All posts in My Life

Day 1: France

by Chris M on April 1, 2013 in My Life with 1 Comment

Hello all the way from a town in France called Montpellier! Happy Easter to everyone :)

We arrived at Cape Town International Airport at 15h00 on Saturday and boarded our flight to Johannesburg shortly afterwards. A rather awful and unpleasant flight to Johannesburg, at least it was just shy of 2 hours only. We then rushed to get onto our flight to Paris, the times were incredibly close. I believe that the only thing that kept me sane was a few minutes in the various SLOW lounges where I could take a moment to relax, splash my face and have a nibble in peace. The flight to Paris was something else. The longest I’ve been on a flight for is about 3 hours and this was 10 hours! I didn’t manage to sleep much at all, dozed a lot, but there are continual interruptions. Nevertheless, the flight wasn’t awful and the time actually went fairly quickly. Before we knew it, we were in Paris and boy oh boy was that an experience – the airport, Charles de Gaulle, is nothing special and it’s quite tricky to navigate yourself around when you don’t speak a word of French, but the people were friendly and we found our way to a cafe to get some nibbles and then off to the next gate for our flight to Montpellier (as seen in map below). The flight to Montpellier wasn’t the best, the pressure was making my ears feel like they were going to burst, but it only took an hour and before we knew it we had landed and were ready to get the show on the road. Grabbing a taxi to our hotel was a piece of cake.

Seriously though, 28 Euro’s for a taxi for a 5 minute drive and 5 Euro for a coke o.O – Gota watch yourself here when you’re operating off Rands! The public transport here is absolutely incredible, I honestly didn’t understand what people were trying to tell me, hop on, hop off, destination reached! The ticketing system is awesome, it just takes you a bit of time to understand the different tram lines.

We had a wonderful dinner in the center of Montpellier, which is truly beautiful. The tall buildings built with architectural perfection are something that you can only really understand and experience in person. I’ve seen photographs, heck, I’ve looked on Google Maps, but it just doesn’t do them justice. I stood outside the restaurant in the middle of town, puffing on my cigarette (which is ever so accepted in France) and just admired the true beauty. People have been really friendly, we’re yet to experience someone frowning upon us for speaking English. Although, with that being said, we try our best to add a bit of an accent and throw out the odd, “Je ne parle pas français” or “Parlez-vous anglais” and these little phrases clearly earn you some respect. It’s funny walking into a cafe and saying, “We have drinks here? Yes”? Haha! Or, “Chocolat Crepe one please” ;)

I’m going to try and post as often as possible for all of you who want to follow or just enjoy seeing what France looks like. I’m armed with my iPhone 5 at the moment, but I should be able to get another point and shoot camera shortly, which will produce better photographs. Or, I’ll be a professional and chuck some Instagram filters over them :P

Here’s a quick batch:

I’m having the time of my life, I truly didn’t understand how incredible this was going to be!

Heading off to lunch shortly with some friends and then I need to do some admin and prepare my slide deck for tomorrow’s workshop.

I’ll post again soon, but otherwise you can follow me here for updates:

Twitter: @ChristopherM
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imod.co.za
Instagram: @ChristopherM

Flying our colours at the Argus

by Chris M on March 10, 2013 in Exercise, My Life, Work with No comments

Two of my really close friends cycled the Argus Cycle Tour today for the first time. A few of us headed down to the finish line to see them come through and I cannot describe how amazing the feeling was to see them cross it. I am so proud and impressed, and inspired all that the same time! A year ago this would have been seen as an impossible task, but nothing stopped them and they did it – WELL DONE you guys!

I’m truly honoured that they wore the iMod Digital colours, just take a look at how awesome this is:

MINI Paceman launch event!

by Chris M on March 1, 2013 in Cape Town, Cars, My Life with 1 Comment

Under the banner of ‘Design with Bite’, special guests started the MINI Paceman experience at the Design Indaba expo in Cape Town. We met at the ultimate Man Space Timeslice experience. Made up of multiple cameras triggered sequentially with split second timing (in full 360 degree angles), we got to capture and display our creative photograph stills through animation. In laymens terms – we got to take part in their very own version of the Matrix.

