More Explosive News on Social Networking
I think this says it all…
279 Days to Overnight Success – by Chris Guillebeau
If you want to change the world (or your world) – READ THIS!
Social Networking #2
Great new post today on social networking for restaurants.. found on the Wine & Hospitality Network http://wineandhospitality.ning.com/
Social Networking — online and off
Wikipedia: A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, sexual relationships, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade.
Everywhere you go people are talking about it – and doing it: social networking. And although most of the talk is about online social networking, the phrase can applied to both to online and offline networking. Don’t think social networking matters? Think again. Check out this graph by compete.com on the growth in the last 6 months:
Yearly ChangeFacebook: +249.70%YouTube: +24.50%Twitter: +1,192.13%
Clearly, the social networking model has boomed. Think social networking is just for youth? The fastest-growing segment on Facebook, originally launched at Harvard for college students, now is people over age 35.
A white paper released this month by VinTank, looks at Social media and its use by wineries:(David Finch has a great post on Social media for restaurants)
“Consumer embrace of social media literally turns the tables on marketers,” said Tom Wark, publisher of the Fermentation daily wine blog and Partner in Wark Communications. “With millions of consumers, particularly those of the Millennial generation, now frequently using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, brands are being built and defined as much by consumers and communities as they are by marketers and suppliers. The degree of change this represents can’t be underestimated.”
Some key findings of the white paper:
– According to Compete.com, the top 20 wine bloggers in aggregate represent a larger audience than the Wine Spectator online, and are growing at a faster rate. However, the wine blogosphere is highly fragmented and difficult for wineries to navigate.
– Wine social network memberships number in the hundreds of thousands, although it is near impossible to determine how much overlap exists across networks.
– The two top-rated wine social networks, CellarTracker and VinCellar, started as wine cellar management tools that over time have added social networking functionality. This deeper level of value has paid huge dividends in terms of customer loyalty.
– A key challenge for all wine social networks that have achieved any kind of scale is data quality. Duplicate and incorrect data affects all of these sites to varying degrees.
– Online advertising models for the wine industry have more challenges than other verticals due to outdated alcohol regulations.
The free white paper is available for download at http://www.vintank.com/VinTank_SocialMediaReport.pdf
We are also conducting our own survey on our industries’ use of social media, with well over a 100 responses already, it can provide you with great — and up to the minute — information.
Take the survey and immediately get the results.
Think of networking as being a personal branding exercise, whether it is your own services, the services of your company or business that you are promoting, or even yourself as you look for a new employment opportunity. And of course – all networking isn’t online. The right approach would be to overlay both your online and offline worlds.So go out there, start promoting yourself and/or your business; show people why you’re different and why they should do business with you.
And if you are in the wine country, of course the perfect opportunity for networking with others in the industry is this Thursday – at the “Industry Insiders” event at the Hess Collection. See details below.
-Margie
Social Networking — online and offWikipedia: A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, sexual relationships, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade.
Everywhere you go people are talking about it – and doing it: social networking. And although most of the talk is about online social networking, the phrase can applied to both to online and offline networking. Don’t think social networking matters? Think again. Check out this graph by compete.com on the growth in the last 6 months:
Yearly ChangeFacebook: +249.70%YouTube: +24.50%Twitter: +1,192.13%
Clearly, the social networking model has boomed. Think social networking is just for youth? The fastest-growing segment on Facebook, originally launched at Harvard for college students, now is people over age 35.
A white paper released this month by VinTank, looks at Social media and its use by wineries:(David Finch has a great post on Social media for restaurants)
“Consumer embrace of social media literally turns the tables on marketers,” said Tom Wark, publisher of the Fermentation daily wine blog and Partner in Wark Communications. “With millions of consumers, particularly those of the Millennial generation, now frequently using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, brands are being built and defined as much by consumers and communities as they are by marketers and suppliers. The degree of change this represents can’t be underestimated.”
Some key findings of the white paper:
– According to Compete.com, the top 20 wine bloggers in aggregate represent a larger audience than the Wine Spectator online, and are growing at a faster rate. However, the wine blogosphere is highly fragmented and difficult for wineries to navigate.
