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Heavy Chef News

  1. New Heavy chef Topic Posted in Heavy Chef News, Concocted by Mike Perk August 28, 2006 1 comment

    The last six weeks has seen us explore blogging as a way of helping create more profitable websites. The best way to do it and not to do it and the benefits and pitfalls. Its thrown up some interesting debates and probably left more questions than we started with. Like all our Heavy Chef topics, this will continue as an evolving study. Read Further

  2. Some guideline rules on blog design Posted in Website Design, Concocted by Mike Perk August 28, 2006

    Great design online is difficult to pigeon-hole, as it varies massively in different contexts. Design for blogs, however, is a different kettle of fish to website design. These points are written for blog design, where the definition of a blog is something that you want people to actually read the content. Read Further

  3. The Role of Design in a Blog: Form Marries Function Posted in Website Design, Concocted by Mike Perk August 28, 2006

    I am in charge of the creative side to World Wide Creative, dealing with web design mainly in South Africa. I’m a huge believer in great design in building credibility, and in turn, leading to a profitable site. I’m often stymied by the restrictions of budget, practicality and target market (and sometimes by the educated wisdom of my colleagues), but, the point is, I am passionate about the role of design in website success. Read Further

  4. The Danger of Search Engine Optimising a Blog Posted in Heavy Chef News, Concocted by Mike Perk August 22, 2006 3 comments

    Imagine you go to a Rolling Stones concert. On the way, you listen to all the best tracks on the stereo: Paint it Black, Angie, and Start Me Up. You arrive at the concert and find that the band decides to play only new songs you havent heard before. You know theyre doing it because they want you to buy the new CD. You feel betrayed, like the band is not faithful to you. Read Further

  5. Lessons from a successful blogger Posted in Digital Strategy, Concocted by Mike Perk August 21, 2006

    Seth_godinSeth Godin has hundreds of thousands of people around the world hanging on his every word once a day for his blog. This is a guy who has made his blog work for him, and turned it into a very profitable enterprise (if the sales of his books are a good indicator). Read this interview with him, taken from the Typepad website, to find out some interesting insights into ‘profitable blogging’ from an original ‘Heavy Chef’. (click here). Read Further

  6. What is a blog? Posted in Branding Online, Digital Marketing Basics, Digital Strategy, Concocted by Mike Perk August 21, 2006

    What_is_a_blog

    In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been stunned to know that there are still a few folk out there who don’t actually know what a blog is. When I tell them about The Heavy Chef, they kinda nod their head and go: ‘Su-u-u-re, Fred, that sounds interesting. I’ll check it out.’ A client of mine recently demanded an explanation of blogging, which prompted me to insert the article below. I think it answers the question ‘What is a blog?‘ aptly enough: Read Further

  7. Using blog PR to promote your site Posted in Digital Strategy, Concocted by Mike Perk August 17, 2006 1 comment

    I read a really good article about using blog PR to promote your site, and ultimately achieve a bit more profitability, by a guy call Adam McFarland of iPrioritize. Thought it was worth sharing:

    The recent trend of using the press release to promote an online business has emerged with good reason good press costs very little and can do more for a business than thousands of dollars of marketing. Most businesses use press distribution services like PR Web or PRFree to get the word out about their news. While distribution services certainly can be effective, they tend to miss out on arguably the most influential group of the press bloggers.

    Read Further

  8. 6 ways a blog can generate a profit Posted in Branding Online, Digital Strategy, Concocted by Mike Perk August 14, 2006 2 comments

    This months topic is about blogging for profitability. We are focused on figuring out what makes all our efforts worth the while, if at all. Mike started the month off with the goals for this exercise, but I want to explore the concept of blogging for profitability a little more clearly.

    What make a blog profitable…?

