People always ask about monitoring tools for social media. There are plenty of very expensive solutions out there designed for big brands. But I suspect for many food and drink businesses costs are always going to be an issue simply because many aren’t that big. Luckily some of the best tools are free, although if you do feel inclined to pay for any probably Hootsuite is the best. Some of these tools have the ability to pre assign activity, but […]
Ideas for the digital world
Specifications for a restaurant website
If you want to see what it should look like then visit El Loco in Sydney and check it on your pc and mobile phone. 1. Front page blog like functionality with RSS feed 2. Allow multiple categories in blog with individual RSS feeds. 3. Mailchimp email sign-up form front page in sidebar. Mailchimp takes RSS feed to make email. Email send to Facebook/Twitter. 4. Twitter stream in right hand sidebar 5. Facebook open graph tags on front page so […]
A rough guide to social media for restaurants
Ed charles social media for restaurants View more presentations from Tomato Media This is a slideshow outlining a verbal presentation I gave to members of Restaurant and Catering in Melbourne last week.
Doing Better Business 10 October 2011
If you want to find out how social media can help your hospitality business win fans and customers, I’ll speaking at one of the restaurant and catering Doing Better Business Seminars on 10 October at Nobu. I’ll be talking about what modern day consumers expect from a restaurant and their website. In contrast to being a threat social media now provides free market research to businesses helping them give customers what they want. The implication for businesses is that you […]
Centre yourselves on your customers
There’s a great quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt in this blog post: “Microsoft organised itself around the structure of the industry; Apple organised itself around the customer. You have to organise around the customer.” I caught up with Chris Lucas who I helped out on the digital and social media side for the launch of Chin Chin. He is excited about what social media offers to focus what he does on the customer. Each day he feeds reviews from […]
Be everywhere with everything
So how does the internet work nowadays? There is no one prescriptive answer but it is more than just having a single website or newsletter that can only be viewed on a computer. It’s all about giving choices. The information on your website need to be available all over the place. That means it should be available to the near 11 million Facebook users in Australia, the 1.8 million or so people on Twitter locally and the 2 million or […]
Inside Modernist cuisine
Check out on Youtube how the cutaways were made. Finally, $484.60 9including postage) and after a three month wait Modernist Cuisine has arrived. I’ve bought it so you don’t have to but also to add to my collection of books by Peter Barham, Herve This and Harold McGee that examine the science of cooking, as I mentioned in May. Out of all of them McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (which you can buy […]
27 social media tips for restaurants
Broadcast across multiple social media platforms thanks to Instagram. Today I’m on a panel at Food Service Austalia with Matteo Pignatelli and Robelen Baja talking about social media and marketing for restaurants and caterers. My specific topic is how to deal with negative comments but also how to use social media. I know this is a little off topic from restaurant reviews and recipes but I thought my thoughts jotted down over a couple of coffees (Sumatran Wahana Estate Magic […]
In for a gram…in for a pound
I think Gram magazine is quite nice looking. But as a concept it is utter crap. It’s a lazy way to use other people’s content to make money out of advertising. In short it summarises blog posts and then links back to the blog but without asking permission to use content. It did send out emails which detailed that bloggers had to opt out if they didn’t want their content used (which I did through several email exchanges). It is […]