Practically Social

I’m baffled when restauranteurs and people in the food industry tell me they don’t see how their business could be affected by social media. It’s so plainly clear how social media and the food world tie together. The answer is summed up in a single word: culture. Social media has become a vehicle for sharing [...]

Facebook is littered with poorly managed, boring and nearly-empty restaurant pages. There are probably lots of reasons for this, including restauranteurs not having the time or resources to devote to Facebook marketing, or a general lack of industry confidence to be effective on Facebook. The former is a much larger problem that deserves a much [...]

I spent three days at Nerd Mecca, otherwise known as the South by Southwest Interactive Conference (SxSWi). It was three days filled with learning, schmoozing, food truck nomming, QR code scanning, band listening and walking, walking, walking. It’s a given that SxSWi is filled with great information about what’s next in social media, marketing and [...]

I live about five blocks from a Ben & Jerry’s. I was casually checking in at a restaurant in my neighborhood not so long ago when I received a pop-up on FourSquare that Ben & Jerry’s is hosting a pretty sweet deal (pun was actually not intended!). The deal: for every person that checks in, [...]

One of the reasons people like to eat out is because it’s a very community-oriented event. There is lots of sharing involved. People share plates, share appetizers, share bites and share sips. Businesses often wonder how they can make their content “go viral” (go viral, by the way, is one of my least favorite phrases [...]