While out for dinner last week, our Operations Manager, Stephanie Elsy, found herself pondering a missing question and that sparked a blog post!

You hear it most places you go, restaurants, stores with clerks, fast food drive-thrus, even the food marts in most gas stations and it comes in variations…

“Can I get you anything else?”

I love being in the kitchen, huge five course meals are my specialty because then I get to concoct my culinary delights for hours on end.  I cook Thanksgiving dinner every year on my own – it takes me seven straight hours and, because of that, Thanksgiving is my favorite cooking day of the year.   Not that it isn’t already an obvious metaphor, but a good recipe is the same as a good online marketing campaign.  You have your ingredients:  SEO, PPC, web design, social media engagement and PR.  Then you have your methods of combining them:  Should you braise, boil and simmer, sauté, or just bake for an hour – possibly with a cheesy crust?

Managing a client’s marketing campaign is very similar to my kitchen escapades.  Now not every client is going to be up for a seven hour turkey basting extravaganza, some are your average week night meals complete with a protein, a grain and a green.  However, these guys still take creative thought – you can’t serve the same meal every night, there needs to be some variation in ingredients and flavors even though the basic concept may still be the same.  Larger meals are more exciting for plenty of reasons:  you plan it out days ahead of time, your shopping budget is bigger, there’s more than one course, you never stick to a recipe and you almost always end up burning something (occasionally salvageable depending on who’s coming to dinner).

I appreciate other cooks in my kitchen as well; it’s the best way to learn new things since I’m completely self-taught to begin with.  Every time a dish is produced you’re able to generate immediate feedback and shift gears accordingly for the next go-round.  I’ve never made the exact same meal twice because of this as it continues to evolve each time I attempt it.  While I definitely have more experience at the stove than I do at my laptop I’m assuming that the same can be said for the way I put a good campaign together.

The principles are easy:  Understand your ingredients, know what works together and what can be complementary, eat what you ruin – I guarantee you won’t make the same mistake twice.  Satisfy not only your hunger, but your need for nourishment.  Don’t make a huge production out of every meal – my best meals have been the ones with no planning where I just open the pantry and put together something based on what I already have, there’s a lot more creativity required.  Always use fresh ingredients, keep sea salt handy and never ever put soy sauce on tomatoes.

Photo Credit: birdies-perch

The Boss posed a question this morning: I’ve noticed the “activity” on Twitter has quieted down.  Thoughts ?

My response was that Twitter activity hasn’t slowed down, per se. People are using it more efficiently. Instead of sharing their breakfast and restroom movements, users are engaging more (which doesn’t always show up in the timeline) – they’re meeting up in real-world scenarios and collaborating outside of Twitter.

With applications like Foursquare and Gowalla coming into the mainstream, Twitter serves more as a catalyst for personal engagement. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon, it’s just evolving into less of an IM/Chat and more of a information sharing/gathering tool.

It’s been said that Twitter would replace RSS feeds, I don’t think so. I still have over 40+ RSS feeds in my Reader. While it may seem that the activity is plateauing, it’s really just going back to ‘normal’ after all the mainstream buzz has worn off; Ashton Kutcher isn’t racing to a 1 million followers, etc.

Search Engine Marketer and Team Lead Craig Tippit had this to add: With every new application there is a learning curve. As another example some people are just now starting to realize that employers or universities may be looking at the Facebook page of a potential hires and perhaps putting pictures from their drunken sexcapades in Cancun may not be the best idea.

• Newness wearing off.
• Evolving tweet etiquette.
• Competing applications.

What’s your take? Is Twitter leveling out or is this a calm before another Social Media storm?