Hi Louis. There is such a variety of blogging platforms. Are different platforms more appropriate than others, depending on your goal?

To answer that question I will point out the main players in the blogging industry. There is Blogger which is a Google product. Wordpress has a very loyal following, and is a very relevant platform. It has done very well as a back end for content-heavy websites like magazines and newspapers . In recent years we have seen the rise of email-to-post websites like Tumblr and Posterous. These have come to the forefront because of their fast posting abilities.  Posterous and Tumblr are more for lifestyle blogging, while Wordpress works for content heavy blogging. Blogger is the middle ground between Wordpress and Tumblr.

How can one ensure that their blog stands out amongst all the others?

Well it is really difficult because there is so much competition. As a blogger you’re also competing with social networks and other blogs. It has become increasingly difficult and some people have taken extreme routes which are not sustainable . There is no quick way to build a reputation. My advice is write on a frequent basis and create quality content. If you want to launch a blog for a quick win then it is not the right platform for you. Take Seth Godin’s blog for example. Godin is a prominent marketing guy and his blog does really well. It has become a place where people can comment and interact. He didn’t set up his blog yesterday; through time he has delivered an innovative way of writing. He started as a writer, and his blog became a natural extension of that. A blog should be an extension of your brand and not the centre of it.

A local example is South African blog KEO which is very popular. It is run by a Rugby journalist and was started a number of years ago. This blog exposed the Rugby Kamp Staaldraad in 2001 and 2002. From this, he wrote a book which got a lot of attention and this attention led to a successful blog and a loyal community. It is one of South Africa’s most successful blogs with about 120 comments on each article. This blog picked up on something and went with it. The message is, creating a successful blog is a long process and requires a lot of hard work.

What about creating a general blog versus a niche blog?

Specialized blogs will always do better. A blog has to speak to certain people and say loud and clear what it stands for. A blogger needs to focus on a specific category.

Would it make sense to make your blog search engine friendly?

Yes it definitely makes a difference. All roads lead to Google, so focus your content on topics that people would want to read. You can also do off-site work like utilizing Twitter, Facebook as well as other blogs. If you want to get into the dark arts of blog marketing you would need to speak to an SEO guru, but on a basic level make sure your blog appears on Google and that you have links to other blogs.

Any other words of advice for keen bloggers?

Blogging gives a massive opportunity to set up a profile online. There is nothing more powerful than the written, or typed, word. I would advise students and graduates to set up a blog as a way to create your own portfolio and start building a brand. When you apply for jobs, people research you before they meet you and a prospective employer will Google you. Telling people to look at your blog is a compelling argument to prospective employers these days.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Louis. We look forward to many hours of productive and successful blogging in the future. Follow Louis on Twitter here.

As CEO of a digital agency, I get involved in a lot of discussions these days about “engaging with the audience”. For this month’s Heavy Chef Session, we’re investigating what the heck it actually means.

After the sheer, ludicrous excitement of last month’s Heavy Chef Session in the Mother City (watch the video featuring the speakers, Seth Rotherham and Rich Mulholland here), we’re back in Jozi for another bumper event.

This month, we’ve invited digital marketing maven Walter Pike, and digital copy maven, Tiffany Markman, to get to the bottom of engagement and interaction in the online environment .

We will be exploring how companies can reach out to their customers and using the ‘new tools’ (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) to actively build a community around a brand.

Walter will also be focusing on the unfolding case study within Cell C’s strategy around its Trevor Noah YouTube debacle.

Email our Heavy Chef girl, Yolandi, if you’d like to attend the Jozi Heavy Chef Session (be quick, seats are limited). There are only 120 seats for the Heavy Chef venue, at Deloitte’s gleaming premises in Woodmead.

Speakers:

• Walter Pike
• Tiffany Markman

Date: Thursday 18th November @ Deloitte Offices in Woodmead (Map)

Time: 6:00pm for 6:30pm

Cost: It’s free, although a bouncer will be filtering people at the door according to their ‘online influence’. (Anyone less than 100 followers on Twitter will be sent packing.)