We were then chauffeured in a MINI convoy for the first exclusive viewing of the new MINI Paceman. The venue, Pentagon Villa (on the market for R120 million), certainly captures modern man’s need for functionality and design. As we were welcomed into the ultimate Man Space, we were thrilled as the first MINI Paceman in South Africa was revealed.

“The most striking design feature of the new MINI Paceman is its coupé-like silhouette: dynamically stretched lines and powerful wheel arches combined with the lowered suspension to generate a thoroughly sporty look which will all result in it being a real attention grabber wherever it goes,” says Kabelo Rabotho, General Manager of MINI South Africa.

Thank you Heineken

by Chris M on December 20, 2012 in My Life with 5 Comments

I always get excited when I see a courier company arrive at my office, and today was no different. Heineken sent me an awesome gift and what better on a boiling hot summer’s day like today! My car reported 35 degrees on the thermometer – A nice cool beer will go down a treat!

The gift came in celebration of Heineken turning 140 years young and it’s a very well received gift – congratulations to Heineken for standing the test of time ;)

As you can see, it comes with a great story, if you look closely you’ll see there’s Paris 1889, Amsterdam 1931, World 2013 and The Future (left to right) – what a wonderful idea and how proud the team must be.

Right, I must finish up work so I can enjoy one :)

The cheapest isn’t always the best

by Chris M on December 19, 2012 in Business, My Life, Search Engine Optimization with 7 Comments

I’m not one for pitching on projects as I believe building business relationships on trust is far more concrete than doing some fancy presentation and winning the work – of course, this applies to both sides, the company and the provider. That is not to say that it isn’t important to communicate what one is able to do, please don’t get me wrong, I just don’t feel that a flashy presso is an approach that is better than building the trust. I also understand that sometimes you have to pitch, but in most of my cases I like to get to know potential clients before entering into business relationships, it’s worked very well for me.

A few months ago I was involved in a situation where there was a level of pitching involved, I did what I had to do, I also went for the trust angle and my offering and costings were very good – I went in lower than usual as it was a client I would have very much liked to have worked for as the brand shared a lot of my feelings. The pitch went well, the client liked me and I was fairly confident that I would get the work. A month went by, I sent through a follow up email and the client replied positively, but explained that it was going to be a slow process – I’m happy with that and completely understand.

I didn’t land the project.

My company is fairly new and I wanted to understand why I hadn’t landed the project so I popped the client a reply thanking them for letting me know (I truly appreciate being told when I don’t land work) and asked for some advise, was my pitch bad, did I quote incorrectly or anything that I could take and work on for the next time. The response was very polite and it boiled down purely to cost. I was a little shocked by this, but I was given some insight into the client’s budget at the time, so I thanked the client and went on with business.

Now, today, a few months later the brand popped up in passing conversation, completely randomly, and I decided to head back to the office and have a look at the website and see how things were going. My experience in SEO allows me to quickly look at a website and identify some of the key tasks any SEO company would immediately implement on a website, such as: meta data, sitemaps, backlink profile and so forth. Now, most of us know that meta data is no longer the be all and end all when it comes to SEO (if you didn’t know that, you do now). However, although it’s not a heavy ranking factor, it’s still incredibly important to make sure that it’s relevant, suited to the page’s content, not duplicate and is user friendly for when the results are displayed by Google, Bing and so forth. On this client’s website, all the meta data hasn’t been updated, it includes keywords that are irrelevant and in many cases, they’re duplicate! The website runs on WordPress, I’ve seen the backend, so I know it’s not a case of being a strong CMS that doesn’t have the functionality to update meta data uniquely. I also noticed that the sitemap is old, it doesn’t take any of the new pages that the client had just created when I met them into account and there’s no sign of any changes to the link profile. The list does go on, but for the sake of this post I shall not bore you. Oh, and the website’s rank for the keywords they were interested in haven’t changed one bit, I compared it to the report I pulled when I was pitching.

