From the Live Downcity Blog:

Since its opening in 1996, Creperie off of Thayer Street has built up what the owner, Leslie Albuquerque, calls somewhat of a “cult following.”  Because of its proximity to Brown University’s campus, Creperie is a student favorite with alumni returning long after they graduate to get their fix of crepes, smoothies and wraps.  Most of the crepes have girls’ names, like Betty, Connie, Nori, Jeanne, and combine classic favorites, such as nutella and strawberries or scrambled egg, baked ham and swiss;  with brave daily specials, such as the Jess a.k.a. “French s’more” with marshmallow, chocolate & graham cracker.

While attending college in Providence, Albuquerque, fell in love with the College Hill area.  After graduating, she decided to use her love of cooking to fill a need on Thayer Street for simple food, Crepes!  Their menu offers vegan and vegetarian dishes, as well as sweet and savory crepes and smoothies morning to night, staying open until midnight or 2am most nights during the school year. “Crepes can be a snack or meal,” Albuquerque explained, “They were my daughter’s first food.”  With fresh fruit and ingredients, crepes offer a pleasant alternative to the multitude of pizza-by-the-slice offered on Thayer Street.

In their thirteen years on Thayer Street, Creperie has maintained its Mom-and-Pop nature in the face of a mass commercialization of Thayer Street.  With very little advertising, they rely mostly on word of mouth, and wholly embrace their mission, to serve delicious, simple food, done in classic french style.  “Providence meets Paris describes it best,” Albuquerque says of their crepes, “We bring the authentic Paris food cart vendors’ taste to Thayer Street.”  Their quaint location, tucked in Fones Alley, just off of Thayer Street is reminiscent of European storefronts.  The cozy interior offers a layed back atmoshphere, with counter service and limited seating.  During the warmer months, Creperie has outdoor seating, as well.  Located just across the street from the trolley and bus stop, and just up the hill from Downcity, Creperie is a choice destination for fresh smoothies and sweet and savory crepes.

Creperie is the recent winner of RI World of Flavors competition this past July and is celebrated as Providence’s best “European” cuisine.  Visit them at 82 Fones Alley in Providence.

Creperie – Best European Cuisine « Live Downcity.

As Jordan and I produced the Rhode Island World of Flavors Competition, I crafted a social media campaign specifically for the event. Here are some of the online tools that I used:

Wordpress and StudioPress: I built a beautiful website for the event, www.RIWorldofFlavors.com. I know only the most basic html, which I have picked up in the course of starting my own company. Using Wordpress, I was able to quickly and easily create and customize a site. I used a template from StudioPress (formerly known as RevolutionTwo) which, for a low price, gave the site a very professional feel. I added in one important WordPress plugin, WordPress Stats, which allowed me to keep track of which external websites were generating incoming hits. This information was extremely valuable and we monitored it closely. I also created specific landing pages for the site. For example, if you came to our site from Google, you would land on a different page than if you came to our site from Facebook. Each landing page offered a unique discount code on tickets, so we could see exactly which clicks were converting into sales. (Cost: $60 for the site template)

Facebook. I teach a seminar at the Rhode Island Economic Development Center called “Introduction to Facebook for Small Businesses,” and the World of Flavors Competition gave me a great opportunity to practice what I preach. I used three different Facebook Applications for to promote the event: Facebook Pages, Facebook Ads, and Facebook Events.

I created a page specifically for the RI World of Flavors. The page started simply with a graphic and some basic information, but as we acquired more media, such as video from our appearances on Fox’s The Rhode Show, we added that to the page. I promoted the page using a Facebook ad campaign, targeting people within a ten-mile radius of Providence with food and restaurant-related terms in their personal profile. We quickly amassed hundreds of fans in a short period of time. I ran a parallel Facebook campaign driving people to the Wordpress site, but I preferred the Facebook Fanpage campaign because Facebook has recently enabled people to become a fan of a page with a single click in the right column of the site. With this one click, I could easily connect with this person repeatedly at no cost. When we drove them to the Wordpress site, we would not be able to reconnect with them again later unless the opted in to our email newsletter, which takes comparatively more effort.

Once we had fans, we connected with them on a regular basis by regularly posting status updates. Among the many improvements Facebook has made in the past year, one of the most significant is allowing Fanpage status updates to appear in the newsfeed of fans. Now, when I post a status update on the World of Flavors fanpage, all of my fans will see it on their homepage. Jordan and I made a point of offering peaks behind the scenes multiple times a day to engage fans.

