Author Archive for tgoodridge

The World’s First Social Magazine?

Remember all that hype around the iPhone 4? Biggest product launch ever, Apple and AT&T websites being crushed by demand, long lines at the store? Well, in the world of social media, a similar thing happened last week- the launch of FlipBoard, the “world’s first social magazine”.

The hype has died down a bit, and I’ve had a chance to download this application and play with it. Here is a review, followed by a quick video.

The Basics
Flipboard is a new, free app available exclusively on the iPad (for now). The Flipboard app essentially turns your time on facebook or twitter  into a dynamic and visually stunning experience. The application turns all of those tweets, updates, photos and links from your social circle into an intuitive, easy-to-read format. Flipboard also has “channels” for lots of other content, like technology, tech influencers, food, sports, etc. These channels, like the Facebook and Twitter channels are vetted and shared by chosen “experts” and influencers in the space. If you’re confused, don’t worry, that’s what the video is for. Take a look.

(Before we evaluate Flipboard, it should be noted that Flipboard doesn’t seem like a one hit wonder. Take a quick look at their investors, and they are a legitimate offering. The co-founders of Facebook, Twitter, Ashton Kutcher and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Pretty impressive bunch.)

The Pros
- Intuitive and very easy to use. It is the perfect app for consuming media. It fits right into the Ipad’s goal of being the “couch technology”. Something to do in your leisure time (if you have any left). On the couch, waiting to board a plane, at doctor’s office, before you go to bed, etc. I think it’s ideal for those 15-30 minute stretches of time between activities.
- Personalized for you. As mentioned before, it’s an experience for YOU. Its’ your social sphere and all of it’s related content delivered directly to you- when and where you want it.
- Advertising opportunities for “visual” brands.  If you are Hermes, the Gap, a luxury safari company, or  a gourmet food company, it’s hard to tell your story in 140 characters, blog posts or status updates. You need a visually stunning way to present your brand, and here is a perfect opportunity to do that. With the format of Flipboard, it allows big space for imagery (advertisements!) to tell a company story.

The Cons
I’ll call this “opportunities for improvement” :-)

- Content needs to be fresher. It seems as if Flipboard only refreshes your Facebook/Twitter feed once or twice a day. According to their Twitter stream- they’re working on this
- Why isn’t Linkedin involved? They should be. Maybe because of the investors? ;-)
- Is this legal? For the other “sections” Flipboard essentially scrapes the web for good content. If you are reading a NYTimes article on Flipboard and click on an a Flipboard-sponsored ad, why should Flipboard get the money? Its not their content to begin with, right?. For more on this read Joel Johnson’s excellent article.
- Other Sections need some work. When you first set up Flipboard, you can add 7 other “sections” of content. Food, NYT, TED, sports. etc. For now, avoid the Flipboard-branded channels.
For example, the sports channel I chose kept feeding me stories about tennis. Not that I don’t like tennis, but 7 tennis stories in a row, and I was immediately turned off.
- Limited interaction possibilities. It must be pointed out again that this application is for consumption, not interaction. If you want to add a new tweet, make a status update on facebook, you can’t.

What’s Next?
I think this is a watershed moment for publishers, and they should take note. Flipboard makes consuming media personal and tailored to you, which is the holy grail of publishing. If you could wake up every morning and go to ONE place for all of your personal and professional content, wouldn’t you?  This is like what iGoogle and MyYahoo was ten years ago, only much much better. It’s new content delivered to you that’s always fresh, delivered in a refreshing, “consumable” way, and now, it’s mobile.

What do you think? Is this Flipboard thing here to stay?

Should your business be on foursquare? Let’s get some PERSPECTIVE…

2010  is the year of geo-location, and now the name “foursquare” (the business leader in this space) is creeping across the desks of CMO’s and marketing types around the world. They’re now asking themselves the question, “Should my business be on foursquare?”

Well, maybe. So read on..

