The August AZIMA event featured guest speaker Neal Schaffer of WindMill Networking and author of Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales & Social Media Marketing, who spoke about the power of social media, and in particular LinkedIn, to drive results for your company and your career. Neal reinforced the importance of businesses needing to not only participate in social media, but embrace it throughout their organization. A few years ago, social media was viewed as a fad – but now its here to stay. According to Neal, more time is spent online than watching TV, especially among 45-54 year olds, so it’s critical we shift our marketing focus there accordingly.

Neal broke down social media strategy into something easy to understand and act upon. According to Neal, the average marketer or company goes through three stages of understanding social media:

• It’s scary and has no ROI – let’s ignore it.
• Maybe we should consider it – after all, other companies are doing it, maybe even our competitors!
• How can we do more social media? Social is great, lets do more!

Once marketers move to third stage and have fully embraced social media, Neal recommends the PDCA approach. What’s that, you ask?

• Plan – plan your strategy & define your goals
• Do – execute your plan
• Check – monitor your results
• Act – revise your plan based on the results you checked

In the end, you’ll realize just how critical the role of a social media marketer is. Neal believes its so important a community manager should truly be a 6 figure job!

Neal also shared some tips for LinkedIn with the audience – Neal was one of the earliest adopters of LinkedIn and known as one of the original “LinkedIn Lions.” He was part of the open networking movement and built his connections to be as large as possible, generating tons of business leads, consulting gigs and job prospects. Neal encourages marketers to be open & connect with each other on LinkedIn as a great way to generate leads and connect with others.

In addition to the presentation and usual networking hour, we gave away a free Kindle to one lucky attendee, as well as a few copies of Arnie Kuenn’s new book, Accelerate!, which just debuted recently on Amazon and can be purchased here.

Thanks to all that attended!

Nick Roshon

Nick is an SEO Strategist at iCrossing, a global digital marketing agency owned by the Hearst Corporation that helps brands find and connect with their customers online. He's also an active blogger, amateur race car driver, and loves all things social media.

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The AZIMA Panel Discusses Social Media Marketing for Restaurants

July’s AZIMA event “Serving it Up with Social Media” was full of delicious stories about what it’s like to do social media marketing for restaurants. We got to hear from the perspective of national chains like Chipotle and PF Chang’s & Pei Wei, as well as from a local perspective of the acclaimed Phoenix restaurant Beckett’s Table. The discussion was moderated by Ty Largo, a food blogger & marketer of restaurants & hospitality at UP Agency, so we really got to enjoy a discussion full of expertise & knowledge! We also demoed an exciting new app called Chatterplug during the presentation, which allowed attendees to review the event in real time – which tied in nicely to our discussion of online review sites & getting feedback from guests!

What ensued was a great discussion where the three panelists shared stories on what they’ve found works well – and what doesn’t – to connect with their customers with social media. While all panelists agreed that social media can’t replace the importance of one on one interaction, and social media metrics can’t track mojo or the ROI on a smile, they all found social media to be incredibly effective & important to connect with their guests and spread the word about their latest dishes & promotions.

Chef Justin Beckett (@BeckettsTable) is not only a chef, but also the social media voice of Beckett’s Table, creating all of the Tweets & Facebook shares his guests enjoy himself. He finds that people react most favorably to pictures of the food, and he often posts pictures of the daily special, or even before and after pictures of the ingredients and the final dish. He joked that “Every time I post a picture of heirloom tomatoes, people go crazy!” in response to learning what kind of posts get the best interaction.

Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets) connects with their local branch managers to ask questions like: Who are your customers? What do you want to do to connect with them better?  to help identify new marketing initiatives that will help them connect better with their various local markets. They also try to identify brand ambassadors and reach out to them for ideas & inspiration (in exchange for burritos, of course!), and are launching a new program where the local staff & managers can invite loyal customers to receive special perks & rewards. Making local connections is a big part of their social media approach.

PF Chang’s (@PFChangs) & Pei Wei (@PeiWei) reply to every tweet and try to connect with as many of their fans as possible, which is impressive for a national chain with over 20,000 followers on Twitter and almost 250,000 fans on Facebook! They find that coupons, such as the free lettuce wraps coupon that is currently on their Facebook page, are very effective at driving people to the stores through social media. They find that “one page, one message” is best when it comes to managing multiple locations so that they can control the voice and make sure no well-intentioned but perhaps less-skilled restaurants are posting updates like “nom nom nom nom nom.”

