In every social group, there is one stand out individual who can wax poetic about the intricate details of a narrow topic.  They are entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers and moms by day; and chefs, foodies, and wine aficionados by night.  Their friends, family and co-workers actively seek them out for trusted brand recommendations in their area of passion.

After more than a year of marketplace testing, Ink Foundry has launched InkFluence, an extremely targeted word of mouth marketing program that identifies and introduces on and offline category influencers to restaurant, wine and packaged food brands.

The InkFluence program exposes brands to unprecedented high value recommendations inside private on and offline social groups that would otherwise be extremely challenging to reach through any other type of marketing.

You can probably think of an influencer you know right now.  You might even be the person in your group who knows where to take a date for a great, but not too expensive, dinner, or recommend the perfect bottle of wine to bring to the bosses dinner party.

According to Keller Fay Group, a leading word of mouth marketing research firm, only about 17 percent of the total population can be considered influential, yet they account for billions of dollars in annual sales in a myriad of categories.

HOW WE DO IT
After more than 10 years of working with major wine, food and restaurant organizations, Ink Foundry has developed a proprietary algorithm to accurately identify influencers for these categories.

InkFluence, Ink Foundry’s Hidden Influencer program, uses a set of social media tools to identify those individuals who are not necessarily high profile, but provide high value recommendations in their passion category to their on and offline peer group.

According to a recent Harris Interactive survey, 71 percent of consumers cite recommendations from family members or friends as having a “great deal” or “fair amount” of influence when making a purchase decision.

Using the InkFluence program, Ink Foundry can help brands identify the best hidden influencers for their product or service, develop a word of mouth marketing engagement program to facilitate the introduction and provide the tools for the influencers to make those high value recommendations to their social network.

For more information please contact us today or click on: influencer marketing.

Your restaurant’s Facebook page is an extension of your brand and a great way to interact with your guests outside of the dining room.  This social media dos and don’ts article will help keep your restaurant’s Facebook page a spam-free zone. Your fans deserve better than that!

Here are the five things that you must avoid on your restaurant’s Facebook page.

Do You Make These 5 Facebook Mistakes?

1. Feeding your Twitter posts onto your Wall. Twitter is a great tool to promote your restaurant, but Twitter and Facebook require radically different approaches.  Ideally you want your patrons and fans to follow you on both. It’s okay to do some duplicate posting, but it can start to look really tacky, and you will lose your fans’ attention by patronizing them with second hand posts.  Make your fans “like” you by providing them with original content.

2. Bombarding peoples’ newsfeeds. 1-3 times a day for wall postings is a good number. Any more than that will increase the number of people who hide your feeds from their friends. Post your specials, new cocktails, fresh ingredients just added to the menu, and lots of photos! Fans devour photos.

3. Talking only about your restaurant. Yes, people “like” and follow your Page to get updates about your food and events, but to really position yourself as an influencer and thought leader, you should be sharing interesting things that are happening in your neighborhood, among your colleagues, and local suppliers (breweries, vineyards, farms).

Talking about food scraps and waste may not be the most scrumptious thing to post about, but Camino restaurant in Oakland posted an article on the subject on their Facebook page.  They simply wrote, “This is what happens to our leftovers!” and linked to a feature story about an Oakland machine that turns food scraps into energy. It is informative, engages the community with the restaurant, and is an excellent example of going outside yourself on your wall.

4. Ignoring the people that “like” your Page. Nothing will make people feel like they are being fed spam more than ignoring their comments. Always respond to people that legitimately post questions or comments on your wall. If you allow people to comment and they never actually hear from you, then what is the point of having a Facebook Page? One-way conversations are for your restaurant advertising, not social networks.

5. Impersonal offers, discounts, specials, coupons, and contests. Don’t get me wrong, we all like specials but when it isn’t targeted, people automatically think spam. Think your ideas through a bit. Perhaps a photo or comment contest or a trivia question. Also one special I always like is: “For every 100 “likes” we get, we will randomly give a $100 gift card to our fans.” Make them glad that they “liked” you! Show them that you care and value their patronage and loyalty. Think of your FB fans as brand ambassadors who have the power to spread great word of mouth.

By avoiding these pitfalls, people will be happy to “like” you and will be excited to try all of the wonders that you feed them!