Furthermore, we’re very pleased to introduce our new wine sponsor, Backsberg. I’m particularly excited to have them on board after recently visiting the Backsberg estate. These guys have got it going on, mixing traditional, sumptuous wine making skills with environment-focused innovations.

As usual, supercool beer goodness will be supplied by Corona.

Seth kicked things off by telling us about his brilliant blog/site/portal, 2OceansVibe and how it came about to be so successful. He tells the story of how 2OceansVibe was a blog and then not a blog; a blog again… and then not a blog… again! With a few stories, a video and some quirky comments, Seth had us all rolling in our seats.

Next up, Rich, with some amazing examples, showed us all how blogging is NOT dead. “Who the bloody hell is asking this question in the first place?!”. Rich gave a variety of success stories where blogging influenced people’s lives, careers and of course, financial states. In Rich’s view Blogging creates content and Twitter distributes it. The one cannot survive without the other one.

Thank you to everyone who joined us last Thursday evening – and wow, what a crowd you were! Furthermore, super special thanks to our speakers and our sponsors, Delheim, Corona, Deloitte for their stunning venue and Channel Mobile for allowing us to send our Heavy Chef guests reminder SMS’ of our events.

For all of you who did not grab a seat fast enough, you can Become a Heavy Chef by subscribing to our site and receive invitations to all our events before anyone else.ast week, at our October Heavy Chef Session, we had the pleasure of being entertained and educated by presentations master, Rich Mulholland and super-blogger, Seth Rotherham. We posed the question ‘Is Blogging Dead?’ by which Rich and Seth broke it down for us and illustrated very creatively how blogging is not dead; won’t die anytime soon; and who’s asking this question in any way!

Seth kicked things off by telling us about his brilliant blog/site/portal, 2OceansVibe and how it came about to be so successful. He tells the story of how 2OceansVibe was a blog and then not a blog; a blog again… and then not a blog… again! With a few stories, a video and some quirky comments, Seth had us all rolling in our seats.

Next up, Rich, with some amazing examples, showed us all how blogging is NOT dead. “Who the bloody hell is asking this question in the first place?!”. Rich gave a variety of success stories where blogging influenced people’s lives, careers and of course, financial states. In Rich’s view Blogging creates content and Twitter distributes it. The one cannot survive without the other one.

Thank you to everyone who joined us last Thursday evening – and wow, what a crowd you were! Furthermore, super special thanks to our speakers and our sponsors, Delheim, Corona, Deloitte for their stunning venue and Channel Mobile for their management of the super-efficient Heavy Chef SMS reminder system for our events.

For all of you who did not grab a seat fast enough, you can Become a Heavy Chef by signing up on this site (go here to register) and receive invitations to all our events before anyone else.

We’ve spent the last few weeks discussing community management on the Heavy Chef blog and we decided that it was time to put some of the theory into practice.  To do this, we’ve developed a home-page wireframe for Homer Simpson’s community blog.

Wireframes are often described as the stickmen of web design – they are simple mock-ups of a web page that allow us to quickly determine which elements need to appear on a page and their relative priority.  The wireframing process is usually the first step after you have taken the time to understand the website requirements from both the business and user perspectives.

The idea for the Homer Simpson community blog was to create a place for Homer and his friends to write about topic which interested them (i.e. beer, donuts and TV).   Based on these topics, Homer then wants to build a community of like-minded people (starting in Springfield) with the goal of getting them to discuss the pressing issues around beer, donuts and TV.

Navigation and banner

The main navigation for the community blog is created around the blog topics.  This structure allows visitors to the site to quickly find articles about the topic that they find most interesting.  This structure works best if the topics which you are going to be focussing on are well defined.  Non-blog related pages are put together on the secondary navigation.

From a community management perspective, it is important have a clear content strategy – this means that the topics you are writing about should be well defined and fit in with the business and website objectives.  Having content that is consistent, on-topic and well written means that users will want to come back to Homer’s community blog because they know that is the best source for information relating to beer, donuts and TV.

