Archives for February 2012

Daktari Mtanzania … Now in The US of A

February 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

You remember those ads you see on the streets that go like: “Daktari Mtanzania anayetibu magonjwa 75…..?

Well, have a look at this:

I will cast a powerful SPELL to get you whatever you want for $5
Spell Caster, Master Shaman Crystal Indigo will perform an extremely powerful spiritual spell for ANY need that you desire. Want to find your true soul mate? Want an ex- lover back? Need more money? Want to lose weight fast? Do you have a serious problem that needs fixing?The spell I cast will quickly and dramatically change your life!

YES, now you can get services za “Daktari” online, for $5…

Link: I will cast a powerful SPELL to get you whatever you want for $5

What do you think?

Filed Under: Internet Culture

Aroma Cafe

February 23, 2012 by 1 Comment

The brilliant, curious, story of how one establishment in Mombasa has used the on-going debate on “husband battering” in Kenya to do some brilliant marketing:

From NTV Kenya:

The upsurge in the number of husband battering cases continue to dominate debates in various parts of the country but in Mombasa the issue has been captured in a different way. One café in the coastal city has chosen to put it in black and white. Aroma Café has written pro-men messages for anyone to see and the management say it is their way of discouraging the vice that has given Central Kenya a bad name. The high-class restaurant has even gone to the extent of preparing cookies labeled “Love Men” in their effort to condemn husband beating.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous

Learning Marketing from Email Spammers

February 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

A little Gem from DoshDosh:

Imagine you’re a email spammer. Your strategy is to send out thousands of unsolicited emails everyday hoping that some unassuming individual will purchase your product or inadvertently get infected by your malware/virus, so you can phish for credit card and banking details.

So here’s the situation. You’re dealing with millions of people whom you don’t know. You might not even know their age and gender, the basic demographic yardsticks. You can data mine email archives on a zombie computer to create personalized and convincing email messages but you’re always going to be dealing with a barrier of not-enough-trust.

You don’t know the audience well. So how do you increase the chance that they’ll even open up your email and clickthrough on the links within it? By treading on common ground and leading with the familiar. People might not know who you are but they know Angelina Jolie, who incidentally is the most popular celebrity name used by email spammers.

2.28% of all emails sent in July 2008 contained her name in the subject field. As a personality famous worldwide, she’s an alluring referential point spammers use to breach the walls of unsavvy targets. The familiar is powerful. That’s why you’ll see domain urls that are almost identical to official institutions or receive emails that use the addresses of people you know.

But that’s not all, spammers also love to use current events as bait. Events like political elections, conflicts between nations and major sports events like the Olympics are all fodder used to hook unassuming users into clicking on links or videos loaded with Trojan viruses.

When you want to get someone to do something, you need to arouse their interest first. You might not know every single person who reads your site, but that’s fine. Because you do know what they are generally familiar with. Use those references to bridge the gap and connect.

Every single blog post or salesletter you write can be filled with comparisons, analogies, metaphors, name-drops, references and citations that make your offer/idea more vivid. More familiar. More enticing. So focus on getting your audience interested first, because if they tune out right from the start, they’ll never absorb your pitch or give you a second chance.

Filed Under: Internet Culture

7 things you can tell your readers if they don’t like an article on your blog

February 9, 2012 by 2 Comments

Most of the times, bloggers create blog post with good intentions. Some of the posts may make people raise eyebrows. Some articles may push readers to express their dislike or hate for the author and their work.

What is a blogger to do in such instances?
Before you go ahead and to defend yourself, you should take some time to ask yourself:

  • Why the dislike? Why doesn’t so and so like my post?
  • What may happen if I don’t address the issue causing the dislike fast?
  • Does the reader who dislikes my post (or me) have a valid ground?
  • Did I let emotions take over me when I was writing this post?
  • How can I make things right?

After answering the questions above you can:
1) Apologize for having offended someone or calling someone names

I am sorry for calling John a jerk
I didn’t mean to offend …… in any way

2) Admit that you were wrong and accept correction

I didn’t get the facts right. I have made corrections already

3) Tell a reader that you stand by your opinion or belief

I was just stating my opinion on …… so take no offence

4) Ask a reader why they dislike your article and ask for their reasons

You stated that you didn’t like my article and never stated why, could you please share your reasons?

