as well as the Spring and Summer Restaurant Specials, have attracted strong interest, with the remaining Top 10 most read blogposts being a mixed bag, containing four restaurant reviews, indicating that blog readers love reading about restaurants.  We have just launched the Winter 2011 Restaurant Specials list.

The Whale Cottage Blog Top 10 blog post list in the past twelve months is the following:

1.   Winter Restaurant Specials for winter 2010

2.   Table Mountain a nominee for the New7Wonders of the World

3.   Spring and Summer Restaurant Specials : 2010/2011

4.   Prince Albert’s attendance at Charlene Wittstock’s birthday party in Fresnaye in January 2009 – the recent engagement and the forthcoming marriage of the couple keeps pulling traffic to the blog

5.   Restaurant Review of Tokara DeliCATessen (a surprise, but probably due to potential search confusion between the Deli at Tokara, and the Tokara Restaurant.  Ranked third on Google search for this deli).

6.   Restaurant Review: Sotano by Caveau – this blogpost caused a stir, mainly due to the rude response it received on Twitter from one of the Caveau owners

7.   Presentation by Disney before World Cup to frontline hospitality and tourism staff, to enhance service levels – it was a ‘Mickey Mouse’ presentation, of little value, and cost the taxpayer a fortune!

8.   The Stellenbosch Restaurant Route – the popularity of this blogpost, listing the significant restaurants in Stellenbosch, is rewarding, as the Stellenbosch Restaurant Route is something I created on this blog, to honour Stellenbosch now wearing the Gourmet Capital crown.

9.  Restaurant Review: Pierneef à La Motte – this is one of my favourite reviews, and was a pleasure to write from the generous background information I received from Hein Koegelenberg, and in reaction to the amazing food that I have enjoyed there.  Experiencing it for the first time gave me goose bumps, knowing that this will become an Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant for 2011.

10.   Restaurant Review: Gaaitjie Restaurant in Paternoster – our review is regularly read, ranked first on Google for this restaurant. 

In the past month the Top 10 most read Blogposts were as follows:

1.   President of Ferrero Rocher dies in cycling accident in Cape Town – this is not normally a story we would write, but we wanted to correct early headlines that stated that Pietro Ferrero was ‘killed in SA accident’, implying yet another crime statistic, which was completely incorrect.

2.   The Consumer Protection Act, of vital importance to every South African business dealing with the consumer

3.   Departure of Chef David Higgs from Rust en Vrede – probably due to the lack of a statement from Higgs as to why he is leaving and where he is going, this blogpost still attracts regular readership

4.   Cape Town and Winelands Spring and Summer Restaurant Specials for summer 2010/2011

5.   Cape Town to become a 24-hour world class city, detailing plans for various development hubs in Cape Town, including the expansion of the Cape Town International Convention Centre

6.   Restaurant Review: Casparus Restaurant in Stellenbosch (right), an Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant prediction for 2012

7.   Restaurant Review: Dear Me in Shortmarket Street

8.   Tasting Room best restaurant in Africa/Middle East, reflecting the results of the S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants

9.   Restaurant Review: Dash at the Queen Victoria Hotel, an Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Award prediction for 2012

10.   Hotels in Cape Town offer wide range of winter rates, but discriminate against foreigners.

Google Analytics also measures clicks on tags, and the top tags in the past month, which led Google searches to the Whale Cottage Blog, were ‘Charlene Wittstock’ (very high source of traffic), ‘Prince William’, ‘Table Mountain’, ‘Marthinus van Schalkwyk’, ‘El Bulli’, ‘Cape of Good Hope’, ‘Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company;  ‘petrol price’, ‘SA Tourism’, and ‘Hemelhuijs Restaurant’.

We welcome your feedback about our blog, and the stories you would like to read more about.  Thank you to all our readers for your readership, support, suggestions, and comments.  

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

SA Blog Awards 2010 have devalued SA blogging!

The SA Blog Awards is a good idea, and can be a good measurement of success and performance in a field that bloggers were never trained for, by raising the standard of blogging in Southern Africa.   It is a shame that the 2010 SA Blog Awards were so poorly organised, and that it has been dogged by controversy.  At the Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club meeting earlier this week, long-standing blogger Dax Villanueva of Relax-with-Dax Blog said that the controversy surrounding the SA Blog Awards had devalued blogging, instead of enhancing it!

Ever since the SA Blog Awards were announced on Twitter about 2 months ago, they have been criticised for their change in procedure compared to previous years.  When the shortlist of 10 finalists for each of the 24 blog categories was announced on 1 September, there was even more criticism and very bitchy commenting by those that did not make the top 10 list in their category, and by those who disparaged others by questioning why some bloggers had made the Top 10 list in specific categories.  When the top two winners per category were announced, and most Top 10 short-listed bloggers were excluded from the Awards Dinner at the One&Only Cape Town last night, the knives really came out, and the organisation of the SA Blog Awards was severely criticised.

