One topic that comes up anytime I am having a conversation about the Digital space or the Social Media Eco-System is the subject of engagement…Specifically how to create and maintain a high level of engagement with fans, customers, or subscribers. That mes amis is the $64,000 question and there are more than enough “experts, guru’s and consulting companies” all claiming that they have the answer.

I am not claiming to have all of the answers either, but I can share with you some examples of successful engagement campaigns that I have created or been a part of in the recent past. One of the first things I would suggest you do is ask yourself these thought provoking questions:

1. How do you currently develop relationships in the digital world? What I want you to explore here is are you simply reaching out to potential fans with push marketing messages only or are you offering something of value consistently to potential customers that costs them little to nothing.

2. Are you reaching across multiple social media channels or are you only on the most popular ones that you are comfortable with ? Are you where your audience is or is going? You must stay current on the big platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc) but realize that new ones pop up everyday and you must be at least conversational and/or testing them out.  Things change rapidly in the digital world…anyone remember MySpace??

3. How is my product/service/menu different from my competition? If 10 people went to your website and then your competitors website, would the marketing message and style be similar? Could these 10 people tell the difference in any significant way? I would be willing to bet that 8 out of the 10 people would not be able to point out any significant differences among the two sites. The challenge in marketing online is that so many websites are starting to look, sound, and feel exactly the same! Now I am not suggesting you be different just for the sake of being different, but there must be a compelling reason that someone who visits your sites is compelled to take action with you.

Here are 3 key ingredients that every successful marketer does to engage their audience in meaningful ways:

1. Be honest and diligent – Another way to describe this is…Be Your Authentic Self. Don’t try and be something you’re not or that you think people want you to be…your audience will trust and love you for the fact that you show them who you are, imperfections and all. Depending on your product or service, show your fans that you share many of the same concerns, fears, doubts, and worries that they have. I teach in my workshops the power of your story…share some “peeks behind the kitchen door” into you, your brand or your establishment. People love to read or understand the “why” of what you do or have created.

2. Provide Value – this should be a no-brainer, but you can’t imagine how many marketers and brands forget this one key ingredient. In the new digital age you need to provide a solution and stop always trying to be a brand. What is your audience trying to accomplish and how can you, your product, or service help them out?

3. Show That You Care – Again, another ingredient that should be easy to implement, but again, most marketers and brands either forget this completely or make half-baked attempts at showing their fans they care. One Social Media Rock Star who currently is doing this very well is Lady Gaga. Look across some of her social media platforms and take a look at the sheer number of fans she has. Think about this for a second…she has 1/10th the marketing budget of just about any Fortune 500 company, yet she outperforms them on every metric of fan loyalty, engagement, and revenue.

Social media users don’t always follow the most talented people or the biggest brands. Instead, they usually follow with passion people and brands that they truly believe care about them. Movie stars and musicians how have 10 million or more followers can’t know every individual they are connected with online. However, the more successful ones make their followers FEEL like they know them or at the very least the acknowledge and appreciate the very people who helped them achieve the level of success they enjoy.

The more that you can exhibit that you understand your customers needs the stronger the digital connection will be.

The SAMMY awards honor overall excellence and breakthrough achievement in Social Advertising, Media and Marketing. The awards are presented by Digiday (a digital media authority) and incorporate the opinions of hundreds of leading social media and marketing experts, journalists, insiders, marketers, publishers and social technology visionaries. This year, count McCormick as one of the honored few to get a SAMMY.

We won top prize for the Best Social Location-based Campaign for the McCormick Grill Mates “Grill mayor” campaign. It also was a finalist in the Best Social Creative category.

Using FourSquare technology, participants checked in on the grilling done by others. At the end of the campaign, the most check-ins at his or her grill brought the winner the honorary title of mayor of Hunt Valley, Maryland for one day (home of Grill Mates, of course). This specific feature was breakthrough in that it was the first-ever REAL mayor awarded through Foursquare.

There were many fun features to the campaign that kept it playful and interactive. As the Digiday campaign brief stated “By connecting a digital activity with a real life activity, McCormick becomes a powerful part of this summer’s epic cookout story across the country.”

“This was our first significant Social Media campaign for McCormick…which is amazing when you think about it,” said Mark Garcia, Director – McCormick Kitchens. “We have garnered awards in what is essentially our first foray into an integrated Social program. The campaign included other innovative components including a Times Square billboard interaction in New York City with our fans who are on Twitter. This was a successful campaign that had cross-agency integration that maximized awareness with TV, PR and Internet all working to build our fan base.”