Below the navigation is a large banner which can be used to promote something important or popular.  The banner be the first thing that the user will notice when they land on the home page and it should therefore be used effectively. It also helps if there are recent articles on the home page which relate to the banner so that users can continue reading about the topic if they find it interesting.  Once of the key elements of successfully building a community is to give your community a cause which they can get behind – i.e. an emotional reason to get involved.  In the case of the Homer Simpson’s blog, we have decided to use the banner to encourage users to donate to his foundation.  Through the donation process, users will be encouraged to sign-up as members so that they can follow the progress of the fundraising and be involved in the handover of Duff and donuts.

Below the fold

Scrolling down past the banner and the top of the latest post reveals that the rest of the home page is made up of widgets on the left-hand column and recent articles on the rights-hand side.  The first widget is used for a big, clear call-to-action that encourages the reader to become a member.

By making the top article bigger and better designed, we hope to direct the user’s attention to it.  For each blog post, the following information is shown: title, author, category, date, comments and shares.  Each of these elements has a specific benefit with regards to community building.

By showing the authors name for each post and by having a featured blogger widget, we are able to highlight the different personalities of the bloggers.  Users who read the blog often will start to form an emotional bond with the different authors as they see their stories beginning to emerge through their writing.  Relating posts back to authors also helps remind the user that the blog is run by real people who are knowledgeable and passionate about the topics discussed.

Showing the date that each post was posted to the blog shows the user that the blog is alive and being updated constantly.  When building a community, users will always be looking for reasons to keep visiting the website – having up-to-date content is one of the main drawcards.

Finally, making the number comments, shares and likes clearly visible indicates to readers, at a glance, that the community is active and vocal.  This lets the user know that they will not be alone in joining the community.  Another one of the benefits of giving the like and share buttons prominence is that they encourage content syndication which in turn will bring new people to the site.

Social networking integration

Facebook and Twitter integration indicates to users that your community extends beyond the blog.  This is important as a lot of people would rather join Homer’s community through a social network that they already part of.  Twitter and Facebook are very different tools with different communities and communication styles.  It is important to not just syndicate content automatically to both but to rather talk to the communities on both sites in the way that they like being talked to.

Together all these elements provide the basis for community building but at the end of the day, it takes good content that is updated regularly by bloggers who engage with their audience to build a community on a blog.

Doh!

Blogging is definitely all about the community and the most important part of the community is comments! For me, comments on my blog are gold. I pretty much reply to each and every comment I receive and sometimes even follow up the comment with a personal email to the person thanking them for stopping by and leaving a comment. This is probably one of the most overlooked parts of blogging. Everyone worries about the design of their blog, social sharing with Facebook and Twitter, content, links, SEO and widgets. But comments is where all the activity on your blog happens. This is where you build the community and when people come across your blog and see others leaving comments, the chances of them also leaving a comment is increased!

As much as building my community online stemmed from my blog, having a blog and talking to people you meet offline about blogging, social media and the likes, also drives those people to become part of your community and follow your blog! There is nothing better than following someone online and actually getting to meet them in person. You easily skip the cheesy small talk and chat about relevant topics you have been blogging and tweeting about.

So, here is 3 easy steps to build your online community via blogging.

1. Start a blog! WordPress.com is free and so simple to sign up and begin
2. Comment, comment and comment! Follow other blogs and leave comments that add to their conversations. They’ll quickly find your blog and reciprocate the favour.
3. Don’t give up. Blogging isn’t a quick fix and takes months of blogging, commenting and chatting.

Update: Sorry, this event is fully booked! To get invited to future events, sign up as a Heavy Chef member here.

For this month’s Heavy Chef Session, held in Cape Town, we ask the question: “Is Blogging Dead?”

It’s amazing to think that blogging has only been around for 10 years and people are already whispering about a ‘dying art’. In the past month, we’ve seen blogging stalwarts like Windows Live Spaces and TypePad closing doors or selling up. Apparently, the rise of micro-blogging has all but vanquished the carefully scripted masterpieces that begat a whole new generation of wannabe-Hemingways .

So, is blogging really dead, or is it evolving?

We’ve asked this question of two legends of digital, Seth Rotherham and Rich Mulholland.

Just last week, the esteemed Mr Rotherham announced with great fanfare that his multiple-award winning blog 2Oceansvibe.com is no longer a blog. Seth’s familiar online presence, strengthened by years of daily blog posts, now extends to radio, accommodation and entertainment news. 2OV is now a burgeoning media empire.