Guest of Honour Western Cape Premier Helen Zille spoke at the Awards evening about how “bloggers are the new voice of society” and how blogs “link the local with the big picture”.  The premier, no slouch herself on the social media scene with around 115 000 Facebook friends and one of country’s first verified Twitter accounts, said that digital communications were a “force for entrenching democracy”.  “Everything breaks immediately and is commented on and analysed before it hits the press… it’s a problem for newspapers and I wouldn’t want to be a newspaper editor in this day. It’s made it more difficult to control what information is transmitted”, reports Memeburn, one of the award-winning blogs.

So what were the complaints?:

1.  The announcement of the call for nominations of the SA Blog Awards was on Twitter only.   If one was not on Twitter, or did not follow SA Blog Awards on Twitter, one would not have known about the Awards, or may have been delayed in participating, in seeing Tweets by others about the call for nominations.

2.  The rules of the Awards seemed to have been made up as they went along – the fact that voting was encouraged at Nomination stage already was not clear, and irritated Twitterers, in that they were bombarded with Nomination vote requests.  The process of nomination was also not clear, with a message popping up, telling one that one could not nominate a blog more than twice on the same e-mail address. 

3.  The organisers of the SA Blog Awards were not identified on the SA Blog Awards website, and via Tweets one could put together the information that 2009 Blog winner in the Business category (Dave Duarte) and Chris Rawlinson, winner in the Marketing category, had got together with JP Naude (an infrequent blogger, by his own admission on his site: “Yes I don’t blog much… I’m a businessman and radio presenter” – prior to this mini-blog post earlier this month, JP had last blogged in May! He is a presenter on Good Hope FM) as Chairman of the SA Blog Awards. I met JP at the Vista Bar after the Blog Awards presentation, and he told me that his company organised the SA Blog Awards.  I was shocked when I saw a comment on the shortlisted Bangers and Nash blog, written by SA Blog Awards committee member Chris Rawlinson a few months ago, congratulating Dan Nash on his blog, and stating that a good blog should carry the f-word at least once a day!   So much for the quality of the judges!  (I did get to meet Dan Nash at the Vista Bar, having had dinner at Reubens at the One&Only Cape Town, and he was very generous in handing out tequila).

4.  When the top 10 shortlist was announced per category, the list was on the SA Blog Awards website, and top 10 finalists were only notified by e-mail the following day.  At no stage was an e-mail with the rules ever sent to all nominees.   One had to find information on the website, and this seemed to be amended as the SA Blog Awards progressed.

5.  Previous participants were shocked as to who made the top 10 shortlist, especially those that had won in previous years.  In the Food & Wine Blog category, for example, eight out of ten 2009 finalists did not make it in 2010.  The Relax-with-Dax, Scrumptious, Spit or Swallow, Rossouw’s Restaurants and Neil Pendock’s blogs all fell out of this category, with only the My Easy Cooking and Cooksister Blogs making the 2010 shortlist again.   Relax-with-Dax and Spit or Swallow did make the Microblogging/Twitter shortlist, however, a surprise to them too.

6.   As the SA Blog Awards developed, more and more sponsors were announced for the categories, but not all categories were sponsored (e.g. our Whale Cottage Blog made the shortlist in the Most Controversial Blog category, which did not attract a sponsor!)   In 2009, the ‘old hands’ and finalists tell me, they all went home with prizes.  It appears that despite sponsors coming on board, the category prizes were a little perspex obelisk with the SA Blog Awards logo on it.  This gives little incentive to enter the Awards competition in 2011.   Sponsors’ monies appear to have been used to pay for the dinner, and to compensate JP Naude’s company for organising the Awards.

7.   The highlight for the 2009 finalists was the SA Blog Awards dinner, I have been told, even if the bloggers did not win.  It was a great networking platform, and an honour to have attended.  In pre-announcing the top 2 out of the top 10 of each category this year, the Awards dinner was reduced to about 50 finalists, and only those got to attend the dinner – in the last minute the rules were changed, in that the SA Blog Awards website announced that the dinner was ‘by invitation only’.  Initially the Awards dinner date was set for yesterday (over a long weekend!), leading one to assume that all top 10 finalists would be invited to attend it.

8.  The voting phase for each category spanned about two weeks, and one felt like an Idols’ finalist, begging for votes on one’s blog and on Twitter.   I think that the more the finalists begged, the fewer votes they received.  One was allowed to vote once a day per valid e-mail address one has.  So, for example, someone with 10 e-mail addresses could cast 10 votes daily!   The actual weighting of votes by ‘fans’ and the judges evaluation was only recently stated as being 30 % of the vote by the judges, and 70 % from the public.  The judges per category were also not all announced – on one specific day the judges of some of the 24 categories were named on Twitter, and some judges also proudly tweeted that they were judging blogs (e.g. Jo-Ann Strauss, Sam Wilson and her husband Andreas Späth).  We never got to hear the names of the judge(s) of the Most Controversial Blog category, for example.  Mention was also made that blog ranking statistics would be taken into consideration as well, being Afrigator specifically, a site that frequently goes down.  The question was raised as to the effect it would have on one’s standing if one was not registered on this ranking site.  Oddly, few of the top-ranked Afrigator blogs were in the finals.  It is clear that the larger the number of readers of one’s Blog, and the greater the Twitter following, the higher one’s votes would have been likely to be.   The top first and second winners per category were notified by e-mail that they had made it, and they were listed on the website too.  The remaining 8 finalists per category were not notified by the organisers, and were only told that if they did NOT receive an e-mail, they would know that they had not made it as number 1 or 2!   This was the rudest aspect of the SA Blog Awards organisation, in my opinion.  Many Blog finalists had put in a lot of effort to encourage voting, and thereby had publicised the Awards on behalf of the organisers, who had created little publicity for the event themselves!  No thanks was received for one’s participation.