5) Explain something the reader night not have understood very well

When I said …………… all I meant wa s……………..and not what you are ……………………..I hope that helps. Let me know if you still have a question.

6) Ask reader to stop using inappropriate language to get your attention

I understand what you are trying to say. I just don’t think that is fine to fill my wall/page with inappropriate language.

7) Refer a reader to other sources that may help them understand the message you were conveying in your article

Check them out this article (add a link to the source). It gives out more info on ………………….

Bloggers should also remember:
Not to respond when they are upset
Some of the comments that usually show up in the dashboard aren’t always pleasant. Some are filled with information that can make a post and the whole blog a better place. Some of them are filled with hate.

A blogger should stick to typing or saying things that will help their blog fulfill its purpose. Harsh remarks may help but so are carefully thought out answers; even if the answer makes the blogger look like a weakling. Bloggers shouldn’t be quick to show how muscled they are.

Not to ignore a reader
Well one can decide to take some time before responding to a comment. That is fine. Bloggers should just remember that every time a reader sends an e-mail or leaves a comment on their blog, they would do anything to see how the blogger reacts after reading their words.

It may not be entirely possible to respond to every comment or e-mail in certain circumstances. A blog post addressing several issues (even if it takes more than a thousand words) can do in such occasions. But it won’t hurt if one takes time to respond to each comment or e-mail individually.

To you now.

What would you tell a reader if they didn’t like one of your posts/views?

This is a guest post by Philos Mudis. He blogs over at Eapost.com where he regularly shares his views on blogging, entrepreneurship and more.

Filed Under: Blogging

Disrupting The Kenyan Movies Industry

February 8, 2012 by 8 Comments

I just read a very well written and thought-provoking article on how piracy affects the Kenyan movie industry: Secrets About Piracy Revealed By Jitu Films Director. It seems that a very interesting problem plagues our industry:

  • Piracy is apparently illegal in Kenya.
  • However, all those “DVD for 50 bob” shops in town sell nothing but illegal pirated stuff. But they sell foreign films and so no one bothers to go after them. (An instance of how the law fails local film makers).
  • Those shops in town can never dare try to sell Kenyan movies because they need a special license to do so and because if they did, the city council will be on top of them quickly.
  • This presents an interesting problem for local film makers: they cannot hope to compete on price with foreign films. Would you buy “The Rugged Priest” at 100/- when “Avatar” is available at 50 bob?
  • To add to that, there is no local DVD factory hence local film makers have to import these and pay import taxes on top of all the other ‘normal’ taxes int heir industry. Essentially, they are unable to sell their movies at 50 bob and remain financially viable. The illegal shops in town selling pirated stuff pay no taxes.
  • This creates a situation where locally made movies are more expensive than foreign movies. They are also harder to find because to sell them you need a special licence which the 50 bob shops typically do not get.

Of course this creates an industry in which it is difficult to make much good money. What do you think can be done to overcome these problems?

IN my mind, piracy is a problem that can be best solved by offering a more convenient alternative. However, I am not to sure what, exactly, can be done to bring up such an alternative.

Through my brief work with Space Yangu, I read numerous emails from people asking us where they could buy Kenyan movies. I believe there’s demand here and money to be made – someone just needs to figure out the logistics. I can think of two approaches to a solution:

  1. Someone to open a chain of little shops in Nairobi (and eventually elsewhere) to sell Kenyan movies. (this was suggested in the linked article)
  2. Someone could open up a huge online shop that sells and delivers a wide selection of Kenyan movies. Perhaps it could eventually lead to a Netflix like service.

What do you think can be done?

Filed Under: Lazyweb, Make Money, Small Business

Where to Get Content For Your Website

February 6, 2012 by 4 Comments

When you build your website, or when you launch an online business, a problem that you may have not anticipated becomes apparent. Where do you get content to put in your new website? We all know that good compelling content is what makes or breaks a site, right? So where can you get it?

1. Steal it
This is easy. Just Google any random topic and you will find thousands of places where you can steal from. Copy-paste and you’re done. Easy peasy. Except it does not work and is a little stupid in this day and age.