Argument for foursquare
- 1.8 million users to date, one of the fastest growing social media technologies out there
- Big brands are doing it, (Starbucks, NYTimes, Zagat, CNN, WSJ) we should follow along.
- We’re a retail establishment. We have a local presence in XYZ city and should engage with customers

Argument against foursquare
- We’re NOT a retail establishment (duh)
- It’s just another flashy social media play, we don’t have time for yet another social media thing
- How do we know it’s worth it? Are people actually “checking in” to (insert name of your business here)?

We could spend days debating the pros and cons here, so let’s not debate. Let’s educate ourselves and try and answer the last two points above. To help, I’ve just tried out Awareness’, “foursquare Perspectives” a brand new tool that helps enterprise marketers:

a. take inventory of their existing (customer-generated) presence on foursquare
b: deliver comprehensive reports to uncover trends across multiple foursquare venues.

Testing out foursquare Perspectives
So, let’s pretend that I’m a marketing person at Massachusetts General Hospital here in Boston. I chose MGH because, well, they aren’t necessarily a “retail” establishment per se, but they do have a physical presence, and actually, multiple locations, right?  I tested it out by doing a quick search here for Massachusetts General Hospital. Here are some screen shots of what came up.

Quick Reactions:
Well, if I’m a marketing person at MGH, I have just learned the following things…
-There are three MGH “campuses” that my customers are checking in to on foursquare.  Should I, as an administrator/marketer set up other official MGH sites for the many campuses/offices I have?
-The main campus is the most popular one by far, I should focus all of my effort on marketing there…
-Looks like my “customers” -patients, employees and volunteers, are checking in pretty regularly (repeats ratio of 3.6)  how could/should I engage them?
-I have roughly 300 customers that I can engage with using foursquare. What should I/could I do. (interesting conundrum here…as a hospital, do you want regular “customers” – i.e. patients checking in often??!)

Next Steps for You as a Marketer
- By using this tool, you’ve just tapped into the magic of foursquare and been given a quick, visible snapshot of the value of foursquare to share with your team. Maybe you’ll act on it right away, or maybe you’ll wait and see, but at least you have a snapshot in time for where your company stands
- Spend some more time on foursquare. See if you can identify, interact with, or somehow connect with your “mayor”. What works, what doesn’t?
- Take a look at Awareness’s new Social Marketing Hub. This answers your question of the “I don’t have time to do all of this social media work” If you’re convinced of the power of social media, and want to be publish, manage, measure and engage with your customers across all the major social platforms, maybe this is for you?

How to Jazz Up Your Next Presentation….

We’ve all been there. That Trade Show, team meeting or company meeting where someone drones on giving another boring powerpoint presentation.

Well, thankfully at last week’s Social Media Breakfast #18 (hosted by Bob Collins and Communispace- thank you!) we were treated to three clever presentations by Robert Davis of PJA, Pawan Deshpande of HiveFire, Inc. and Andrew Davis of Tippingpoint Labs.

My favorite presentation was by Andrew Davis.  He took a subject as simple, likeable, and “relate-able” like meatloaf (?!) and gave us a crash course in “Content Creation in the New Age of Search and Engagement”.

Don’t take my word for it- take a look at his presentation below (click on arrow) and tell us what you think. If you want to bring it to life, click on the a quick one-minute video (he gets the crowd roaring at around 20 seconds) to get a feel for it…

Food for Thought
So, while we’re talking about meatloaf or “Meat Loaf”, here’s what I’m taking away from his presentation…

- Don’t just use Powerpoint. His presentation was put together by Prezi, a new platform I’ll probably use for my  next talk at the Apple Store. It’s interactive, fun, and is designed in a way to give the audience context and a framework for whatever subject you’re talking about. Think about it, without even being in the room, you get a pretty good feel about what he said and how he said it.