This sort of thing pains me, not because I didn’t win the work (sure, that plays a part), but mostly because I know that I could have done a better job, an ethical job and a job that the client would be able to see the result of. I can’t help but think that the company who won the pitch quoted really low, landed the client and has honestly done absolutely nothing – probably sends them a monthly report with some complicated graphs and keyword lists that make it seem like a lot is happening. It just feels wrong to me, horribly wrong, when there are SEOs and inbound marketers out there doing great ethical work, these cowboys and flyby nighters are giving the industry a bad name.

Now, I know this is life and I know that this happens in all industries, so I’m certainly not saying this is all about SEO, but in this case it was and it infuriates me that these great people (the client) are not getting what they are paying for. It also makes me mad that I could have landed an incredibly nice client and done some amazing work.

Perhaps I should email the client and touch base?

less than sign, forward slash, rant, greater than sign

A photographic catch up

by Chris M on December 17, 2012 in My Life, Photographs with 1 Comment

A photograph really is worth a thousand words. This post includes photographs I’ve snapped on my iPhone over the past couple of months, so if you’re a follower of my personal life, this should bring you a bit up to speed with what I’ve been doing. Enjoy :)

Thank you MINI South Africa

by Chris M on December 12, 2012 in Cars, My Life with 6 Comments

Over the past few months I’ve mentioned to my fiance a few times that I needed a good bag to cart my Macbook and some other equipment around in. I haven’t done a big search, but I have kept my eyes open and have only seen one potential bag, but it lacked additional pockets, and I wanted to avoid having chargers in the same area as the Macbook, for obvious reasons.

This morning my door bell went and a courier dropped off a big package. Now, yesterday I received an email from MINI South Africa saying, “A MINI delivery is on the way” so I figured it must be from them, but something so big, let’s see. I unpackaged the parcel and to my excitement I found this:

Absolutely perfect! The cover that flops over the bag is magnetised, which is super useful and a perfect match for Apple gear in my opinion. There are plenty of pockets and areas to store all sorts of things and the bag is of great quality – I’m absolutely over the moon!

Thank you very very much MINI South Africa!

What information, where?

by Chris M on November 27, 2012 in Business, Internet, My Life with No comments

For the most part of my life I’ve used all communication channels to advertise my life. iMod Blog was started many moons ago as a channel to keep my friends updated with my life and to assist others with all things digital and marketing, as well as the odd things here or there. Facebook and Twitter came along and I found myself following a very similar pattern for information distribution. I have no complaints nor problems, it was all about putting information out there that I felt was useful, funny or interesting. Of course, I used the channels for engagement too be it assisting someone, discussing a topic or the likes.

Today, or at least the last several months, I’ve found myself in an interesting position – what information should I share and through which channel. This all came into play when I started a company – clients find your Twitter handle and they take a peak, service providers friend you on Facebook and watch your updates, there are suddenly far more eyes on deck. It didn’t feel like this when I was employed, I was always careful about my image, but now it seems more important than ever. Deciding what to share and where is far more difficult than imagined.

There are folks who run and work for digital agencies around the world that I have huge respect for; they’re leaders in their industries and I follow them like a hawk to see what they’re doing and how they do things. Now, I don’t believe in replicating what someone else does at all as I believe individuality is crucial is being successful through carisma and the likes, but we’re mammals that learn by nature and if you’re following the right people you’re learning, so learning how others do things is important, for me at least. I started following a gentleman called John Doherty, he’s an SEO who works for a great company in New York City that does all things SEO, but he’s also a photographer and someone who loves to travel (even if it’s on his bicycle on the way to work). John’s a great guy and I really hope he doesn’t mind me writing about him here (bet he’ll be stoked about the backlink though, ha ha). Now, John preaches all things SEO, he’s an optimist and in my opinion he’s very intelligent, but not only in SEO, many other things too. His Twitter account consists of 90% inbound marketing stuff (doesn’t help that at the time of this post his second most recent tweet is about Kim Jong Un being the sexiest man in 2012), but take my word for it, 90% of his tweets are inbound marketing related with a strong focus on SEO. It’s not often that I see him tweet about things that are more personal and I start to wonder whether that’s the best approach.

