Restaurant Social Media Marketing
What is Social Media?
Wikipedia defines Social Media as:
“Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures.”
Restaurants need to look for alternate ways to bring in the customers. One easy way is to develop a social media strategy to connect with your customers and create a community of regular diners.
While every restaurant should develop their own strategy to connect with their customers, I will share some ideas with you. The tools I’ll be using to implement the strategy are easy to learn and use. In fact many of you may already be using some or most of them, but not necessarily in the most efficient way. Also these tools are either free or very inexpensive so you should see a good return on your investment (ROI) in a relatively short period of time.
The core of the strategy is to open the lines of communication both from your restaurant to your clients and from them back to you. This allows you to inform them about what you offer as well as allowing them to offer feedback about what you’re doing well and what you can improve upon. This essentially allows you to use your customers as a free, perpetual, always updated focus group. Once you’ve opened up the lines of communication between your restaurant and your clients, there’s then an opportunity there to create a community of happy clients, which brings benefits like brand loyalty, reliable and trusted feedback and word-of-mouth marketing. The best marketing in the world (you may want to read my article "The Best Restaurant Marketing in the World")
Your Restaurant Website is the most likely second point of contact with a new customer (after direct contact in your restaurant), for many customers, it would be the first. Whether as a result of a review, a search in Google or Bing, or even a click-thru from a restaurant aggregator, many people are going to restaurants after checking their websites and reviews in restaurant directories.
Without a web site you’re missing out on a valuable marketing tool that requires little set-up and maintenance cost.
For tips and down to earth recommendations about having a great website, please read my article: "Seven Steps to Create a Restaurant Website" by clicking on the link below.
Wikipedia defines Social Media as:
“Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures.”
Restaurants need to look for alternate ways to bring in the customers. One easy way is to develop a social media strategy to connect with your customers and create a community of regular diners.
While every restaurant should develop their own strategy to connect with their customers, I will share some ideas with you. The tools I’ll be using to implement the strategy are easy to learn and use. In fact many of you may already be using some or most of them, but not necessarily in the most efficient way. Also these tools are either free or very inexpensive so you should see a good return on your investment (ROI) in a relatively short period of time.
The core of the strategy is to open the lines of communication both from your restaurant to your clients and from them back to you. This allows you to inform them about what you offer as well as allowing them to offer feedback about what you’re doing well and what you can improve upon. This essentially allows you to use your customers as a free, perpetual, always updated focus group. Once you’ve opened up the lines of communication between your restaurant and your clients, there’s then an opportunity there to create a community of happy clients, which brings benefits like brand loyalty, reliable and trusted feedback and word-of-mouth marketing. The best marketing in the world (you may want to read my article "The Best Restaurant Marketing in the World")
Your Restaurant Website is the most likely second point of contact with a new customer (after direct contact in your restaurant), for many customers, it would be the first. Whether as a result of a review, a search in Google or Bing, or even a click-thru from a restaurant aggregator, many people are going to restaurants after checking their websites and reviews in restaurant directories.
Without a web site you’re missing out on a valuable marketing tool that requires little set-up and maintenance cost.
For tips and down to earth recommendations about having a great website, please read my article: "Seven Steps to Create a Restaurant Website" by clicking on the link below.
Apart from your website, you can also use social media networks to perpetuate your new community . You could for instance establish a Facebook group or a MySpace page. In these days, be sure that most of your clients frequent social media hubs like Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and use Twitter and Instant Messaging to communicate with their friends, family and colleagues. The question is, are you there?
I will briefly cover here each of the main social media gigants:
I will briefly cover here each of the main social media gigants:
MySpace
Facebook
Twitter
Promote Your Restaurant in MySpace
MySpace was “The Social Network” place just a couple of years ago. Although MySpace was overtaken internationally by main competitor Facebook in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace - cite_note-3, it is still very popular with younger people. And although teens were the main audience, an October 2006 report by comScore Media Metrix notes that “more than half of all MySpace visitors are now age 35 or older so you creating a MySpace page for your restaurant could be a good idea, specially if your restaurant has lots of young clients.
