Skip to content

You're at: Home / Blog / Recipes for Success

Recipes for Success

  1. A Winning Recipe for A Secure Facebook Profile Posted in Recipes for Success, Web Marketing Fare, Concocted by Yolandi Janse van Rensburg March 8, 2010 No comments

    Facebook is a great way to stay in touch with friends and family but even more, to promote yourself and your business. With all the benefits you get from a social networking site, there are dangers too. That is why it is important to set you privacy setting. You need to protect your contact details, your conversations and anything else that you don’t want to make public to the global web. Here’s a quick 5 step recipe to quickly whip up a more secure Facebook profile: Read Further

    Share
  2. How Can You Protect Your Business’ Online Reputation? Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Yolandi Janse van Rensburg March 2, 2010 1 comment

    Online reputation management (ORM) is the analysis of your personal or professional reputation as represented by content across all types of online media channels. Fred Roed at World Wide Creative breaks this down to a more digestible chunk. “Basically, when people online write stuff about you, you should know about it fast enough to be able to respond – especially if it’s negative stuff” Fred says. So, what do you do to improve your business’ ORM? How do you deal with negative discussion or criticism? And, how do you monitor your business’ ORM online? These are a few questions often asked. Here are my answers to all these questions: Read Further

    Share
  3. How do I know if an SEO company is reputable? Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Yolandi Janse van Rensburg February 11, 2010 1 comment

    On LinkedIn, the owner at Travel Cruise and Tour, Peter Himmelberger, posed the question: How do I evaluate SEO firms to select a reputable firm? I thought this was a very relevant question since SEO has become such a huge buzzword you just can’t ignore it. Now, it is not difficult to achieve top rank for certain keywords or your company’s name nor is it a sign that the company you hire for SEO is effective. Read Further

    Share
  4. Top Social Media Sites: Age Breakdown Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by LouisJvR January 7, 2010 No comments

    The Nielsen Company recently released research results on the age breakdown of members on 3 of the largest social networks around: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. 

    Read Further

    Share
  5. Running out of Ideas? Here’s a Marketing Checklist to Help Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Yolandi Janse van Rensburg December 10, 2009 2 comments

    Here are some great marketing Ideas to use as a reference list and read over every now and then. It happens so easily to get stuck on ideas and sometimes you forget the basics that really do work and should be implemented all the time. These ideas can’t be exhausted so check them out and stick them on your wall so you can look at them every now and then when you’re running low on ideas. Read Further

    Share
  6. Why ORM is so important Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Fred Roed December 5, 2009 6 comments

    Online reputation management (ORM) is the analysis of your personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by content across all types of online media channels. Basically, when people online write stuff about you, you should know about it fast enough to be able to respond – especially if it’s negative stuff. So, why is this important? Here are a few damn good reasons.

    Read Further

    Share
  7. 5 Ways South African Consumers will use the Internet in 2010 Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by LouisJvR December 4, 2009 2 comments

    It’s that time of the year again where every digital marketing expert/guru/genius/yoda/messiah will shout from the hilltops on what they think the digital marketing trends for 2010 will be.

    (do a search on 2010 digital marketing trends and you’ll get the picture)

    A lot of noise indeed and often lacking context I believe… Read Further

    Share
  8. How to Prepare for the Press Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Yolandi Janse van Rensburg December 3, 2009 1 comment

    You’ve got a media interview to prepare for and you don’t want to mess up such a great opportunity to free publicity and getting your message across. Here’s a quick guide on how to prep for handling print, radio and TV interviews. Read Further

    Share
  9. My formula for creating online community Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by LouisJvR November 16, 2009 No comments

    (*reposted from my personal blog http://www.louisjvr.com)

    The term online community is something that’s thrown around a lot these days… and legitimately so.

    Read Further

    Share
  10. Top 3 Mobile Marketing Ideas for South Africa Posted in Mobile Take Away, Recipes for Success, Videos, Concocted by Mike Perk November 2, 2009 No comments

    Join Mike as he chats to Rob and Gavin (Channel Mobile) and they discuss the top three mobile marketing ideas for the South African market. Read Further

    Share
  11. Controlling your company’s brand in the world of Social Media Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Fred Roed October 18, 2009 No comments

    Control is an unsettling word in the new parlance. “Give up control, sir!” said Ricardo Semler in his seminal books Maverick and The Seven Day Weekend. “Control has been lost in the digital economy!” shriek breathless ’social media scientists’ on their blogs and twitter streams. “Power to the People; we control the corporate brand now!” scream the new marketers, all of 22 years old, speaking from their accumulative 6 months of experience.

