Ivanka Trump | WhaleTales Blog by Chris von Ulmenstein

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

Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald and Ivana Trump, has been honeymooning in South Africa with her husband Jared Kushner. Due to the power of social medium Twitter, her travels around Southern Africa are documented for all her 613 000 Twitter followers to read. Fashion and celebrity blogs are following her trip too, creating exposure for South Africa which money could not buy.

Her first stop was in the Winelands : “Wandering in the Paarl area of Cape Town. Just visited the Backsberg vineyard. A terrific afternoon…..” She took a photograph of her Winelands trip as well : “A gorgeous view of the vineyard http://tweetphoto.com/7015625”

She then went on a safari, and sent the following Tweet : “Our first day of safari and we’ve already spotted 2 lionesses, 10 hippos, 3 rhinos, 3 giraffes and a group of baboons! What an adventure!” She also photographed a lioness: “A lioness as seen from our Jeep this morning. http://tweetphoto.com/7375944“.

Yesterday, she continued with her safari: We were so close to this leopard on our morning game drive that I snapped this pic on my Blackberry camera! http://tweetphoto.com/7496963. Her latest Tweet reflects that Ivanka and her husband are off to Mocambique.

Ivanka Trump can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/IvankaTrump

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