Today’s savvy consumers want products from a business they can trust, learn from, relate to and “be friends” with. MySpace is a potential springboard in lead generation for business owners, especially those that appear to offer something interesting rather than in-your-face marketers. Your MySpace page can be used to promote your restaurant and menu items to prospective customers in a more personal and easily accessible environment.
If you are interested in using MySpace to promote your restaurant, I recommend you that you read my free article: "Creating a MySpace Page to Promote Your Restaurant
Today’s savvy consumers want products from a business they can trust, learn from, relate to and “be friends” with. MySpace is a potential springboard in lead generation for business owners, especially those that appear to offer something interesting rather than in-your-face marketers. Your MySpace page can be used to promote your restaurant and menu items to prospective customers in a more personal and easily accessible environment.
If you are interested in using MySpace to promote your restaurant, I recommend you that you read my free article: "Creating a MySpace Page to Promote Your Restaurant
Promote Your Restaurant in Facebook
Facebook is probably the most talked about, and the most misunderstood, social networking phenomena right now. Even if you don’t have an account yet, you have probably heard about it. It may surprise you to learn that many people have already found Facebook to be an essential addition to their web marketing toolbox. Why? Because the Facebook social networking experience can be precisely what you want to make of it.
Think of Facebook as a professional tool, and that’s what it is. It doesn’t matter how millions of high school and college students are using Facebook to socialize and post photos of their Spring breaks. You can make it into whatever you want, even your own personal media-broadcasting channel.
Facebook is wonderful because it really meshes the best of what you might find at MySpace or LinkedIn, for example. Facebook was started originally for college students, so it was a very natural progression to offer it to professional as they went into the business world.
You will find many more small business owners on Facebook than MySpace or LinkedIn. MySpace has a very personal quality. It's used a lot to talk with friends. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is very professional. You have more or less a static profile.
Facebook combines the two where you can really blur the lines between professional and personal. That's what I think really makes it different; because it combines the best of both worlds, and that’s why this makes it the perfect tool to promote your restaurant.
Another reason to use Facebook is that it is a great marketing tool for small businesses because it's free. If you have a good profile in Facebook with your restaurant’s name, when somebody types in the name of your restaurant in Google, your Facebook profile will show up very high in the list of results. Sometimes much higher than your restaurant website that some of you spent so much money designing. That's very strong, and it's wonderful for search engine rankings without expending a fortune in Search Engine Optimization (or SEO for short).
BUSINESS GOALS FOR USING FACEBOOK:
Think of Facebook as a professional tool, and that’s what it is. It doesn’t matter how millions of high school and college students are using Facebook to socialize and post photos of their Spring breaks. You can make it into whatever you want, even your own personal media-broadcasting channel.
Facebook is wonderful because it really meshes the best of what you might find at MySpace or LinkedIn, for example. Facebook was started originally for college students, so it was a very natural progression to offer it to professional as they went into the business world.
You will find many more small business owners on Facebook than MySpace or LinkedIn. MySpace has a very personal quality. It's used a lot to talk with friends. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is very professional. You have more or less a static profile.
Facebook combines the two where you can really blur the lines between professional and personal. That's what I think really makes it different; because it combines the best of both worlds, and that’s why this makes it the perfect tool to promote your restaurant.
Another reason to use Facebook is that it is a great marketing tool for small businesses because it's free. If you have a good profile in Facebook with your restaurant’s name, when somebody types in the name of your restaurant in Google, your Facebook profile will show up very high in the list of results. Sometimes much higher than your restaurant website that some of you spent so much money designing. That's very strong, and it's wonderful for search engine rankings without expending a fortune in Search Engine Optimization (or SEO for short).
BUSINESS GOALS FOR USING FACEBOOK:
Get found by people who are searching for your restaurant
Connect and engage with current and potential customers
Create a community around your business
Promote other content you create, including your newsletter, blog, etc.
Promote your special events
PERSONAL ACCOUNTS VS. BUSINESS ACCOUNTS:
On Facebook, Profiles are meant for people and Pages are meant for businesses. To fully engage and leverage Facebook’s features, you should create a personal profile. If you’re worried about privacy, or balancing business and personal contacts, we’ll cover that in the next section.
What not to do with your personal profile: Do not create a personal profile for your business. Profiles are for people, Pages are for businesses. Facebook is building significant new functionality for businesses, and all of this functionality is only available to Pages. We’ll talk about Pages more in a later
section.