    Read Further

    Share
  12. 5 tips to optimise Twitter Posted in Recipes for Success, Videos, Web Marketing Fare, Concocted by Mike Perk October 13, 2009 No comments

    This Heavy Chef video snack offers five great tips to consider when using Twitter and writing your tweets, in order to optimise them for the search engines and your users. Read Further

    Share
  13. October Heavy Chef Session Jozi: Raising Capital for Digital Start-ups Posted in Heavy Chef News, Recipes for Success, Concocted by Yolandi Janse van Rensburg October 8, 2009 2 comments

    Monday night was our October Heavy Chef Session with the CEO and Founder of Yola.com, Vinny Lingham. This event in Joburg was a repeat of an earlier Session held in Cape Town. Even though Vinny wasn’t feeling a 100% he still indulged us with his fascinating insights on how to raise capital for digital start-ups – Thanks Vinny!

    Read Further

    Share
  14. For great usability, think like a retailer Posted in Recipes for Success, Videos, Web Marketing Fare, Concocted by Mike Perk October 6, 2009 No comments

    At UCT Graduate School of business’s Nomadic Marketing course , I explain why it is so important to focus on usability. Money is wasted because we don’t think enough about the visitors to our website. Read Further

    Share
  15. Use your analytics to create great linkbait Posted in Recipes for Success, Videos, Web Marketing Fare, Concocted by Mike Perk September 28, 2009 2 comments

    Your analytics data holds a treasure trove of information that can be used to help you decide on great linkbaiting content. Heavy Chef, Mike Perk from World Wide Creative, shows us how.

    Read Further

    Share
  16. 4 steps to building your company brand using Twitter Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Fred Roed September 27, 2009 No comments

    Twitter is becoming such a huge part of the communications environment (almost 20m Twitter users projected by the end of 2010) that The Heavy Chef Project’s mother company, World Wide Creative, is getting referrals now for a “Twitter strategy”.  This is a big deal, since we’re seeing people use Twitter in ways that even the founders are surprised by. Here are some quick tips for you to get started on building your brand using Twitter:

    Read Further

    Share
  17. Golf Case Study: Integrating Twitter & other social media tools with your value offerings Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by LouisJvR September 26, 2009 No comments

    (this is a re-post from my Posterous blog)

    A month or two ago www.pga.com showed the world just how effectively social media can be integrated with your value offerings.
    First some context, at the recent PGA Championship, people were on the edge of their seats as they watched Tiger Woods and Y.E. Yang battle it out for the coveted trophy (surprisingly, Yang won eventually!) – however a huge contingent was following the action online.
    Where PGA.com came to the party, the provided their visitors with:
    Live online video streaming (not just ‘highlight’ clips, LIVE streaming of the entire play-off)
    Shot for shot commentary and related news updates relevant to event
    However where PGA.com really came to the party was giving users the ability to chat live, as event were unfolding, on PGA.com via their favourite social networking tools – Twitter, Facebook and MySpace (MySpace? This still relevant? ;) ).
    So, how it worked, basically you logged in through PGA.com using your preferred social networking profile and then posted your status updates or tweets on an aggregated page. Simple and easy to use (screenshot below).
    From a user’s point of view, you can imagine the appeal – you’re into what’s happening between Tiger and Yang and can now interact with the event in any number of ways – watch on TV, watch online, connect with other fans, share your thoughts with your friends/followers. Just many touch points, all adding to your golfing experience.
    But, the real kick of it, the ROI for PGA.com:
    Online advertising – needless to say, the streaming and live chat platforms had its own sponsors and advertising on its pages
    TV commercials – live streaming didn’t cut commercials, so if you were watching, commercials were no different then watching it on TV
    Database – you had to be part of PGA.com’s community, this provided them with loads of demographical info on its viewers
    Viral – User updates were pollinated across their specific social networking profile i.e. if you tweeted on PGA.com, your Twitter followers was able to see it
    Measurable – what duration a person was logged on to PGA.com, how many updates they posted, how much was viewed, how many clicks etc etc
    In the not too distant future, I imagine PGA.com or any other socially integrated site out there would be able to profile you (based on your social networking information) and then show advertising/promotions that is most suited to your profile.
    For example, in a previous status update you mentioned you and the wife are house hunting and you both are sooo excited. So, you’ve used your social networking profile to login to a specific site and presto!, you see an advertisement: ‘Properties for Sale in (insert your region)”… talk about targeted advertising.
    This is where the world is heading.
    All very exciting and well done to PGA.com for adding to golf fans golfing experience.
    As a side note, getting users to log in to your site via their social networking profiles is a trend that uber-analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, refers to as The Era of Social Colonization – as Jeremiah puts it:
    “Gone are the days of isolated websites – all becoming part of a greater, integrated social web; web technologies will focus on making web users online identities central and portable i.e. visitors to your site will bring their identities with them”
    I did a more detailed write-up of Jeremiah’s analysis on my blog LouisJvR.com if you’re interested > The Future of the Social Web – Take it Seriously
    (thanks to http://socialnomics.net for inspiring this post (here)!)

