MIKESTOPFORTH

About a month ago I had a brainfart and nearly didn’t come to Austin to attend SXSW. Thank heavens I came to my senses – the trip has already been worth it on so many levels. In the short time Allan Kent and I have been here we’ve met some amazing people, seen some rather [...]

For an out-and-out music fan and musician I have attended precious few live performances. Sadly. This is partly because the artists I love most seldom venture out here and secondly, life has generally gotten in the way when the best opportunities have presented themselves. Not this year though! Having missed the last few My Coke [...]

The dudes in Cape Town updated me with this news release today – more good news for our baby, Afrigator! Taken directly from the news release: Afrigator shoots up the ranks to take the ninth spot on the Online Publishers Association according to latest stats by Nielsen Online. Cape Town, February 5, 2009: Afrigator Internet [...]

Dave Duarte has grown the Nomadic Marketing brand into the definitive local social and mobile media education programme – nothing else comes close. The combination of excellent content, the backing of the UCT GSB and professional facilitation mean that it ranks among the best of it’s kind worldwide. And now Dave is bringing Nomadic Marketing [...]

I love free stuff. Want to win me over? Send me free stuff. But then I think that works for most humans. I still get a warm tingly feeling when a post office slip arrives, or even better, the courier rings the doorbell for me to collect some random corporate gift or token. Doesn’t matter [...]

I was privileged enough to receive an invite from Reuben Goldberg to join him on an episode of his popular talk show The Internet Economy which airs every Friday night from 7-8 on ClassicFM. We spoke about the broad subject of social media in South Africa, the article I wrote the other day (the Next [...]

The honeymoon is over. Much of the hype and noise surrounding social media and its meteoric rise (especially in the USA) has abated. Perhaps owing to the global economic crisis, arguably due to the apparent lack of sustainable business models and possibly as a result of some semblance of reasonable thinking, we’re no longer reading [...]

…is only sometimes through his stomach. The way to this man’s heart, at least, is through a 6,27 litre naturally-aspirated V8 engine under the hood of one of the scariest ‘passenger vehicles’ on the road today. You know I’m an Audi fan – let’s state this up front, and having just invested in a shiny [...]

Big news from the Afrigator team today is the launch of AdGator – Africa’s first blogging ad network. We always envisioned Afrigator being a platform that bloggers could not only use to ‘market’ their content but also a source of revenue for them, and finally we have a model that allows us to do just [...]

I received an email from Shelley Wilson, an honours student at Vega who is doing her thesis on viral video. She’s put together this ’15 tips for viral marketing videos’ clip, with an accompanying article (quoted below) that she’d love your feedback on. I’m all for feedback, so let her have it! We live in [...]

The 29th 27dinner, held on the 25th to accommodate more folks (weekends aren’t ideal for these things), was, I think, an improvement on previous dinners. The new venue, Cappello in Sandton City, suited our presentation format far better and encouraged a more networky vibe. Thanks to Garsen (the owner) and his team for their refreshingly [...]

This is a video of a recent talk I did at the exclusive Tintswalo equestrian estate (note the horse’s bum in the background) with the MasterMind Group of Professional Speakers, of which I’m a member. I decided at the last minute to ditch my PPT slides in aid of the old fashioned approach. Your critical [...]

…but not on the billboard, it seems. I’ve been planning this post for some time, stopping arbitrarily (and rather riskily) on the side of the highway to snap photos of lifeless billboards, but it seems the incomparable Rui Esteves beat me to it at Ideate. Now I’m a bit notorious for bashing billboards in my [...]

Oops, stumbled in a bit late… freakin’ traffic. Thanks to Vincent Maher and Vodacom for my ticket – here are my observations: Rick Joubert: Vodacom Mobile Advertising “Mobile is the seventh mass media… Print, Recording, Cinema, Radio, TV, Internet, Mobile. Reach, targeting, frequency and response make the mobile medium so compelling. “Mobile has twice the [...]

…my book. But let me first tell you why. Quirk eMarketing have once again firmly established themselves as our country’s leading eMarketing authority with the release of their textbook eMarketing: The essential guide to online marketing. From their blog: eMarketing is a 300 page textbook aimed at tertiary education students, business owners and marketers who [...]

This is a little late in coming but I’d like to take a moment to share my experience of Internet Solution’s Internetix event in Cape Town with you. I was invited to speak at both events (Jo’burg is still to come, Cape Town was held yesterday) on the subject of Harnessing the Social Web.  To [...]

For some reason I’ve been ignoring MyGenius.com – the Southern African social network for business people. I have been a member since late 2006 – MyGenius’s very early days – and never quite got in to it. I get the odd message from a MyGenius member wanting to connect but have spent little no time on updating my profile or adding content to the site.

Recently I decided to give MyGenius another go based on two realisations. Firstly, the value of social networking is undoubtedly found, or much easier mined, in niche communities. The quintessential example is Charl Norman’s Zooped Up community for owners of modified cars and suchlike – completely useless for me but absolutely invaluable and addictive to people entrenched in that community. MyGenius cannot be compared to MySpace, for example, because it’s not trying to be a globally dominant player. It’s simply trying to do what it does well.

One of my professional speaking colleagues, Erik Vermeulen, forwarded a very cool email newsletter to me the other day. Normally that would tick me off but the newsletter, produced by Scott Ginsberg (check out his site and blog, they’re awesome), had an article titled 46 Marketing Mistakes Your Company Is (Probably) Making that caught my eye. I read it an thought I’d share it with you – some of it ought to be familiar already but there are a bunch of cool thoughts I thoroughly enjoyed…

Opinions around Apple’s updated iPhone, now supporting 3G and GPS (among other features), vary drastically it seems. Some are calling it a revolutionary, strategically brilliant move by Jobs and co, others are saying Bubbleland has lost perspective. What do you say? n What do you think of the iPhone 2.0? I’ll sell members of my [...]