Hopefully, you’ve read our article on How To Set Up a Restaurant’s Facebook  Page.  And let us know if you need any assistance, we’re here to help.

Share your best restaurant marketing on Facebook best practices in the comments below!

Photo Credit to Ishibakasama on Flickr

As a longtime twEATer, I live to both eat and tweet. Most of the people who I communicate with on Twitter are other foodies, restaurants, food and wine bloggers, wine enthusiasts, and wineries. After years of successful Twitter engagement, I know what types of activities will help your restaurant or winery  build an engaged Twitter following.

Now that your restaurant or winery has a Twitter account, what’s next?

Hot tip for building great Twitter relationships:  You must communicate consistently to make a big impact with those you follow and those who follow you all in 140 characters or less!

Here are the 8 Best Tweeting Tips to build a rabid fan base of food and wine followers:

8. Retweeting (RT) is the easiest way to communicate on Twitter because you do not have to think up content. You can either copy and paste or simply click the Retweet button. Look for things that are newsworthy or useful to your followers. If you have a winery perhaps retweet a news story about how the weather is affecting the vines this season. Use this technique often, but not too often. It should supplement your original tweets, not be the only information you push out.

7. Participate in Follow Fridays (#FF), this is another easy tactic that requires very little effort. Simply make a tweet of your favorite tweeters and tell your other followers to follow them. A little description with only a select few is more valuable then just a list of people. For example:

#FF our favorites of the week that made us laugh: @Foodie1 @Foodie2

6. Involve other local business in your tweets, especially if they are complementary. If you are a winery, mention (@) the bed and breakfast down the street in your tweet and recommend them. The B&B will then, most likely, mention you and you will become a twitter team and an unofficial strategic alliance.

5. Post pictures on Twitter of what you are working on: a new dish in the kitchen or a glass of wine you just opened up. Write a short description to accompany it so people know what they are opening. TwitPic and Plixi are the 2 big photo uploaders for Twitter.

4. Post specials and promotions. This is something simple that you can and should do everyday. If someone wanted to know your specials in the past perhaps they would walk in and look at your chalkboard or wait for the waiter to remember to tell them. Not anymore: post it on Twitter.

3. Let your followers be part of the restaurant and winery process. Most people are not entrepreneurs or restaurateurs but they would like to be; they are curious about the life. Post things about the kitchen meals, working on getting your liquor license, or any of the other behind-the-scene processes. Also ask your followers for help, but only if you are willing to accept it, don’t use it as a marketing ploy.  For example:

What would you love to see on the menu this season?

2. Have real conversations with people on Twitter. Read the Timeline and participate. If someone asks a question in the Twitterverse, you should be the person to an answer it. When someone asks a question about wine pairings, consider it your golden opportunity to shine. Answer the question. Mention them (@) and don’t be the first to end the conversation. If they say “thank you” then you should respond:

You’re welcome @winequestions, let me know if you ever have any more wine pairing questions.

1. Provide  real contests for your followers with prizes. Bridge the connection from a virtual relationship to an in person relationship. Tweet something like this:

The first 10 people to come in the winery and say the word “Riesling” get a specially crafted Riesling flight on us.

If you tweet it, the food and wine tweeters will follow!

Side note: You should be sending a minimum of 10 tweets a day, trust me, once you start you will become addicted and want to do more. The more you do, the better! Remember, you are still a business so only use abbreviations when you are in a character crunch and  try to make these wink and happy face free tweets.

Photo Credit: Webtreats on Flickr

In addition to sharing more than 10 years of agency experience, I’ve also been on the other side of the fence as the in-house marketing director responsible for hiring outside word of mouth and public relations agencies. Above and beyond the ability to perform the work, which forms the baseline of the relationship, I’ve learned that there are other considerations that help make an agency partnership long lasting, profitable and rewarding for both parties.

Although there are many reputable agencies with the ability to perform the tasks, the best agency/brand relationships I’ve experienced have had little to do with work quality and more closely resemble a great marriage. Finding a great agency partner for your brand is about the dynamics of the personal relationship you have with your communications team, both internal and external and finding an agency partner that is the right emotional fit.

