The Worldwide Blogger Bake Off

One of our clients here at Quirk eMarketing is Breadline Africa. We have offered our services to them to build a campaign to raise money for the work they do.  One of their projects is to turn shipping containers into bakeries and teach peopl how to make their own bread.

The Worldwide Blogger Bake Off aims to do 3 things.  Firstly, and most importantly, raise money for Breadine Africa.  Secondly, spread the message using social media networks like blogs. And thirdly, get people to bake bread and talk about baking bread.

Please go have a look at the Bake Off website, I know some guys who have been having sleepless nights getting it ready.  Obviously we would love you to donate if you have some spare cash lying around.  But we also would like you to blog about it.  That won’t cost you anything.

Get involved.

Do it. Do it.

Blogger Action Day

Consider this a Lazarus post.  Hlalaphansi is not dead, just sleeping.  Blame it on a lack of inspiration, not a lot of excitement and sheer laziness.  It is however, blogger action day today so a good day for an update.

I guess the biggest news is the Taylor-Groeger nuptials in Cork Saturday after next.  I  am so bloody excited I may have just wet my pants a little thinking about it.  I love weddings, in all their misty-eyed glory.

Its almost a year since I left London thinking good riddance but to be quite honest I am really looking forward to going back.  Walkabout, snakebite, bad cover band, drunk antipodean girls.  Its a formula for success like no other.

So many friends to see and so little time.  It also happens to be the Cork Jazz festival so its going to be quite a weekend.

Other recent adventures have been a Clanwilliam trip where I was dragged nostrils first behind a boat in frigid water.  Also wound back the years at Rocking the Daisies music festival.  A weekend spent shivering in a tent, traipsing through mud, hovering over stinking portaloos, drinking beer and jumping around to rock ‘n roll music.  You take the good with the bad.

Miraculously I am still employed.  Still on probation which is a bit like purgatory.  All the moving out of home and buying car plans and such good intentions are hovering, waiting for job security that never comes.  Been here 3 months yesterday.  Its a strange old industry this internet marketing.  When you look at figures of people visiting a website month on month there’s no denying that certain tactics can make you more visible online.

Unfortunately you also have a very small but very vocal online community hell-bent on becoming internet celebrities, all professing to be search engine messiahs, all commenting on each other’s blogs, all linking to each other’s sites, patting each other on the back, blustering away.  A colleague dismissed them as “circle-jerkers”.  If the image isn’t clear I’ll have to explain it to you one day.  Basically, saddo’s who need to get outside more.

I remember walking past the ComSci lab back in Grahamstown during a power failure.  All these gecko skinned, goggle-eyed freaks sitting outside in silence unsure how to interact with real human beings waiting for the power supply to be restored so that they can go back inside and hide behind avatars and made up names like “behemoth-69″ and chat away in chat rooms quite comfortably.

Ok, we have an announcement here at work regarding a very cool camapaign that we have been asked to talk about.  Just checked and the site isn’t live yet so I’ll post about it as soon as it is.  The idea is to use social media networks like blogs and Facebook to spread a message.  I write about, 5 of you write about it, 5 people that each of you know write about it and so on. The message gets spread like wildfire through an online fynbos field with the south-easter blowing.

Ok, gotta go do some real work.  Hope you all well.  Hopefully see some of you in 3 more sleeps!