There’s no shortage of happy, sad or annoyed customers ready to speak up online. Yelp, Urbanspoon, TripAdvisor and Facebook make it easy for people to have an audience. It’s also easy for restaurant and bar operators to feel helpless and upset when they’re besieged by opinions, advice and putdowns. Help!

In this interview Ken Burgin talks with Ed Charles of Tomato Media and food blog Tomatom. Ed is a business journalist who moved onto writing about bars, restaurants, food and producers. He’s also one of Australia’s original food bloggers, and now helps cafes and restaurants manage their online presence and reputation. Ed is a strong believer in businesses pro-actively shaping the story they want customers to hear – not just on social media, but with an interesting blog and a modern website. When you have a regular flow of good news, it will soon drown out the occasional grumble about a service error.