waffl blog

Looking for Employee #1 - VP of Customers

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:08:17 -0500

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.

Facebook Fan Pages

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:11:35 -0400

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.

Postling now pulls in all of your comments into one place

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 20:32:07 -0400

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.

scout: unicornology:mascarah: Poached Pear Waffle w/Maple...

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:06:16 -0400

scout:

unicornology:mascarah:

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

Delicious. Worth the wait.

I would travel far to eat this.

Chris and I presented waffl at the NY Tech Meetup Showcase this...

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:05:19 -0400

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!

Dear vendors (sorry!)

Fri, 29 May 2009 13:17:51 -0400

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

Today we’ve launched a new feature we’re pretty...

Thu, 28 May 2009 17:39:00 -0400

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...

Thu, 28 May 2009 14:53:04 -0400

thisiswhyyourefat:

Bacon Infused Waffles

(via baconbaconbacon)

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

Making Free Internet Pay

Fri, 22 May 2009 17:22:49 -0400

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.

gluttonyisabliss: (via 翡冷翠) Fruit waffle We’ve got...

Wed, 20 May 2009 10:12:32 -0400

gluttonyisabliss:

(via 翡冷翠)

Fruit waffle

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

It’s our first day at DreamIt! DreamIt is the startup...

Mon, 18 May 2009 14:49:07 -0400

It’s our first day at DreamIt! DreamIt is the startup incubator into which we were accepted, and the goodness has already begun: our lovely mentor, Ellen, brought us a huge pile of goodies for us to snack on as we work hard this summer building goodies for all of you. She’s pretty awesome, isn’t she?

"In 1986 when we opened Holden House, we were one of three professional B&B’s in the..."

Tue, 12 May 2009 13:52:30 -0400

“In 1986 when we opened Holden House, we were one of three professional B&B’s in the Colorado Springs area. Now the Pikes Peak Region boasts nearly 40, and the western states continue to see a large increase in the number of new B&Bs. It’s estimated that in 1982 there were 1,200 inns serving 1 million guests and a comparison in 1998 showed 40,000 inns serving 38 million guests, grossing $2.1 billion in room sales.”

- Denver B&B Examiner: The Reality and The Dream of Starting a Bed and Breakfast Inn

Our mentor Ellen Thompson sent us this article, and the last sentence in this quote surprised me. 40,000 inns in the western US in 1998, doing $2.1 billion in sales? That’s incredible.

How many inns do you think there are today?

gluttonyisabliss: (via PATierney) Pecan waffles topped with...

Tue, 12 May 2009 12:22:51 -0400

gluttonyisabliss:

(via PATierney)

Pecan waffles topped with strawberries and cream.

Never tried adding pecans to waffles before.

Innkeeper Twitter Directory

Mon, 11 May 2009 13:13:00 -0400

After talking with a number of innkeepers, we discovered that many of them wanted tools that would make it easier to manage their social networks and new ways to connect to other innkeepers.

We’ve just launched a new feature that gains some ground on both fronts: the waffl Innkeeper Twitter Directory.

Put simply, it’s a public list of all the folks on waffl that have twitter accounts. Using this page, you’ll be able to check out the twitter pages of other innkeepers and add them to your twitter followers list. We expect it to become a great marketing tool for innkeepers, as twitter is a fantastic way to connect with new people.

Using this feature is completely free, just like listing your properties on waffl.

Let us know what you think!

sarahcooley: mayonegg: thelonglistofthingsthatsuck: theonlyama...

Fri, 08 May 2009 14:55:07 -0400

sarahcooley:

mayonegg:

thelonglistofthingsthatsuck:

theonlyamaris:

brunettevixen:

theslyestfox:

Whhaaaat!? PENGUIN waffles!? I will no longer be able to enjoy the normal kind. I must have this godsend contraption which bitch slaps my waffles into penguin shapes!! <3

This photo also helped me remember it’s FRIDAY! Woooo!

everything about this.

oh my god.

I know my friends over at Waffl would love this!

Now that’s a different kind of waffle…

The wonderful folks over at Another Second Penny Inn sent me...

Thu, 07 May 2009 13:21:59 -0400

The wonderful folks over at Another Second Penny Inn sent me this picture of their hearth - they offer hearth cooking classes! I love it.

Here’s picture of their inn:

Now we just need to get them on waffl (wink wink nudge nudge)! It’s free to create your waffl page, and it’ll look great! It even links back to your own site, if you wish. (If you are wondering how we make money, we’ve got something in the works that we know you’ll like, so stay tuned this summer. The listings on waffl will always be free. Promise. And why not? It’s your inn, your photos, and your writing.)

gluttonyisabliss: (via ninetyonepercent) Waffles Is that soft...

Sun, 03 May 2009 12:07:20 -0400

gluttonyisabliss:

(via ninetyonepercent)

Waffles

Is that soft serve ice cream? Wow…

Our friend PJ over at the LimeRock Inn sent us this photo - via...

Sun, 03 May 2009 10:05:46 -0400

Our friend PJ over at the LimeRock Inn sent us this photo - via twitter and twitpic - of the waffles he serves - Belgian waffles with banana and candied walnuts. Yum!

PJ and Frank were the first innkeepers we ever spoke to about waffl, way back when it was nothing more than an idea of ours. We met up with them in Brooklyn Heights at a local diner (I think I ordered waffles, but it might have been pancakes, don’t tell anyone!), and pitched our idea. A few months later, here we are!

Keep the submissions coming! It’s so great to hear from all of you. My email is dave@waffl.com and you can find us on twitter at @waffl.

“Wow” was what I said when I saw this. This was...

Sat, 02 May 2009 14:14:42 -0400

“Wow” was what I said when I saw this. This was today’s breakfast at the Inn on Mill Creek, which they posted to their @InnOnMillCreek twitter account, using twitpic to post the photo. Great use of social media, and a great looking breakfast!

As always, we love posted food photos (who wouldn’t?), so send them to me at dave@waffl.com and we’ll post it.

Inns That Cook: B&B Getaways and Cooking Classes – Inn Cuisine

Fri, 01 May 2009 10:16:45 -0400

Inns That Cook: B&B Getaways and Cooking Classes – Inn Cuisine:

The Inn Cuisine blog is now showing off inns that put the focus on food - my favorite! I’m very excited about this and I love hearing about inns that are exciting destinations themselves, not just a cozy place to stay while you’re off doing something else.

I’d love to feature B&Bs that are offering something a little extra special for their guests, so if that’s you (or you know of one), send me email at dave@waffl.com. Thanks!