- Poke fun at yourself. If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at? You’ll notice the Jim Henson/Muppets reference early in the presentation. He does a terrific Grover impression which loosened up the audience. (NOTE: if you’re not good at impressions, don’t even thinking about trying to pull off what he did)

- Tell a story. This is the cardinal rule of giving presentations, but many people STILL forget to do this. Choose a topic or concept (who can’t relate to meatloaf?!) that your audience understands

Any other thoughts? how do YOU Jazz up your Presentation?

11 Tips to Make Your Brand’s Social Presence Social

Today’s post is guest blog post from Jamie Wallace, a friend here in the social media space (and, as it turns out, a neighbor here on the North Shore of Massachusetts!) She’s a great writer, a well-connected marketer, and someone to keep on your radar screen…) She puts into words what so many people are trying to say, only she does it better, so read on….

Is your brand’s social avatar the company logo, or a photo of a real person? Are your social updates mostly news items, or conversations? Just how social is your brand’s social presence?

More and more companies are venturing onto the social scene, but not all of them are taking full advantage of the opportunities. The key word in social network is “social.” It’s not “broadcast” or “update” or “official” or “corporate.” When some brands start out in social media, they make the mistake of handling communications in a business-as-usual style that falls flat on venues like Facebook and Twitter.

Whether you’re just getting your feet wet or optimizing an existing approach, here are 11 tips to help you get your brand ready for a social close-up:

Complete your profile: There are few things more off-putting than an incomplete profile. It only takes a few minutes to fill out your company name, URL, and description. Do it.

Be creative: When writing up your company description, don’t just grab the existing corporate line and call it a day. Think about the audience. Tailor your company description to include how what you do benefits them. Don’t be afraid to include something a little personal or cheeky or both. Humor – when used judiciously – goes a long way.

Use faces instead of logos: There is some argument that logos are more easily recognized in news feed streams. However, I’d argue that a picture of a real person creates a faster, stronger connection. Putting a face on a social presence brings the experience one step closer to a real relationship. It also makes it easier for people to recognize you in real life – at conferences, for instance.

Be a person, not a company: Along the same lines, I recommend that your brand be represented by a person (or people) rather than an anonymous corporate entity. People are more apt to engage with an individual than with an organization, and they will engage on a different level if they feel they are dealing with a real person.

Communicate consistently: It takes some planning and diligence, but – as in life – half the battle is just showing up. The people who see the greatest benefit from their social efforts are the ones who put in the time.

Inject personality: As the name implies, the social Web is meant to be social. That means that it’s about more than just publishing information and generating status updates; it’s about sharing personal opinions. Sometimes, those opinions are about a business-related topic, sometimes they are about True Blood or the World Cup. People want to engage with real people, not publishing robots.

Add value: It’s been said nine ways to Sunday, but I’ll say it again anyway: bring something to the party. If you retweet something, add a little note of your own to explain why you think the content is worth sharing. If you leave a comment on a blog or a Facebook status, make it something more than just “great post.” Post alternate theories, conflicting opinions, relevant resources, additional examples – add a little something-something.

Focus your efforts: Using the tired analogy of social Web as cocktail party, it is often said that you can’t hope to have meaningful conversations with each person there. Instead, pay attention to which people and conversations repeatedly attract your attention and focus on developing more intimate relationships with that subset of your network. Using lists in Twitter and Facebook and pulling favorite blogs into a Reader subfolder are easy ways to isolate your core circle of friends for concentrated conversation. On the flip side, be mindful of where your intended audience is hanging out and who they’re talking with and find a gracious way to insert yourself into those conversations.

Make other people shine: One of the easiest ways to make new friends on the social Web is to compliment someone’s work by sharing it. For the highest impact, you should do this manually (vs., for instance, automatically retweeting every post from a particular account) and include your own commentary. For every self-promotional tweet/status update you publish, you should put up at least one update promoting someone else’s work. (ED. NOTE- I WOULD RECOMMEND THE 80/20 RULE HERE. 20% ABOUT YOU. 80% EVERYTHING ELSE…)

Have conversations: This is why we’re here. Don’t be afraid to get in there and actually connect! People on social networks are inherently social – they want to talk to people. Make their day – respond to a question, pose a question, reply to an update, LOL at a joke. It takes only a few seconds to make these small connections, but they can make a world of difference when it comes to building a real relationship.