I should note that while we used status updates extensively, we did not use updates very often. Facebook fanpage updates are essentially email blasts to fans. In Facebook, these blasts don’t land in the user’s inbox, but in a special section of the inbox just for updates. Frankly, it’s easy for Facebook users to ignore or miss their updates (I do), and so I don’t rely on this feature much.

Finally, I created a Facebook Event for the World of Flavors and promoted this event with a Facebook Ad campaign similar to the one for the fanpage. During the ramp up to the World of Flavors, Facebook made a significant improvement to its ads by allowing users to RSVP to an event with a single click in the right column, very similar to the way they can become a fan of a page with a single click. I like to supplement the Facebook Fanpage with a Facebook Event because once a person RSVPs or is inivted to the event, you can send them a message. Unlike Fanpage Updates, however, these messages land directly in the user’s Inbox. (As a marketer, this is great; as a Facebook user, however, I find that my Inbox gets clogged with messages about events that I RSVPed to even though I have no real intention of attending.)

Overall, we noted that we had more incoming hits on our Wordpress site from Facebook than all other sites combined. We found Facebook to be, by far, our most effective online marketing tool. (Cost: About $.70 per click)

Incorporating Video with Eyejot and Ping.fm. I have raved about using Eyejot and Ping.fm on this site many times now, but we used it quite effectively here. Eyejot is primarily a video email service, but the site offers a Firefox widget which allows you to share any site with a customized video sidebar. So whenever we signed up a new restaurant for the Competition, I would leak that information using Eyejot. I would go to the restaurant’s website, record a video, and share it through social media.

Ping.fm has been a trusted weapon in my marketing arsenal for a long time now. The site lets me post status updates to all of my social media outlets - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. - with one fell swoop. At my request, David Geller, the founder of Eyejot integrated his service with Ping, so I can know post video updates to all of my social media outlets at once. I made a habit of regularly creating video updates (many featuring our newly adopted kittens) and we saw significant traffic increases from these updates in particular. Unfortunately, Ping does not yet integrate with Facebook Fanpages (reportedly because Facebook has opened up that API yet), but I was able to develop a convoluted workaround using a Twitter hashtag, described here. (Cost: Free)

GoogleAds. I created a GoogleAds campaign to drive traffic to our Wordpress site. I selected two dozen or so keywords (usually something food-related like “restaurant” and something geographically-driven, like “Providence”) and produced all the possible combinations. I then set up an ad campaign taegeting people within the Providence area. I used several different variations on the text and monitored them closely to see which produced the best results. (Turns out “20% Off” was more effective than $10 Off,” but we actually got more clicks when we didn’t offer any discount!) I am a big proponent of GoogleAds, but I don’t think we converted many of our clicks to actual tickets sales. (Cost: About $.75 per click)

Google Alerts. Although Google Alerts is not a social media tool in the strict sense, I set up a an alert for the term “World of Flavors” to see what other people were saying about the event. This is how I was able to monitor our press coverage as it happened. For example, as soon as Gail Ciampa, the Food Editor for The Providence Journal, posted a story online about our event, I was alerted both by email and by RSS feed. (Cost: Free.)

Event-listing Websites. I have built my own event-listing website, QuickWhatsUp.com (recently named “Best Local Event Listings of 2009″ by Rhode Island Magazine), but that’s no reason not to employ other websites as well. We posted the event on numerous sites. Some of those were broad event-listing sites, including WhoFish.org and Going.com. Others sites belong to local media outlets with event-listing capabilities, such as ProJo.com/TheBeat (The Providence Journal uses a white-label website company called Zvents to handle its event listings) or Turnto10.com, NBC’s website. Still other sites were specifically restaurant-related, such as FoodReference.com. Interestingly, FoodReference.com generated the most incoming traffic after Facebook. (Cost: Free. Never pay to list your event anywhere.)

Email and Blog Outreach. QuickWhatsUp.com has its own email database and we included the event in our email blasts (I use Constant Contact to generate the company’s emails. We also developed Strategic relationships with some specific newsletters, such as the Providence-based email newsletter and blog Live DownCity, and a local Food and Wine newsletter. We only paid to be included in one local email newsletter, run by ArtTix. We considered this an experiment, and even though it only cost $150, we only saw about 20 incoming hits from the newsletter. The cost-per-click was significantly higher than Facebook. Moreover, it did not allow us to repeatedly connect with those incoming users the way our Facebook Fanpage does. (Cost: $0-150)

Twitter Outreach. Most of our Tweeting was done automatically through Ping.fm, but we made a habit of using TweetDeck to monitor any replies, retweets and direct messages we received regarding the event. Interestingly, we connected with several potential sponsors through Twitter, including SwingJuice and Glee Gum. We also connected to a couple of restaurant-focused Tweeters, who promoted our event through Twitter ticket giveaways. (Cost: $0)

Text Message Outreach. QuickWhatsUp.com maintains a text message database through ClubTexting, and we promoted our events through blasts. However, because we did not have a list specifically dedicated to restaurant-related events (we had never done one before!), these may not have been the most our most effective tool. (Cost: $100/month to maintain the ClubTexting database, though they now offer a pay-per-use model at $.05 per message.)