Sadly, it is worth noting that a significant number of clients who I have worked with before think this is what they need.

2. User-generated content
The idea here is that you hope people will come to your website and entertain themselves while at the same time filling your website with content. This approach has worked for many websites out there but it probably will not work for you. Sawa?

Sturgeon’s Law says that 90% of everything is garbage. This is even more true when you try to deal with user generated content.

Traditionally in Kenya, sites that depend on user generated content do not fair well at all. This is how zuqka died despite being backed by a whole lot of money. Mgangagenge expounds on this:

…UGC needs 24-hour surveillance of user behaviour to monitor usage trends, offensive content, and most of all, SPAM. Once you neglect a UGC site, it either degenerates into a flame war a la mashada, a porn site a la KenyanList/eastafricantube, or a SPAM farm a la Zuqka.

3. Mass Semi-Amateur Content
You know www.e-how.com? This is their content generation strategy of choice. Basically what you do is pay an army of underpaid freelancers to write articles for your website in mass. Learn more.

Of course the quality of content will be higher than user generated content but I personally do not feel that the difference in quality is very pronounced. I would not recommend this for your website.

Besides, Google is clamping down hard on this. Be warned.

4. Using Talented Expert Writers
In theory, this sounds really good. You can hire expert “artists” to write beautiful stuff, polishing every little bit to perfection. If you can do this consistently, your site will be known for its quality, well researched content. I would recommend this, but I feel it may be too expensive for almost everybody. I am tempted to call this the “New York Times” (NYT) approach.

Speaking of which, have you had a look at the NYT financial performance lately? If the NYT brand cannot make this method work, what makes you think it will be sustainable for your relatively small brand? Pole.

5. Scalable Content Creation
If you are going to be able to generate content that is high quality yet affordable and which advances your business goals then you will have to get creative.

A while back Ok Cupid published an article titled “How Your Race Affects The Messages You Get“. Please have a look at that article again – they received thousands of comments and no doubt many other websites talked about it.

Ok Cupid did something very smart. They used a kawaida user survey to publish an interesting, easily consumable, easily share-able piece of content. Brilliant! And you know what? Ok Cupid can do this over and over again because they already have the tools in place. All they need to do is come at it from a different angle and be the at the top of the social news sites again.

What’s the lesson here?

As a business you should strive to collect (or to be privy to) unique information. In almost every business imaginable, you can collect unique information and with just a bit of creativity whip it into amazing content for your website.

Are you a wedding planner? Whats the most comment color themes at your weddings?; Do you sell spare parts? What item breaks down the most? How can people take care of it better?; Do you sell cakes? Why not share unique recipes? What is bought most often? etc etc

The idea is that if you run any business, stuff that you do every day can be turned into simple and interesting content for your website.

If you have not yet started collection interesting data, you can start analyzing existing data. The recent Open Data movement should get you started! Keep in mind that anyone else can do this, though, so use it as a temporary solution while you build your own unique stuff.

Filed Under: Internet Culture

Freelancing is Dangerous

February 4, 2012 by 5 Comments

I remember when I was employed – I use to hate it. I have always thought of myself as a free bird who must not be tethered to one place or one job. And so I dreamt. I dreamt of the day I would be free of employment. So when someone told me to try out freelancing, I jumped on the idea.

Who wouldn’t want to live the easy life as a freelancer? Think about it. No 8-5 hours, no workplace politics. Just you working at home or from Java and closing deals on the phone. Sounds nice, eh? Except it’s not.

From my experience freelancers typically work way more hours than you’d think.

Rob Walling put it best in his manifesto “The Micropreneur Manifesto“:

With freelance work, you essentially trade your one boss for many—except now they’re called clients. And they don’t pay for health care or vacation days, or worry about your job satisfaction. Some won’t even feel obligated to pay you for the work you’ve done.

So as you dream of leaving your job, be careful not to get stuck in a new rat-race. What you should work towards is becoming a business owner (as opposed to becoming “self-employed”). That is, putting structures in place that will ensure that you are not the one-man behind the whole show. Hire freelancers/employees. Do not become your own slave.

Filed Under: Small Business