Tag Archives: Hootsuite

Restaurant Marketing: how to improve business!

February 11, 2015

An American article guides restaurants with ‘25 Restaurant Marketing Ideas, Tips and Strategy to win in the food business’, most of which are applicable to South Africa too. Local restaurants are not known to be good at marketing their food and service! The list of ideas suggested is as follows:

1. Photographs are THE way to market restaurants, via Instagram in particular, ‘high-quality, drool-inducing photos’ being the best way to promote a restaurant. It is worth investing in an excellent food photographer.

2. Loyalty Programs on online food apps attract attention and reward loyal custom.

3. In the USA Yelp is vital, positive reviews being a massive marketing plus. It has not been heard Continue reading →

Public Relations consultants: feedback from a blogger!

August 11, 2011

Having blogged for almost three years now, we receive an increasing number of media releases from PR agencies. Having run a food PR consultancy before starting our Whale Cottage Portfolio, I have long wanted to write a blogpost about how we view PR consultancies, and the recent Mail & Guardian article, pitting food journalists against bloggers, and detailing how PR consultancies have to deal with the blogging politics, has been a further inspiration to do so.

Our observations are as follows:

1. As the representative of the client, we are surprised about the spelling and grammatical errors that we see in media releases sent by PR consultancies. One would expect clients to sign off media releases, and they too do not seem to pick up the errors.

2. In the era of social media, everyone knows where bloggers are, as they like to Tweet about it. One of the biggest problems this causes is that bloggers know when they have been left off the invitation list for a lunch or launch, without explanation or warning. While one understands that not everyone can be invited to all functions, there is an automatic affront if one is left off such a list, and one picks up from Twitter who is present. This is a minefield for PR consultants. One would think that they would rather host a small number of events with bloggers and journalists who tolerate the presence of others than invite all of them to one function. To be sent the media release about the restaurant/product after the lunch that one has not been invited to is adding insult to injury! No PR consultancy should pander to blogger or journalist egos in dictating who they want/don’t want to be in a room with at a function!

3. My biggest issue with PR agencies is their inability to say ‘thank you’ when one has written about their clients’ brand, whether it results from an invitation to attend a function, or is a spontaneous visit to a restaurant and it receives a good review. Not saying thank you for coverage received is as rude as a blogger/journalist not thanking the host and PR agency for the invitation! As a blogger we are spending our own money and time to evaluate a restaurant or product, and are not remunerated for this by an employer. In the pre-Social Media days, our PR company subscribed to an agency that tracked all coverage we achieved for our clients, especially in print. It was difficult in those days to track TV and radio mentions. To pick up Social Media mentions, one can subscribe to Blogs that one expects coverage from and to whom one sends releases, check Hootsuite for mentions on Twitter (via keywords reflecting the clients’ names/brands), and via Google Alerts for the client name/brand. One should not have to write the PR agency’s Twitter handle into the Tweet linked to the blogpost about a restaurant/product, for the agency and/or its client to pick up the coverage. Blogging has an important role in gaining awareness for a new brand/restaurant, and bloggers with high readership can get the product/restaurant onto the first page of Google, the ultimate goal for any brand, with resultant financial benefit if it leads to bookings. We rarely receive feedback about the business that is created for the restaurants we write about. An exception has been De Huguenot, which is tracking via Google Analytics where its website traffic is coming from, and could tell us how many hits it had received from our write-up about their launch lunch. An absolute no-no is a PR consultancy requesting that one informs them when the blogpost about their client’s brand has been published!

4. What is surprising is how few PR consultancy staff appear to read the Blogs they send media releases to, firstly in not picking up the coverage their clients’ brands achieve, but also in asking for coverage in our ‘events diary’, something we don’t have. This means that everyone on the media list receives the same release and request for coverage, making the PR consultancy look unprofessional in not understanding the bloggers’ writing interests (we are all diferent), and the media release will be deleted as a result. One cannot help but think that media consultants are still old-school, valuing print coverage more than coverage in blogs. Part of the problem is the valuation of the coverage, the measure PR consultancies use to prove to their clients how good they are, and what the coverage achieved would have translated into in advertising Rands. There is no official public information about the readership of an individual blogpost, or even of a Blog, or a means of placing a value on this readership, making it appear that blog exposure is a secondary achievement for PR consultants compared to print coverage, even if the blogpost achieves an excellent Google ranking, and therefore could be far more beneficial to the client’s brand and its sales. There is also no quantification of the value of the immediacy of coverage in a Blog compared to that in a magazine three to four months later.