Other Tools. We used several other online tools in the production of the event, though not necessarily in the promotion of the event. These include Batchbook Blue, Shoeboxed, Brown Paper Tickets, Formspring and more. I recommend checking them out.

Hopefully, this gives you some insight into the creation of a social media marketing campaign. Of course, we employed tons of traditional marketing as well, including print, radio, television, posters, flyers, banners and more. Much of this was necessary because our event needed to attract an audience that isn’t always the most web-savvy. Nonetheless, social media marketing proved to be extremely cost-effective for us.

My girlfriend, Jordan, and I have spent the last two months working on the Rhode Island World of Flavors Competition. The initial idea behind the event was Jordan’s; she loves food and wanted an excuse to work with restaurants.  I “borrowed” the model from the Rhode Island beer expo that happens at the Convention Center.  I thought to myself, why can’t we do with food what they do with beer?  So we met with a number of caterers and sought their input.  We were repeatedly told that this was a very tough year for restaurants and it might be hard to get them involved.

That’s when we came up with the idea of turning the whole thing into a contest with a large prize package to attract the restaurants.  The prize package we put together far exceeded my expectations.  You can see it here.  We designed the contest so that the audience could vote.  We decided to divide the restaurants into geographic regions to showcase the cultural diversity of food that Rhode Island has to offer.

Over the course of doing this event, “showcasing cultural diversity through food” has emerged as a major theme.  When people think of Rhode Island food, they tend to think of Italian, seafood and Portugese.  But this state has a lot more to offer, and we wanted to call attention to that fact.

This is far and away the largest event I have ever put together, and in many ways the most complicated.  It’s complicated primarily because of the sheer number of people that are involved in an event of this nature.  Because it is outdoors, City Hall, the police department and the Department of Public works are involved (plus I have to bring in my own tent, tables, security, credit card machines, dumpster, etc.).  And, because its a cooking event, the fire marshal and Department of Health are involved.  Plus thirty-three restaurants, dozens of media and prize partners and a number of exhibitors.  Suddenly there’s  lot going on.

There’s no way I could have taken this event on without Jordan’s help.  She has been chiefly responsible for recruiting and handling the restaurants.  She’s done an amazing job getting great quality restaurants into the competition.  If you haven’t seen the list yet, check it out here.  I’ve been handling most of the other logistics, including the paperwork (there’s a lot!) and the marketing.  Even with the two of us, it’s a full time job, and I’ve had to let most of my other endeavors go in order to focus on this event.

The best part about it has been all the interesting people we’ve met along the way.  Jordan has really enjoyed meeting all of the different chefs and restaurant owners (she could talk about food all day).  I’ve met a ton of great people, too.  Naturally, some have been very supportive of the idea and some have been skeptical, but we’ve been able to team up with enough believers to get things done.

The first year of an event is alway the toughtest, primarily because there’s no video, photos or testimonials from previous years to show people, so they don’t always believe you can pull it off.  I’ve put together a ton of events before, but events are always easier once you’ve got the first one under your belt.  We can already tell that this event will be much easier to put together the second time around.

We’re really looking forward to this event.  Overall, things are coming together very nicely.  It’s been a lot of work, but there have been no major snags (knock on wood) so far.  We hope you’ll come down and join us at the Skating Center on July 12th for it!

For including this in the paper:

Seth Resler is a Providence marketing specialist who looked around and thought Rhode Island, with its rich, ethnic food world, needed a multicultural culinary competition.

A Brown University grad who worked as program director at WBRU after graduation, he’s moved into the marketing biz and has been running mixology contests for local bartenders. Now, Resler’s company, QuickWhatsUp.com, launches The World of Flavors Competition on Sunday, July 12, from 1 to 6 p.m. at the Bank of America Skating Center at Kennedy Plaza, Providence. Resler plans to showcase a cross-section of Rhode Island restaurants as they compete for a $15,000 prize package that includes an appearance on Fox Providence’s Rhode Show and design services.

