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
Don’t be one of the 64.5% of marketers who say, according to a survey from R2integrated, that their companies have not increased revenue or profited from using social media. They’re doing it wrong.
MarketingProfs said 60.1% “marketing and business professionals cite lead generation as their primary source for using social media”, followed distantly by conversation monitoring at 26.9% and keeping up with the Jones at 5.1%
Generating and monitoring conversations about your business/products/brand are both good ways to be using social media, but that’s small potatoes compared to the potential. R2integrated’s survey sample was a mere 262 professionals, but I’d be willing to guess most businesses out there aren’t thinking big picture when it comes to social media. So it’s a good thing you’re here; you’re already ahead of the game.
Today, Matt from the team at 37signals posted a quote from Merlin Mann on the company blog that I think illustrates what’s going on here:
“I really feel like that combination of little, easy motor skills and clicking combined with feeling a little less bored for a minute is completely addictive to people…if you’re not mindful about the amount of your attention that goes to thinking about and consuming those things, you’re not going to be making good stuff, either for that medium or elsewhere. That’s what I got kind of hung up on, when I finally realized that all I was doing was eating and producing potato chips all day long.”
Are you producing (and consuming?!) potato chips?
Do you spend hours of your day refreshing your Google Analytics results? Are you feeling crispy from the unfocused effort you’ve been putting into your business’s social media marketing plan without many tangible results? Instead of trolling networking sites, spamming members, and scraping the bottom of the barrel for ways to make social media pay -
- develop meaningful content and
- cultivate a community that will promote it for you;
- think about ways to use social media within your business to increase efficiency, buy-in, or morale;
And if you need it, we can help…..
Facebook’s New Commenting System
Yep, the iPad 2 is rolling out today, but lost in the noise of that big (overhyped) announcement is bigger announcement with far-reaching, and longer-term consequences for social media. It’s the announcement of Facebook’s new Commenting System. Here’s the deal.
Facebook has created a plug-in that websites and blogs can use so when you comment on a website (let’s say it’s espn.com, nytimes.com, your sister’s blog) AND you’re logged in on Facebook, it will show your comment as a Facebook user/profile.
And, vice-versa.
The images below look identical, but they’re not. The top screenshot is , this is a screen shot of a comment I left on TechCrunch’s Page. You’ll notice that since this is a “public” site, you’ll see my Facebook name, title and description there If anyone on TechCrunch sees my post there- they can click on my Facebook name and if they want to- can connect with me. Make sense
Now look at screen shot below that one.. This is taken from a Facebook page. You’ll notice that when I commented ”yes, this is showing up on Facebook”, it automatically posted itself over to Techcrunch site- nifty eh?
Confused-?here is a 3 minute video describing it.- pop it open in full screen/HD to see it.
What does this mean? – Essentially 3 things…
What do you think? Comment below… (I tried earlier using this plugin but it’s still a bit buggy)