5. While we appreciate receiving information that can help us write an interesting story on our Blog, we don’t want to receive information that has been sent to every other journalist and blogger. Only one PR agency, representing the Stellenbosch Wine Festival, took time to request which angle I wanted to write about. In the end I chose my own perspective on it. However, background information on a brand launched at a function to which one is invited helps in writing the blogpost, as one can add the personal individual touch from one what one has learnt at the function itself. An exclusive angle is great, but these are seldom seen. Reuben Riffel’s visit to America earlier this year, and his appearances on TV there, was an exclusive story we were given by Manley Communications.

6. Another sign of the lack of understanding by PR consultancies is being sent high resolution photographs, which slow down the download, and are unusable on a Blog. Bloggers prefer using their own photographs, and would not want to use those that every other blogger and journalist have been sent.

7. While we sometimes fear that we will run out of things to write about, there is not such a dearth of material that we have to be flooded with media releases. One wine client PR agency sends a media release almost daily, and they look boring, and have minimal news in them, and are without attractive ‘packaging’ of the release, to entice one to read it. I am unable to write about a wine or a food product if I have not tasted it, and the fewest PR agencies send one a product to evaluate. I would never write about a product that I have not experienced, events being an exception. This does not mean that I feel I have to write something positive because I received the product for free – I may choose to not write about it if it is not exceptional, or if the story does not have an interesting angle. The worst thing that the staff of a PR consultancy can do is to chase coverage. There are no coverage guarantees in journalism and blogging.

8. While branded CD’s look attractive and professional, I far prefer a printed media release, to write from. An attractive interesting media release is preferable to a bland and boring one, for obvious reasons. But the release should be printable, and one should be able to read communication between the two parties, if it is against a dark background.

9. Bloggers do not know all other bloggers or journalists, and it would be really nice to have name tags at events hosted by PR consultancies, with an introduction to those we may not know. I rarely see this at functions. PR consultancies may not realise that the acceptance of an invitation to an event may be more about meeting other bloggers (an ever-growing band), and less about the meal!

10. We would like to be updated on changes happening at restaurants, such as changed names, changed opening hours, winter specials offered, changes in chefs and restaurant management, etc. This may not justify a media release, but an e-mail would be appreciated, so that one can update one’s blogpost.

11. Last, but not least, a free lunch cannot ‘buy’ most bloggers! I have been questioned about the degree of feedback one can give about an event if one has been invited to it, some feeling it rude to provide criticism of an invited event. This is a difficult question, but if the blogger is known to be honest in writing, then one would expect that person to write about the event with warts and all. There is no greater compliment when one’s feedback has led to a positive change. Many critical commenters on blogs question the credibility of write-ups based on lunch/dinner invitations. Any blogger with ethics will declare that a complimentary product/meal was received .

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

Honesty and independence best basis of blogging, food and wine bloggers told!

June 13, 2011

Bloggers must be honest and independent to have any credibility, the Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club meeting was told by wine blogger Dion Martin at its meeting held at French Toast Wine & Tapas Bar last week. This was echoed by food blogger and restaurant design curator Neil Stemmet.

Dion Martin writes The Travelling Vineyard Blog as a sideline, being a print-on-demand publisher in his day job. A love for food in his family, a chef qualification he obtained via City and Guilds, a Cape Wine Academy Certificate, and a University of Stellenbosch Wine Evaluation diploma, led Dion to start his blog two years ago, so that he could document his wine experiences. Dion mentioned that lawyer Robert Parker could be seen to have been the first blogger, in having published a weekly newspaper thirty years ago already, sharing his evaluation of the wines he had tasted. Dion has observed an increasing ‘noise’ in food blogging, and therefore one should find a point of difference with one’s blog: it could be humour, it could be its excellent photographs, or its ethics, in declaring when the blogger has received a complimentary product or meal. Few bloggers disclose freebies, he said. When he was asked how he deals with freebies, Dion said he would accept them, but would not write about a wine in isolation. He might write a comparative review about a blind tasting he would do with the freebie wine against two others.