What was interesting was that all three restaurants  – PF Chang’s, Chipotle & Beckett’s Table – had just one person who was doing the heavy lifting of social media, and they all admit it’s no easy task and still playing catch-up on some social media fronts! Despite the challenges, you could tell that all three panelists really enjoyed their job and had a lot of passion for what they do, which was inspiring to restaurateurs and marketers alike.

And of course, all of that talk about food sure made the crowd hungry, but not to worry as Chipotle & PF Chang’s handed out coupons for free burritos & lettuce wraps, respectively, to everyone in attendance!

Event Photo Credit: Mark Goldstein

Nick Roshon

Nick is an SEO Strategist at iCrossing, a global digital marketing agency owned by the Hearst Corporation that helps brands find and connect with their customers online. He's also an active blogger, amateur race car driver, and loves all things social media.

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts

Thanks for joining us, Chris! Hope to see you at the Online Marketing Summit! Don’t forget to register for Online Marketing Summit in Phoenix June 15-17! Register with promo code IMA15AZ, as a friend of AZIMA and  save 15 percent!

Abby Gilmore

Abby Gilmore is an Interactive Media Analyst at Ryland Homes and a member of the AZIMA Communications Committee. She enjoys blogging, connecting with others via social media and volunteering whenever she can. Follow her on Twitter @abbygilmore.

Thanks for coming, Michael! Hope to see you at the Online Marketing Summit! Don’t forget to register for Online Marketing Summit in Phoenix June 15-17! Register with promo code IMA15AZ, as a friend of AZIMA and  save 15 percent!

Abby Gilmore

Abby Gilmore is an Interactive Media Analyst at Ryland Homes and a member of the AZIMA Communications Committee. She enjoys blogging, connecting with others via social media and volunteering whenever she can. Follow her on Twitter @abbygilmore.

Why? Its simple, because many hands make light work as well as we love to collaborate on the best ways to improve this organizations communication and marketing in order to better serve our members and sponsors. If you are interested in joining the committee we only ask that you commit to devoting about 2 hours a week to AZIMA related work such as blog post writing, web page copy writing, press release writing and or public relations pitching and social media as well as employing other misc. marketing and communications tactics in order to drive both membership and attendance to our monthly events. If that sounds like you, great! Email us at admin@joinazima.org and let us know!

Redlincook

Elise is the eMarketing Specialist at Empire Southwest, an authorized Caterpillar heavy construction equipment dealer which also offers top brands of used machinery to clients across the United States and Mexico. She specializes in content strategy, content marketing, search and social technologies and has been on the AZIMA Board of Directors since the very beginning.

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Thanks for being so loyal, Rita! Don’t forget to register for Online Marketing Summit in Phoenix June 15-17! Register with promo code IMA15AZ, as a friend of AZIMA and  save 15 percent!

Abby Gilmore

Abby Gilmore is an Interactive Media Analyst at Ryland Homes and a member of the AZIMA Communications Committee. She enjoys blogging, connecting with others via social media and volunteering whenever she can. Follow her on Twitter @abbygilmore.

Thanks for coming, Shaina! Don’t miss next month’s event on social media with Scott McAndrew.

Abby Gilmore

Abby Gilmore is an Interactive Media Analyst at Ryland Homes and a member of the AZIMA Communications Committee. She enjoys blogging, connecting with others via social media and volunteering whenever she can. Follow her on Twitter @abbygilmore.

It’s almost that time again – time for AZIMA’s monthly social event!  David Szetala will be talking Pay Per Click marketing next Tuesday, March 8th. Register today! Hope to see you there!

Abby Gilmore

Abby Gilmore is an Interactive Media Analyst at Ryland Homes and a member of the AZIMA Communications Committee. She enjoys blogging, connecting with others via social media and volunteering whenever she can. Follow her on Twitter @abbygilmore.

Glad you enjoy the events, Sonia! Hope to see you next week at AZIMA’s monthly social event featuring Joe Pulizzi!  And don’t forget, for an added bonus, AZIMA is now offering VIP tickets, which give you the chance to be seated as his table! For details on VIP tickets contact ljablonski@admixsocial.com.

Abby Gilmore

Abby Gilmore is an Interactive Media Analyst at Ryland Homes and a member of the AZIMA Communications Committee. She enjoys blogging, connecting with others via social media and volunteering whenever she can. Follow her on Twitter @abbygilmore.



Nice to meet you, Sheila.  See you at next month’s event featuring Joe Pulizzi.  The discussion will focus on content marketing!

Abby Gilmore

Abby Gilmore is an Interactive Media Analyst at Ryland Homes and a member of the AZIMA Communications Committee. She enjoys blogging, connecting with others via social media and volunteering whenever she can. Follow her on Twitter @abbygilmore.