I have blogged about Open Table before - it is the free online reservation service. I love it. It is actually the first place I go to when I want to make a reservation. Sometimes the restaurant is there, sometimes it isn't. Either way, I check out the site first.

After the last few reservations, I have received an email notification from Open Table to provide feedback on my restaurant experience and also be able to send comments to the restaurant. And, because it is simple, short and easy...I typically do it. Give my two cents, some star ratings and off I go.

However, after my last (bad) rating to Rosewater Supper Club...I began to think...is this restaurant or any other restaurant even listening...do they care? Do I care that they care? I had yet to hear from any of the restaurants I did provide feedback on.

You see, most foodies I know are extremely passionate about eating - including me. For me, one bad experience can mean no repeat visit - no matter what. My experience at Rosewater was bad enough for me not to return. I gave the restaurant a bad rating...but will they care?

So now what? At least I did it for the public? Fine.

But, it just isn't good enough.

In the age of community, communication and most of all...this recession - listening to your customers, taking feedback and responding are key. It is essential. Especially when the vehicle is there for the taking, why not, be the restaurant that really does care.

A few weeks ago, Jenny and I took our darling Renita on a tour through Niagara's wine country for her dirty thirty. (No worries, I can't drink so I was DD).

When setting up the day, I actually had a difficult time trying to figure out what to do there...make up our own tour, be part of a tour group or do a little of both, purchase a do-it-yourself tour.

After some searches online, I could hardly find any reviews or advice on how to tackle the day in one of Canada's sought after wine regions. Trusty chowhound offered some feedback, but not enough to sway how we were to spend the day. I was surprised the tripadvisor came up short, with only some link love to be found.

We settled on the Taste of the Season passport, which got us into 18 (we only did 12) wineries and got us a tasting and food pairing at each (yup, loved the food part). The passport landed up being a great experience (even though I only got to taste and spit or just smell). We had a wonderful time and would definitely do it again.

AND, now my online marketing tidbits:

If the province of Ontario or the town of Niagara-on-the-lake, or heck, even a handful of wineries could develop some type of digital marketing plan - they can easily turn search traffic into foot traffic ...here are some easy tactics:

1. Create an interactive map where users can develop their own tour (via car or bike) that they can download to the GPS or access online their mobile. Let them provide reviews and ratings on the spot. Give them the ability to share them with friends. Below is the map I started in Google Maps.
2. Create a community blog of all the wine makers. Let them post about their new releases, events and special tours.
3. Create a blog specifically for reviews on niagara wines.
4. For all the tour groups - how about a place where people can review the tour, the guide, where they visited, what they tasted, what they liked and didn't like about the tour.
5. The city should purchase some google ad words. Believe it or not, but a lot of people click on them and if organic search comes up empty, it is a great place to turn to.
6. Wineries should focus on building and keeping their site updated and focus on organic key words that make search easier and drives wino's to their site. Afterall, some of the best wineries are small and have no web presence.


View Larger Map

Pretty much everyday, at work or with friends, I talk about online marketing, community building or dare I say it, web 2.0. For one, that is what I do for a living. Two, a lot of my friends and family have taken an interest in the medium and are either looking to start their own blog or build their own online community - in which I offer what support I can to help them out.

I live and breathe this stuff. And since taking the enterprise online strategy role at BMO Financial Group, it is non-stop.

One of the biggest pitfalls for me with the increase in the popularity of this area and have been doing it for over two years, has been my blogging. I just don't have the time to do it as often as I would like to.

Originally, I started blogging because I love the medium and wanted to take part. Selfishly, I also wanted to understand how it all worked. I still do love the medium and try to read my blog feeds and comment as much as possible if I have something to say. But to have a good 30 minutes to write a post - is hard to find.

So after reading Mitch Joel's post on abandoning the community you have created - it made me pause and think about what I was actually doing. To some degree, yes, I don't write as often as I like to, I don't provide the content to the readership. However, with that said, I am able to spend more time on the online and offline relationships with those that I have connected with through my blog - and not for monetary reasons. Either because I enjoy communicating with them or I want to help them with their online needs. Not for money, just because I enjoy what I do.

Okay, you may say that getting a gig in online marketing may have been because of the blog, so there was some payback. This may be partially true. Perhaps having a blog and a readership when getting my previous online role at Scotiabank or now at BMO may have helped...but I suspect that so did my time at the agencies I was at prior, perhaps my degree or possibly just simply being in marketing for over seven years. I suspect it was a combination of all of these.

So did I abandon blogging because I am now doing online marketing for a living? No! In fact, I wish I could blog more due to amount of learning's I gain on a daily basis from being in this industry, on the job and still online. But, another part of me doesn't feel all too bad - I am still connecting with the community I build, online and off - just not as actively through my blog.