Hi. I’m Ed Charles, a Melbourne-based freelance journalist with a special interest in social media. I split my time writing about business and food and drink for a mix of daily newspaper sections, magazines and websites. I also run several blogs, advise on and can help on setting up cost effective practical and easy to use search engine optimised websites with all those great web2.0 features.
WRITING
A selection of recent articles is available on the Portfolio section of this site. Here are some of the recent media I have written for:
- Herald Sun - The weekly Extrabite food and drink column and features
- GQ - August/September 08 issue coming soon.
- World Food - SBS’s new food website.
- The Australian - Monthly Entrepreneur liftout
- The Australian - Weekly Wealth liftout
- The Weekend Australian - Travel and Indulgence
- IN THE BLACK - The CPA’s monthly business magazine
- Henry - Henry Buck’s occasional magazine
RESTAURANT REVIEWING
I reviewed restaurants for The Age Good Food Guide 2008 and The Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Guide 2008. I also reviewed for the Golden Plate Awards in both the Geelong Otway region in 2006 and 2007 and in the Mornington Peninsula in 2006. I also have reviewed restaurants on my food blog Tomato since 2005.
- Tomato - restaurant reviews (warning: may contain offensive food and bad language)
SPEAKING
I am available to speak on the disjoin between traditional media and social media. Specifically, I speak on how small businesses can harness social media and free blogging tools for marketing. I also speak on how businesses need to integrate social media and blogs into their marketing and PR plans. Recently I have spoken at:
- Melbourne Food and Wine Festival 2008 - Out of the Frying Pan (How to blog)
- Restaurant and Catering Victoria - Doing Better Business Series (Media Essentials)
- Restaurant 08 - Restaurant reviews - no such thing as a bad press?
- Restaurant 08 - Making you website work for you (search marketing)
SOCIAL MEDIA
I run the popular Melbourne-focused food and wine blog Tomato which attracts some 30,000+ page views each month. I also established the group blog Very Cheap Eats and Food and Wine Daily, which is still in development.
- Tomato - An insider’s guide to eating and drinking in Melbourne
- Very Cheap Eats - Eating out at under $20
- Food and Wine Daily - A guide to the best food writing on the web (in development)
- Facebook - My profile
- Linkedin - My resume
- del.icio.us - My del.icio.us bookmarks
- Google Reader - Items of note from my feed reader
- Flickr - Mainly food photostream
- Youtube - Video experiments
- Twitter - Micro blogging
- Friendfeed - Everything in one place (in theory)
WEBSITES AND BLOGS
I can help set up easy to update and cost effective blogs and websites with all those great Web2.0 features including RSS, comments, video, audio and so on. I can help set-up with the key blog platforms such as Wordpress, Movable Type, Typepad and Blogger. These all can also be used as content management systems for websites. They make updating a website as easy as pressing save in Microsoft Word.
I can also advise on marketing through social sites and blogs and provide coaching.