Start now: Speaking of relationships, start building networks and relationships before you need them. If you are launching a project or planning an event, don’t assume that you can jump on the social scene at the eleventh hour and rally support. Social marketing is not a quick fix, it must be cultivated and nurtured. The ramp up can take some time, but the long-term benefits of a solid, responsive network are priceless.

Jamie Wallace is an independent copywriter and marketing strategist who focuses on content and social marketing for small businesses and start-ups. You can read more of her writing at the Savvy B2B Marketing blog where she has way too much fun with her 5 Savvy Sisters.

Great content, right? For those of you interested in writing a guest post here on Dialogue- please send me a quick email/tweet/message.- thanks.

“FaceTime” with Steve Jobs, don’t mislead your customers…

Some FaceTime with Steve Jobs

Dear Steve,

I love Apple. I have a Macbook Pro, an iPad and now a fancy schmancy iPhone 4…I’m wondering if I can get a little “FaceTime” with you now…have a minute?

After a full day spent with the iPhone 4, one of the best features your new phone has is its HD camera. It shoots VERY well in HD (720p) Your device can easily replace the Flip. Why buy a FLIP for $200 when you can get HD video, a camera, a phone and amazing technology for the same price as a brand new iPhone 4…?

Ok, so that’s the good news, here’s where you completely drop the ball….For a company that’s made it’s money on the user experience and simplicity of use, there is NO way you can easily share your HD video you just shot on your iPhone 4.

The ONLY way I can share my HD video with the world is by simply (!) taking the following NINE steps

• Shoot video
• Plug iPhone 4 into your computer (hopefully a macbook, I haven’t figured out how a PC can do this)
• Open up iPhoto (hopefully it will recognize your iphone)
• Select video to download
• Open up iMovie (again, hopefully you have this, or something similar)
• Import Movie from iphoto- create a new “event”
• Create a new “project” in iMovie
• Drag your new event into your new project
• Then (and only then!) you can Share your movie via YouTube and be given the option to choose “HD”

Easy huh?

Ok Stevie, here’s what you need to do…

1. Tell people that you can’t share HD movies with your iPhone 4. Because, well, you can’t…
2. Tell people that the brand new iMovie App ($4.99) doesn’t do this either. (can i get my money back please?)
3. Talk to YouTube and tell them that it’s your problem so that other YouTube users don’t blame it on you…

Thanks for listening!

Tyson

Impressions on the iPhone 4- Part 1

Just picked up the new iPhone 4 today. The hype is legitimate. I spoke with one of the team members there today who told me that they had 500 reservations (the maximum) for pick up that day and an undisclosed amount of iPhone 4 available for first-come, first-served. So, there will probably be 1,000 or so people walking out of that store today with new phones. Compare that to last year’s announcement of the 3GS. They had 350 people come the entire DAY…

So far, the new iPhone 4 is living up to all the accolades- for the most part.. Here are some quick reactions…

• The new “retina” display lives up to its billing. Incredibly clear.
• “Face time” (the live talk/chat) feature is VERY VERY cool, but you obviously need  someone else who has an iPhone 4 and you need to be talking over wifi, NOT 3G, so don’t plan on having a video conference when you are out and about- it simply can’t happen. You need to be sitting still on a wireless network. Will it work on planes and trains with their own wifi? Not sure yet. It also won’t work with another phone or network. So, will this drive more people to the new iphone? or will they wait?
• Weight. It feels heavier (i.e.- better) First reaction is obviously the “squarer” feel and glass on both sides of the camera. Buuut, at night time or in the dark, it could be tricky to see which side is up. Positive side here is that the metal ring around the frame is actually an antenna, and I already notice better reception at the office.
• Multi-tasking. Very cool feature allows you, to well, multitask. Good for us social media/ADD types…
• Video: The jury is still out on this one, because well, Apple CLAIMS that you can shoot in HD but you can’t – yet. (trust me, I’ve tried everything)