I advise my friends and chef clients that when you are engaging on Twitter…think of it like a cocktail party. What I mean is that you should try and keep the conversation light, relevant and interesting. We can all remember a time when we were at a social function or industry conference and there was that “one guy” who once you met them, you found yourself trying to get away from them faster than a chicken being chased by angry chef!

When you first met someone at a party or online, one of the best ways to engage and continue the conversation is to not talk too much about yourself, brag about how great your product, service or widget is and to seem genuninely intersted in the other person. Cocktail parties are meant to be light, fun and enjoyable. When you take this same approach with your twitter audience, you will be surprised how easy it is to get followers and more importantly to engage your followers who will promote and pass on your content.

Lately there has been a LOT of talk for both Rock Star Chef entrepreneuers and Fortune 500 brands about “followers” and “friends” and “likes” in the  Social Media and Digital space. I agree that the size of one’s audience matters, but there are other numbers that are arguably better measures of impact and overall strength of one’s Twitter feed specifically.

As with anything, there are a few essentials:

Number of clicks on your links

When someone clicks on your link, that’s evidence of interest in your content. Your daily click totals are helpful in understanding the overall “health” of your feed, while knowing which of your Tweets garners the most clicks may help you to craft future messages.

Number of retweets

When someone shares your content—even in the context of an opposing opinion—that’s more measurable engagement, as your “handle” and your words go beyond your own subscribers.

Number of messages, mentions, and replies

When someone includes your @ name in a post, they either want your attention (like a cc:) or they want to speak with you directly. Not only is this an opportunity to connect with people and discover more content, it’s a sign that you’re a player.

Size of your engaged audience

All the above (and more) factor into what Klout and other social measurement companies use to help us understand the “quality” of Twitter accounts. If your own following has a good level of influence over their followers, your messages have the potential to be amplified far beyond your own shores.

Time

Using Twitter effectively doesn’t have to take hours and hours. You can take advantage of free tools (see above) that enable you to schedule your messages throughout the day, and with the ubiquity of smartphones, checking in every now and then is easy to do.

Growth of your audience

As the Twittersphere matures, the progressive acquisition of new active followers should be part of your strategy. It is best when done without gimmicks. If people like your posts, they will let you know by adding your account to their streams. If you’re not seeing new followers on a daily basis, you might need to experiment with your content (tone, subject, focus, timing).

Some Final Thoughts:

Remember that having an audience of 100,000 who rarely click on your links may not be as valuable as a following of 10,000 highly engaged people. This will, in turn, widen your reach organically and genuinely—which can broaden awareness of your brand, product or service.

I feel so blessed in my life. One of the cool things I get to do today is present a check for $30,000 to my alma mater for scholarships for Hispanic and Latino students who wish to attend the CIA.

As many of you know, I am a ’91 honors graduate of the C.I.A. I am Hispanic and I too was able to attend school with financial aid provided by the CIA. So in many ways, this is an event that has come full circle for me. Tonight I will have the honor to present a check from McCormick for $30,000 to the scholarship fund specifically directed at Latino and Hispanic students. The funds are a from a campaign that we conducted this past summer targeted to the Hispanic community.

The program name was Asando Sabroso Tour (Grilling with Flavor tour) and started on Cinco de Mayo in San Antonio. The tour had 26 stops throughout San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Los Angeles and Phoenix. As part of the tour, a McCormick-branded food truck offered product samples, flavor ideas, and two delicious tacos from their new line of seasoning blends. A Chipotle Chicken Taco and a Montreal Steak Carne Asada taco were the stars. There was a minimum charge of $1 to help Latino students pursue their passion for cooking at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and McCormick matched all funds collected to provide these targeted scholarships.

What I am most thankful for and also what I absolutely love about these two great institutions is that both have a long history of working towards attracting and showcasing Latino talent and preserving and innovating on Latino culinary flavors and cooking traditions.

Gracias to the San Antonio Campus of the CIA and to McCormick!

I am honored and excited to be presenting to one of my favorite local organizations here in San Antonio. The San Antonio Area Foundation, Center for Nonprofit Support is a true “servant” organization that aspires to serve the local community in BIG ways!

On April 29th they will be hosting their first Marketing Summit designed to help non-profit organization get the word out about their mission and purpose. The event is called “Mission Possible – Marketing Your Nonprofit from Top Secret to Top Notch” and will be taking place at the Valero Energy campus.

