1. Ghostbusters
2. The Exorcist
3. Silence of the Lambs
4. The Ring
5. Beetlejuice
6. Seven
7. The Grudge
8. Scream
9. The Blair Witch Project
10. Alien
11. 28 Days Later
12. Saw
13. Army of Darkness
14. Scream 2
15. Aliens
16. Psycho
17. Shaun of the Dead
18. 12 Monkeys
19. The Shining
20. Open Water
I am excited to announce that next week I am headed to Boston to become the new Marketing Campaign Manager at an executive development firm called Linkage. Almost three years ago, I started an event production company called QuickWhatsUp.com. I started out with small events, then began working on major events like the New England Nightclub and Bar Expo, the Rhode Island World of Flavors Competition and the DiscoverYou Holistic and Wellness Expo. My work was honored by a citizen citation from the Mayor of Providence and was named “Best of 2009″ by Rhode Island Monthly Magazine. I met dozens of great people from the local nightlife industry through events like the Iron ‘Tender, from the local entertainment industry through events like the Going Going Gong Show and in the local entrepreneurial community. I had the opportunity to work with great up-and-coming talent, including Spogga, Greg Lato, Johnny Lingo, Ben Hague, Patrick Austin, Benjamin Horsman, Opie, JAT, Sasha Gaulin and more. I’ve also worked with some great clients, including the Twin River Casino, Anheuser-Busch, Corona, Universal Records, Safari Modeling, the Newport Comedy Series, and many more.
Somewhere along the way, I taught myself to use social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, text message databases and blogs. I didn’t set out on this path consciously; I simply couldn’t afford traditional media to promote my events. But I became skilled with it, and realized that others were interested in the knowledge I had acquired. So I began offering courses at the RIEDC in Facebook and Twitter for small business. Eventually, I launched New England Social Media to focus exclusively on social media services for businesses.
While I enjoyed working with small businesses, part of me has wanted to return to a larger pond, like the one I was in during my broadcasting years. So when the Linkage opportunity came along, it was a natural fit. The company produces five large events a year (four summits and a total immersion training experience) as well as dozens of smaller workshops. The combination of working on events and social media while consulting with larger consulting clients was too good to pass up, and it seems like the natural next step in the evolution of my career.
Early on, somebody told me that the business you start is never the business you end up with. That’s definitely been true for me. It’s been an interesting ride, and I’ve learned a lot about both the world and myself along the way. I will continue to offer social media guidance to those in need of my services. I may even produce an event here and there in Boston, but on a much smaller scale.
I am looking forward to working at Linkage. I have already met a number of very smart people there, and I am excited by the social media projects they have in store for me. I am also looking forward to returning to Boston (I was there in 2000-2001 working for WBCN). I have many friends up there and I have always loved the city. Providence has been my home for ten years - four as a college student and six as a young professional - and I have enjoyed the city immensely. I have to confess, it was not until I started QuickWhatsUp.com that I really got to know the rest of the state, from the shops lining Thames Street in Newport to the Bristol waterfront to the Block island beaches. I have lived in many cities and traveled to many more, but nothing is quite like Providence. I will miss this state’s quirks, from cabinets covered with jimmies to a stubborn refusal to drive more than fifteen minutes up the road. I realize that this state has been hit harder than most by the economic downturn, but I have lived in many cities and traveled to many more, and even in these trying times Providence has an amazing amount of culture to offer for a city of its size. So I wanted to say thank you for allowing me to be part of your community; I have learned a lot from all of you and I will remember you fondly.
WBRU’s General Sales Manager Mark “Stack” Stachowski will depart the station to become the General Manager of the Citadel cluster (no, he didn’t win the position in an on-air contest) after fourteen dedicated years. Stack has been a friend since the days when he and I used to spin U-Nite down at Lupo’s on Westminster Street. While I left the station, returned and left again, he rose through the ranks as a steady fixture, first as a student, then as a promotional assistant, then as a national salesperson, and finally as the general sales manager. Only a handful of others (Mary Dalton, Randy Herschoff, Craig Healy, Tim Schiavelli, Mike Hart) have put in a comparable number of years in WBRU’s long history, and he has contributed hugely to the station’s continued success during his time there. Even in the current economic climate, when flat is the new up, Stack’s navigated the treacherous radio waters while larger alternative stations like WBCN and K-Rock have faltered. I have no doubt he’ll do very well in his new role overseeing four (!) stations in New London. We all wish him the best of luck.