What I CAN do is compare the Flip HD Mino to the iPhone4. I took 2 identical 14 second videos with the Flip and the iPhone. I’ll let you be the judge and I welcome your comments below…

Eat, Drink and Be Social- The Thank You Edition.

Dennis Crowley, Mike Schneider and Alexa Andrzejeweski (photo by Derek Wilmot)

By now you may have heard about an event held in Cambridge earlier this week combining the best minds in Social Media and Restaurants/Foodies/bloggers and more. I won’t recap the event for you because many others did (see below). Thanks everyone!

http://blogs.a-g.com/wp/?p=6152
http://sarahwallace.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/my-take-away-from-eat-drink-be-social/
http://thebostonfoodie.blogspot.com/2010/05/foodies-and-social-media.html
http://sierratierra.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/business-advice-tapas-from-food-and-social-media-conference/
http://bostinnovation.com/2010/05/24/eat-drink-and-be-social-bringing-together-local-and-national-tech-foodies/
http://www.grangehallmedia.com/2010/05/eat-drink-be-social-wrap-up/#more-75

But what I WILL do is thank the people that made it possible.

Eric Schwarz over at Grange Hall Media- he created the logo and the catchy name. The next version of this event won’t be called “Eat, Drink and Be Social” because well, Eric has other plans for the name. So stay tuned for a new name for a similar event announced in the next week or so. If you’d like the chance to pick the new name (and get 5 comp tickets to the next event- head on over here.)

Derek Wilmot. Pictures tell a thousand words, and well- take a look at these pictures that he took. If you are ever interested in hiring a top notch photographer for your event- he gets it.

Lindsay Pollard from Arrangements. Did you notice the flowers? Hope you did, and hope you hire her for your next event.

Ellie O’Keefe from Nestle Waters. During the event we didn’t drink from your standard plastic bottle of Poland Spring. We enjoyed Pelligrino and Aqua Panna in bottles. After all, we’re foodies.

Dante De Magistris. On Sunday night, the panelists were treated to a custom-designed dinner for us, a 6-course feast that took us about 2 hours to eat. A BIG Thank you goes to Jessica and Dante over in Cambridge for opening up their hearts, their kitchen, and their restaurant to us.

Joselin Mane and Boston Tweetup. Great promotional video, great publicity for the event, and stay tuned because Joselin is going to share some video excerpts from the panel with Mike Schneider, Alexa and Dennis.

Christine Major and Awareness. Remember that food you had on Sunday night at Dante? That was Awareness. Thank you Christine!

John Pepper and Boloco: For the inspired burritos on Monday afternoon. We were dying to have John attend, but he was out of town. Next time John, next time.

B. Good. This was my first time meeting Jon Olinto face to face AND tasting one of his burgers. Jon tells a great story, has a fantastic restaurant business, and I’m happy to be part of his family. (I just don’t want to run a marathon in a burger suit)…

Below are some sample pictures from the event- more of them can be found here.