There are a few key differences between Business Pages and Personal Profiles:
On Facebook, Profiles are meant for people and Pages are meant for businesses. To fully engage and leverage Facebook’s features, you should create a personal profile. If you’re worried about privacy, or balancing business and personal contacts, we’ll cover that in the next section.
What not to do with your personal profile: Do not create a personal profile for your business. Profiles are for people, Pages are for businesses. Facebook is building significant new functionality for businesses, and all of this functionality is only available to Pages. We’ll talk about Pages more in a later
section.
There are a few key differences between Business Pages and Personal Profiles:
Pages allow you to designate multiple administrators, so that you can have multiple people help manage the account, and if one of your administrators leaves the company, you can still have control over the Page.
Pages are, by default, public and will start ranking in Facebook and public search results.
Pages are split into different categories (local businesses, brands, musicians) that help you be listed in more relevant search results. Of course, as a restaurant owner or manager you want to be listed under the local business category.
Personal profiles have friends, which require mutual acceptance, whereas anyone can become a fan of your Page without first going through administrator approval.
Promote Your Restaurant in Twitter
In case that you are not very familiar with the new Social Networking trends going on, I will start by explaining to you what Twitter is and how you can use this social network phenomenon to promote your restaurant.
This is Wikipedia’s definition of Twitter:
“Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, or through applications such as TwitterMobile, Tweetie, Twinkle, Twitterrific, Feedalizr, Facebook, and Twidget, a widget application for Mac.
Four gateway numbers are currently available for SMS: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, and a United Kingdom-based number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email. By September 2008, Twitter had 'well over 5 million visitors.”
Now, Twitter can be an incredible waste of your time if you don’t use this service as a marketing tool with a clear marketing strategy. It is very easy to start tweeting your daily routines and to follow everybody else’s tweets without any specific goal just to realize that you’ve spent many hours of your time without any gains.
In my ebook "How to Use Twitter to Promote Your Restaurant", I help you develop a clear Twitter marketing strategy and guide you step-by-step, from the creation of a Twitter account, to the branding, promotion, strategy implementation, management of your followers, and tracking of the effectiveness of your Twitter efforts.
Building a list on twitter is not exactly like building a targeted email list but at the same time it's also very similar.
When someone opts-in to your mailing list, they have expressed an interest in your content and want to receive your messages.
Likewise, the same is more or less true of Twitter except that your messages don't go to anyone's email, but rather to a central conversation with many participants. Once your message is tweeted, your followers can see it, as well as the followers of the people whom you are following; all of whom can reply back to your tweet.
The best way to understand Twitter is to watch this short and fun video that explains in plain English what Twitter is all about:
This is Wikipedia’s definition of Twitter:
“Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, or through applications such as TwitterMobile, Tweetie, Twinkle, Twitterrific, Feedalizr, Facebook, and Twidget, a widget application for Mac.
Four gateway numbers are currently available for SMS: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, and a United Kingdom-based number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email. By September 2008, Twitter had 'well over 5 million visitors.”
Now, Twitter can be an incredible waste of your time if you don’t use this service as a marketing tool with a clear marketing strategy. It is very easy to start tweeting your daily routines and to follow everybody else’s tweets without any specific goal just to realize that you’ve spent many hours of your time without any gains.
In my ebook "How to Use Twitter to Promote Your Restaurant", I help you develop a clear Twitter marketing strategy and guide you step-by-step, from the creation of a Twitter account, to the branding, promotion, strategy implementation, management of your followers, and tracking of the effectiveness of your Twitter efforts.
Building a list on twitter is not exactly like building a targeted email list but at the same time it's also very similar.
When someone opts-in to your mailing list, they have expressed an interest in your content and want to receive your messages.
Likewise, the same is more or less true of Twitter except that your messages don't go to anyone's email, but rather to a central conversation with many participants. Once your message is tweeted, your followers can see it, as well as the followers of the people whom you are following; all of whom can reply back to your tweet.
The best way to understand Twitter is to watch this short and fun video that explains in plain English what Twitter is all about:
Since I don’t know how much or how little you know about Twitter, in my ebook "How to Use Twitter to Promote Your Restaurant", I assume that you don’t know anything.