I’ve played with it a bit and I still prefer my RSS feeds, but you tell me what you think…
Google, long seen as an enemy by many in the news industry, is making a bold attempt to be seen as its friend with a new service it hopes will make it easier for readers to view newspaper and magazine articles.
On Monday, the company unveiled an experimental news hub called Fast Flip that allows users to view news stories from dozens of major publishers and flip through them as fast as they would the pages of a magazine.
Fast Flip, which is based on Google News, attempts to address what Google considers a major problem with news sites: because they often are slow to load, they turn off many readers. Google, the leader in Web search services and advertising, has long argued that if reading news online resembled more closely the experience of perusing physical newspapers or magazines, people would read more.
“Browsing news on the Web is much slower than it is in print,” said Krishna Bharat, a distinguished researcher at Google who developed Google News in 2002. “When it is fast, people will look at more news and more ads, and that’s something that publishers want to see.”
via Google Releases News-Reading Service - NYTimes.com.
Today, I announce the launch of New England Social Media, a new division of QuickWhatsUp.com. It might be odd to have multiple divisions in a one-man company, but I wanted to use a different brand for my social media services than I do for my events. Plus, much to my surprise, the domain name for New England Social Media was still available, and I just couldn’t pass it up!
So let’s talk about how I got here, because it was a long road. I have over a decade of experience in broadcasting. I’ve worked for legendary rock radio stations in Providence, St. Louis, Seattle, Boston and New York. But I saw the writing on the wall and knew that industry was slowly failing - even before the economic downturn was a factor. Technology was changing everything.
I was not a particularly early adopter of social media, though I was pretty internet savvy. I wanted to start a website that listed events, but I couldn’t figure out how to monetize it. (As far as I can tell, not that many people have successfully figured out how to monetize their website.) So I decided to adopt a more traditional business model - I’d generate revenue by producing events.
In the course of producing events, I began using social media to promote them. I’ll give you a few turning points:
In the fall of 2007, Corona contract QuickWhatsUp.com to put together a series of promotions for Gillary’s tavern in Bristol. Mike Ferreia, the owner, had some local customers who wanted a country-western night, so we produced a whole package for him. I offered my staffers (who were local Roger Williams students) a financial incentive to promote the event to their friends on Facebook. Sure enough, the place was record-setting packed on the first night. I have no doubt that it was because word spread online. For me, it was an eye-opening experience.
So I began to spend more and more time online, figuring out the intricacies of social media to use for my events. I watched closely as Facebook introduced Applications and ramped up the features on Pages. I tested Twitter and played with text messaging. To be honest, it was a LOT of trial and error.
Fast forward to October of 2008. I helped the Twin River Casino produce the New England Nightclub and Bar Expo, which was a rousing success in its first year (Frank Martucci, Alain Bart and the rest of the crew over there deserve immense credit for this.) Walking away from this event, I realized that I had the email addresses of dozens of liquor reps and bartenders from the area. I wanted to do something with them, but I wasn’t sure what. It was Opie, a local flair bartender and instructor at the New England School of Bartending, who suggested that somebody should put together a newsletter than focused on profiling people in the nightlife industry. So I launched Behind Bars, an email newsletter specifically aimed at bartenders. In the process, I learned a lot about email newsletters.
At this time, I also doubled-down on my social media strategies. I decided to use Facebook aggressively, and start tweeting on a regular basis. The results were both amazing and instant: suddenly, customers were coming to me. A number of local liquor companies approached me about putting together events for them. Once again, it was a lesson in the power of social media.
In early 2009, I started doing some side work for Allan Tear of Aptus Collaborative. Allan is a business consultant who specializes in the social media realm. He was producing a roundtable discussion on the future of social media for a client who was looking to figure out how they should adapt to the changing landscape. Working with Allan really crystallized a lot of my thoughts about social media. Allan’s got a great mind for the broader, more abstract implications of social media and I learned a lot by working with him - plus I credit him with the great line, “It’s a conversation - are you in it?”
