Farming Collapse

Don’t get me wrong, when properly exercised, land reform is a fundamentally sound principle.  Where land was unlawfully taken by the colonial white settlers in Zimbabwe, absolutely it must be reapportioned to those from whom it was taken.

Reports have shown that as few as four and a half thousand white farmers owned up to 32% of some of Zimbabwe’s most fertile land and had the pegging of land been properly coordinated to avoid the loss of jobs and the closure of some of the most productive farms in southern Africa, I’m sure I could sympathise.

But to drive north out of Harare on my last visit in 2006 and see a tobacco farmer close to tears at the limp, yellowed crops that once stood twice the height, and ten grain silos which could hold enough food for most of Zimbabwe and some of its neighbours empty and decaying, really drove it home to me that this was such a short-sighted shambles.

Super farms, generating hundreds, even thousands of jobs and millions of tonnes of food a year, split into 1/2Ha plots for individual claimants to farm for only themselves and their family is absolutely heart breaking.  Unemployment has skyrocketed and through economic mismanagement inflation has led to stores being unable to stock food as they can’t afford to sell it at government-stipulated prices, so there is none.

These shortages were further exacerbated by Operation Murambatsvina which Bob used to drive urban hubs back out into the rural areas that he finds easier to control with the food supplies.

Nice to see that Bob’s downsizing whilst the country slips further into famine and a cholera epidemic.

Rising Violence

Reports of violence are many and often, MDC supporters, members and leaders are often arrested, beaten and intimidated, violence between rival factions of the current ruling ZANU-PF party is just as common and increasing recently at an alarming rate.

Current Political Stalemate

Power sharing is the main focus of most of Zimbabwe’s international coverage, but unfortunatley Mugabe shows no sign of relenting key cabinet positions, thestory has been the same for months now.  Until governments like South Africa start to condemn this crisis and step in, we can only concentrate on helping those affected.

Anyway, enough of the moaning and onto the useful stuff.

How can you help?

Many charities are lined up to help Zimbabwe (i’ve listed a few in the resources section) but personally I feel like the one thing we should be ensuring is that safety and education of Zimbabwe’s youngsters. Once the most educated state in Africa, education is now one of the scarcest resources.

So if you have anything at all that would be useful for children’s schooling; books, clothes, CDs and toys, please send them to:

THE PASTOR
RICHARD MUPASU
P.O.BAG 1015
MUDZI
ZIMBABWE

More information here (they’re even looking for bras!)

Resources

So I’ll round up with some links to help those of you interested in what must be one of the most avoidable humanitarian crises in modern history:

http://www.zimbabwesituation.com – Daily news digest from local, neighbouring and international press.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/africa/2000/zimbabwe/ – BBC’s Zimbabwe: In depth section is excellent

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxfam_in_action/where_we_work/zimbabwe.html – Oxfam helping out with the cholera epidemic

http://www.zbf.org.uk/ – Zimbabwe benefit foundation

http://www.justgiving.com/hiz – Just giving page for a housing project

Image courtesy of Flickr - wwworks

I really enjoyed a post by Kate Morris on New Edge Media regarding the skillsets of PPC and SEO Managers, where they meet and where they differ.

I won’t go over that again but it did get me wistfully thinking about how much fun I’ve had acquiring these skills and sent me off on a jaunt along memory lane, reminiscing about the early days of search and being part (or sometimes all!) of a growing, learning search department.

Many of us’ll remember evolving from the small one-win-at-a-time initiatives, to the infusion of search into marketing mixes and strategic growth across an organisation.  Doorway pages certainly seem a long time ago.

This journey is often a personal one, differs vastly in speed dependent on industry and of course is never completed – so pooling experiences from a couple of jobs along the way as well as some great tidbits I’ve heard, here’s my take on the growing pains of a pre-pubescent search dept.

Stage 1: Selling search marketing into an organisation

Situation: ’90’s corp’ has decided that they need a handful of PPCs and 6 or so yards of essy-o so you interview, try to talk in depth about your experiences without dazzling anyone with such mystical fare as H1s or keyword density and it works – you’re in, get cracking!

Team: It’s just you; all other resource is begged, borrowed or stolen – it sinks in, seriously – just you. Oh snap.

