Pigeon Marketing

I had never heard of The Unlimited Company before this morning. But then I heard about Winston and the Pigeon Race 2009 – within minutes, my colleague asked if I had heard about it and I received an email about it. And, of course, it’s all over twitter.

Basically, the company’s taken a logistical challenge – getting large volumes of data from one office to another – and a staff member’s comment that a carrier pigeon would be faster than South Africa’s notoriously slow and costly broadband, and turned it into a brilliant marketing initiative.

You’re never too old to start blogging

So I set up a blog for my dad a while back, and he got a bit of a crash course on navigating his WordPress dashboard last weekend. He “retired” to Swellendam a couple of years ago, but promptly started another veterinary practice there, and is as hard at work as ever. He also runs a small business on the side – propagating bromeliads. It’s the perfect business to market with a blog. It’s a very defined niche.

However, ‘bromeliads’ is still a highly competitive term on Google, with 328 000 results in organic search (69 200 if you add ‘South Africa’). My dad has some great pics, and there’s loads of information he can share about the different species, tips for looking after them, etc.

It’ll take a bit of time to climb the rankings, though. There are 145 000 results on blogs alone. But that’s a lot of bloggers with which to interact and share link love.

It will be interesting to see how well it does in attracting bromeliad enthusiasts, and gardeners more generally, and whether it leads to increased sales. I think it will.

Next project: my mom’s B&B in Simon’s Town

Cue Stork ad now

So many blogs, so little time – research or procrastination?

I have to apologise to Dave Duarte for my rather trite comment on an excellent post he wrote this week, entitled “Symptoms of Organisational Attention Deficit Disorder.” It might have seemed dismissive of the post, but certainly wasn’t intended to be. I started to add a further comment expanding on my previous one-line contribution, but then thought perhaps it needed a post of its own.

Dave opened with the question, “Do you ever get so overwhelmed with information that you end up procrastinating on all the things you should be doing to be productive?”

What also came up in subsequent comments was the distinction between “important” and “urgent”. I found myself wondering (aloud, because I recorded it in Dave’s Comments) where reading that post and subsequent comments fitted on my importance/urgency matrix.

Never under-estimate the power of humour in marketing

Never under-estimate the power of humour in marketing. Last week, I started receiving Eskom jokes and cartoons by email. It happens like clockwork, doesn’t it.

After consulting with one of our spokespersons, I decided to include a “Lighter side of load shedding” on our new blog. I created a Humour category, and posted a couple of humorous pics on Friday.

New DA blog on Eskom load shedding

Last week, we set up a new blog for the DA to write about Eskom’s load-shedding and other energy-related matters. We’ve called it “Shedding Light“.

We want to shed light on the energy crisis using all avenues at our disposal – parliamentary questions, portfolio committees and other sources – and make that information available to the public. But we also want to hear from anyone who’s got a good idea, who wants to comment on our ideas, or who just wants to vent, and have someone take note.

We do post our press releases to the main DA website; but, besides sending an email using one of the maillinks on the “Contact the DA” page, it’s rather limited to one-way communication. We’ve picked up from emails we’ve received over the last couple of weeks that there’s a lot of interest in engaging us on this issue, and we’d like to hear from the public and experts alike – especially on our proposed solutions.

So have a look at the new blog, and let us know what you think.

DoshDosh my new favourite blog to follow

DoshDosh has definitely become my favourite blog to follow. It’s full of useful tips and interesting information – especially for the rookie blogger or online marketer.

Its author, Maki, tends to favour longer, more detailed posts, which means it takes a bit more effort to follow, but I think it’s worth it.

A particularly worthwhile recent article was “16 effective strategies to expand your blog’s reach in 2008.“

Another interesting post was “47 Social News Websites You Can Use.” I had no idea there were so many social news sites out there, and the list is apparently by no means comprehensive.

The latest post also has a bit of a political angle: it’s on the Art of Propaganda. See if you can identify a South African political example of each of the seven common tactics mentioned.