[caption id="attachment_169" align="alignleft" width="98" caption="I took this photo while eating at Brenner's in Houston. Delicious"]
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There isn't anything glamorous about doing a lot of traveling for work. It is airport to hotel to office to hotel and then back to airport. If you travel enough for work, even heading to the airport for a vacation is something you will likely dread (I know I do). Screaming babies, long lines, cranky security guards and often unhappy airline personnel make it pretty unbearable. Enough with that negativity....
One of the really great parts about doing a lot of traveling is getting an opportunity to eat at some of the country's greatest restaurants. If you follow me on Twitter or are friends with me on Facebook you will likely have seen me upload photos from a restaurant either in Austin, Texas (my hometown) or some other city in the country. I love food. I probably love food a little too much (at least I think so). Not only do I love a good meal, but I'm fascinated by how these meals are constructed. It's not a stretch to say I'm a foodie. I search out the best places to eat in a city and immediately go there to try the food. Next to my family and social media, food is a close #3 in my favorite things on this earth.
As I was out to eat this week (see, I wasn't joking) with a colleague I realized that fine dining (or just good food in general) has a lot in common with social media. No, really, it does. And when I say there is a connection between social media and food, I'm not talking about the abundance of food that tends to be consumed during the big social media conferences. Follow me here...
- Replicate - The busiest restaurants literally see thousands of customers (and I could be dramatically underestimating that) every week. There is no way that fine dining establishments could create dishes that they would have a hard time recreating every night during service. It's a similar story in social media especially with the large enterprise. When the large enterprise is getting started in social it has to setup guidelines and processes that all of the different brands can follow. Create a process that a brand can't follow and you've likely killed the social media movement.
- Precision - Jeremiah Owyang posted a presentation of his and in that presentation he said "fish where the fish are." It's a pretty simple concept in social media, but you want to know precisely where your community may lie. In fine dining establishments, just the smallest mistake can cost the restaurant a positive review, positive word of mouth or at worst an existing customer. Everything from the service to the food has to be precise.
- Measurement - This is pretty obvious, right? If you've done any cooking you know that following a recipe is absolutely critical (for the most part). You wouldn't want to include a cup of soy sauce when the recipe actually called for a 1/2 cup of soy sauce would you? Not only would the recipe likely be ruined, but you'd have achieved your weekly sodium intake in a week. It's a similar story in social media. If you aren't "cooking" with the right components of brand promotion, fostering conversation and sharing useful content for the community the final "dish" will be thrown off. Along the same lines, measuring your progress is critical in understanding how your campaign is performing.
- Creativity - The best restaurants in the world find a way to take something familiar and turn it into something that's entirely brand new to its customers. Obviously, in a restaurant setting this creativity does have limits. You can't combine brussels sprouts with mayo and hope it tastes good. Again, it is the same thing with social media. The fancy creative campaigns are great, but creativity that's true to the original (or the brand in this case) is what we're searching for.
- Eating with our eyes first - This is a pretty common phrase within the restaurant world. Presentation is key as we eat with our eyes first. It's the same thing with social media content. If you're putting out content that passes someone's initial "sniff" test then they are more likely to engage and do something with that content.