Mike Schneider and Alexa Andrzejewski (photo by Derek Wilmot)

The program (photo by Derek Wilmot)

Alexa Andrzejeweski and Dennis Crowley (photo by Derek Wilmot)

Leighann Farrelly: Yelp, Aaron Cohen, @eatboston (photo by Derek Wilmot)

Jody Adams: Rialto, Barbara Lynch, BLGruppo (photo by Derek Wilmot)

Mary Catherine Deibel , Naomi Kooker, Amy Traverso, Leighann Farrelly (photo by Derek Wilmot)

Justin Levy (photo by Derek Wilmot)

(photo by Derek Wilmot)

Derek Wilmot and Dennis Crowley

Flowers by Arrangements (photo by Derek Wilmot)

Jon Olinto: B Good, Naomi Kooker (photo by Derek Wilmot)

The Menu from Sunday night at Restaurant Dante

Sun Tzu: The Art of Social Media…

I was talking to a friend the other night and, very impressively in my opinion, he quoted Sun Tzu:  ”strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory” but “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”

The concept is that having a strategy will ultimately bring you victory, but tactics alone won’t get you anything. You don’t have to be fighting a war to use this concept; it comes into play for every goal you have. As I drove home, I naturally started thinking about how the concept applies to social media and a quick search proved I wasn’t alone.

Strategy always comes first?
That was the consensus among the social media heavy-hitters (including our own Aaron Strout!) in a terrific blog post conducted by Lee Odden about a month ago. Here’s a quick review…

Shel Israel offered and enlightening quote from Louis Carol’s Cheshire cat: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” He said you need to know WHY you want to use social media and establish specific objectives first, then use those to shape the tactics you choose.

Shannon Paul added that the real trick is defining strategy: “a strategy is not a timeline or a goal, even though these elements are often included in what people refer to as a strategy document. The actual strategy piece is the spirit with which you approach others and engage with them.” She always warned that social media evangelists in an organization need to empathize with people who don’t “get” the WHY of social media strategy intutively, and work hard to articulte strategies clearly and seperately from whatever tactic is hot at the moment.

But one of my favorite comments was from Des Walsh, who said “Tactics are fun, strategy is boring” and added the second half to Sun Tzu’s advice: “All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” His argument was that strategies allow organizations to manage a process intelligently, measure progress, and adjust as circumstances change.

What about flexibility?
And circumstances are changing in social media. Constantly. That was Guy Kawasaki’s argument for starting with any form of social media marketing, because it’s easy to change directions. And you have to be able to change directions, because the no one even really knows what role social media will have for the long term.

The goal is to do more business. Social-media is a means to that end…Don’t focus on some kind of high-level strategy because no one really knows how to use social media yet. Focus on tactics: Get more followers, make them happy, promote your stuff to them every once in a while,” he said, and Joseph Jaffe agreed, saying the industry is still in the “bright and shiny object syndrome” phase.

But Toby Bloomberg said the overflow of new tools and tactics every quarter actually makes stragey more important: establishing that first, she said, allows a business to focus only on those tools/tactics that fit with its broader goals. She added, “You do have goals? Oh, that’s another conversation.”

What’s your philosophy?
Unfortunately, in my opinion, most of the responders didn’t focus on the points that Debbie Weil and David Alston made: if you’re not the CEO, it’s a long road to establishing any social media strategy in the first place. Alston advocated against integrating specific goals into a strategy for companies just starting down that road, saying that the C-suite doesn’t want to hear about how popular/effective/ubiquitous any social platform is today, they want to hear a strategy. He said “…borrow one if you need to. How could you go wrong with a strategy like: make listening to the voice of our community/customers central to how we make decisions as an organization.”

Weil added: “What’s tough in the 1st step in a social strategy: adopting the social media mindset”.

So what’s the bottom line?
Social media marketing is a loop that starts with internal buy-in. That creates the opportunity for developing a specific strategy, which in turn generates a method for adopting relevant tactics. You can then measure the effectiveness of those tactics, and use data to appropriately adjust your strategy as necessary. The result is a truly effective campaign that, ultimately, increases your bottom line. And that’s something we can all agree on…

A Social Media Breakfast….

Living in Boston, we’re lucky to be surrounded by some of the smartest social media minds in the biz. And, once a month (or almost) we’re lucky enough to bring all of those minds together for a Social Media Breakfast (The SMB was started by friend Bryan Person, and he has passed the torch to Bob Collins, who has carried it well.