– Wine social network memberships number in the hundreds of thousands, although it is near impossible to determine how much overlap exists across networks.
– The two top-rated wine social networks, CellarTracker and VinCellar, started as wine cellar management tools that over time have added social networking functionality. This deeper level of value has paid huge dividends in terms of customer loyalty.
– A key challenge for all wine social networks that have achieved any kind of scale is data quality. Duplicate and incorrect data affects all of these sites to varying degrees.
– Online advertising models for the wine industry have more challenges than other verticals due to outdated alcohol regulations.
The free white paper is available for download at http://www.vintank.com/VinTank_SocialMediaReport.pdf
We are also conducting our own survey on our industries’ use of social media, with well over a 100 responses already, it can provide you with great — and up to the minute — information. Take the survey and immediately get the results.
Think of networking as being a personal branding exercise, whether it is your own services, the services of your company or business that you are promoting, or even yourself as you look for a new employment opportunity. And of course – all networking isn’t online. The right approach would be to overlay both your online and offline worlds.So go out there, start promoting yourself and/or your business; show people why you’re different and why they should do business with you.
And if you are in the wine country, of course the perfect opportunity for networking with others in the industry is this Thursday – at the “Industry Insiders” event at the Hess Collection. See details below.
-Margie
[Caveat: The following may or may not be copyrighted]
Social Networking — online and offWikipedia: A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, sexual relationships, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade.
Everywhere you go people are talking about it – and doing it: social networking. And although most of the talk is about online social networking, the phrase can applied to both to online and offline networking. Don’t think social networking matters? Think again. Check out this graph by compete.com on the growth in the last 6 months:
Yearly ChangeFacebook: +249.70%YouTube: +24.50%Twitter: +1,192.13%
Clearly, the social networking model has boomed. Think social networking is just for youth? The fastest-growing segment on Facebook, originally launched at Harvard for college students, now is people over age 35.
A white paper released this month by VinTank, looks at Social media and its use by wineries:(David Finch has a great post on Social media for restaurants)
“Consumer embrace of social media literally turns the tables on marketers,” said Tom Wark, publisher of the Fermentation daily wine blog and Partner in Wark Communications. “With millions of consumers, particularly those of the Millennial generation, now frequently using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, brands are being built and defined as much by consumers and communities as they are by marketers and suppliers. The degree of change this represents can’t be underestimated.”
Some key findings of the white paper:
– According to Compete.com, the top 20 wine bloggers in aggregate represent a larger audience than the Wine Spectator online, and are growing at a faster rate. However, the wine blogosphere is highly fragmented and difficult for wineries to navigate.
– Wine social network memberships number in the hundreds of thousands, although it is near impossible to determine how much overlap exists across networks.
– The two top-rated wine social networks, CellarTracker and VinCellar, started as wine cellar management tools that over time have added social networking functionality. This deeper level of value has paid huge dividends in terms of customer loyalty.
– A key challenge for all wine social networks that have achieved any kind of scale is data quality. Duplicate and incorrect data affects all of these sites to varying degrees.
– Online advertising models for the wine industry have more challenges than other verticals due to outdated alcohol regulations.
The free white paper is available for download at http://www.vintank.com/VinTank_SocialMediaReport.pdf
We are also conducting our own survey on our industries’ use of social media, with well over a 100 responses already, it can provide you with great — and up to the minute — information.
Take the survey and immediately get the results.
Think of networking as being a personal branding exercise, whether it is your own services, the services of your company or business that you are promoting, or even yourself as you look for a new employment opportunity. And of course – all networking isn’t online. The right approach would be to overlay both your online and offline worlds.So go out there, start promoting yourself and/or your business; show people why you’re different and why they should do business with you.
And if you are in the wine country, of course the perfect opportunity for networking with others in the industry is this Thursday – at the “Industry Insiders” event at the Hess Collection. See details below.
-Margie
Chocorua Group Blogging
I’ve been away quite a bit negotiating a life transition. Here on out, you’ll see two blogs a week at a minimum.