He’s now recruiting restaurants from around the state into the fold. They will serve samples of their food to attendees who will pick winners in each of four categories: Americana, South of the Border, European & Mediterranean and Asian & Indian. Those who sign on will pay a $200 refundable deposit to commit to the event, which will be held under tent rain or shine.

The event will hosted by Shawn Tempesta of the Rhode Show and features music by Spogga. Resler said the date was chosen to tie in with Providence Restaurant Weeks, July 12 to 25.

Tickets to the event cost $50 but there is a $10 discount for those who use the code ProJo when buying tickets on riworldofflavors.com. That is also the spot to learn more about signing on for the event.

via Multicultural culinary competition set for July 12 | Food | projo.com | The Providence Journal.

I’ve raved before about Eyejot, the video emailing service. I like it not for emailing (although I did use it with great effect to impress an important client recently), but rather because the Eyejot This! browser widget makes it easy to share sites with a video accompaniment. Eyejot founder David Geller integrated his service with Ping.fm, making it easy for me to post these videos to all of my social media sites - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

I’ve begun secretly leaking the restaurants that are competing in the Rhode Island World of Flavors Competition using Eyejot videos. I’ll go to a participating restaurant’s website, click the Eyejot This button on my site, record a quick video, and post it to my sites. Very simple.

Then I created a Facebook page for the RI World of Flavors Competition. I wanted to quickly and easily import each of these Eyejot videos onto that page. Ideally, I wanted to import them onto the page with an RSS feed via Facebook’s Notes application, because this would let me tag the video with friends. While Eyejot provides an RSS feed for your incoming video email, it does not allow you to create a specific RSS feed for outgoing videos (or, what would be even more useful, a particular subset of outgoing video emails - like just those pertaining to the World of Flavors Competition).

Ultimately, I found a workaround for this issue. I created a Twitter hashtag for the #RIWorldofFlavors, went to Twitter.com, and created an RSS feed for the results of a search for this hashtag. The RI World of Flavors Facebook page imports this Twitter search RSS feed via the Notes application. Now all I have to do is include the hashtag in all of my Eyejot posts, and they will automatically upload to the Facebook page. It may be a little convoluted (I’m using Eyejot, Ping.fm, Twitter and Facebook Notes at once to accomplish my goals), but it works.

Nobody reads my blog.  Well, apparently you do.  But nobody else does.  Why you’re reading this when you could be doing infinitely more valuable things with your time, like downloading old Adam Lambert videos, is beyond me.  But to thank you for reading, I want to extend a special offer to you and your friends.  Tomorrow (Fri 5/22), tickets go on sale for the RI World of Flavors Competition:

QuickWhatsUp.com is proud to launch the first multicultural culinary competition in Rhode Island. The World of Flavors Competition will showcase a broad cross-section of Rhode Island restaurants as they compete a $15,000 prize package. Restaurants from around the state will sample their food to up to 1,000 voters who will pick the winner in each category: Americana, South of the Border, European & Mediterranean, and Asian & Indian. The event, hosted by Shawn Tempesta of the Rhode Show on Fox Providence and featuring music by Spogga, will kick off Providence Restaurant Weeks (July 12-25).

via Rhode Island’s World of Flavors.

To thank you for reading my silly little ramblings, I’d like to give you a 20% discount on tickets.  Just enter the code “Blog” when you purchase tickets online. Hope to see you on the 12th!

As I write this, I am sitting in a hotel room in San Diego, where I am vacationing (but never able to completely get away from it all).  I am very excited because I have finised putting together the prize package for our upcoming World of Flavors competition.  All told, local restaurants will be competing for over $15,000 in prizes.  To be honest, it’s a better prize package than I imagined possible when I set out.

The competition will take place at the Providence Sating Center on Sunday, July 12th.  Up to forty restaurants will compete in one of four geographic categories: Americana, South of the Border, European & Mediterranean or Asian & Indian.  The public will vote for their favorite restaurant in each categoy.

• The four winners will share in a $15,000 prize package, which includes:
• An appearance on Fox’ new local morning show, the Rhode Show
• Commercials on Fox Providence and WPRI Channel 12
• Commercials on 95.5 WBRU
• A professional photography package by IHI Design
• A creative consulting session with print and broadcast advertising producer Tony Aguilar
• A GoogleAds campaign by Precision Web Marketing
• A graphic redesign package by Artinium Inc.
• A professional printing package by Sir Speedy Providence
• A DJ/karaoke package by WRIK Entertainment

I’m really excited about this event because I love things that showcase the culture of the state.  The competiton will kick off Providence Restaurant Weeks.  It will be hosted by the Rhode Show’s Shawn Tempesta.  It’ll be a great weekend downcity - Sound Session will culminate on the day before the event and Iron Man is the same day.