Below please find a list of our top tips for marketing directors looking to find the right word of mouth marketing agency. For a comprehensive list of qualifying questions, please read our article, 26 Questions To Ask Before Hiring A Social Media Agency.

1. Define Your Needs and Objectives
   Spend a painful amount of time determining your needs. This can be a challenging proposition for any organization that is moving rapidly and feels like they need to find an agency quickly. Take a deep breath, step back and write down your business objectives for hiring an agency.
   Determine what you are hoping to achieve from hiring an agency. Ask yourself what business objective does hiring a social media marketing, public relations or other type of marketing communications agency provide. Awareness? Sales? Engagement? Word of mouth?
   Think about how you need the marketing communications agency to move the needle for your company.
2. All Referrals Are Not Created Equal
   A great place to start is getting referrals from those you know and trust who have a similar brand and are in the same brand life cycle as your company. However, you’re still going to have to do some serious legwork to determine if the referred agency will be a good fit for your specific needs.
   Ask for relevant case studies that provide evidence of success. Most great programs are the result of collaboration between the in-house and external teams. Listen for programs that resulted from team effort. If the agency claims they did it all themselves, this may be a giant red flag.
3. Evaluate Brand vs. Agency Pace
   This is a critical piece of the agency / brand relationship pie that I learned through one of the most embarrassing moments in my professional career.
   We were working with a very old school restaurant chain that would take forever to make even the most minor decisions. Adding insult to injury they would run the ideas through the entire company for feedback, then ponder some more. When the anorexic bookkeeper felt free to send feedback on reaching influential foodies, I should have immediately resigned the account. Our original task was to help revitalize the brand and it became painfully obvious to me early in the relationship that they needed a full internal structural change before any consumer facing change would be possible. Again, red flag number 2.
   In a moment of pure frustration, I blurted out, “For God’s sake, sack up and make a decision.” Thankfully, they laughed.
   If your company is very methodical, find an agency that can endure the slow pace, if on the other hand your brand is fast moving and going a million miles an hour, you’re going to need an agency partner that can keep up. I’ve learned to spot the red flags for a company that won’t be a good fit for Ink Foundry and learned that we work well with start ups and other dynamic business.
4. Seek Passion
   We have yet to see a successful person or company that isn’t passionate about what they are doing. While agencies need to have case studies outlining their specific skill sets, they also need to display a burning passion and deep understanding of your category and your target market.
5. Find The Right Personality
   Again, all things being equal, make sure this is a group or individual who you personally like. Creating great programs takes time and collaboration. If you don’t like your primary account executive, you’re going to end up dreading meetings with them. Ask yourself if this person or team would be a great fit for your company if they were fulfilling an in house opening. If not, take a pass.
   Teams who genuinely like each other create cooler stuff.
6. Define Roles & Responsibilities
   Establish clear roles and responsibilities that you want your agency partner to play. For many clients, we’ve been the voice that can help sell ideas through to the C-suite. If you know this is a skill that you need your agency to perform, make sure you hire someone who can fill that leadership role when needed.
7. Cultivate Mutual Respect
   For a great agency partnership there needs to be mutual respect flowing from your company and back again to you from the agency.
   As the agency is pitching your team, listen and watch carefully to how the leader treats his/her team; are they listening to feedback or just trying to steam roll their ideas right over the group? Do they give appropriate credit to others? If none of these things are happening to your satisfaction, this may be a sign that you need to keep looking.
8. Articulate The Plan
   When I was younger, I thought that the idea was well, the big idea. But ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s the execution that is critically important. How many times have you heard someone say they are going to do some really exciting, but they don’t take any steps to do it. Or they don’t know how to get from point A to point B.
   Ideas can be very exciting. But you need a solid execution or that idea will sit in the presentation deck in the halls of the agency for ever.