    Read Further

  9. Check if you’ve arrived Posted in Digital Strategy, Concocted by Mike Perk August 9, 2006 2 comments

    Profitable_websitesJust thought I’d check if the work over the last couple of days had come to any fruition and it was good to see the blog has now made it into the Google database. Getting it up the rankings is the next thing, but you have to start somewhere. If you want to check your own blog, go to Google and type the following in the search box, and it will show you your registered pages:

    site:www.yourblogaddress.com

  10. Pinging Bra’s Posted in Digital Strategy, Concocted by Mike Perk August 9, 2006 2 comments

    Now the titles caught your attention, I can tell you this post has nothing to do with bra’s. But it is about Pinging. Fred was asking yesterday about Pinging so I thought I’d let you know of a site called Ping-O-Matic. Its quite well known, so you might have heard of it already, but if you haven’t its a really good free tool to get your blog out there. And only if its out there and getting found, will it get read by more people and hopefully make your blog more profitable (if thats your objective).

    Read Further

  11. Promoting your blog in Google Posted in Branding Online, Digital Strategy, Online Advertising, Concocted by Mike Perk August 8, 2006 5 comments

    Although Google has certainly simplified their sitemap process and plenty of free software is now out there to help, its still not a dead easy process to upload an entire sitemap.

    I’m sure their must be an easy way around it, but this post shows a way in which you can inform Google of any new post to your site to get it indexed quickly.

    Read Further

  12. Blogservations Posted in Digital Strategy, Concocted by Mike Perk August 7, 2006 6 comments

    Heavychef

    I have been doing a little research on the side with regards to blogging. These are some of the results so far.

    • Most of the top blogs use short, punchy posts. When the information runs into more than a few paragraphs, then a click here to continue reading button is used.
    • Keep it real. The key here is something called authentic dialogue. People can sniff a fake a mile away.
    • Its fine and well to use tricky manoeuvres like bolding tags for attracting search engines to your blog, but try and make it relevant to your content. If it doesnt read well, people will run. Screaming.
    • Use pictures (see above). Contrary to popular belief, people dont really like hanging on every bloggers every word. A pic makes your well-structured prose so much more palatable.
    • Use lists. Ive blogged on this before. Top blogger Guy Kawasaki swears by this. Who are we to disagree?
    • Keep it short.
    • Use punchy sentences. Once again. People dont like to read. Im serious. No kidding. And whats more. Get to the point quickly.
    • The reason things are easier to read when your point is made quickly is because the longer you drag your long, well-constructed, yet interminably detailed, sentences, the more your mind starts to get distracted by the meanderings of your imagination, a fact well documented by such famous bloggers as Seth Godin, bloggers who have proven over time that less, well and truly is, more.

    More to come.
    Love,
    Fred

  13. Introducing your blog to MSN Posted in Digital Strategy, Concocted by Mike Perk August 5, 2006 2 comments

    With Yahoo now in the know about our blog its onto MSN. The more places we can get our blog out to the more chances of it being listed and our website becoming profitable (thats the theory anyway). If you want to get your blog registered in MSN this is a pretty good way of doing it.

    Read Further

  14. To get it profitable, treat your blog like your website Posted in Digital Strategy, Website Usability, Concocted by Mike Perk August 4, 2006

    I normally work on the optimisation of websites, so I’ve just been applying the same principles to our blog. Blogs are basically websites, with each new post becoming a new page on that site. We looked at the keywords and optimised the site, we are continually updating with fresh content – things we know the search engines like. Links are also vital, the more natural the better, but we do need to give it a little push and get our name out there.

    I’ve been investigating possible ways to do this and as well as the same we would use for normal sites (such as Google site maps) we can use special directories. Okay lets start with Yahoo:

    1) Set up a free Yahoo account by going to www.yahoo.com. It will ask you to set up your home page. Which will then force you to set up an account.
    2) Go to your new home page. At the top of the page you’ll see a link that says "Add Open Content from around the Web by URL".
    You will then need to get your URL for your RSS feed in your blog application (i.e. blogger.com or typepad.com). in Blogger.com it is in the settings, in typepad go to your blog and go to the "subscibbe to this blogs feed" and right click. Copy the link and place this where Yahoo asks you to add a link.
    Then click "add to My" button in top right.

    We’ll have a crack at MSN tomorrow.
    - Mike