Dion said that he is an avid Twitter fan (@TVDionysus), but he sees a lot of ‘soulless Tweeting”. He warned that communication on a medium such as Twitter can be misinterpreted due to the loss in intonation, which one would have in spoken communication. He warned Tweeters to be careful in what they say, and attendee Dusan Jelic added that one should not ‘Drink and Tweet’. Dion has seen people on Twitter follow groupings, reflecting a herd mentality. Twitter is a conduit to one’s blog. Twitter has a lot of ‘noise’ too, and he filters this ‘noise’ out via TweetDeck, in reading only the Tweets of a select number of persons he follows. Such a facility is available on HootSuite too. He is strict in unfollowing those that do not follow him. Dion said that he does not use Vlogging much yet, but is experimenting with it, as he recognises the value of YouTube videos in Google search optimisation. He advised bloggers to not make the video longer than 30 seconds. Dion does not use Facebook much, but recognises that it is powerful.

Dion brought along a selection of Shiraz wines, for the bloggers to taste: Rusty’s Red from McGregor, made by garagiste John Hargraeves and costing about R40; Rusticus is a Shiraz and Viognier blend from Robertson, costing about R80; Le Marquis de Beau Rond Syrah received the least favourable response; Simonsvlei Toffee Chunck Syrah was also not that highly rated; the Sutherland Shiraz from Elgin, costing about R90, received the most most positive response.

Neil Stemmet writes ‘soutenpeper’ Blog, the content all written in lower case, to represent his humility and the blog’s simplicity, and is in Afrikaans. He focuses on the food tradition of South Africa, and his book by the same title will be published in November, and will be launched at the Food Indaba, to be held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, and organised by Design Indaba’s Ravi Naidoo. Neil said that he has no formal training, but he sees himself as a teacher, in wanting to leave a legacy. He is a ‘survivor’, he says, and says that the more one gets stamped upon in a judgemental society, the more fuel one obtains. He has been the interior curator of the Towerbosch restaurant at Knorhoek, and Cuvee at Simonsig. He received acclaim for his award-winning stand he curated for the BOS Tea House, and he did so with minimum budget, collaborating with a number of design suppliers, each of whom brought a display case representing their outlet. The walls were painted purple, and the food was served in large platters at the symbolic ‘altar’ table, explaining his interpretation of a reaction to religion.

The ‘soutenpeper’ name reflects Neil’s approach to food preparation, which is adding nothing more than salt and pepper to a leg of lamb. It starts in obtaining one’s meat from a butcher one knows, and knowing from where he sources his meat. Neil started his food career with his restaurant Le Must in Upington, which he opened in 1985, and still owns. Here he once served Nelson Mandela. He keeps his food ‘hearty and simple’, serving it in large platters, and it is eaten with ‘great conversations’. Neil started ‘soutenpeper’ on WordPress, and asked for help when he got stuck in his early days of blogging. The publishers approached him about the book after only three months of blogging. He said of his growing reputation:”The more people write about me, the more scared I get”. He says it takes energy to live up to the coverage he receives, and he is always honest and sincere. He speaks his mind. He advised bloggers to write what comes to mind, to be natural in what one writes, and “to trust one’s instinct and to not force it”. Do not shout, he advised, ‘speak quietly’. ‘Become more humble, the more success you have. It is not about you, but about the energy flowing through you. Do not write for who we think we should be, but for what you are. Always share knowledge, and you will get reward from it’, he concluded.

French Toast Wine & Tapas Bar is jointly owned by Karen Visser and John Harrison, and opened last year. They generously hosted the Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club meeting next to their cosy downstairs fireplace, serving bruschetta, as well as a surprise Chocolate Fondant.

The next meetings of the Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club take place as follows:

* 20 July : Hennie Coetzee and Maggie Mostert of Batonage Blog, at What’s On Eatery

* 17 August: Nikki Dumas of Swirl Blog, and Matt Allisson of I’m no Jamie Oliver Blog, at Den Anker, wines sponsored by Jordan wines

* 21 September: Chef Brad Ball of Bistro1682, and a wine speaker from Steenberg, at Steenberg

* 19 October: Roger and Dawn Jorgensen of Jorgensen’s Distillery, and Anthony Gird and Michael de Klerk from Honest Chocolate, with a chocolate and potstill brandy tasting and talk on blogging, at Haas Coffee on Rose Street.

* 12 November: Saturday lunch visit to new Leopard’s Leap tasting room and cookery school in Franschhoek

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com E-mail: whalecot@iafrica.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage @FoodWineBlogClu Food & Wine Bloggers Club now on Facebook

The Future of Blogging: is it dead?