Jeff
Social Networking
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about social networking this past year. Before I delve into that (the circularity of this post will become apparent), I want to mention defunk theatre. defunk theatre is a small production company located in a small space behind brother David’s awesome coffee shop Common Grounds, located at 4139 SE Hawthorne Blvd in SE PDX.
I found defunk theatre on the recommendation of David, after our conversation about seeking space for what is now called Oregon Saucier (more on Oregon Saucier later). Dave had instructed me to show up on Thursday evening and that one of the production company could show me the space – he thought they might be letting the lease go soon.
When I got there, I met a lovely young woman, Naomi, with bright blue eyes and pretty smile. In what seemed too short a conversation, Naomi and I discussed the space and she gave me a quick tour. Unfortunately, the space is not adequate for my needs and in any event, defunk theatre is extending the lease another year. Naomi gave me a postcard for their current production Cooler.
Later this evening I researched this production company. To their disadvantage, their website is ‘down’. I did a quick search on Facebook for them, and didn’t find them there either. [blogger note: the website is working – go check them out at http://www.defunktheatre.com/]
Segue:
I’ve been thinking about the explosion of social networking in the past couple years. I currently follow about two dozen restaurants on Facebook (mostly in Boston and NYC) and have watched them develop very effective communications – mostly daily. Here they are, including my favorite other food-relateds:
Share Our Strength (http://www.strength.org/)
Tremont SixFourSeven
Sel de la Terre
Food Network
Chef’s Collaborative
James Beard Foundation
Chez Melange
Rialto Restaurant
Chris Douglass
Radius Restaurant Group
Tavolo Ristorante
and many others! Including Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and NPR! If you wish to see all that I follow, just search for me on Facebook (Jeffrey Kingman or jkingman@chocoruagroup.com)
So here’s my thinking, especially that past few days..
The old ways of being in community with customers has changed dramatically.. no longer is society reacting to print, tv or radio ads for restaurants. The past five years have shown these methods don’t work. The development of Urban Spoon (http://www.urbanspoon/) and many successful food/restaurant related blogs have spearheaded societal use and addiction of internet technology in sharing great restaurants.
[Aside: Open Table, the online restaurant reservation network, did an IPO on the NYSE the week of May 18th, 2009, with stocks soaring 59% in the first day. Check out the story here http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124337829530056123.html]
It’s become the reality of that old restaurant adage – ‘word of mouth’ is best. But what is word of mouth in a digital and social network age?
So here’s the question I’ve been mulling the past six months. How do restaurateurs use the advent of social networking to work to their advantage? How do they do this with extremely limited time and usually limited expense accounts?
In Wolfeboro NH at the last restaurant I was Chef for, I played with using Facebook, Twitter and direct email as a marketing and social networking tool – without the support of the owner. There was some limited success to this – but I believe the success would have been much greater if the owner had been onboard.
I’ve been watching these organizations on Facebook effectively message almost every day. The messages intrigue me – not only as an entrepreneur, businessperson, chef and possible competitor. They intrigue me as a diner and gourmand.
So today, when I met the lovely Naomi and was introduced to defunk theater, and then couldn’t find their presence online, it led my thinking beyond the hospitality industry. How do other organizations begin to use social networking – efficiently and often – to reach their “tribes” and find new followers?
For defunkt theater and Common Grounds – I have a proposal: I’d be more than happy to work on this on your behalf in a pro-bono agreement! Consider it my personal experiment 🙂
Denny’s "Recovery Grand Slam"
Amazing! This is brand development genius!
From CNN Link: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/03/dennys.grand.slam/index.html
(CNN) — Denny’s restaurants across North America were jammed Tuesday with patrons hungry to take advantage of the restaurant chain’s Grand Slam breakfast giveaway.
Denny’s announced in a commercial Sunday during the Super Bowl that it would give away its signature breakfast from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. local time Tuesday at all its restaurants in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.
Media outlets reported customers lined up outside the doors of many of Denny’s 1,500 locations.
Some patrons were still wearing their pajamas and slippers, and strangers were crowding together into booths, CNN affiliate KSL-TV in Salt Lake City, Utah, reported.
