Crain’s Chicago Business’s new strategic biz blog, Crain’s Social Media Group featured our fearless leader, Phil Tadros last week in its ongoing column, “How I Use Social Media To Do My Job.” The writer talks to Phil about him photoblogging every aspect of his life since 2008, why he believes social media helps strengthen brand culture and how it has for Doejo and Bow Truss Coffee Roasters.

From Crain’s Social Media Group:

In 2007, Phil Tadros told Crain’s Chicago Business that he’d consider himself “a serial entrepreneur.”

Fast-forward six years, and Phil’s business ventures have continued to add up. He’s the founder and CEO of Doejo, and Phil has also opened many coffeeshops across Chicagoland. Since May 2008, he has been documenting his adventures on his photoblog.

Phil creatively uses social media to share bits of his life and promote his business ventures, and today, he’s telling us all about how he does it.

You’re the founder and CEO of Doejo in Chicago. What exactly does your agency do? Can you share a little bit about your role?
Officially we say that Doejo is an award-winning, full service digital agency or we’re the “startup for startups,” but now, we’re so much more than that. We help launch companies and brands, new and old, online and off from tech startups creating an app to established companies looking to redesign or reboot their image. We also do storefront build outs and act as a startup incubator, think tank for many of our clients. Some of our clients include Braintree, Groupon, Lightbank, New World Ventures, TechWeek, Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, the Lakeview East Chamber of Commerce, Consequence of Sound, the Chicago Yacht Club, Bike and Park, the Chicago Athletic Clubs, and Industrious Office, among others. We also run (our now one-year old) Bow Truss Coffee Roasters right by our office in Lakeview, State Farm’s Next Door Cafe, the Columbia College Cafes, Strange Pelican Brewery, and Map of the Dead (an iOS game).

What about your coffeeshops and storefronts? Tell us how you use social media to promote these business ventures, such as Bow Truss Coffee Roasters.
We’re really passionate about building and nurturing communities within our projects, so social media helps us build and keep an audience for that. For Doejo, Bow Truss, Strange Pelican, Map of the Dead, Industrious Office and other internally managed projects, we’re active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and/ or Pinterest. We post about updates or photos of us working on or building out the spaces and aggregate related content. For Doejo we keep up a blog of interest to the local entrepreneurial and tech startup scene as it pertains to most of our clients. We attend a lot of events and post about them and act as a resource in our industry community. For Bow Truss we post our cafe’s unique interior, our drinks, roasting process and have contests sometimes to reward active users. For both of these especially, we are establishing a brand culture through social media.

Since May 2008, you’ve been publishing your mobile photos online — long before Instagram and other photo sharing networks were created. Why are you so passionate about photoblogging? How did you figure out how to do it?
I was trying to live stream my life with a mini video camera strapped to my glasses. Technology wasn’t up to speed and people didn’t really like to be tapped, so I started taking photos. I had a Palm Treo with T-Mobile and a Tumblr account and just saved my unique Tumblr account email as a contact in my phone. Now everyone photoblogs. I love communicating in real time with images.

How does your blog and photography relate to your professional life?
As someone who is constantly in and out of meetings, formal and informal, my photoblog acts as a recap in images of my day. But it’s not just business. I love sharing my life with many worlds, my family, friends, co-workers as well as clients currently and soon to be. I feel people are current with each other’s lives all via Instagram.

Read more of the interview here.

https://cookcountyrecord.com/stories/511638172-bow-truss-coffee-founder-tadros-ok-to-continue-defamation-suit-vs-crain-s-over-hit-piece-article