(ok ok, enough about John now)

That is to say, keep your work interest related matters to the public forum that is Twitter and keep your more personal items to Facebook, where you have more control over privacy, lists and such? Do you put your personal information through Facebook and your carefully curate your Twitter account? I selected a handful of other people who are located closer to home and who run businesses and I definitely see a trend whereby the general message being put out on their Twitter account is business/work related, with the occasional twitpic of a sunset and the likes. I also ran a small test where I asked a handful of Twitter users questions that were somewhat off the work/business topic and was interested in seeing that 80% of them replied to me via DM rather than in the public space – the questions weren’t terribly personal either. Of course, keeping a topic (read: niche) going on a Twitter account is a great way to gain followers who are like minded, for example, if I engage in a discussion around SEO, get followed and then blog about my new shoes or going out to a party or falling off a chair whilst being drunk, they’ll probably decide to unfollow me, whereas, those people on Facebook are meant to be “friends” (oh how that makes me laugh) and would therefore appreciate the more personal updates.

I’m not going to get onto the topic of blogging, because for me that’s far bigger, I would need to password protect my personal posts and only grant access to those who ask and that’s a story for another day, but Twitter and Facebook, and the separation of information definitely does intrigue me and I’m fascinated by what people are doing. I read a fantastic article the other day shared by Gino Cosme (I think it was) entitled, “5 Reasons Why Your Online Presence Will Replace Your Resume in 10 years” and that something else that sparked this whole quest to find the best mix of what goes where.

Ultimately, I don’t think there’s a correct answer and it all boils down to what we choose to share, but if we’re moving into a day and age (we’re there already) where we’re represented so heavily through our social interactions and communications, I do believe that this is a topic with value and is worth the discussion.

What’s your opinion?

Do BMW South Africa have enough customers?

by Chris M on November 23, 2012 in Cape Town, Cars, My Life with 26 Comments

I’m not that guy who goes into car shops on the weekend and tries to act big, nor am I that guy who bounces around from car shop to car shop test driving cars for the hell of it, in fact, I intensely dislike test driving cars. So, when I go to a car shop it’s because I’m interested, and by the time I do, I’ve normally looked at my financials, looked at the resale value of my current car and so forth, so I go in there with a purpose and not to waste anybody’s time as I appreciate people’s time.

Last weekend my sister and I went down to BMW in Cape Town. I’ve been driving my Audi for a couple years and I feel it’s time to perhaps change, I would stick with Audi, their service is great, the guy I deal with takes me seriously and has always had my best interests in mind (I feel it’s fairly rare to establish a relationship like this), but Audi don’t have a car that I want – The A4 and A5 cabs are too big, the S3 is for kids and doesn’t have a soft top, the TT is beautiful but I can’t bring myself to get that and the Q-range is sexy, but I feel I’m not ready for a baby seat in the back (chuckle) and the R8, well, let’s just say that I appreciate the fact that paying off property is far wiser and if you’re going to spend money like that on a car, there are plenty of better options. So, that covers the Audi range and is why I’m not simply going in and taking that direction.

The 125i/135i cabriolet’s that BMW has are, to me, gorgeous. They’re similar to my A3 cabriolet, but have a few features that I wish mine had, the engines are also stronger and there’s a slightly better touch of elegance. I’ve eyed them out for a while now and that’s what lead me into BMW to have a chat. I was greeted by a guy called Shaun who was friendly, showed me the 125i and 135i, told me about the specs and gave me the change to sit inside one – he offered a test drive, but like I said, I don’t like test driving. I left with an awesome booklet and was rather excited at the idea of treating myself to a new car as this difficult year comes to an end – I’ve worked my butt off this year and felt I perhaps deserved to treat myself. In terms of finances, it wouldn’t cost much more than my car, so all in all it was a situation that looked fairly good. Shaun promised to email me through a quote on the Monday so I waited in anticipation.

It’s Friday today, it’s been almost a week and not a word, so I followed up this morning to which I received the following response:

“I tried calling you about four times an no answer an I was off from work on Tuesday an wensday had an small op on my mouth so sorry about that . What eaxactly would you like to know”

Say what?

I wasn’t greeted, I was made to feel like it was my fault and the spelling and grammar is just awful. Perhaps I’m just anal and perhaps I’m overreacting, I don’t think I am though.