I start from the beginning, guiding you step by step. I’ve marked each chapter clearly with Headings so that you can skip a chapter if you are already there. Although, I would recommend you to still read the chapter, as you may find some useful information, tools or tricks that you didn’t know about.
There are already many restaurants using Twitter to engage diners online so you’ll be in good company.
However, I have to tell you, there are good ways and bad ways to use Twitter. The good ways will get you a thriving community of friends and loyal followers. The bad ways will get you ostracised and ridiculed. Here are some guidelines to using Twitter for the best return on your time (your only investment in Twitter since it's free):
I start from the beginning, guiding you step by step. I’ve marked each chapter clearly with Headings so that you can skip a chapter if you are already there. Although, I would recommend you to still read the chapter, as you may find some useful information, tools or tricks that you didn’t know about.
There are already many restaurants using Twitter to engage diners online so you’ll be in good company.
However, I have to tell you, there are good ways and bad ways to use Twitter. The good ways will get you a thriving community of friends and loyal followers. The bad ways will get you ostracised and ridiculed. Here are some guidelines to using Twitter for the best return on your time (your only investment in Twitter since it's free):
Be real. Be yourself. Establish your restaurant’s Twitter account as a person not a faceless organisation. By all means use your restaurant’s name in your Twitter name, but make sure that the people that read your bio know that you’re the owner, the chef etc.
Twitter is global, your restaurant is local. You’ll see a better return if you follow people using twitter in your local area. Services like Twitter Grader allow you to find who the top Twitter users are in your area. In http://twitter.grader.com/location you can find the "Top users by Location". Just enter your restaurant location and follow the top 100 users or so in your location. Over time, you can build from there.
TwellowHood also allows you to find Twitter users in your area, but is only currently available in the US and Canada.
You can also find interesting people by checking out who others follow. Include your Twitter on your website and encourage visitors to follow you.
TwellowHood also allows you to find Twitter users in your area, but is only currently available in the US and Canada.
You can also find interesting people by checking out who others follow. Include your Twitter on your website and encourage visitors to follow you.
Don’t broadcast. There’s a temptation to tell everyone in Twitter who you are, what you do, and what a great place your restaurant is. Don’t.
The best way to engage people is to listen to them. Perhaps you can answer other people’s questions, make light and friendly conversation with your clients who also are in Twitter, and maybe solve a problem or two.
Only once you’ve established a relationship with your followers – because inevitably if you’re friendly people will want to follow you too – then you can mention that you’re having an event and link to that event on your website.
If people ask for more details then indulge their curiosity. After the event post pics – remember be tasteful and always professional – using a service like Twitpic.
The best way to engage people is to listen to them. Perhaps you can answer other people’s questions, make light and friendly conversation with your clients who also are in Twitter, and maybe solve a problem or two.
Only once you’ve established a relationship with your followers – because inevitably if you’re friendly people will want to follow you too – then you can mention that you’re having an event and link to that event on your website.
If people ask for more details then indulge their curiosity. After the event post pics – remember be tasteful and always professional – using a service like Twitpic.
Keep an eye on your brand and your industry. Twitter allows searches to be converted to RSS feeds which can then be streamed, filtered and ready to be read in your RSS reader.
For instance, set up a search for your restaurant’s name and every time someone mentions it that tweet will show up in your reader. That way you can respond to any praise or criticism.
You can also set up searches for keywords in the restaurant industry, or keep on the look-out for catering opportunities in your area.
For instance, set up a search for your restaurant’s name and every time someone mentions it that tweet will show up in your reader. That way you can respond to any praise or criticism.
You can also set up searches for keywords in the restaurant industry, or keep on the look-out for catering opportunities in your area.
If you could use some help setting up your restaurant's online social presence, I have good news for you! I've just added a new module to my Marketing Consulting Services that covers implementing a powerful Social Media presence for your restaurant.
It is called Online Marketing Consulting: Online Restaurant Marketing and it covers both, email marketing as well as Social Media marketing for your restaurant. You can find more information HERE.
It is called Online Marketing Consulting: Online Restaurant Marketing and it covers both, email marketing as well as Social Media marketing for your restaurant. You can find more information HERE.