   A great idea is just that. Make the agency define the execution side of the idea and make sure that it is in line with the resources available for the project.
9. Fine Tune Targeting
   Sending a press release, email or other company communication to hundreds of unsuspecting innocent consumers isn’t marketing – it’s SPAM.
   Make sure the agency has the experience and tools to identify and define the target market as well as clearly tell you what type of communication will work best with the key targets. Again, we believe this goes back to passion and immersion in your brand’s category.
10. Shun Guarantees
    If a public relations agency guarantees you they will get your pencil manufacturing business on the cover of Vogue, run. If a social media agency guarantees that your video will be viral, again, run.
    Certainly there are ways to build in safeguards for success, but this is just grand posturing on the part of the agency who is trying to get you to sign the contract instead of building a long term mutually beneficial relationship with you.
11. Require Ethics
    If you hire an agency that isn’t ethical, it is a reflection on you personally and on your brand. If they “guarantee” you that no one will find out, run. Someone will always find out. Always.
    Make sure that the agency is ethically sound, they follow the Word of Mouth Marketing Associations Ethics Code and that they have a formalized plan for their employees and vendors to follow that is compliant with the FTC Guidelines For Adequate Disclosure.
    We recently saw an agency’s profile and capabilities package where they openly declared they had created fake Facebook accounts to manufacture support for a professional sports player’s move to a new team. We were unbelievably stunned and disappointed that this type of activity is taking place. It’s not the kind of activity that generates true brand advocacy.
12. Determine The Budget
    In advance of hiring an agency, determine a budget range that you are considering. This will help the agency craft a program that fits with in your budget and your time line.
    Additionally, if the agency presents some options, make sure that your budget can adequately cover it. A good rule of thumb is that you should be willing to spend to promote what you’ve built. If you build a Facebook application or a great YouTube video, you will need to allocate financial resources to make it successful.
    Make sure before hiring an agency that if they are going to go over budget, you need to know in advance and put some checks and balances in place. Ink Foundry generally bills by the project, and the price we agree upon, barring any unforeseen changes to the program, is the amount on the invoice you will receive. However, some agencies don’t bill that way.
    When I was the liaison between the brand I was working for and a field agency, they invoiced us for 30 percent more than our original agreement. They never called, tried to renegotiate or forewarned me in any way. And their explanation: “It was more work than we thought it would be.” I could have avoided this with a stronger more clear contract and better communication with them from the beginning.
13. Define The Length of Relationship
    Are you looking for a long term agency partnership or more of a one night stand?
    If you are just looking for an agency to write a few articles for you, send out a press release or other short term project, you may be better off hiring an independent tactician instead of a holistic strategic partner. That being said, understand that one off tactics do very little to move the needle for your brand.
14. Remain Committed
    When you get into an agency relationship, commit to making it happen. If you are one of those marketing directors who brags about how you like to fire agencies, or you’ve had a string of the equivalent of one night stands, you don’t need a marketing agency, you need therapy.
    Setting out with a commitment in mind will allow both parties to work through any kinks that may arise in the beginning.
    Certainly there are deal breakers. Communicate what those are to your agency in advance. We ended up with Chevron as a client because the agency before us turned in receipts from a competing gas provider on expense reports. While that probably wasn’t the only problem, it was the breaking point.
15. Review Previous Results
    Results from other programs can be a little misleading as a gauge to determine whether this is going to be the right agency fit for your company. But, it’s a good place to start and to understand the agency’s thinking behind the program that generated the case study.
16. Understand Agency Resource Allocation
    Before hiring a word of mouth, public relations or other agency, get an understanding from them who from the agency will be working on your business, what their roles will be and what experience they bring to the table.
    Also ask about the work load for individuals who will be assigned to your account. If the staff is overloaded with accounts they won’t be able to focus on your business.