Despite all of the above, we are proud that we made it to the Top 10 finalist stage in our category, and that we learnt from participation for the first time.  We trust that the organisers of the 2010 SA Blog Awards will accept this feedback and will improve the organisation and credibility of it, to ensure that they have quality participants in 2011!

The overall winner of the SA Blog Awards was a big surprise, being www.watkykjy.co.za, a provocative proudly-Afrikaans on-the-edge blog, that claims to receive 180000 ‘visits’ per month, and describes itself as “Die beste Afrikaanse blog en website in die heelal”!  In the past the Award has been won by www.2Oceansvibe.co.za every year that editor Seth Rotherham (Will Mellor) has entered the Awards.  Rotherham/Mellor did not even bother to attend, being in the Karoo over the weekend, and sent a message to the organisers that this was the last SA Blog Awards competition he had entered.   (Most non-Cape Town top 2 finalists per category did not attend, yet the writer of www.indieberries.blogspot.com travelled all the way from South Korea to pick up her two category wins).

The winners in the 24 categories, announced last night, are as follows (congratulations to them all):

Best Entertainment Blog:  www.2oceansvibe.co.za (ranks 3rd on Afrigator)

Best Media & Marketing Blog:  www.cherryflava.com

Best Post on a SA Blog: www.brainwavez.org/screen/film/features/2009/20091001001-01.html

Best Overseas Blog: www.pharside.co.uk

Best TV Radio Blog: www.ecr.co.za/kagiso/content/en/east-coast-radio/east-coast-radio-blogs-breakfast

Best Politics Blog: www.wonkie.com (ranks 10th on Afrigator)

Best Photographic Blog: www.guywithcamera.co.za (Andrew Brauteseth)

Best New Blog: www.simply-delicious.co.za

Best Food & Wine Blog: www.simply-delicious.co.za

Best Science and Technology Blog: www.shesthegeek.co.za

Best Music Blog: www.dontparty.co.za

Best Fashion Blog: www.kimgray.co.za

Best Design Blog: www.indieberries.blogspot.com

Best Podcast/Video Blog: www.zanews.co.za

Best Business Blog:  www.memeburn.com

Best Group Blog: www.rlabs.org

Best Sport Blog: www.paddlesweep.net

Best Green Blog:  www.sprig.co.za

Best Indigenous Language Blog: www.watkykjy.co.za (7th on Afrigator) 

Most Controversial Blog: www.2oceansvibe.co.za

Best Travel Blog: www.getaway.co.za/page/blog

Best Personal Blog: www.indieberries.blogspot.com

Best Parenting Blog: www.reluctantmom.wordpress.com

Best Twitter Blog: www.twitter.com/mandyjwatson

Best Company Blog: www.rlabs.org

The SA Blog Awards website states that “integrity and credibility of the SA Blog Awards is our highest priority”.  It also states that the organisers would look for a ‘balance between the public voting system and the judge’s choice of winners’, to allow a free and fair selection of winners.  Many participants of this year’s Awards will agree that this was not the case!  

POSTSCRIPT 27/9:  The response to this blogpost has been phenomenal, with more than 850 readers in the first 21 hours of publishing it, and an incredible number of Twitter Retweets, many containing compliments, throughout the day yesterday.  Twitter is normally very quiet on a Sunday, especially over a long weekend.   The link to this post was sent to the organising committee of JP Naude, Chris Rawlinson and Dave Duarte, with no response to date. 

If one googles ‘SA Blog Awards’, one can read many blogposts written in the past two months, criticising various aspects of the SA Blog Awards.

The list of judges per category, with many typing errors, was recently added to the SA Blog Awards website, it would appear.  It is funny to see Randall Abrams listed as a judge for the Most Controversial Blog category – did I not write above that we felt like Idol’s finalists??!!  The other judge for the category was listed as ‘Ivor Vector’, but this name does not exist on a Google search.  However, Ivo Vegtor says he was invited to be a judge, but decided not to.  Randall Abrams has no blog, nor has Graham Howe, one of two judges in the Food & Wine Blog.  As far as judging goes, read the Comments section to this blogpost about what happened to Chris, the writer of iMod, the top ranked blog on Afrigator.  The list of judges for all the categories:  http://www.sablogawards.com/Judge3.aspx

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

S A Food Bloggers’ Conference a sizzling success!

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