What is the core of a Social Media Strategy

The core of your business to consumer (B2C) strategy will be to open up two-way communication between you to the customer. 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. One side benefit is free focus group polling. Once you’ve opened up the lines of communication, joined the conversation and engaged your customers, there’s then the opportunity to create a community around your brand.

Start with Understanding Behavior

Restaurant owners can no longer afford to ignore the shift in power from business to the consumer. It started the day the Internet was available to consumers. Now, control of your brand is in the hands of the many, who love to be honest, transparent and open about nearly everything. Advertising your business through traditional means is part of your strategy, but not the tactic of choice. You must take advantage of social media to outperform your competitors and engage with your customers and employees.

The foregoing seems obvious to many of us, in part, because social media is just so, well, restaurant. Customer-facing businesses, like restaurants, are naturally social. They are just used to doing this in person, not asynchronously.

The crown jewels of your social media strategy begin with understanding who your customer is. This starts with understanding behavior. Ask these five questions first:

1. How is your restaurant is positioned? (segment, sub-segment, pricing, service and staffing philosophy, etc.)
2. Who is your most loyal customer demographic? (Gender, age, ethnicity, etc.)
3. How do you define frequency?
4. Where does your customer consume media? (if you are sending out tweets at midnight and your customer is in bed, then, is that tactical?)
5. What motivates them to make their decision to dine at your restaurant over another?

Once you understand behavior, you can start crafting a strategy.

Joining the conversations means never, ever stopping...

The first step is to develop a strategy for how you will use social media for your brand. It's an integrated marketing strategy that makes your traditional marketing efforts work harder and more efficiently. Once you start, make sure you commit time to execute. Or hire a company that specialize in restaurant social media to manage your programs for/with you. No one knows your brand better than you. But, consultants will leverage your time and ensure you keep the conversation going.

Core Media
First, update your restaurant website. Too many restaurants created a website 10 years ago and haven't changed a thing. Web 1.0 is so obvious. Take the time to update it to include facebook fan links and "follow me on Twitter" badges. Add industry-centric badges and widgets that show you are relevant and connected. This is the center of your online branding efforts, so start here. If the customer isn't coming in to your restaurant, they need to be thinking about your restaurant.

Too many restaurateurs drop the ball after their initial effort because they do not take the time. Managing your social media is a key success factor today. Be sure none of your competitors are using social media before you make this mistake.

Measurement is a big part of your strategy. What is your online reputation? What is the blogosphere saying about your brand online? There are a lot of tools and services that will provide this data to you including Guest Pulse and BooRah. Start by going on Twittersearch (launching July 2009) and search your brandname. Welcome to reality. You are no longer in control of what is said. Your customers, employees, vendors and their relationships are.

Social Media Tools for Restaurants

My first post isn't even from me. Part of what I will do here is aggregate, re-post, Tweet and link to blog posts that I think are relevant. David Finch does a good job here. See the entire blog here.

Social Media Tools for Restaurants

• Make sure your restaurant can be searched and reviewed through local business guides such as Yelp.com, Urbanspoon.com, and TripAdvisor.com
• Suggest that positive feedback from patrons be shared on these social business guide sites.
• Twitter – sign up for a Twitter account. Publish your Twitter profile on all documents. Promote giveaways, specials and announcements via your Twitter profile. Use it also as a tool to listen and converse with your customers.
• E-Newsletter – Email a monthly newsletter with the latest happenings, new menu items, entertainment news, recipe of the month etc. This is also a great tool to collect email addresses for future opportunities to connect with the customer.
• Blog – Blogging is a great way to bring the customer into the kitchen. It’s a great way bring them behind the scenes and make them feel a part. Sharing a recipe, employee profiles, and kitchen tips and tricks are just a few options to break down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. Customers want to be part of something more then just a meal, they want to feel like they belong. A blog can be that tool.
• Google Alerts – This is a great tool to use to listen to what is being said about your business, website or even your chef. Setting up a Google alert with just the name of your restaurant can bring priceless insight to both positive and negative talk that’s being said online about your business.
• Facebook – Set up a Facebook fan page to connect with your customers on Facebook. Keep it updated with fresh content and always make sure you’re involved with the conversations that are taking place on “the wall.”
• MySpace – If your clientele is more likely to be found using MySpace, create a profile page and updated it with fresh content as well. Like Facebook engage in conversations and comments.
• YouTube – Incorporate video into your social media strategy. Like your blog, take your customer behind the scene and give them a pass to a part of the restaurant that only insiders are allowed to go. Provide a few quick tips and how-tos from the house chef. Share these videos on YouTube and other video sharing sites, as well as your blog. Use video to even show where you buy your produce and meats. This is also serves a dual role because it promotes your local farmers.
• Mobile – Have customers provide their mobile phone number for coupons, specials and latest news via an SMS message.
• Events – Host Tweetups for your Twitter community and Meetups for those that gather around topics via meetup.com.
• The Business Card – Provide a business card or note-card to each customer that maps out where they can continue their dining experience online.
• Social Calendars – Use sites such as upcoming.org and eventful.com to promote the latest happenings and events.
• Flickr – Use photo sharing sites to show images of events, behind the scenes and market days. Let your customer see from the eyes of the chef rather then just the brand.
• Email – Use email not only for your e-newsletter, but also to give away FREE stuff to your customers and continue to build your email list.

Remember, that the effectiveness of social media isn’t the tool; its listening, answering questions and connecting with others. These tools are just opportunities to connect your customers to your brand and by connecting with them they’ll tell others about you.

Here are a few examples of how dining establishments are using social media to connect with their customers.

1. Social Media for Small Business - Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse
2. How one Coffee Shop Used Twitter to Double its Clientele
3. Restaurant Entrepreneur Turns to Social Media and On-site Tasting Events for Help

What types of social media are you using to converse with your customers? What has worked and what hasn’t? What would you recommend to your local restaurant owner?

I want to hear your thoughts. The comments are yours!