Thanks to Diane Hessan and Geoff Hall at Communispace, we were treated to a smorgasbord of great insight from Aaron Strout, Kyle Flahery, and Edward Boches from Mullen. Unfortunately, I missed a bit of Aaron’s and Kyle’s presentation, but here are some quick nuggets to share with y’all

There are five keys to brand advocacy. Here are 5 simple things to remember….

Content: Take content from anywhere- from your company, your client, whoever. Be unique. Edward showed this great example of a fellow Mullen employee crashing into the door with a coffee cup. this simple piece of content ended up on the Ellen DeGeneres show.

Invent an Experience. So what happens when you have a passion for the Super Bowl and the brands that play in the same space? Why not record all of the real-time chatter about these brands during the actual Super Bowl. Edward and the team at Mullen created “Brand Bowl“- ending up with 310 million recorded impressions- not bad eh?

Let people have a voice. Best example of this is what Burberry is doing in the space. Let people provide their own pictures and video of their Burberry experience?

Conversation strategy. Don’t just let the conversation happen. Have a strategy about what people can talk about, how they can talk about it, and how you’ll engage and monitor it.

Have a Magic Formula: His magic formula is pretty simple…..

• Break things into into little pieces. Make it easy for some people (employees, customes, and advocates) to understand and digest
• Give them a pyschic reward. Edward brought this little robot with him, we all helped it get to the front of the room. People want to be part of the process
• Trust the community. Sure, there’s the story of United Airlines, Dominos Pizza, and Nestle, but don’t be afraid. Build your community before you need it.
• Don’t be afraid to ask. Your evangelists (if they trust you) Would love to tell your story. Ask them. Encourage them
• Have a big smile. Share your appreciation, optimism, passion amd enthusiasm

NOTE: a last minute gems from Aaron…

“Key thing is getting social media from your brain to your heart”. Once it’s there, you’ll have that a-ha moment

For any comments, gems I missed, please add in comments below!

Eat, Drink, and Be Social….

The best way to teach social media is to find a topic that a person has a passion for. Adam Cohen of Rosetta spells this out perfectly in a recent (ok- a year ago) blog post.

So I thought to myself, I LOVE food (my waistline will prove it). Why not bring together other passionate foodies (restaurants owners, chefs, caterers and food bloggers) and help them learn even more about how to combine their love of food with social media.

Sure, there’s Twitter and Facebook, but there’s much, much more out there….

Foodspotting: A terrific new application. Find dishes, not just restaurants. Let’s say you’ve just arrived in Maine and are looking for the BEST Lobster Roll. It may be at a roadside shack,a food truck, or (gasp) Red Lobster. Why not go to Foodspotting first, take a look at some pictures (with user-generated “Noms” or Likes) and find yourself the best Lobster Roll in Maine..

FourSquare: Geolocation meets retail. Let’s say you’re a frequent customer at a local restaurant. Use your mobile phone to “check in” at this restaurant. If you’re a regular there, wouldn’t it be nice to be recognized as the “mayor” of the establishment? If you’ve checked in more than anyone else, bingo, you’re the “mayor”, and if you are a smart/savvy restaurateur, you’d reward them with something, right? Starbucks is doing it, Harvard is doing it, and a local establishment here in Boston, Boloco is doing it. And doing it very well actually. They’ve actually turned this into a cause-related marketing campaign to reward the mayor AND a local non-profit.

Video: Bring your food/dining experience to your customer. If they haven’t been to your restaurant yet, why not bring it to them? Create a video, interview your chef, highlight your special of the day. Heck, take a picture of it and upload it to Foodspotting..

So much more to talk about it here, but if you’re a foodie and you live in the Boston area, I’d love to meet a fellow foodie at my May 24th Event

Some of the best social media minds in Boston (and fellow foodies) will be there to guide you through it all. They are: Mike Langford, Jeff Cutler, Justin Levy, Mike Schneider, Aaron Cohen