I am honored to be sharing the stage with an incredible lineup of talent from the Alamo City. Robert Rivard, EVP of San Antonio Express-News will be discussing strategies for getting the press interested in your organization. Kellie Fichter, Business & Nonprofit Relations Manager from Texas Public Radio will be sharing marketing tips and best practices with TRP.

Mollie Walker, Partner at Drew/Walker her in San Antonio will give insights into nonprofit branding and positioning and my good friend Wendy Welsh from Outside The Box Events will present creative ideas and themes that non-profits can use for the next fundraising event.

I will be sharing some of the latest Social Media tactics that non-profits can use to help spread the word about their message and gain more friends and subscribers.

With the current state of the economy it has become increasingly harder than ever to get funding to support a nonprofit’s mission. What is interesting though is that more and more Americans say that they want to support or be involved with local organizations.

The advent of Social Media is a perfect bridge to bring these two groups of people together. The goal of all of the presenters is to share insight and know how to teach organizations some inexpensive, creative and impactful ways to get the message out in the public’s eye.

To find out more information or to learn how to support these fantastic groups, click here on the main San Antonio Area Foundations website and give of your time, money or both!

I am such a fan and student of brilliant operators such as Trader Joe’s. I admire their business practices, merchandising sets, product selection and employee retention philosophy. I keep praying that the retail gods will smile upon us here in south Texas and bring us a neighborhood TJ’s!

I have had the pleasure of working with Trader Joe’s on several products lines and have had a chance to “look under the hood” of their business strategies and practices. Without giving away any confidential or proprietary info, here are some key factors that I see that make up the Trader Joe’s competitive advantage.

Most every grocery retailer has Trader Joe’s on their radar screen. Even if they don’t compete with them in the same cities, the sales numbers and more importantly the profit numbers keep some grocery retail executives awake at night.

From Walmart to Central Market, most retail executives are confounded with the counterintuitive  approach that this company has. They don’t follow most of the traditional retail “best practices” that the herd mentality grocery retail industry finds itself stuck in these days.

Most of the locations are under 20,000 square feet and throw off impressive foot traffic and basket averages. I already mentioned the profitability aspect. The strategy surrounding these smaller footprint stores are exactly what we conceptualized when we created Eatzi’s back in the day.

Other key points in Trader Joe’s strategies:

1. Fewer Choices – They understand that their customer doesn’t always equate more with better! TJ’s goes out and finds the best two or three items in a category (not including major categories such as beer, wine, cheese, etc) and procures them at the best possible price for their customers. Their stores stock @ 1/10th the number of SKU’s that a traditional gourmet retailer would stock.  It’s worth noting though, that they generate TWICE the revenue per square foot of most traditional retailers.

2. Private Label – Over 80% of the products inside a Trader Joe’s bear the company name and logo. They have earned the trust of their customers that thier private label is often superior to any national brand. They don’t just say it…they actually DO IT! How many supermarkets can say the same thing about their private label programs???

3. Aggressive Pricing – The buying group at Trader Joe’s searches out the best quality ingredients and manufacturers and then passing on those great prices to their customers…not just once in a while but all the time.

4. Great Employees – I won’t even mention the image that most people have of the staff working at most grocery stores here in the states. Heck, there have even been a few movies out of Hollywood the portray the supermarket “career path” as one of last resorts. The store managers at Trader Joe’s can make a strong six-figure income (running a cleaner, smaller, and funner store by the way) while most full time employees earn about half that on average. Any of you that have shopped in one of their stores know that it is a great experience. The staff is friendly, knowledgeable, well trained and aware of the food culture.  The company provides great benefits and has a significant matching program for employee retirement plans. I guess that they had their rocket scientists at the home office figure out that when you take care of and respect your front-line employees, they in turn tend to take care of your customers! Brilliant…I hope the idea catches on!

5. Trend Setters – There are so many industry insiders that go to visit Trader Joe’s stores to see what is going to be hip or trendy in the next couple of years it’s not even funny. These guys were promoting California wines back in the day when nobody else thought they were worth anything. Organic, natural, healthy were all programs that TJ’s was promoting before most of us even knew that food like this was available in the states.

6. Know thy customer – Instead of trying to be all things to all people, TJ”s understands their customer today and has programs in place to listen to where they are going tomorrow. Imagine this, they are a food company that mines data from demographics, education AND food habits of their customers. They then market the products that this audience is looking for in locations where they want to shop.