Tickets go on sale one week from today - Friday the 22nd at noon - for $50 apiece.

If you want to enter your restaurant in the competition, just click on the Register button on the website.

Next Monday night, QuickWhatsUp.com is hostng a private event for Rhode Island bartenders that I am very excited about.  We are bringing in New York City master mixologist Junior Merino in to teach an artisanal cachaca masterclass.  Cachaca is similar to rum, in that it is produced from sugar cane.  It is used in caipirinha’s, the national drink of Brazil.  The seminar that Junior is going to teach is going to be sick, and I can’t wait for it.  Bartenders who are interested should get more info here.

Last week, I gave a seminar at the RIEDC called “Intro to Facebook for Small Business.”  It was the first time I had given the seminar, and I was a bit nervous, but it went very well.  It was not a strategy session; I said at the beginning that I was not revealing any tricks or secrets.  In fact, all of the info contained in my seminar is available on the web, most of it on Facebook’s site.  The seminar was designed as a very practical walkthrough of Facebook’s features.  The first half was designed for people who had never used Facebook before and it covered the basics of setting up a profile and the communications.  The second half focused on the the Facebook applications designed by Facebook, including Photos, Videos, Notes, Groups and Ads and Pages.  I received a very nice email in response to the seminar:

Hi Seth,

I attended your presentation on “Intro to Facebook for Small Business” a few weeks ago and wanted to tell you how helpful it was.  The first hour was geared very well for people who are relatively new at using the internet as a business tool <or at all>.  I was happily surprised at how much really practical and useful information there was in the second half for a semi-knowledgeable user.  I’ve created our first business page <of many to come I’m sure!> to go with my husbands <Stephen Russell> brandy new “work” profile. This template should save me bunches of time when I’m creating our LinkedIn and MySpace profiles.  I also took your advice and purchased a Flip camcorder which I will use at the very next IT event I attend.

Here is our first page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pawtucket-RI/RB-IT-Solutions-Inc/67520579334#/pages/Pawtucket-RI/RB-IT-Solutions-Inc/67520579334?ref=ts

Thank you for your help and I’m looking forward to employing some of the other techniques for marketing you suggested during the workshop.

The other day, I took a meeting with some very nice folks at a prominent local media outlet.  When I met with them, they told me that their web guy had said to them, “Seth Resler?  He’s a huge local blogger?”

I found the comment surprising, because I haven’t been blogging that long, and lately I haven’t had the time to blog all that often.  If anything, I would expect other media entities to know me from my work at 95.5 WBRU, not this blog.  But it just goes to show that you never know who’s reading, or how people may know you.  Which is why I feel bad that I’ve been too busy to blog recently.

I’ve been working hard on launching two hug event this summer.  The first, which will take place on July 12th, is the Rhode Island World of Flavors Competition.  Up to forty restaurants competing for a $10,000 media package.  We will divide the restaurants into different geographic locations (Asian, European, Americana and South of the Border) and let attendees vote for their favorite.  The event will kick of Providence Restaurant Weeks.  It’s on the same day that the Iron Man triathalon is downtown, and on the same weekend as Sound Session.

So I have spent the last several weeks taking meetings, building relationships and putting everything in motion.  On the logistical side, we’ve been meeting with the Skating Center, representatives from City Hall, the Health Department, Iron Man, media outlets, etc.  We also sought the advice of several large caterers early in the process, to give them an opportunity to tell us what makes events like this a pleasurable experience, and what are the pitfalls to avoid.  I can’t tell you how valuable the advice of Guy Abelson, Deborah from Edible Rhody, Lori from Chelo’s, Dennis from Pineli Mara, Tracy from the Chow Fun Group, Whitney from RISD, Kim and Jim from Twin River and others have been.

To be perfectly honest, I was always apprehensive about how restaurants would respond to this event.  It’s a down economy, and restaurants are feeling the pinch as much as anybody else.  While it wouldn’t cost them anything to participate except the cost of food and labor (and a temporary event license fee if they don’t already have one), I still wasn’t sure.

So I was shocked this week when we finally started approaching restaurant and the response was overwhelmingly postitive.  Almost every restaurant we’ve visited so far has told us they want to participate.  Many have signed up on the spot.  TO be sure, there have been a few exceptions.  These tend to be the older restaurants that have been in the same place for 50 years and don’t need the exposure because everybody knows them.  But the majority of restaurants have told us without hesitation that they are eager to compete.

We’ll publicly announce this event in the coming week, but this is a sneak peak for you.  Tickets go on sale on May 15th. I am really excited about this event!