MarketerBlog

Tweets for Eats - Chefs Using Social Media: @SBoSM

Twitter has replaced the Yellow Pages for some chefs and their suppliers. An article by Chuck Sudo in today's Chicago Sun-Times highlights a new trend of restauranteurs and suppliers using social media to find customers and generate business.

"Carl Galvan, a sales representative at Supreme Lobster & Seafood in Villa Park, uses the messaging service Twitter to post photos of fish and other seafood Supreme is offering and to interact with chefs interested in placing orders based on those photos. Since Galvan started using Twitter four months ago, he estimates his sales have doubled."

Sudo notes that as technology has made communication easier and faster, a growing number of chefs and others in the food industry have taken to social media services such as Twitter and Facebook to promote themselves and their projects, interact with customers and fans, offer special promotions -- or just see what all the fuss is about.

Restaurants have long known that word-of-mouth referrals are critical for success. Social media provides another set of tools for generating and sustaining positive referrals.

Even paper-bound reviewers like @ZagatBuzz are getting into the social media game.

Services like @CloudProfile make it easier for local food and beverage companies to expand their reach and grow revenue. Leesburg Vintner (http://leesburgvintner.cloudprofile.com/) and The Four Firkins (http://fourfirkins.cloudprofile.com/) are two great examples but there are many others.

So next time you have a hankering for a cold brew or a great slice (or both) what will you do? Check out your friends tweets and yelps, or open the yellow pages?

Using Social Media to Break the Nonprofit Starvation Cycle

The current issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review has an in-depth article about the vicious cycle nonprofits face in trying to balance unrealistic funder expectations regarding administrative costs with the reality of building an effective and efficient operation.  As anyone who’s worked with or for a nonprofit knows, well-meaning grant requirements whose goals are to direct the maximum amount of funding towards program delivery often result in reporting shell games, where administrative costs are buried in program line-items in order to achieve unfeasible expense ratios.  Ann Goggins Gregory and Don Howard, the authors of the article and partners at the Bridgespan Group, assert that the best place to break the cycle is where it starts -- adjusting Funder expectations.                 

“A vicious cycle is leaving nonprofits so hungry for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations—let alone serve their beneficiaries. The cycle starts with funders’ unrealistic expectations about how much running a nonprofit costs, and results in nonprofits’ misrepresenting their costs while skimping on vital systems—acts that feed funders’ skewed beliefs. To break the nonprofit starvation cycle, funders must take the lead.”

But as they rightly point out, the responsibility for solving this problem does not rest solely with funders.  Nonprofit leaders must understand and effectively manage their true infrastructure needs.  

I would add another point:  nonprofit leaders must embrace new tools and technologies to amplify reach and mitigate costs.  Social Media is a perfect mechanism for tapping into constituent interest, spreading the word about a cause or issue, and engaging supporters, whether as volunteers or donors.  Nothing demonstrated this better than the Obama campaign’s superb use of social media, which not only extended its reach but allowed the campaign to secure unprecedented levels of donor support.  But there are countless other organizations who have Facebook groups or causes, who tweet, and who blog their way to broader awareness and support.  Mashable posted on this last week in a terrific article on how to Do Good on Facebook.  

Despite their desire to change the world, nonprofit managers are often themselves resistant to change.  It’s time for them to recognize that the “low pay, make do, and do without” culture undermines their lofty goals. 

Addendum:  Here's a link to a great presentation on this topic.     

Knowledge vs. Information: Social Media and the Arab World

Renee Blodgett (@MagicSauceMedia) retweeted a post last night from Naseem Tarawnah (@tarawnah) a journalist in Amman, Jordan.  Naseem Tarawnah offers a thoughtful, but somewhat pessimistic analysis of how people in the Arab States use (or don’t use) Social Media, and why it’s been rejected by some religious and intellectual leaders in Arab countries.  Now I am a new student of the Middle East and will not pretend to fully understand the complexity of the issues described, though I’ve discussed them often with my husband, who is an expert in these matters (@AmbassadorNed).  But I suspect that, much like here in the US, it all gets down to the difference between knowledge and information, and the power of harnessing collective intelligence. 

I studied classics at a school with an extraordinary focus on the pursuit of knowledge achieved through rigorous questioning and critical thinking.  All of our classes were taught seminar-style, with a focus on the text, rather than the teacher.  From what I understand, the vast majority of schooling in the Arab World is based on rote-memorization and lectures, educational techniques which are not the best for cultivating the ability to question and challenge voices of authority.  

For that reason, Social Media may be a perfect way for new writers and thinkers to express themselves, collaborate, and challenge the norm.  Social Media offers the potential to engage in dialog with someone across the street or on the other side of the globe.  It builds on itself, aggregating new insights along the way.  And it amplifies the writers voice, as tweets are retweeted and links are shared.  That’s a powerful tool, whether you’re an academic, a journalist or a small business looking to get the word out about your idea or product. 

Without question a lot of garbage is created and time wasted.  But as more people engage in social media, the tools are refined and the high-value conversations emerge. 

Last month, one of the first large-scale acquisitions of an Arab Internet company occurred when Yahoo acquired Maktoob.  Internet usage is experiencing double-digit growth in the Arab States and they’re rapidly adopting Social Media.  Yet the 320M+ people of the region remain under-served by Internet services, with Arabic-language content accounting for less than 1% of all Internet content.  (I was told by a Google executive that there’s less online content in Arabic than there is in Czech.)  It’s about time the global technology community realized there’s enormous potential in the Arab States.  The Maktoob-Yahoo deal, along with recent Google announcements, are putting the Arab technology and entrepreneur communities on the map. 

But Naseem Tarawnah is right, the real innovation will be in the ways Jordanians, and Egyptians, and Tunisians, and everyone else across the Arab States use the Internet and Social Media to harness collective intelligence, share information and create new ideas.  

Back in the 14th Century, when Europe was in the Dark Ages and the US didn’t exist, Arab intellectuals led the world, serving as a bridge from the Ancients to the Renaissance. I hope that Arab innovators, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs will use the Internet and Social Media to create another Golden Age.            

Social Search is the New Black

Great follow-up to John Battelle's (@johnbattelle) post by my pal Alex (@ahawkinson). Alex's point that "social discovery and word of mouth are equally important" is right on the money. Search results that show me what Google  thinks aren't nearly as powerful as results that show me what my friends and colleagues think. Small, community-based businesses have been leveraging the power of word-of-mouth marketing for years. Now tools like Facebook, Twitter, and CloudProfile make it easy (and cost-effective) for them to take these strategies online. That's great news for local community-based businesses and the people who support them.

Time to go to the Clinton Cider Mill for coffee and a donut. I need to find out what the locals are saying about my business!

Is Twitter the lazy man’s blog?

Ken Fromm’s post on the Real-Time Web got me thinking about whether Twitter is a lazy man’s blog or digital Haiku?  It’s easy enough to retweet and add zero value, something I’ve been guilty of many times.  But Fromm is onto something when he talks about the way Twitter amplifies the message.  Marketers take note - spend the time and effort to comment in your next retweet.  Think of this as “extreme blogging” ... a way to get high-value, brief commentary out to a large audience.  And think about how you can use Twitter to engage with customers, communities, or supporters and measure sentiment around your brand.  For me the Real-Time Web is the next-generation of CRM.