waffl blog

Nov 30

Looking for Employee #1 - VP of Customers

Postling’s goal is to help businesses get the most out of social media with the least amount of effort. This position is called “VP of Customers” because your entire focus will be on customers: learning from customers, acquiring customers, creating relationships with customers and between customers, and educating customers. The position spans marketing, PR, sales, and community management, hence the broad title. You will be employee #1, which means we need you and your rockstar skills right now, so email me at dave@postling.com and convince me why you’re perfect for this position.

Who you are:

You love social media and really believe it can generate more revenue for businesses.
You love putting technology into people’s hands when you know it really helps them.
You love data, and know that data is the best arbiter of decisions and separator of facts from assumptions.
You are great at marketing, knowing just how to position something so people understand the value of it.
You are great at PR, understanding what it takes to get written up in the NY Times.
You are great at sales, from cold-calling all 20,000 PR firms in the US to making a sales presentation to the executive of a giant corporation.
You are great at getting things done promptly and without direction.
You are a great writer, in both a social media format and advertising format.
You are a great listener, always being open to what customers are saying.
You are a great synthesizer, combining what customers say with innovative product ideas to create the next big thing.
You look forward to working long hours and odd hours when needed.
You look forward to the crazy ups and downs of startup life.
You can take all of the above and be your own CEO, creating the programs and initiatives you need to make your company great with almost zero direct management.

What you’ll do:

Help us define the Postling brand, and then make it reality.
Get outside the building and meet with customers. Learn everything there is to know about them and teach us something new.
Make sales presentations to agencies and enterprises with tens of thousands of dollars on the line and close those deals.
Cold call thousands of potential customers.
Work with the team and available data to optimize website conversion, working across feature implementation, text copy, and price.
Work with the team to come up with products, priorities, pricing, and positioning that will move the needle for Postling. For example, customers say they want analytics. Which analytics? In what form? At what price? How is it discovered and presented to customers?
Own our marketing channels:
- Drive customer acquisition and customer education through an email marketing program that highlights our customers’ successes and ROI.
- Turn our social media properties into a source for valuable content with a strong community of readers.
- Manage and optimize our AdWords campaigns. Or, prove it doesn’t produce good ROI.
- Get Postling covered in relevant media and blogs.
- Acquire small business customers through a direct and/or traditional marketing strategy.
Although this will eventually be a management position, right now it is not. You will be getting your hands dirty doing the above yourself until we have generated enough revenues to take the company to the next level.

You will get:

A decent salary + stock options. When we can afford to do so, we’ll give you a nice raise.
Milestone-based bonuses. We considered a small sales commission, but with so much of your job in the marketing / PR realm, we don’t want to skew the incentives so far towards sales that that is all you want to do.
Medical, dental, and vision insurance benefits.
Delicious home-cooked meals by yours truly from the kitchen of our super-awesome new shared office space in Union Square (across from the Strand!) courtesy of a generous VC firm. Ingredients purchased from the nearby Whole Foods and Union Square Farmers Market.
The experience of your life. There is nothing like doing a startup, and you will be employee #1.

Aug 28

Facebook Fan Pages

We actually got this working sometime last week, but forgot to announce it.

If you have a Facebook Fan Page, you can now update the status on that page from Postling.

First, go to Manage Services and click on Facebook.

Next, click Allow Publishing in the bottom right corner.

That’s it! You’re done. Now you can post to your Facebook Fan Pages just like you can with your Facebook status or Twitter accounts. As always, you can contact us if you have any questions.

Aug 08

Postling now pulls in all of your comments into one place -

I think this is an internet first.

If you publish a blog post to your blogs, tweet a link, or upload a photo to flickr and someone comments on your post, Postling now pulls in those comments, regardless of source.

Chris’ post (linked above) includes a screenshot.

Jun 12

scout:

unicornology:mascarah:

Poached Pear Waffle w/Maple Butter @ Clinton Street Baking Company.

Delicious. Worth the wait.

I would travel far to eat this.

Jun 05

Chris and I presented waffl at the NY Tech Meetup Showcase this past Tuesday, and it was packed! It was an event that was part of the Internet Week festivities in New York City, and we were pitching waffl for 3 hours straight. Unlike our launch at PAII’s Innkeeping show, this event’s audience was a mix of technologists and investors. Everyone we spoke to seemed extremely excited about what we were doing with waffl and what was in store in the future. All in all, a great event and the first step in getting the word out about waffl!

May 29

Dear vendors (sorry!)

Some of you have created waffl pages advertising your businesses. Unfortunately, these pages are for inns only, so if you create one, we’ll have to take your page down. It makes sense to do so because B&B customers who are searching for places to stay would be very confused if there were vendors mixed into the search results, appearing as if they were inns.

It does mean that we need to accelerate our plans for making vendor specific pages! So we will get going on that right away, and we’ll announce them as soon as they are done.

Thanks for understanding!

Dave

May 28

Today we’ve launched a new feature we’re pretty excited about: Innkeeper Forums!

The Innkeeper Forums are a place where Innkeepers can talk to one another and waffl’s creators. There are currently six forums for you to post in:

New Innkeeper Help
Inn Management & Marketing
Food and Recipies
Ideas
Site Issues
Everything Else

We’ll be reading all of your posts, and we can’t wait to see you there!

thisiswhyyourefat:

Bacon Infused Waffles

(via baconbaconbacon)

This is brilliant. Sweet and salty with a bit of bacony crunchy goodness.

May 22

Making Free Internet Pay

superamit:

gtmcknight:

If I ran an establishment with wifi, I’d use it as an opportunity to do one of the following (integrated somehow so you had to do something before you could get online):

* Register with an email or phone and let people opt-in to your mailing list for specials

* Create a community: Let people submit a link/post to a community Tumblr. It could be like a super-local MeFi. I could link to my twitter, or a song I’m currently digging, or something I wanted community feedback on (like my taco stand!).

* Educate Them: People are creatures of habit and like to order the same thing. When they are logging in why not explain to them the benefits of Matcha or a short review of your latest dish.

* Educate Yourself: Before users login they have to take a survey. Something as simple as “What would you change about this place”, “What do you wish was on the menu”, “Would you order tofu?”

Other ideas that have been running around my head:
* Use iTunes DJ / iPhone feature to let users control the music overhead (Volta plans on doing this soon I believe)
* Retweet contests: If 20 people retweet a promotion everybody in the shop gets a free iced tea

What do you think?

Great ideas!

Interesting idea for all of you innkeepers out there. Build lasting relationships with your guests and create a community online. Happy to chat more if you’d like more details or explanation.

May 20

gluttonyisabliss:

(via 翡冷翠)

Fruit waffle

We’ve got something tasty coming your way in a few days..