Main objectives/focus: You’re doing it all, setting up and tactically managing the PPC, consulting and winning over technical teams to unravel the mess that is the company’s (usually 6 year-old) in-house CMS.  SEO at this point is almost exclusively the reconfiguration of sites to be visible, clear to navigate and as irridiculous as you can muster the energy to make it.

You get the opportunity to communicate the results of your hard work in rare, besuited presentations to the board.  They see trend lines going up, they nod.  They ask you why we aren’t number one for our obscure internal name for something irrelevant.  It’s frustrating, tiring and often all but invisible but by god is it rewarding when you see those sales creeping up and your vanity searches reaping more than a disappointed slump.

Most tested skills: tenacity, communication, prioritisation, forging relationships and organisation, curiosity.

Stage 2: Sophistication in SEO, Scale in PPC

Situation: Finally you think – you can start to move away from answering everything with ‘because that’s just how you should do it’ to ‘see these proven results? *tapping screen*’.

You need to shoulder off the day-to-day campaign management and creative link-building.  With more resource you know how quickly your avg. ROI would be 30% up and your already pretty vast keyword portfolio an order of magnitude vaster.

You start hunting.  First to fall prey to your charm is that friendly sales analyst who ‘looks after’ the web stats, they help you show the true value and conversions all your sweat is contributing; then that bored print copywriter who wants to hone their calls to action, they get your ad text popping.

You get some much bigger cheques signed for messrs Google and Overture.  Hey, this search business might not be such a fad after all, although this is probably also the point where you realise that everybody is an SEO expert. Heated discussion ensues. You think, “If he calls another meeting because a company sent him a we-can-get-you-to-#1-in-Google-for-£200-quid email I’m taking up floristry.”

Team: You’ve managed to make a case for, and hire support, whether your main focus is natural or paid search, this is a god send and you can look up from the now and start to think about sustainable traffic growth.

Main objectives/focus: Now is the time for big hits.  Site structure guidelines are being adhered to, 5-figure PPC budgets are rolling your way, you’ve got a seat at the project board table and new products are ready for googlebot lovin’ straight off the bat.  Remedial SEO is a thing of the past (except for the odd ‘microsite’ that pops up now and again).

Things are still very hands-on but you’ve got the respect of the tech teams through results, the writers and product teams are loving the sales they’re seeing from prospective keyword targeting.  You are buzzing, the heart and soul.

Most tested skills: Influencing, motivating, analysis and commitment to building a team, creativity in link-building, proposing and budget-securing. Ego ;o)

Stage 3: Looking forward to strategic, enterprise-level search programmes

Situation: Up until now, you’ve been relatively inward-looking.  What are our traffic levels?  Which keywords convert best for us?  Now that the ship’s on an even keel it’s time to dust off the sextant and take a look around, further than your immediate competitors.  You know you’re getting traffic but is it a lot?  How much is out there and are you getting your share?  Ranks are topping out and keyword portfolios bulging but growth is slowing; there must be more demand out there, surely?

Team: By now, you’ve likely got your very own analyst on board, and a couple of execs.  They’re either called the SEO guy and the PPC guy, or the fluffy one and the geeky one, dependent on who you’ve found and how best your creative/scientific work is divided up.
Your training programmes have created a legion of supporters at ground level and it turns out you took the right path, getting the whole company into SEO rather than guarding the knowledge and telling them to back off when pockets of the company started pushing ahead alone.  We’ve all felt that warm rush of rage up our cheeks when someone undermines you with their (usually wrong) insta-SEO knowledge gained from ‘a friend in IT’.

Main objectives/focus: finding more growth is tough but you’re so used to optimising your tiny team’s time that it’s just another challenge and you start getting creative in response to market movements.  Whole product launches are created from an idle poke through Hitwise or Google (with SEO for Firefox of course!).  You are creating website structures and taxonomies that are profoundly relevant to their target searcher from the get-go.  Who’d have thought it would still be this rewarding, this far along?

Most tested skills: inspiration, resource optimisation, drive.

Discuss:

I’ve tried to intentionally keep this post light and top line.  Anyone got any juicy horror stories?