    A month or two ago www.pga.com showed the world just how effectively social media can be integrated with your value offerings.

    First some context, at the recent PGA Championship, people were on the edge of their seats as they watched Tiger Woods and Y.E. Yang battle it out for the coveted trophy (surprisingly, Yang won eventually!) – however a huge contingent was following the action online. Read Further

    Share
  18. Simple explanation of SEO Posted in Recipes for Success, Videos, Web Marketing Fare, Concocted by Mike Perk September 23, 2009 No comments

    Mike Perk uses props and embarrasses the Nomadic Marketing course attendees in order to explain, very simply, the basics of how search engines rank web sites. Read Further

    Share
  19. Avoiding spying and spamming with mobile marketing Posted in Mobile Take Away, Recipes for Success, Videos, Concocted by Mike Perk September 18, 2009 No comments

    Back by popular demand, Channel Mobile, one of South Africa’s leading mobile solution providers, have agreed to provide a more regular video slot. Providing all the heavy chefs out there with more insight into the world of mobile marketing.

    Read Further

    Share
  20. Thinking about Silver Surfers Online Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by LouisJvR September 11, 2009 No comments

    In a recent chat with a client of ours at World Wide Creative, we got into an interesting discussion around ’seniors’ (that is those people +-60 years and older) and their level of activity on the web and their value to marketers.

    So, I did a bit of digging around and found some interesting learnings…. in fact over the last 3 years or so this market, dubbed the “Silver Surfers“*, has become quite a hot topic of discussion… Read Further

    Share
  21. Spread The Word With Viral Marketing Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Yolandi Janse van Rensburg September 4, 2009 1 comment

    Want to make use of viral marketing as an essential marketing strategy? Well, you can’t. You can create a message and hope it’s good enough to spread. Our CEO at World Wide Creative, Fred Roed wrote a post on how to make a viral video. His answer was simple – you don’t. Fred explains that “there’s no way you can make a viral video. You can only make a video. Your audience will make it viral.
    Read Further

    Share
  22. Corporates increase spending in Social Media Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Fred Roed September 3, 2009 No comments

    US research company, McKinsey released a report today revealing the results of a survey on social media adoption for corporate marketing strategy. It’s well worth a read, with some healthy support coming out in company’s marketing strategies for Web 2.0. adoption in the corporate environment.

    This is one that the strategists and account managers will enjoy, with multiple sound bites to use in their client presentations.

    Read Further

    Share
  23. Creating New Worlds: Comcast Town Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by LouisJvR August 25, 2009 No comments

    At one of our previous Heavy Chef events in Cape Town, Justin Gomes (FoxP2 Ad Agency) in his talk on “Creativity And Its Power To Transform Business”, told the story of George Lucas and Star Wars, and the importance of creating new worlds…

    So, when I stumbled across Comcast Town, I was reminded of Justin’s words of wisdom.

    Read Further

    Share
  24. 5 mobile tips for business profitability Posted in Mobile Take Away, Recipes for Success, Videos, Concocted by Mike Perk August 21, 2009 3 comments

    Channel Mobile are one of South Africa leading mobile solution providers. So being in the same Cape Town neighborhood The Heavy Chef team decided to pop in on them and pick up a few useful tips.

    Read Further

    Share
  25. A thirst-quenching vitamin-rich success story: glaceau vitaminwater Posted in Recipes for Success, Concocted by Fred Roed August 21, 2009 No comments

    Forgive us if this comes across as a little “advertisey”, but believe me this is a sincere story. Recently we’ve been sponsored by glacéau vitaminwater for the Heavy Chef Sessions we run each month. So, intrigued by this relatively new brand that’s now EVERYWHERE, I scratched below the surface for some tasty tidbits. A while back, Thurlow from thewinwingroup related to me the story of a guy called J. Darius Bikoff, who started a small bottled water company in 1996 after eating a vitamin C wafer on the way to a yoga class.

    Amidst serious personal difficulties, Bikoff managed to get the company up and running, and within 5 years the company was the company’s drinks were sold in over 4,000 retail stores in the New York area.

    Read Further

    Share