“You couldn’t beat it. I mean it was a beautiful, beautiful breakfast. It was fit for a queen or a king,” diner Annah Shoffner told CNN affiliate WNCN-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“To do this is amazing and not something you hear of every day, especially in today’s economy — that we’re getting something free,” Debbie Brugger of Essex Junction, Vermont, anticipating a hearty breakfast at a Denny’s in Burlington, told CNN affiliate WCAX-TV.
A college student who identified himself as DeShawn told CNN affiliate KFSN-TV in Fresno, California, that he came out for the free breakfast “to do better in class — brain food, you know?”
A manager at a Denny’s in Raleigh, North Carolina, called the promotion a little “economic stimulus” for the average hardworking person, CNN affiliate WTVD-TV reported.
“A lot of restaurants in the community have been going out of business, and we’re aggressively going after the business,” Eddie Rice, owner of a Denny’s in Peoria, Illinois, told CNN affiliate WEEK-TV.
Rice said he had 2,400 eggs ready to cook at the start of the day.
Waitress Terri Gibson told CNN affiliate WMFD-TV that her restaurant in Mansfield, Ohio, was busy but everything was going smoothly and no one was complaining.
The company said it was expecting an additional 2 million customers to turn out for the promotion.
“This free offer is our way of reacquainting America with Denny’s real breakfast and with the Denny’s brand,” Chief Executive Nelson Marchioli said in a statement.
The Grand Slam breakfast consists of two pancakes, two eggs, two strips of bacon and two sausage links. It weighs in at 44 grams of fat, 56 carbohydrates and 770 calories, according to CNN affiliate KETV in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Grand Slam started as a baseball-related promotion in Atlanta, Georgia, in the mid-1970s and has been served chainwide since 1977. Its normal price varies by market but averages around $5.99. Denny’s said it sells 12.5 million Grand Slams a year.
National Restaurant Association 2009 Industry Forecast
While the industry is suffering some huge hits this past half year – the experts at the National Restaurant Association are forecasting an optimistic outlook. Here’s their You Tube video showing highlights:
New Times
Now that the presidential election is over (and it looks like President-Elect Obama is really following President Lincoln’s example as outlined in the excellent book “Team Of Rivals” – bringing his sharpest competitors onto his team), we’re pretty optimistic about the next four years. Even though the current economy is pretty bad – it’s not as dire as the Great Depression, the World Wars, nor, the Civil War period.
Americans are a tenacious breed. Much of American history was built by immigrants (my personal sentiments to those who’s ancestors were brought here against their will). Immigrants, by choice or necessity, are risk-takers. I’m not developing an original thought here – just regurgitating something I read in the last year.
So many of our ancestors came here with nothing and built their lives well. It can be argued that this has become a genetic trait of Americans – we are a nation of risk-takers and opportunists. By nature, we gravitate to reaching for the brass ring.
It’s this philosophy I subscribe to that drives my optimism about the hospitality industry. This current economic low (perhaps a 100 year storm) will cede to a new cycle of growth and expansion.
This is the time to position for that coming growth. This is the time to acquire your next projects, to plan your growth when those big waves start rolling in again. I’m ready to go surf – are you?
Economic Stimulus
The headlines have been blazing forth with dire predictions and lots of gloom these past few weeks. Depending on authors viewpoints and your own predilections – it’s easy to feel pessimistic and quite uncertain about the short and long future for the hospitality industry.
Here’s my take. This isn’t the end of the world. It’s a cycle. Yes – a mighty freepin big one downward. But still a cycle. It’s the 250 or 100 year economic storm.
In this current quarter, it’s very difficult to maintain an optimism that a restaurant can survive or grow.
Here at Chocorua Group, we’ve shed that cynicism and are now focused on opportunities presenting themselves on unprecedented scales. This downturn will reveal the best of the business. It presents opportunities to get your business lean and mean… to capture additional customers… to reinforce relationships with clients both old and new.
Can’t quite join us in that optimism? Give us a call… let us sit down with you to inject it in your organization…
Chocorua Group 
Rewarding Feedback Joins Chocorua Group As Client
We’re pleased as punch to announce that Rewarding Feedback, a digital tablet based comment card system provider to the hospitality and gaming industries, has retained Chocorua Group and Chalkboarder.com to increase market share and presence internationally.