Now, I admit that I don’t always answer my phone, I do this thing called work during the day, which often comprises of strategy to which I prefer to have my phone off so I can concentrate, but I always check for missed calls and voicemails – I have not received a voicemail and don’t see any missed calls that I haven’t responded to. I could be wrong and I certainly do make mistakes, but I’m quite efficient in this regard and don’t believe the error lies with me. That being said, the agreement was an email because he was going to send a quote through – quoting over the phone.. highly doubt that.

But in all seriousness, what’s the deal? Do BMW mark up their cars that much that they aren’t desperate for new sales? Have they got enough customers that they’re able to play their pieces like this? I’m no economist, but last I checked, one would imagine that car sales guys would push hard to close a deal, especially considering the time of year.

You tell me, am I overreacting or do you agree that this leaves a bitter taste in your mouth?

Update: I received a good response from BMW’s Twitter account, “You’re certainly not over-reacting. That’s not how we like to treat our customers & we apologise for the poor service. We are investigating this with the Dealer. Please send through your contact details and we will be in touch.“

The weekend

by Chris M on November 11, 2012 in Exercise, My Life with 3 Comments

I received a comment about week or so ago from an iMod reader who was concerned about the number of cycling posts I was doing so I’ve taken his comment and decided to change things here a little and rather give a bit of a more rounded update and not just post about my ride as I can see how that could be boring for many of you and I apologize for that. Although this is my blog and I feel that I never have to answer to anyone for what I blog about, but at the same extent I naturally want to provide my loyal readers with what they want. Work with my whilst I adjust things somewhat and if you missed my post about 5 Lessons I Learnt Opening a Business, please give that a read, I would love to hear what other entrepreneurs have to say. Talking of business, I wrote a post about Hiring Social Media-aware Designers & Developers and would love to hear if you agree with my thoughts.

The last two weeks have been incredibly busy, probably two of the busiest weeks of the entire year – my guess is that it’s because of the end of the year approaching and because we’re all starting to see Christmas decorations in the shop. A frantic 8 weeks leading up to Christmas to ensure that everything is done and that 2013 may be entered into with a positive start? I’m resigning to the fact that for the next 7 or so weeks, I’ll be putting my head down, working incredibly work and ensuring that everything is completely in control so that I can take a few days off over the Christmas and New Year holidays.

This week was, however, enjoyable – Fe and I had some good friends over for a braai on Friday evening, which was a lot of fun, great to catch up with everyone and great to share some good laughs. Saturday morning Ian and I missioned through to Anatomic to get our cycling shirts fitted, I’m having iMod Digital cycling shirts made for a few friends and we want to make sure they all fit perfectly. I’ll blog some designs and samples on the iMod Digital Blog once we’ve received them after production, I think you’ll like them. The rest of Saturday was spent shopping, watching the Boks win and a splash of Blackjack at the cashino in the evening.

I’ve been slacking on the exercise front and the last time I cycled was basically last week when I was in Tulbagh – pretty shabby to miss an entire week (or I think I cycled once in the week), so I pushed myself this morning despite it being 100 degrees outside, it was a good ride, I feel fantastic for doing it:

In other news, one of our dear friends has been in ICU for a week and the doctors aren’t entirely sure what’s wrong, it’s been difficult trying to understand what the outcome will be and we’re not sure how much longer he’s going to be in there. We’re praying and sending our thoughts to him every single day and trust that the doctors will diagnose the problem and treat it accordingly.

On a lighter note, I had a really great meeting last week with a potential client to take over their digital marketing. I’ve met with them, I’ve pitched and I’ve adjusted the proposal for them and it looks like the outcome is going to be positive – I want to land this deal for two reasons:

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting with the client, I left feeling inspired and motivated, and
It would be hugely beneficial to the company to go into 2013 with a new client.

Hold thumbs for me!

Right, I really need to go and hit the couch. I hope you’ve all had a wonderful weekend and I wish each and every one of you a fantastic week!

Feels like I should write, “xoxo” after that ;-)

All posts in My Life

Day 1: France

Flying our colours at the Argus

MINI Paceman launch event!

Thank you Heineken

The cheapest isn’t always the best

A photographic catch up

Thank you MINI South Africa

What information, where?

Do BMW South Africa have enough customers?

The weekend

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