At Ink Foundry if we don’t think we can help you or we don’t have the bandwidth, we’ll refer you to someone else and we believe that the best agencies will do the same. One of our greatest achievements is our ability to develop long term relationships with our clients because we’ve done a thorough job of making sure we are the right agency for the brand before committing to any relationship.

PHOTO CREDITS: Crane Gears: TallKev ; The Ponderer: Striatic

Approximate Reading Time: 5 minutes

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times — (paraphrasing, of course) “When it comes to social media measurement, the number of fans or followers a brand has won’t tell us anything.”

I’ve thought about this philosophy a lot, so much in fact that I’ve become slightly OCD about it. It’s hard not to when the majority of the PR thought leaders I respect have at one time or another made a statement similar to the one above and followed it with contempt for agencies or “so-called” social media experts who only focus on these numbers.

If there was a way to un-fan fans and un-follow followers, I’d have done it by now. But they won’t go away and clients keep asking about them, so I’ve kept thinking about just what, if anything, these numbers actually tell us. And here’s what I’ve come up with:

I want to revise the statement, “The number of fans or followers a brand has won’t tell us anything.” Well, really, I just want to change one word — “The number of fans or followers a brand has won’t tell us everything.”

Fans and followers do tell us some things. They provide us an “at least” number of people that have visibility to the messages a brand shares via its Facebook and Twitter presences and the number of people who might share that message. In other words, Gatorade currently has 326,543 fans and 2,314 followers. That’s “at least” 328,857 (326,543 + 2,314) people who have visibility to a conversation on Gatorade’s wall or Twitter feed and who could share that conversation with their friends, followers, colleagues or anybody else.

Why is that 328,857 number important? Because we know a few things:

1. We know if Gatorade really needed to get a message out, say about a crisis, that message is likely to have a greater reach and be shared by more people if the company has 326,000 fans as opposed to 32,600. It’s purely a numbers issue.
2. We know people trust people and consumers more than they trust organizations. As Gatorade gains more fans, it gains more chances that a story about the company (e.g. helping a customer with as service issue on Facebook) will be told by the fans as opposed to the organization. And that’s a reputation win for the brand considering the source. How do you think Gatorade and other companies gain the majority of their fans and followers? Via word of mouth endorsement, of course.
3. We know that brand fans are an audience that serves as advocates for our clients and we want them to have stories to tell. And while we can’t guarantee that all fans or followers of an organization are actual brand fans, I think we’re safe guessing that the fans and followers of a company would be a good place to start when looking to engage fans of that brand.
4. We know the majority of people who participate in online social networks and take the step to fan or follow brands — not the first steps a person usually takes when dipping their toes in the social media waters — are more likely to engage with a company or tell a story online than those who aren’t as active in the online space.
5. Finally, we also know about perception. And I can tell you — based on recent conversations with clients, peers, colleagues, tweeps, fans — the perception is that the more fans and followers a brand has, the more successful that brand is with social media. And the more successful a brand is with social media, the more progressive that company is. And the more progressive a company is the more successful it often seems. Is that perception wrong? Well, I’d lean toward calling it incomplete.

If fans and followers are the only measures of success you’re tracking, then I agree that doesn’t tell us much. And that’s where I fall in line with the gripe against some agencies that base the entire social media strategy they’re selling on those numbers. The most significant thing about fans and followers is the audience they create for a brand to engage with. That’s where the real strategy comes in.

Think about it this way. When you go to a networking event, you may not know much about the organization or the people when you get there. Over time, you may get to know the organization and the people in it better. You’ll probably form opinions about the group and share stories about your experiences. But for any of that to happen, you had to show up at that first meeting.

Successful PR is still about building relationships — always has been. When a person fans or follows your brand, that’s just a relationship starter. They decided to come to that networking event. Or since users can fan or follow with the click of the mouse, you could argue they’re making much less of a commitment. But even if it took five seconds, the person still made a conscious effort to engage. Where the relationship goes from there is largely up to you.

I was lucky enough to see Brian Solis speak in Kansas City tonight and he offered a lot of great food for thought and insight into “the conversation” and “influence” that I’m still thinking about and continue pondering for a while, I’m sure. But one thing Brian said tonight came to mind as I sat down to finish this post — (I paraphrase again) “If we’re not in the conversation, it’s easy to fall off the radar screen, disappear.”

To me, when you look at a brand’s fans or followers, you can get a rough idea of how many “radar screens” that company is on. And you’ve got to be on some radar screens to keep from disappearing. But you can’t tell a whole lot more than that without digging much deeper.

Fans and followers are a starting point. They tell you something. But the companies and agencies that run into problems are the ones who don’t keep going. There’s a lot more to a conversation than the introduction.

What are some of the companies you know that have a lot of fans and followers? Did those numbers change your perception of the brand? How did you hear about those companies? Do those brands do a lot to engage their fans and followers?

Presented at TWTRCON, May 31, 2009

Summary:
Current Twitter users are early adopters of technology, entertainment and emerging services. They are more likely to use social networks and Internet 2.0 technologies to stay connected and be informed. Most are eager to learn about new products and services. They are loyal users, with 70% likely to continue using Twitter. As such, Twitterers leverage the power of word of mouth and are a valuable audience.