November 1, 2010

A provocative title about the future of blogging was an immediate drawcard to a function of Heavychefs, who had invited two high-profile bloggers, Seth Rotherham of 2Oceansvibe, and Rich Mulholland of Richard Mulholland Blog, and led to a turnout of more than hundred bloggers at the offices of Deloittes last week.

The challenging talk topic was set to the speakers by Heavychefs, a company offering a platform for persons interested in digital marketing to meet monthly in Cape Town, Johannesburg and London. They had seen that Facebook and Twitter usage was on the increase, and felt that readers were not able to spend so much time reading blogs, due to other time competitors, and also the large number of new blogs being started, and therefore chose the topic.

Seth Rotherham was a delight, many bloggers attending to see and hear the blogger that has become a cult – I was one of them too, not having ever had the opportunity to meet him in my two years of blogging. Seth established his sense of humour almost immediately, and told the 2Oceansvibe case study, relating how he had progressed with his blog over the past nine years, from it being a fun means of sharing information with his friends, to being the leading blog in South Africa. His focus was to find “the common enemy”, and cyclists with their odd gear (‘prawns’, as he calls them) were one of his first targets. He called this ‘moblynching’, and it became a fun way to attract readers to his blog. Seth won the SA Blog Awards Top Blog of the Year for most of the years in which he entered (he sat out some years when he was a judge, and did not make Top Blog in 2010), and found that he faced huge criticism for calling his site a blog as it carries advertising. He told the audience that he and his mates often fabricated comments, to get the debate going. Seth did not want to write about topics that newspapers wrote about, such as politics, but rather about the topics that people would talk about over dinner at home, such as celebrity news. The 2Oceansvibe site is so successful that he had 300000 page impressions in September, and has 55000 unique readers per month, putting his blog at one of those with the highest traffic in South Africa. One quarter each of his traffic comes from Google searches and from referrals, while the remaining 50 % comes from direct access to the site.

Blogging is an easy way for Seth to say what he wants to say, he told bloggers. His definition of a blog is that it allows comments. The 2Oceansvibe site has been updated a number of times, and he candidly admitted that he has matured in the past few years, so his visuals and content have ‘matured’, away from ‘sexy’ content, with resultant benefits in attracting advertisers. The ‘new improved’ site has multiple writers, who are paid on the basis of clicks per story, ensuring that they add content that drives traffic to his site. A few months ago Seth set up 2Oceansvibe Radio, which broadcasts from Cape Quarter, an opportunity that presented itself when M-Web introduced uncapped ADSL, proving how smart a business person he is! I had the luck to chat to his girlfriend Sam, who writes the blog Pop Ya Collar, and was most flattered when she expressed surprise at the name of my blog, and when she told me that Seth wanted to meet me – we were fellow Top 10 finalists in the Most Controversial Blog category in the recent 2010 SA Blog Awards, the category which he won. Seth has decided to not enter future SA Blog Awards, wanting to give newer bloggers a chance to participate and win. He gave me such an amazing warm hug, and provided support and guidance for the abusive Twitter campaign, which he had not heard of before we chatted about it. There was no ego and no arrogance, something one had heard others say about him. I felt much better when he told me that he receives hate-mail regularly, and sees this as part of the Social Media ‘package’, and that one must just grow a thicker skin! All controversy is good for increasing readership, he said.

Richard Mulholland is proud of controversy, and introduced his talk by proudly claiming to be the first blogger in South Africa to be sued for disparagement, an expensive lesson he learnt, he said, but he stood up for the rights of bloggers. Richard absolutely denied that blogging is dead, and highlighted how bloggers can influence politics. For example, 5FM presenter Gareth Cliff loves controversy, and his recent letters to the government attracted more than 800 comments, an amazing boost to the traffic to his site, and gives him a voice. Blogging creates the content of one’s social media communication, while Twitter is the billboard that announces the new content, by providing the link, he said. Richard said that RSS feeds are dead, and that “Really Social Syndication” is now needed, whereby followers and friends spread one’s messages. He encouraged bloggers to work even harder at their blogging, and to write the best that they can. He encouraged bloggers to be controversial, saying that “those people that want boring are spoilt for choice”! Richard says his readers settle in to their social media catch-up in the morning, and he schedules his Tweet linking to his new Blog post at 9h05 every morning via Hootsuite, to reach the maximum number of readers. Richard advised bloggers to register one’s name on every new platform that develops, even if it does not take off, to ensure that one can transfer one’s brand to the new medium.