Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
Big website, big adspend and a blogger blog?
Vottle has pumped some serious moola in to their advertising campaign recently. I think we have all heard them on 5fm or whichever other radio station it was.Yet I am left a bit baffled and bemused at their approach to blogging. They clearly believe they have a massive product if they are willing to pump money in to their campaign. They clearly have the money to do this, but they have a BLOGGER blog?Not only is the website a .com url, which means they have a hosting package attache to that .com, but they most probably have a great big hosting package to cope with the traffic they built up over the ad campaigns. So I ask you, where is the .com/blog blog? What are you thinking?Blogger might have been cool a couple of ages ago, but now blogger blogs are filled with porn, spam and clutter. .com blogs are the way forward, .co.za blogs are a very suitable substitute, but a blogger.com blog is not acceptable. They might have redirected the blog to "blog.vottle.com" But they have chosen to keep the Blogger template. This really makes no sense to me.I suppose that any online presence in the form of a blog is better than no online presence. But surely an ONLINE company knows better and knows about better services?Lock it up and throw away the key. Get a Wordpress blog.
How to boost your rankings
This simple tip comes courtesay of a Technorati Top 500 blog: GET NOTICED BY A TECHNORATI TOP 500 BLOG...This recently happened to me in a very strange way. I would live to say that I wrote the most incredible post of my life. I would love to say that a very pronounced blogger picked up my genius and subsequently blogged about it. I would love to say this. Alas, it would not be the truth.My linklove came from my del.icio.us daily posts from my bookmarks. A sheer stroke of luck. The blogosphere ranking gods smiled on my personal blog and gave me some love. FINALLY.So, the Duct Tape Marketing Blog picked up on my del.icio.us posts that are automatically posted to this blog at a certain time. To be perfectly honest I was considering dropping the posts because lately that is all that one sees on my blog, my delicious bookmarks.It looks likes they are staying and it looks like I am on the rise again (however slow that rise might be).
I'm going down...
And it isn't 'cause you ain't around baby!I am baffled, bemused, condusticated and confused. This blog just keeps on dropping down the charts. Which ones I hear you ask? All of them.It's strange. Sometimes you can feel like a rockstar and sometimes you just feel like the rock. Let it roll I guess, let it roll.
Dog murderer gets R10 000 fine
I want to ask a question: How does a person who killed a dog get processed through the criminal system so quickly?I get it, he decapitated a dog. It's horrific. But in the same breath, it was a dog, not a human, but we are able to get activists rallying around the issue. When a murderer escapes, when a rapist sits in prison for months and years no-one says a flippin' word. Explain it to me please.While you are at it, please also explain it is that some criminals sit in prison for ages, others are never processed, some cases take 3 years, but this dude goes straight through? HOW?This actually ties in nicely with something I blogged on SA Rocks today. Why do people rally and march around negative issues? Why do people rally and march when the march really means nothing in the long run. A dog was killed, in an extremely messed up way, the dude has been punished, the activists have had their say and BAM things go back to normal.WHAT IS THE POINT? In my opinion we should be rallying for the good things. Make people proud of what we have, support those who have done well, take care of their animals and help the country. I know it is in our nature to berate, but why not uplift once in a while?Let the man pay his R10 000 and then we can all go and complain about something else.
Things to remember when redesigning your blog
I have recently done an overhaul on SA Rocks with the help of Vince.Some very specific things came out of the redesign. I know that the following thoughts/tips/ideas wont be shared by everyone but this is what I learnt and think should be remembered:1. Content is king (Cliche, i know)... always.2. Design sometimes gets in the way of content.3. Colours are not always good. Muting the colours could help your readers.4. Sometime all a reader wants is a black background, a white page and some text.5. Sidebars need to be cleaned out, much like a closet. Be ruthless, delete all the services, bars, tools, widgets and extras that are cluttering your sidebar. Sometimes your blogroll might even be the issue.6. Slick design is good, but don't think your readers are stupid. They know what is hot and what blows. If you are missing the point, call in for assistance.7. Outside assistance might be hard to come by but is worth finding. A second perspective on your blog should always be welcome and is often needed.8. Don't screw with your CSS too much. SIMPLE IS BETTER.9. K2 is not so shit hot, make sure to choose your template/theme carefully. Ensure that you can work with the CSS and the basic theme setup.I think that is it. I tried to get to 10, but fell short. Alas, what can one do!?I hope this helps and I hope that everyone has some thoughts on the SA Rocks template.
links for 2007-07-24
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South African government to expel the children of senior ruling party officials, on the basis that they have destroyed education in Zimbabwe while their children were attending good schools in South Africa, America and Europe.
Citizen journalism floods in
The recent spate of flooding in the UK has proven to be a wonderful platform for citizens to feature on major news networks.Watching Sky News this morning (yes, I watched Sky News this morning) I was astounded by the reports coming in on the channel. It seemed as though there were no employed "proffesional" journalists in the field. I'd say most, if not all of the footage from one report came solely from citizens suffering from the floods.This makes sense since much of the country is underwater, which makes it tough for journalists, trucks, camera crews etc etc, to get to the places.
