Upon Leslie’s arrival in New Orleans, I whisked her to Ralph’s on the Park for the Social Media Club’s (@smcno) “Setting the Table for Social Media: Restaurant and Hospitality Roundtable” featuring:
Scott Boswell (@chefscottb): Chef and owner of Stella! and Stanley in New Orleans
Brooke Boudreaux (@whereneworleans): From her hidden Where Magazine
Lizzy Caston (@misslizzyc): New New Orleanian and marketing and urban planning guru
Lorin Gaudin (@loringaudin): New Orleans Food Diva, and WGNO star
OVERVIEW:
This was a tasty meeting of food journalists, dining and hospitality communications professionals, foodies and social media specialists.
Chef Scott said that people are following what he tweets about and ordering those dishes.
Big Do’s and Don’ts for social media:
Do: Be positive, Be yourself and Think before you Tweet!
Don’t: Sell too hard and RT everything.
Live by “if you wouldn’t want to read it, don’t tweet it!”
Twitter was the main focus of the panel’s discussion although several of them also found success using blogs, youtube, facebook and flickr. Myspace seems to be in the echoing past, with hardly anyone keeping up their profiles there. In using social media, be aware of who your audience is and how to best communicate with them.
Panel members share a passion for food and social media is one way to share that.
Lorin mentioned an amazing blog by an 18 year old foodie: “Passionfruit butter” http://passionfruitbutter.com/ .
We were starved after this discussion and ate at Ralph’s. Leslie had saffron braised lamb cheeks with Israeli couscous and Dustin chowed on a baked oyster quartet! Mmmmmm.
Some more do’s and dont’s for social media
Do: Find a way to be beneficial to your readers. Make it about them, not you.
Don’t: Tweet too much (this can and will lead to unfollows)