Nonetheless, I’m a nuts and bolts guy. I had spent the last several years working with small business owners, and I knew that they were going to be more concerned with the practical applications. These guys often wear several hats in their businesses, and are working so hard they don’t have a lot of time to look years into the future. They want to know what they need to do, how much it will cost, and when they will see results. As an overworked small business owner, I could relate. So much of my personal exploration into social media has been geared towards the practical. How can I use social media without it consuming my entire day?
Of course, this is a tricky point. To be effective, social media requires a significant investment of time. What makes social media different - and I think, better - than the traditional media channels that I came from is that it allows you to engage in a real conversation with your customers. It is about setting up a campaign to repeat the same message over and over and then letting it run on its own. Social media is about engaging your customers by both talking to them and, more importantly, listening to them. But talking to that many people takes a lot of time! Some of us have businesses to run!
I began teaching a seminar at the RIEDC on Facebook, aimed at small business owners. I was amazed at the turnout. Clearly, there was a lot of interest in the topic. And the breadth of businesses represented there was immense, everything from adult diaper manufacturers to iced tea brewers. Clearly, lots of people were interested in using social media for their business. I even picked up some social media consulting for a few clients, like the Newport Comedy Series and Inspiring Events.
A few weeks ago, I traveled to southern California. In the course of my trip, I met with Larry Weintraub, the CEO of Fanscape. Larry has been putting together social media campaigns for larger companies like MTV and M&Ms for years. He told me that PR agencies are just now realizing that they need to add social media to the list of services they offer. The distinction between online and offline public relations is disappearing. My conversations with PR agencies confirmed this. Although there was some debate over where social media duties should fall - inside an actual company or with its PR agency - it was clear that social media marketing was quickly being recognized as a legitimate field, much like Search Engine Optimization (the art of getting your business’ website to rank high in Google) in recent years.
It dawned on me that while social media is time-intensive, there are two parts of it that require lots of time. One is investing the time in talking to your customers, but the other is learning about social media itself. It takes a lot of time and effort to learn how to use Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, Constant Contact and the hundreds of other social media tools available today. But I had already done all this work. I knew social media. Moreover, I had hands-on experience putting social media marketing campaigns together for my own events. I realized that I had the ability to put together a comprehensive social media campaign from beginning to end.
By the time I returned from California, I was convinced that this social media was the avenue I wanted to pursue. Within a few days, I had other companies who provide business services, such as website development and media buying, coming to me to ask if I could develop some turn-key social media management packages for their clients. With my knowledge, I knew I could provide something that was both low cost and effective. At that point, the next step was obvious: behold, New England Social Media.
We specialize in the two most mainstream social media services: Facebook and the rapidly-growing Twitter. We can do a whole host of other services, from email newsletters to viral videos to text messaging to blogging. We can offer you a very simple, straightforward marketing package, or design something from the ground up that meets your marketing needs. What’s most important, it’s very inexpensive and requires almost no work on your part. If there’s any way I can help your business, please let me know!
I am excited to announce that QuickWhatsUp.com, the company behind events such as the Rhode Island World of Flavors, the Rhode Island Comedy Quest, and the Iron Bartender Mixology Competition, is launching a new division today.
New England Social Media will produce Facebook, Twitter, blogging and email campaigns for companies looking to boost their online presence. The focus is on helping businesses engage with their customers by perpetually generating compelling content. In this day and age, it’s not enough to have a static website. You need to be consistently updating it and constantly conversing with customers through social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. We’re not talking about online advertising; we’re talking about having real conversations with your customers. Frankly, it’s a lot for small businesses that are already overloaded, but it’s also too important for them to ignore. So we are here to manage help you manage your social media presence, including:
New England Social Media was the natural outgrowth of QuickWhatsUp.com. QuickWhatsUp.com was already employing social media marketing strategies in the promotion of its own events, such as the Rhode Island World of Flavors Competition. Eventually, I began teaching social media to others, offering seminars on Facebook and Twitter for small businesses at the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation. QuickWhatsUp.com began orchestrating social media strategies for clients like the Twin River Casino and the Newport Comedy Series, so it was a natural leap to extend these services to others.
