Hi. I’m Ed Charles, a Melbourne-based freelance journalist. I also help businesses confused by social media with practical plans that win followers and customers. 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.
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:
- SBS Food – SBS’s new food website.
- The Australian – Monthly Entrepreneur liftout
- The Punch – News Ltd’s adventure in group blogging
- Ad News – The weekly Stir Friday opinion column
- Melbourne Cup Carnival Magazine – coffee culture
- Herald Sun – The weekly Extrabite food and drink column and features
- GQ – on Melbourne restaurants and bars
- 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
- HBA Shine Magazine – healthy recipes
RESTAURANT REVIEWING
Currently I am building the Bite Melbourne iPhone review app crowd sourcing reviews from bloggers. I reviewed restaurants for the soon to be launched melbourne Coffee Guide, 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:
- Restaurant 09 – Talk Business: Gen Y Dining – Meeting Their Demands
- Restaurant 09 – Café Live: The Gen Y Café
- Good Food & Wine Show 2009 Sauvignon Blanc tasting panel forum
- Victorian Tourism Conference 2009 – Brand building through social media
- 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.