1. Twitter users are super engaged consumers.

• Typical Twitterer is a technical or creative professional in their 30s, who tends to adopt new products or trends more quickly than others. Almost all are on other social networks, two thirds watch online video, read blogs, and play video games. Over half have HDTV, forty percent have DVRs and about a third have smartphones.

2. Consider it the Oprah effect—most of the U.S. knows about Twitter.

• Over three quarters of Internet users are aware of Twitter. While friends (43%) have driven greatest awareness, a whopping 35% heard about it through television. Other sources of awareness include websites (22%), social networks (18%) and family (17%).

3. What does Dr. Horrible, coffee, Tom’s Shoes, flowers and a Sony Vaio have in common?

• They were all purchased because of Twitter. 40% of Twitter users regularly search for products or services online via Twitter. About 20% follow at least one product or service. Specifically, 12% note they’ve chosen a service or bought a product online because of information they found on Twitter.

4. Is the social networking and Twitter phenomena half empty or half full?

• It depends on the user. While 44% believe that Twitter has long term value, 52% believe it’s a trend.

5. Brands beware! Use Twitter wisely!

• 40% of Twitterers note the way a brand utilizes Twitter affects their perception of the brand. Two thirds would use Twitter to communicate good or bad information about a brand.

6. Make social networkers loyal: Cues from Twitter: easy, fast, and well designed.

• Social networkers note community and friends as top reasons they’re spending more time on social networks. Variety of activities (46%), ease (39%), and speed (30%) are key.

7. Search and find most popular, multimedia not fully adopted.

• About half of all Twitterers are using search and find. Less than a quarter are updating to blogs, posting photos or posting videos.

8. Ashton vs. CNN: News actually trumps celebrities! (but not by much!)

• About half of all Twitterers are interested in news and entertainment. Other popular Twitter themes include politics, products and services, sports, celebrities and restaurants.

9. Social networks and Twitter: It’s not just about finding your old prom date.

• Two thirds of all social networkers use them to connect and communicate. However, about a quarter use them to follow news, play games or professionally network.

10. Smartphones: A Twitterer’s best friend.

• Twitterers are almost twice as likely to own smartphones than Internet users. Top two phones include BlackBerry (15%) and iPhone (10%). Twitter users have advanced mobile behavior: half take photos, a third go online and twenty percent play games regularly. About 25% of Twitter users update some type of social networking status regularly via their mobile phone.

From a thinktank research study of Internet, mobile and social networking users, fielded May 2009, n=1,850, twitter users, n=665. (For the full report, contact Robin Boyar at thinktank research. The full report is available for $495 or $995 with an in-person presentation)

• If you are a household brand name, like Virgin America, by all means use it. Followers will be looking for you.
• If you are a well known in your category and people are already seeking you out, use your name in your handle. Again, people will want to find and follow you because you’ve already built a personal reputation offline.
• If you fall into the category of virtually unknown, like most of us, consider using a descriptive name in your title, for example @winedinetv. Building my following would have been much easier had I used “public relations” or “social media” in my twitter handle.
• If you use your company name and/or your personal name and you don’t have a significant offline following, describe what you do in your profile.

2. Fill Out Your Profile Completely

• Think of this as your introduction to your followers. If you were at a networking event you would introduce yourself and at some point get around to telling people what you do for a living, your philosophy on life, the books you’ve written; whatever you want people to know about you.

3. Post A Photo Of Yourself

• This proves you are indeed, human. Leaving the Twitter icon up looks like you might be a spammer (this is the equivalent of talking to a wall at a party and no one wants to relive THAT experience). We found when we had our logo posted we did not get as many followers. When we posted my personal picture, the numbers of followers increased greatly. Again, going back to @winedinetv, they use their brand name, but put pictures of themselves up on their page.

4. Do Not Lock Your Updates

• Locking your updates tells potential followers that you’re not interested in having a two-way conversation with them. We have a client who was complaining that no one was following them, but they had locked their updates. We unlocked their updates (and changed a few other things) and followers poured in.