The social media revolution is here and it’s not just for young people. Twitter has experienced quadruple-digit growth in the last year. Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is people over the age of 35. According to Forrester Research, only 18% of adults don’t use social media. Social media can offer an extremely cost-effective marketing alternative for many businesses - especially in this economic climate - but there are not many resources for local companies who want to tackle the internet. So I am proud to offer these services to you.
I will be hosting a free seminar on Twitter for Businesses at the Rhode Island Economic Development Center this Friday, September 18th at 9:00 am. The RIEDC is located at 315 Iron Horse Way, Suite 101, Providence, Rhode Island. I would love to see you there.
Thank you for your continued support,
Seth Resler
President
QuickWhatsUp.com & New England Social Media
After teaching my seminar on Facebook and Twitter at the We Mean Business Expo last week, somebody emailed me this question:
Hi Seth,
I wanted to thank you for the wonderful workshop! I learned a lot and you made it easy to understand the information, to digest it and, to boot, it was fun.
I have a question for you: Is it possible to open an account with Twitter for a group? We would like to communicate/tweet among ourselves, privately. Can all of us use just one name, the same name together?
Here was my reply:
Thank you for coming to the seminar. I am glad you found it useful.
If you are looking for a tool to use among your co-workers that nobody else can see, I recommend trying Yammer.com. It is specifically designed for business looking to conduct their internal affairs.
On the other hand, if you are looking for a public Twitter stream (for the world to read) that multiple people in your company can post to, I’d suggest setting up a Twitter account and integrating it with CoTweet, which is a great management tool. You can setit up so there are multiple administrators for one Twitter username.
I will be giving a full seminar Friday morning at the RIEDC. I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions!
Thanks to Pete Hopkins for cluing me in to this. I must be a geek, because I found the references hilarious…
With the restaurant industry facing its worst downturn in decades, dozens of independent and chain eateries are turning to Twitter to generate cheap brand buzz. Short messages, aka Tweets, tease diners with instant freebies, discounted dining events and menu makeovers.
“The Internet is a crowd of people where everyone is yelling, and to be heard is a matter of who has got the biggest megaphone,” said Shah, who recently spoke to the Orange County Restaurant Association about the power of Twitter.
In June, Twitter had 21 million unique visitors, a 1,928 percent jump from the same month last year, according to Nielsen Ratings. Restaurants are also taking advantage of Facebook, which allows businesses to create “fan” pages.
Both social media sites are revolutionizing the way diners consume information — and chains are scurrying to make themselves heard.
“Twitter allows El Pollo Loco to build relationships with consumers through direct two-way conversations, with contests, idea sharing and deal opportunities,” said Julie Weeks, spokeswoman for Costa Mesa-based El Pollo Loco.
Since joining Twitter in late March, El Pollo Loco (@elpollolocoinc) has gained 2,000 followers. Weeks uses Twitter to highlight El Pollo Loco trivia, as well as host contests, where winners get the ultimate reward: free food.
The result: fans closely watch El Pollo Loco’s updates — creating instant brand buzz.
Other local restaurants and chains using Twitter include Taco Bell, Bogart’s in Seal Beach, BJ’s Restaurants, Wienerschnitzel, Kean Coffee, Baja Fresh, Johnny Rockets and Sprinkles Cupcakes in Corona del Mar. (LIST: Rating Restaurants on Twitter)
Like El Pollo Loco, Sprinkles uses Twitter to promote new menu items and freebies. The cupcake chain’s “whisper” Tweets have become especially viral. About twice a week, Sprinkles will post a code word on Twitter such as “raspberry” or “peanut butter.” Customers (typically the first 25 in the door) are instructed to whisper the secret word to get a free cupcake.
Twitter is “very efficient because it provides immediate results. Within a minute of posting, we get people in our store redeeming our promotions,” Sprinkles Cupcakes said in a statement.
via Local eateries Tweet like crazy, but does it work? - Life - OCRegister.com.