Vancouver Dining Review Sites

Foodvancouver.com is a dining review site for people looking for restaurants in Vancouver. To list the horizontal layout of some categories:

-Restaurants
-Dining Guide
-Recipes
-Special Diets
-News
-Coupons
-Events
-Videos
-Site map














Benefits: What I like about this site is it has a page dedicated to coupons and events, which give me extra incentive to dine-out with the feeling that I made a "wise" choice. In addition, I found the famous "Dine Out Vancouver 2010" event on this website and was relieved that I have not missed the deadline for reservation. One more complement to add is its usability; I find it as practical as it can be, just by looking at the coupon site, site map if someone wants to get a bird-eye view of all the contents.




















Overall: What makes the dining review sites different from Food blogs is the layout. You can get the most relevant information in the order of your choice. (Not to mention that it has links for maps and shows the type of restaurant on the top to get a quick idea of what I am looking at). For example, you can find restaurant reviews by region/cuisine/atmosphere etc. Then, you can further have them ranked in the order of best reviews/most views/price/ alphabetical order. In other words, it is user-friendly so that you can save time searching for your tastes.


Some dining review sites for Vancouver restaurants
Foodvancouver.com
Urbanspoon.com
Dinehere.ca
Yelp.ca

Source:
Foodvancouver.com

Food Blog Aggregators (US/CAD)

FOODBUZZ is a U.S.-based "blog aggregator." It aggregates, organizes and curates nearly 2 million blog posts from 10,000 food blogs worldwide. It allows visitors to share their passion for food and dining. It helps food bloggers to platform blogs and monetize their traffics. Also it provides marketing solutions for hundreds of food brands. To prove its powerful standing online:

-10 million global unqie users
-Top 3 Online Food Property
-Growing 15% per month
-Curate 1.7 million pieces of food content
In addition, it has won 2009 WEBBY AWARDS Nominee, OMMA AWARDS for Excellence, and WEBAWARD.

Benefit: Since it is pretty well-known site, tagging the widget, FOODBUZZ, on your blog will increase the credibility of your own blog. And if your posts get on the top lists, you will get an extra tag-widget of recognition.



FOODBLOGS is also a "blog aggregator." The contents on the site are in the view of external blog writers not FOODBLOG or its administerators. It basically provides the service of convenience to visitors: aggregating blog posts into a central site for easy filtering process to personalize information. You can:

-Keep up with your favorite blog
-Discover new food blogs
-Block food blogs you choose not to follow
-Search through thousands of food blogs to find your interest

Benefit: What makes it apart from other blog aggregator is strong customized usability: you can tag, save and organize as well as block the posts you choose. You can also post your own blog to increase the chance of online presence as well as of winning the top blog ranking.

Final Thoughts: What makes these blogs different from other dining review sites is more pictures, and the storyline of dining experience as opposed to the message from extreme opposite ends. I feel more related to writer's review since I get to know the writer's tastes better.

Here is the canadian food blog list posted on a blog:
http://www.pho411.ca/blog/list-of-canadian-food-blogs/

Source:
FoodBuzz.com
Foodblogs.com
http://www.pho411.ca/blog/list-of-canadian-food-blogs/
Pictures: http://www.foodbuzz.com/recipes/2071800-broccoli-and-cheddar-twice-baked-potato

My Technographic Status in Food Network

As my Blog is mostly about finding ways for Korean Food Marketing, I have been looking into many online food communities: Food Blogs, Restaurant Reviews, Social Media like Twitter, FB, YouTube, and Flickr as well as Canada Food Network websites.

The strongest selling point of these online tool is the viral marketing effect. They are linked by overwhelming variety of Social Media Tools (which I would like to try out some day).





So far, I have signed up for Twitter to be the follower of food buzzers and get a bird-eye view of overall online food networks in North America and beyond(some day). For now, I am on my baby steps keeping track of all those instant updates. Hopefully, my technographic status will move up from spectators and joiners to collectors and creators.

BBC SuperPower

BBC has an exclusive webpage, SuperPower, to explore "the power of the internet." The webpage harnesses both one-way and two-way communication in providing information to visitors. There are 8 news categories in demonstrating the power of internet:

-On&Off: Documentaries with experimentations
-Blogworld: Stories of some of the best bloggers in the world
-Virtual Revolution: Speakers on the evolution of internet over the past 20 years
-Digital Giants: Interviews with world-renown internet experts such as Google CEO, the founder of Wikipedia
-SuperPower Nation: How multilingual community is formed
-The Power of the Web: How disabled community is formed
-My World: making a short video in my perspective
-More SuperPower Stories: more stories about internet through BBC radio and TV

As the online community about online communities, the SuperPower webpage is provides all types of online marketing tools such as:

-Online Radio
-Podcasts
-Radio (FM, AM, SW)
-e-Newsletter
-Mobile
-Install Widgets
-Twitter


MY THOUGHTS
What I like about SuperPower is the quality of the source: Crediblility, Recency, and Applicability. My favorite page was its statistical page, "Visualizing the Internet," the instant updates on worldwide internet usages even at this moment.

I think it is a great way of promoting the brand in a broader scope, for a traditional media like BBC, to create a resourceful online community. It is especially attractive source to get more information about the power of internet since BBC has the brand image of "international news" source, making its information more applicable to everyone and less biased than other national broadcasts. So BBC is indeed making use of its credible status on TV, airs documentaries, introducing the growing importance of internet and naturally convincing viewers to visit SuperPower to find out more. This way, in turn, increases its website traffic of both SuperPower and BBC main page. In this sense, the Superpower website is an effective way to bring its current viewers online and attract prospective channel-flipping, news-viewers by having an access to latest updates "wherever you leave."
BBC can not only try to transform Inactives into spectators and joiners, but also use viral marketing by listening, talking, and energizing Collectors, Critics, and Creators at the Superpower community. All in all, I think BBC is leveraging the power of internet to increase its brand equity both online and offline, which in turn helps their revenue lines such as advertisements and event sponsors.

Overall, I think it is a great source to learn about the latest, the most comprehensive and the most effective strategies to online marketing.

Source: www.bbc.com/supoerpower