Mr Maher might find some point against this, but I feel that this is where CitJ is very relevant and useful. It might even be the logical way to cover this sort of event (can one call floods an "event"). Instead of asking one journalist to try and cover and entire span of tragedy, ask the people living it to send in their footage. It's easy in todays day and age.This streamlines the process, allows citizens to feel important and special because they had their footage played on TV and allows for the news station to appear to be caring about what is happening from the view of the citizens.
Fall Out Boy rocked Jo'Burg
I went to the Fall Out Boy (FOB) concert last night. I have two words: ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT.Before I start with the Fall Out Boy praise, let me begin with the SA bands that opened for FOB.Harris Tweed were phenomenal. The music they play is well rounded, proffesional and has international appeal for sure. They have a different take on music and have a very South African flair to their music. They were joined on stage by some friends of mine who played strings (Violin and Cello). Courtenay and Hannah were incredible and added a great angle to the music. You guys rocked.
J played a sterling set that had a touch of The Fray, Coldplay and Snow Patrol. I hate to compare local talent to international bands, but it was very clear in my little mind. This is a band to look out for.Following J was Fevertree. I have played on stage with Fevertree in the past, but this was not that band. This band featured 2 new members out of the three original members. So the approach to their music has changed somewhat. They went from a very a very christian rock band to a very Greenday, pissed off, manliner (eye-liner for men) type of sound. They were great but a carbon copy of many other bands out there in the punk rock world.Love Jones finished off the SA contingency. They are a great band and have huge potential I think. They were strange though and I think lost the crowd a bit with their aggressive, in your face sound.And then came FOB. From song one to the last song and hour and a half later they rocked and rocked and rocked a bit more. They played only one show in SA and last night was it. They also noted that the Jo'burg concert will be the biggest crowd that they play to the entire year. I think there were close to 20 000 people in the audience. I am sure that was the biggest crowd that all of the SA bands have played to.Many people had said a lot about the FOB live performance, I myself saw them on MTV Live and thought I was in for trouble. But low and behold, the lead singer can actually sing, the drummer can rock and the guitarist and bassist really do spin around like they do in the music videos. My only criticism was that Pete, the bassist, would not shut up. He went on about Americans not being all that bad, about this and that after every two or three songs. They almost lost a lot of the audience due to this but every time they started off another song everyone went absolutely mad.My advice for people who want to go and see any band live is to listen to the bands music for a while before the concert. This was my saving grace and made my evening a millions times better than many of the people around me. I knew every song except for two and jumped and bounced to almost every song I knew. What a party.
Dodging Jo'burg traffic
I was asked to take part in a bit of a test run of a very groovy piece of transport. Vespa's are kick ass. I was fetched by Jeff, from the Vespa who popped me on the back of his little scooter and told me to hold on. He wasn't kidding about holding on, that little Vespa flew down the streets and in amongst and between the traffic like nothing I'd experienced.Purchase of a Vespa is not for everyone at all, in fact they are fairly overpriced if you ask me. The people at Vespa are well aware of their scooter almost being the most expensive around but they aren't ashamed of it. The scooter is apparently an aspirational means of transport for people not a necessary, as far as I understand. But I personally feel like it is a great way to get from A to B and maybe visit C along the way.I wouldn't take my girlfriend on one as her hairdo would either be destroyed by the helmet or the wind. However a 2-stroke Vespa has been known to make a girl purr in the past apparently, if you know what I mean.It took us a whopping 10 minutes to get from Rivonia to Design Quarter in Fourways and that was in 9am traffic. Incredible. I must say that it is a whole different experience to be so close to cars and their tyres. Looking straight in to windows and seeing a whole person was a bit strange too. But I think if I had the necessary cash to buy one I would. A Vespa is a statement, not a predominant one in SA yet, but soon to be a very hip when traffic becomes a problem (more of a problem at least).
9-5 or working your own hours?
I have been resisting employment for a while now. I can't really say why for sure but one of the reasons was the 9-5 brand. I didn't want to work to make someone else money. No no no. I was detered by the hours for sure. I was insistent that working for someone else would restrict my flexibility. This was my steadfast opinion.However things have changed, slightly. When you are working for yourself, or to make your own idea work you lose sight. You lose sight of rational working hours, of the distinction between work and play. Free time becomes a thing of the past. You become obsessive about making things work (especially in the online industry where normal trading hours do not ever apply). Thus you don't really notice that you are waking up at 7 and working till 11pm. You don't notice because you don't care. You are driven, focused and as I've already noted, obsessive.In short (like I'm ever short) when you are an entrepreneur you are consumed by what you do 100%. Often when you work for someone else you do just that, you work. You work 9-5 hours and stop working when you get home. This is the joy of work, you get to stop. Somehow many people miss this small joy. Trust me when I say it is a joy when you are (or should be) able to leave work at work.In today's day and age with the internet around working hours, jobs, the usual are not the usual anymore. Things have changed, variety is the norm. Things are happening and sometimes, working hours are fantastic.