On the other hand, the esteemed Mr Mulholland has redirected his focus back to blogging. Over the past 12 years Rich has focused his attention on growing his presentation, conference and innovation companies, and has been blogging since 2001 on multiple outlets such as Jo’Blog, Capitalist Punks and, more recently, his own personal blog.

Seth and Rich will be presenting their answers to the Heavy Chef community later this month – you DON’T want to miss this.

WANT TO ATTEND?

Email Yolandi if you’d like to attend the Cape Town Heavy Chef Session (be quick, seats are limited). There are only 120 seats for the Heavy Chef venue, kindly sponsored by Deloitte Cape Town.

Speakers:

- Rich Mulholland (Founder of Missing Link)

- Seth Rotherham (Founder of 2Oceansvibe)

Date: Thursday 28th October @ Deloitte Offices in Green Point (Map)

Time: 5:30pm for 6pm

Cost: No cost. Heck, if you blog about the event we’ll send you an iPad, a couple of iPhone 4’s, and a 6-pack of Steri-Stumpie. (UPDATE: this is a joke. Not a very good one, but a joke nonetheless. We will, however, be giving away book hampers and t-shirts on the night.)

Refreshments will be supplied by Delheim and Corona.

We had a rocking session in Joburg last week with Mike Stopforth and Alwyn Venter. Mike and Alwyn came to chat to us about community and managing a community online.

With the explosion we’ve seen with micro-blogging, social networking and more, we’ve noticed a change in how brands interact and engage with their consumers. This on its own brought up a new set of rules for building and engaging with your community. Everyone is talking about how consumer behaviour has changed and how it’s still changing and evolving. Brands should know by now that they need to pay attention to these changes!

Now, with the attention economy we are living in, people tend to ask “How do you stand out from the crowd online?” Our speakers, Mike and Alwyn elaborated on this and provided useful tips and guidelines for engaging with your community online.

We’ll be posting their presentations soon so keep an eye out for them!

Thanks to everyone who joined us in Joburg last week and special thanks to our sponsors as well! P.S. You can see the photo’s on our Facebook Fan Page.

Cape Town folk, our next session is taking place end of this month and we’re asking ‘Is Blogging Dead?’ – NOT to be missed!

blogging

As a blogger myself I know the importance of creating an online identity. I started snooping around to see what has been written on blogging and how much people really know about it. It is strange to me that people still define a blog as an online journal or diary, because this definition for me is a bit out dated.

Blogging has moved past only being a journal filled with a blogger’s personal thoughts and experiences. Another definition I found was by Cedar Pruitt who said it is an “ongoing documentation that can be viewed by anyone in the world with access to the internet”. This definition is probably more accurate but it still doesn’t dig into the essence of a blog.

After sending out a survey on blogging to TUKS journalism and communication students, I was shocked at how little they knew. All of those who replied said they do not have a blog but interestingly one student replied saying “Yes, if Facebook counts as a blog”. It was a great shock to me to realize that there are people that are clueless when it comes to the online world. Personally, when I studied journalism we didn’t even glance in the direction of online media and that’s tragic.

When asked whether blogging could become a form of journalism most students replied “no” and said that it does not require journalistic skill. What is ironic about this statement is how incorrect it really is in terms of how many great journalists there are in the world who do not have a journalistic degree or ‘skill’.

According to Cedar Pruitt blogging has already started to have a powerful effect on mainstream media. An important characteristic of a blog that makes it different from other forms of information media is the ability of its readers to give immediate feedback by publishing a comment on a story.

The blogging phenomenon is here and it’s real, but what people want to know is ‘why blog?’ and the answer is clearly not reaching everyone.

So, if you need to up the ante on content for your blog, here are some points to remember:

• Every post need not be an essay
• Every post need not be original
• A post can be a relevant link and a sentence to expand on it

Here’s Fred’s attempt at doing this: http://www.heavychef.com/hot-stuff/the-missing-zebra-swart-on-campus/

Good luck – !!

*Note: this post is in no-way an exact copy of an email sent to me by a very wise man some time ago (thanks Fred!)