5. Follow Your Followers

• The whole idea behind participating in social media is to have a two way conversation with the folks in your group. If you don’t follow people who follow you, it’s like you are staring mutely back at someone who ask you a question.
• There are a few exceptions and I may be a prude, but there are some people who I don’t follow back because of the content that they are tweeting. Some of that stuff I just don’t want to see pop up on my screen!
• If you don’t follow your followers, you may find that they stop following you.

6. Follow Your Follower’s Followers

• If your followers like your content, their followers are likely to be interested in the same topics.

7. Be Consistent With Your Tweet Content

• This allows people to find and follow you based on content. With few exceptions, I consistently tweet about social media marketing, public relations, wine and restaurants. If someone is considering whether to follow me, they will have a good idea of what I’m all about and decide if that’s information they are interested in receiving.
• If your business is geographically specific, i.e. you run a furniture store in West Hollywood and you know your customers come from a 15 mile radius, you need to mention “West Hollywood” in your tweets as many times as appropriate.

8. Give Back To The Community

• It’s fine to send people to your website for specials, deals, information etc. But if you only do that, you will earn a bad reputation as a taker, you will lose followers and break the trust of your followers.
• Find articles that talk about your area of interest or retweet other posts.

9. Avoid Following People With Locked Updates

• Do you really want to try to have a conversation with someone who is already telling you they don’t want to talk to you?
• I have found that these people are less likely to follow back

10. Tweet (seriously)

• I realize this seems obvious, but clients will tell me that they can’t understand why no one is following them, but they posted three totally lame (and you know who you are) updates months ago.
• You need to post on a regular basis with relevant, helpful information. Except for your parents, few people care that you can’t find matching socks in the morning.
• We recommend that client’s tweet at least every 48 hours.

11. Don’t Over Do It

• If you are tweeting too frequently, unless you are reporting breaking news, you are probably sending out too much information too frequently that can overwhelm people and turn them away.

Check out our 26 Tips On Social Media Participation.

PHOTO CREDIT: AcousticSkyy

We started off at BREADBAR where they delivered on the promise of a near perfect bun coupled with a nice angus burger. We all agreed they earned double added bonus points for the house-made ketchup. 

For a little less bun and a lot more filling, we hit up The Bowery, where you have the option to add “the works” to your enormous patty, and try to hold it all inside the English muffin bun.  Messy, (probably not a good first date choice) but loaded with flavor from the super thick sirloin patty, your choice of cheese (I went with gruyere), grilled onions, and sautéed mushrooms.

Next up we went with the rumored Waygu Wonder at O Bar & Kitchen downtown.  Piled high with pickled shallots, bacon, provolone horseradish aioli and tomato confit, this burger delivered all of the traditional flavors, but each ingredient turned up the flavor a notch. 

As we neared our decision, we elected to try out another long time Los Angeles bad boy landmark, The Shack Sports Grill. The burger is good, but really might be a heart attack on a plate with a sausage and a patty. Suggesting it as the best would be akin to homicide, which is apparently against Ink Foundry policy. Go figure.

With almost 20 different hamburger creations at 26 Beach, it’s challenging to choose just one. There is definitely something here for everyone including a peanut butter burger that no Ink Foundry staffer has been brave enough to try.

Finally I recalled the Pug Burger at the Hungry Cat.  I fondly recalled the bacon, avocado, and bleu cheese burger topped off with an egg. 

So how would the long esteemed Office Burger measure up?  Although we had some incredible burgers, there was no denying the Father’s Office burger “no substitutions” combination of dry aged beef, caramelized onion, applewood bacon compote, gruyere, Maytag blue cheese, and arugula was the winner of the Ink Foundry Great BurgerQuest 2009. Although we don’t have trophy’s (hey, we tried, but received a “you want budget for what?!?!” response), we will be there often drinking craft brew and eating as many burgers as any pr girl can handle.

I think I’ll tackle pizza next. Any suggestions?
 
TOP SIX
 
1.    The Office Burger, Father’s Office, Culver City & Santa Monica
2.    Bowery Burger, The Bowery, Hollywood
3.    Waygu Burger, O Bar & Kitchen, Downtown
4.    Pug Burger, The Hungry Cat, Hollywood
5. Angus Burger, BreadBar, Century City, Beverly/Fairfax
6. 19 Burgers Choices, 26 Beach