7. K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple Stupid! They don’t try and re-invent the wheel every year with the latest “Strategic Initiative” from the top brass. Their bosses are the customer and they tend to know what they want, when they want it, how much they will pay for it and in what form do they want it in.

Many retailers, restaurateurs and manufacturers could learn some simple lessons here.

Until next time,

A recent article in the Guardian UK highlighted some of the recent challenges that Chef Ramsay’s Empire is experiencing…declining restaurant ratings, family dissension and waning enthusiasm for his TV shows could spell trouble for the hot tempered chef.

It has been known in the industry for the past couple of years that his restaurant empire was stumbling with P&L profitability. However this year it looks as though the restaurants themselves will stay in the black.

In addition to the financial struggles with his restaurant empire, former chef proteges have campaigned against him and there have been several accusations of sexual shenanigans! (You just can’t make this stuff up…I have often said that a true restaurant reality show would have to be shown on Cable due to all of the sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll that still happens in some places)

Gordon has had a strong central figure behind the scenes helping to run his restaurant group, Chris Hutcheson, his father-in-law, was also a role model and somewhat surrogate father to him over the course of Ramsay’s meteoric rise to culinary stardom. With Chris running the the day-to-day operations, Gordon was able to be distracted by the trappings of the TV show persona. Now that is Chris is no longer part of the equation, one has to wonder who or if anybody can fill that role.

Gordon has always been gifted at identifying and nurturing new talent in the brigade de cuisine, but late last year he lost two of his most important chef proteges. You can be a Rock Star Chef traveling all over the world if there isn’t the talent manning the stoves back at your restaurants day-in and day-out .

The wheels come off the bus pretty quickly in that scenario.

I wouldn’t count him out just yet…I have the utmost respect and admiration for Chef Ramsay as the truly gifted culinarian that he is (this is often overlooked by the public and professional world). He work ethic and personality are clear examples of pig-headed discipline and determination. He’s a scrappy lad as they say in London town…

As some of my friends, students, and coaching clients have been aware of for a few months now, we have been quietly working behind the scenes on developing a branded line of Chef Gordon Ramsay products for retail distribution in some of the bigger grocery and gourmet stores. I often term this “mailbox money” for my chef clients….the sales volume can be significant and that can cure a ton of ill’s that restaurants simply can’t compete with.

At a recent invite-only sales exhibition in Singapore called “Master of Spirits” a bottle of Remy Martin Cognac called Louis XIII Grande Champagne Tres Vieille Age Inconnu sold for record breaking $70, 155!

The buyer remains unidentified ( I wouldn’t want to share my Rémy with anyone either!). The Remy brand is owned by French winemaker, Rémy Cointreau and was on display with several other limited edition whiskeys and eaux-de-vies.

Many of my friends and family know that I am a HUGE Rémy Martin fan and have been blessed to have had two bottles of Louis XVIII given to my by clients over the years. I tend to share a pour or two from those bottles on special occasions or on unique celebrations. At over $1,400 per bottle, one tends to want to savor them as long as possible.

After reading about the auction and mentioning it to some of my fellow chefs and clients, a number of folks asked me to remind them again of what exactly make Rémy a true Cognac versus a brandy. Now, some of the distinctions that go into traditional Rémy also applied to this special vintage bottle for the show.

So, to that end, here is one of my favorite stories of what makes this unique beverage….well, so unique:

A True Cognac: In the world of alcoholic spirits, only a specific kind of brandy, which is made from white grapes, can be called cognac. The term refers to brandy from the French region of Cognac that has been distilled twice in copper stills made in the French region of Charente and is then blended by a cellar master. It must be aged for at least two and a half years and possess an alcoholic content of at least 40%. Regular brandy is typically aged for at least six months and contains 36% alcohol.

Provenance and Age: The Rémy Martin cognac was marketed as consisting of “a century in a bottle”: It was one of a series of cognacs bottled for a 1938 royal banquet at the opulent Château de Versailles that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth attended (parents of the current Queen of England). Mr. Depardon notes that some of the eaux-de-vie blended to form this particular cognac date back to the middle of the 19th century.

Timeliness: Augustin Depardon, global marketing director at Rémy Martin says he thinks it was a “fortunate coincidence” that the cognac went on sale shortly after the movie “The King’s Speech” won Best Picture at the Oscars in late February. Rémy-Martin’s marketing department played up the cognac’s link to the movie, which starred Colin Firth as the stammer-prone King George VI (the actor won Academy Award Best Actor for his performance). Even so, it is a stretch to suggest — as the press materials did — that the cognac “may have been what left George VI speechless.”

