Restaurant Social Media
Today’s guest post is from Lauren Fiedler, the Director of Promotions and Marketing for A Pots and Pans Production. In it, she talks about what’s made Scotty’s so successful leveraging social media, and shares tips on how other restaurants can follow suit.
How To Build A Successful Social Network For Your Restaurant
Working in the food industry gives you the ability to come in contact with a variety of people and delicious food daily. It is an ever changing industry and every consumer has a large variety of choices. What makes you stand out? Effectively communicating with your customers and potential customers.
When starting your social network marketing efforts for your restaurant, you should follow some simple tips:
- Two-Way Communication is key. Everyone likes having a voice. When you are communicating with your customers you want to make it conservative. Make them feel comfortable talking to you about their experience at your restaurant. People are more comfortable talking to someone they consider a friend then a business. If they have a bad experience ask them about it, if they had a wonderful experience thank them for the praise.
- Make it Fun. Just purely marketing to people day in and day out will not keep their attention. You can’t just shoot off messages day in and day out with marketing messages. You have to engage the customers whether it be through contests you run or simply giving them a glimpse into your personal life. If you follow my boss Scott Wise, @brewhouse, you know what I mean when it comes to sharing the personal side of things. Once you give your Facebook page, Twitter handle, etc. a personality, people are more likely to become interested in what you are saying.
- Keep up with it. Trust me from experience, once you start interacting people they expect it and get upset when you don’t respond in what they consider an ample amount of time. You can’t only dedicate time to this for one week and then let it go, this is something you have to be willing to monitor and interact with daily, yes even weekends, on a continuous basis. Being in the restaurant business a majority of your business is usually done on the weekends, meaning there is more of a chance people are trying to interact with you via social media. Connect your accounts directly to you smart phone allowing you to be connected with your guests 24/7.
- Take criticism in stride. Restaurant social media is not for the weak at heart, people are going to criticize certain things you do and you have to be able to handle them professionally. With social media comes the chance for people to express their every thought with you and you have to know how to respond properly, if you upset one person they will share with their network and so on and so forth until you have a real problem on your hands and a large clean up job. The best thing to do is stay ahead of them by responding in a calm and respectful manner, take the ‘customer is always right’ stance even if they’re not.
Overall, my biggest advice is to go into restaurant social media with a plan of action, this is an ever-changing environment and you have to be able to adapt and change with it as necessary.
Have questions or comments? Feel free to e-mail me at lfiedler@scottysbrewhouse.com
Lauren Fiedler is the Director of Promotions and Marketing for A Pots and Pans Production, the parent company of Scotty’s Brewhouse, Scotty’s Lakehouse and Thr3e Wise Men Brewing Company. You can follow her on twitter at @brewhouseprlou.
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