A Divine Hotdog

Hotdog. Frankfurter. Tube Steak. No matter what you call it, there are few foods that compare to the perfect hotdog. You can keep your Falafel, Larb Gai, or bacon jam. Mustard, onions, a little kraut on a bun… perfection.

And few compare to the beauty that is a red hot from Dante’s Inferno Dogs. While my other fellow bloggers stood in line for tacos and tamales, I made a bee-line for the stainless-steel cart shining like a beacon, singing to me from across the parking lot. The smell of garlic, mustard, and onions call my name. And like a sailor to a siren, I am drawn inexorably to gastric doom. I must have one. No Ballpark frank here. Juicy with the perfect blend of garlic and spices, the Dante dog has the perfect ‘snap’. It’s all about the snap. That is what separates the good from the great.

Add a Kilt Lifter Ale from The Pike Brewing Company and food Nirvana is not far behind.

Photo Credit: Mardi Michels, www.eatlivetravelwrite.com

NOTE: The above is part of an exercise from the International Food Bloggers Conference 2010. It took place during lunch on the last day of the conference, when we were fed by several of Seattle’s finest street vendors. The goal was to write and publish a 200 word or less blog post or photo about our favorite bite/food cart at lunch. A panel of judges chose the three best among the entries, and this was one of the winners.

Recently, I’ve been getting more and more auto or canned “thanks for following” direct messages on Twitter. I’ve suggested in the past that this was bad etiquette, but why? First of all, it goes against everything that makes social media an effective marketing/customer service tool. The strength of social media is the ability to engage with somebody one-to-one. It’s a personal connection. So, how does an auto-DM look to someone who just tried to make that connection with you?

“I think they are lazy and extremely impersonal. They seem at odds with the point of social media, which is engagement,” says Ben Simons of Vintology. And, he’s right. Auto-DMs are impersonal and off-putting.

” I am for auto DM’s, [because] it let’s me know quickly that the person isn’t worth my time following on Twitter,” says social media expert Shana Ray, of Two-Five Media. And, in fact, many users WILL use it as a reason to unfollow you as quickly as they followed you in the first place.

“Whenever I receive an auto-DM/reply thanks, I wince a little bit. I feel like it’s an obligatory interaction and not genuine,” says Joshua Sweeney of Wine(Explored). I do as well, and sometimes I will offer some friendly (and free) advice to the perpetrator that they may want to reconsider the practice, but I don’t have the time or energy to do this with all the auto-DMs I receive.

So, what’s the proper etiquette? “Why thank them at all? I know I’m a little rough around the edges at time, but when did this become Twitter etiquette?” says Lenn Thompson of the New York Cork Report. Indeed. I would suggest that the best response to someone following you is to follow them back if appropriate. That should be sufficient. “Sometimes I follow back. Sometimes I send a thanks for the follow to open a dialogue. I do it case by case,” says Sue Guerra of New Jersey Monthly.

So, should we do away with the idea of a “thank you” DM altogether? Not according to Shana Ray. “[A] DM saying hello & starting a real [conversation] equals social media.”

So, if you are reading this, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t send auto/canned DMs in Twitter. If you currently use the practice, stop. And, if you have the cycles, do your research and respond to your new friend with something more personal and engaging. That’s the way to leverage this social media stuff for good, not evil.

Perhaps the funniest comment on this subject came from an anonymous source at the Sonoma Farmer’s Market, “they are like a bad boob job: you know they’re fake.” ‘Nuff said.

One of the many activities in which I participated at the Wine Bloggers Conference was a series of interviews by other bloggers/media. One such interview was with Jeff Weissler of the new blog, Conscious Wine. It’s a nice little wrap-up of the conference. I’m near the end, by the way.

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Tags: blogging, interviews, wine bloggers conference

One of the challenges that publicists face, is how to measure the effectiveness of their activities in a quantitative way. This is especially true for small businesses and wineries. Unfortunately, they don’t often have the tools or in-house expertise to correlate specific programs to direct sales, and even harder to measure brand awareness/loyalty. It can become very time consuming and costly. Measuring the “Circulation” or “Ad Values” alone can be a poor metric.

So what are we left with? I often use what I call a “Proxy Measurement Model”.

The Proxy Model is a way to “score” the results of your media relations efforts to help you gauge success and set future goals. Basically, you assign a total value to a media clip based on several variables. Here are some examples:

• Content Value – What kind of article was it? Feature? Review? Mention?
• Publication Value – What kind of publication is it? Magazine? Newspaper? Community Paper? Onine? Blog? TV Spot? Radio Spot?
• Circulation Value – Slightly antiquated term referring to how many people read a particular publication. The online equivalent often used is “Unique Visitors per Month”. So, assign some values based on circulation.
• Audience Value – It doesn’t matter HOW many people read a publication if the audience is all wrong. The quality matters more than the quantity. A wine specific audience is much more likely to pay attention to good reviews/stories about wines, than a more general audience.
• Image Value – Images more easily grab a reader’s attention and they are more likely to retain what they read. So, photos, label shots, or bottles shots should count toward the total.
• Social Media Value – Obviously, this didn’t exist a few years ago, but now many publications/blogs often use social media tools to extend their reach. If the article is posted to Facebook or Twitter, give it extra points.

So, the total value of an article or blog post can be assigned based on the above criteria. Whether you use a 1 to 100 scale, or 1 to 10, doesn’t matter as long as you are consistent over time. It’s not fool-proof, nor is it entirely scientific, but it will give you clues on understanding your program effectiveness and help you to plan and measure future campaigns.

If you have other ideas, feel free to share them.

Tags: Measurement, Metrics, PR, public relations, wine

I make a small cameo appearance in this video by Zev Robinson (for Catavino). It’s a nice preview/trailer/short that he did of Ryan and Gabrielle’s trip to the Wine Bloggers Conference last month. Regardless of my 2 second appearance, it gets you thinking…

Tags: Bloggers, blogging, Blogs, catavino, video, wbc10