Exclusivity: Mr. Depardon says that the price reflects the cognac’s “value of rarity.” The carafe of cognac sold at the DFS exhibit was one of the few remaining in Rémy-Martin’s heritage cellars, which holds the “rarest and most delicate eaux-de-vie” in the brand’s collection since it was first bottled in 1874. He declined to reveal how many bottles remain in the heritage cellars.

Packaging: The crystal carafe of cognac comes with some history. It is based on the design of a 16th-century metal flask, says Mr. Depardon, discovered by a vine grower in 1850 in a battlefield near Cognac, the French town from which the spirit draws its name. For the sale, the decanter was placed in a jewelry box made from lacquered rosewood and leather embossed with an ostrich-skin pattern.

Ingredients: More than 1,200 brandies were blended to form this cognac. The ugni blanc,colombard and folle blanc grapes used to make them were harvested in the Grande Champagne area, which Mr. Depardon says possesses the “most prestigious” vineyards in Cognac.

You can read the entire article here at WSJ.com

I think I may have to enjoy a bit of Rémy after working so hard to write this post.

Enjoy!

As Social Media continues to grow from an interesting pastime for teenagers to a critical component for businesses large and small, a major player in the space has surpassed an important milestone. Linked In, the most popular social network for professionals this past week passed the 100 Million member mark.

Most of the users are outside the US with the top countries being USA, Brazil, India and the U.K. An industry breakdown shows that high-tech (17%), finance (14%) and manufacturing (10%) are the top three and the site tends to skew more towards men (61%). An interesting breakdown shows that male users that are between the ages 25-34 and 35-54 are 36% white.

The site lauched 7 years agao and just recently allowed individuals and companies to buy ads on the site. This tools also gives “marketing gold” to advertisers who wish to gain information about registred users. I often recommend to all of my coaching clients and students that they MUST have a personal profile on Linked In at the bare minimum. They should also have a company profile or active channel profile for their products or services.

Another hidden asset to the site is the rich source of community through the various groups that exist on Linked In. I talk more in depth about Social Media For Chefs and Restaurateurs in a newly created program that is aimed directly at the “How To” and “Why” of social media for the restaurant community.

Chef Guy Fieri Visits Alamo City Again, Random Rock Star Chef Sightings Occur…

Ok…so the cat is officially out of the bag so to speak. I have had a ton of phone calls and e-mails from readers of this website, friends, colleagues and foodies all asking me if it was true that Guy Fieri was in town. Yes he was. Guy was in town early this month to film content on some of the local flavor for future episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

What I love about his visit this time was that he highlighted several personal favorites of mine and I am glad to see one location in particular get some much deserved national exposure. More on that in a bit. The Food Network crew hit local Mexican food joints Beto’s and Taco Taco Cafe.

Bun ‘N’ Barrel and Magnolia Pancake Haus rounded out the American classics part of the menu and I am sure that he had his fill of BBQ, Burgers, Cinnamon Rolls and Designer Pancakes! El Bohio, Moroccan Bites and Dough Pizzeria were the final visits on this trip. It was refreshing to see a national show highlight other cuisine that we have here in San Antonio besides Mexican Food and Classic Texas BBQ. No doubt we can be proud of our MANY institutions that we are famous for here in SA Town, but we have so much more talent and diversity here!

I mention Dough Pizzeria because I happen to think that Chef Doug Horn and his team are producing some of the best pizza on the planet! I don’t make that statement flippantly either…Many of my fans know that I have lived in Europe, New York City and Italy where amazing authentic PIzza Napoletana is just about as common and easy to find as breakfast tacos are here in San Antonio and Austin. Doug made the commitment (both financially and personally) to learn the authentic ways of producing the recipes we get to enjoy here in town and to purchase the correct equipment and raw ingredients that have made his joint one of the elite 32 certified here in the states and #292 in the world to receive the prestigious certification from L’Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana.

The TV show should give all of the restaurants named above well deserved recognition and more importantly, national exposure to the talented owners and staff of these great places.

Now to answer the other question, rumor, gossip topic that I have been getting asked alot about Mr. Fieri’s visit to our area….Could there be a certain Rock Star Chef helping a certain Diners, Drive-In and Dives host chef create, produce and implement a line of branded food items that may or may not appear on retail grocery store shelves in the next few months??? And can anyone think of any corporate headquarters of rumored retail grocers in the San Antonio or Austin city limits ???

Hmmmmmm…I guess y’all will have to stay tuned to find out!